Could humans become as powerful as Jehovah? WT says yes!

by Paralipomenon 4 Replies latest jw friends

  • Paralipomenon
    Paralipomenon

    Coming to the end of my trying to rationalize and understand the witnesses I had a thought.

    Witnesses maintain that Jesus was a physical human. A perfect one, but human nonetheless. This was to be a perfect sacrifice in place of Adam, and it had to be human otherwise it wouldn't be a real test.

    At the age of 30, Jesus was baptised and with the holy spirit in the form of a dove, he regained his memories of his life in the heavens.

    Close books, applause, sing a song and pray.

    Whoa, wait... so if he was a normal human... that means that a normal human has the CAPACITY to hold all the information of the universe from the creation of the stars, galaxies, to the intricices of DNA structure of every living thing on the planet.

    I researched this point and asked everyone I could. As far as I could tell, this concept has never been addressed by the WT. Nobody really could dispute it, and I watched as some people got very uncomfortable with the implications of this idea.

    Either:

    1) Jesus didn't fully become human and retained some of his spirit essense behind, in which case the sacrifice wasn't legitimate

    or

    2) Humans have the capacity to become gods in flesh

    Neither concept is acceptable to a true believer. It was fun to watch them try to mentally resolve this.

  • HintOfLime
    HintOfLime
    Genesis 11:5-8 (New International Version)

    5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6 The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them."

    (God then proceeds to interfere with man's plans and abilities, thus invalidating the outcome.)

    The point being, according to the bible, if man set out to accomplish peace, good health, everlasting life, and independence from 'god'... nothing would be impossible for him. According to the bible, man does not need god - but rather god needs man, and will do whatever it takes to ensure man is dependent on him.

    - Lime

  • ana_dote
    ana_dote

    well...just thoughts to ponder in addition to yours:

    God supposedly confused the languages because there was "nothing" humans couldn't accomplish if they remained united.

    Also, there is no way to measure what the "perfect" human brain could hold. "Experts" claim we use, what....I think the last I heard was one tenth of one percent of our brains? And yet we have some SMART humans from just that minor fraction of brain usage.

    So yes, I think that humans could become god-like by certain definitions of the term, perhaps. The scriptures indicated that there currently were many "gods and lords", etc.....

    Another interesting concept to think about is that it has been often said that we could never learn all there was to know about God...but nothing was ever said about our inability to continue learning. Therefore, the capacity to store information in a perfect brain could potentially be virtually limitless.

    Also, just to argue some semantics....Jesus wasn't actually a "normal" human. Neither was Adam. Their direct source was supposedly God. Yes, there had to be human for human sacrifice, but when you think of the paternity of both humans, it was from a heavenly, supernatural source. Jesus was born by a woman, which qualified him as human for the ransom, but the seed was from God himself - as was Adam's "seed" or birth source. Therefore, Jesus wasn't exactly a "normal" human (nor Adam if you want to get technical. He was SUPPOSED to be the normal human, but that kinda got messed up apparently). Our definition of a "normal" human is only known by tainted imperfect standards since we cannot know what the species could have been like in a perfect state. But again, because both Jesus and Adam were on par with the source of their coming into existance, the ransom was valid.

    I can see where the shock and confusion would come from, though. It's easy to get caught up in the questioning of certain details to the point of maybe not realizing others.

    :)

  • HintOfLime
    HintOfLime
    Also, there is no way to measure what the "perfect" human brain could hold. "Experts" claim we use, what....I think the last I heard was one tenth of one percent of our brains? And yet we have some SMART humans from just that minor fraction of brain usage.

    This is a myth. http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/10percent.asp

    Another interesting concept to think about is that it has been often said that we could never learn all there was to know about God...but nothing was ever said about our inability to continue learning. Therefore, the capacity to store information in a perfect brain could potentially be virtually limitless.

    Says who? What is this mythical 'perfect brain' exactly? Your brain is already a marvelous machine with billions of neurons and trillions of connections.

    Even still, there are a finite number of neurons in our brain - as there would be with any sized brain. The brain evolved with only the capacity required to function, survive, and reproduce within our lifespans. Capabilities and storage beyond that would never be utilized, and therefore a waste (and just as evolution would predict.. that is a prefect description of our mental capabilities).

    Only so many neurons can fit within a physical space, and that translates to a finite capacity for storing information. The human brain is currently estimated to have storage capacity somewhere in the terabytes. This used to sound like an impossibly large amount of storage - but not so much in 2010. I currently own two 1 terabyte hard drives. In 20 years, no doubt I will own a couple petabyte hard drives (that's 1000 terrabytes each). Even if your brain were only working at 10%, the human-developed magnetic hard drive will likely surpass the mythical 'perfect' brain in capacity by a factor of almost 100 within 20 years.

    That is hardly 'limitless'. The website Wikipedia requires about 5 terabytes of space uncompressed, yet somehow I doubt you would find it easy to memorize even 0.001% of that with your '10% capacity' brain.

    Think back to 31 minutes, 24 seconds into the movie The Dark Knight... or any movie for that matter. Odds are, you cannot recall exactly what was being said or going on at that precise time. Multiply these two numbers in your head: 7022852 x 4493283 within 1 second. You can't. A neural network is great at doing some things, and absolutely horrible at doing others. By design, a neural network 'simplifies' input for storage. It 'compresses' information using a form of 'lossy compression'. When it doesn't do that correctly (which occationally happens in mentally handicapped individuals) undesirable performance results. It is a pattern matching engine, and as such is not and cannot be suited for all tasks.

    The point is - the brain, no matter how 'perfect' or how big - will always be limited. It is by the organization of multiple individuals, scientific reasoning, and accumulated human knowledge through which humans have become gods. By standing on the sholders of technology we can dispense ourselves of the knowledge of 4000 years worth of bushcraft survival skills and instead put our minds toward information suitable to our current environment.

    That is what makes us gods - our ability collectively to grow in knowlege and create framework systems by which to support ourselves for greater technical achievements - not the limited capabilities of our human brains.

    Also, just to argue some semantics....Jesus wasn't actually a "normal" human. Neither was Adam. Their direct source was supposedly God. Yes, there had to be human for human sacrifice, but when you think of the paternity of both humans, it was from a heavenly, supernatural source. Jesus was born by a woman, which qualified him as human for the ransom, but the seed was from God himself - as was Adam's "seed" or birth source.

    By that reasoning, if I were to create a half-man, half-mouse creature... that thing would be a mouse - and all other mice could be measured in performance against it.

    Absolutely not. As soon as something is 'super-human' in power or abilities - it is by definition not human anymore.

    I can see where the shock and confusion would come from, though. It's easy to get caught up in the questioning of certain details to the point of maybe not realizing others.

    It can also be confusing trying to employ logical thinking in conjunction with bible apologetics.

    - Lime

  • ana_dote
    ana_dote

    while you do make well-educated points that I would concede to, this isn't a question of evolution/science versus the bible.

    I was simply expressing the thinking that could be used to explain the reasoning behind the question. If you base what I said from a jw "biblical" perspective, then what I said is correct.

    Whether or not it agrees with science, nature, evolution, whatever...doesn't really apply in this particular debate.

    As is proven with the JW's and most other religions, it can be quite easy to construct a line of reasoning to fit whatever issue is raised. If you're a "true believer" of that faith, then such reasoning would satisfy the curiosity because it sounds logical ENOUGH to not have to investigate further (which is how jw's mentally resolve the issue that paralipomenon raised).

    "By that reasoning, if I were to create a half-man, half-mouse creature... that thing would be a mouse - and all other mice could be measured in performance against it. " - this type of analogy doesn't exactly apply, although I still see your point. There were no "half" creatures involved. Both Adam and Jesus were human. But they were both directly created by a divine source, instead of one being created by God (Adam) and then everything else coming solely FROM that creation. If you created a mouse out of nothing, used it's parts to create a counterpart mouse, bred them, and then selected one female, created new sperm from nothingness (using the same creation concept as the original mouse) and impregnated her, THEN that would be a more similar analogy. Both the original mouse and the mouse born from the sperm that was not passed down from anything would be on par in the originality of their existance.

    Interesting points otherwise, though.

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