Jehovah and the Munchausen Syndrome

by Terry 67 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  cyberjesus

  So how mature were Adam and Eve? was Adam created with a Child like mentality? apparentely not because God address him as an adult. Then Adam spent time by himself, therefore he became more experience, he gained knowledge he just didnt know how to classify it. Now was Eve created with a child like mentality? with the same mentality as Adam when he was created or with the advanced mentality that Adam had now that Eve was created?

  If she wasnt as mature as Adam, then Gods own Son who was far more advanced, intelligent and experienced than Adam and Eve deceived Eve who had a very inmmature mentality. Sort of like deceiving a little girl. That I would call the God syndrome.

  So God gave Adam the tasks of having lots of sex, rule his offspring and name animals. Would all those tasks make Adam smarter, wiser? Now the task of naming animals brings another point. Names are just words that are part of a languange. If the animals didnt have names it means that the language God gave Adam was incomplete since it lacked the words to describe animals. The language was faulty. Adam corrected that and he completed the languange adding the words to describe the animals. I wonder what other words were missing in that vocabulary? Since the language lacked animal names I wonder how God called them when he created them. "furry things"?

  Now how smart was to give him that task when only four generations after Noah, There would be tons of other new languages that this time did have animal names.
• 

  THE GLADIATOR

  So true Terry - Then there were the Israelites who God arranged to be taken into slavery for two hundred years and then rescued them, killing many Egyptians in the process. He then made them wander in the wilderness for forty years and claimed that he owned them because he had rescued them from the captivity he arranged for them to be in!

  There are many more accounts of the God of the bible's dubious deeds and they all seemed to involve retribution, revenge, death and duplicity.
• 

  not a captive

  cyberjesus, You have struck on the real crux of all disputes on the God story: Language.

  You think God created the words for us? Why do you think that?
• 

  not a captive

  Look at the alphabet they use and think about language. http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/28_chart.html

  Also there is a topic on a potsherd from Israel on this board with a sample of ancient Hebrew on it. My point is that there is a problem transmitting really accurate information and concepts from the past up to now.

  It seems to me the only really compelling God information from the past is this: We are really messed up creatures whether we want to blame it on God or our simian ancestors. The story of Araham as a progenitor of faith resonates with me as a likely event. The story of Abraham's descendents with a mass exodus from Egyptian slavery makes me suspect that something like that occurred--because it would be hard to impossible to get an intire people to fabricate such a thing if it were an outright lie IMHO. Jesus hitting the scene is relevant and historical.

  Beyond these markers I find the idea of "orthodoxy" difficult to uphold. I believe that the story of Abraham marks a call to individual faith that we may speak of to each other but may not compel others to follow. I believe that Jesus reinforced this in his life and his teaching. To expect ancient texts to connect these elements can be tricky--especially when we have to rely on human intermediaries--translators. When I look at the potsherd from Israel I find it insulting for anyone to quibble about theological points--one way or another.

  If God is present in this vast whatever-it-is, we can only each find him in the proportion that we even seek him. We are not going to be finding him through a Knowledge Book. I do read the Bible --but come on--they didn't write things like we do on this post--and we are not all that great sometimes at communicating ourselves. It is difficult to assess our own history and express it.

  Again--Who made language, us or God?
• 

  Terry

  Look at the alphabet they use and think about language. http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/28_chart.html

  Also there is a topic on a potsherd from Israel on this board with a sample of ancient Hebrew on it. My point is that there is a problem transmitting really accurate information and concepts from the past up to now.

  This will come as quite a surprise to the thousands of Rabbis around the world who read the ancient texts with great proficiency!

  Hebrew is among the simplest of languages compared to Greek. If God were going to create a language you couldn't do much better than

  Greek with its specificity of expression well suited for philosophy, science, logic and math. Aristotle's writings brought the nation of Islam out of the Dark Ages.
• 

  not a captive

  That is true, Greek seems to have more sophistication than ancient Hebrew. That is why I invite any to consider how difficult it is for scholars, Hebrew scholars to unlock the ideas behind the older writing. The transmission of iconcrete names and common action was the first job that language undertook and it is said that Hebrew as an early(some say the earliest) language was very graphic in expressing a thought. I read that words were so formed that even the culture was carried with the formation of a word.

  But a new idea is hard to express, isn't it?

  But if there were ideas that a benevolent being wished to convey , wouldn't these be hard to express ? But even before they were spoken (as through a thick-headed-hearted prophet like, say, Jonah) wouldn't it be nearly impossible for humans to understand? I think of so many instances that God tried to get a new definition out there, a new concept. And we humans, the Jews in this case, just couldn't understand what he was getting at.

  I think of Jesus redefining the idea of who a neighbor is. The root word for neighbor in both Greek and Hebrew has to do with being in close proximity to someone. Jesus changes it from the customary definition of the Jew next door to that of a stranger who needs your kind attention. I think of his telling the story of the Good Samaritan and ending it with a question"Who of the three made himself neighbor to the man who was robbed?" reveals that just the literal meaning, the root of a word, will not tell us God's mind. If we want to get what is being said we have to listen like someone playing a game of Charade.Kind of figure it out. Maybe some Jews "got it". They got a lot of credit for trying at least. David was a bloody man but God gave him a lot of credit for picking himself up and trying again. It comes down to good will.

  I kind of have to rely on you for that. I have to trust that this post is open enough that my own stumbling attempts at communication are given generous consideration. I don't expect mindless concession but I do hope for mindful disagreement.

  In trying to figure God's position in this mess humanity is in--and I do think it is a mess--I wouldn't suspect God of being so misunderstood if I didn't know how violent and cruel we humans are--even when we thing we are being just. The very words that the Hebrew use to describe male and female are really disturbing. I have thought for years that this indicates such a basic disturbance in the household of man that I don't know how God can deal with us.

  This post has most to with how God set such an ambush for humanity. I just cannot concede so quickly that God is such a son-of-a-bitch. I think he was caught associating with the wrong types, so to speak, us. I think we did create God in our own image --and we just don't like ourselves.

  Respectfully, Maeve
• 

  goldensky

  "God is out there walking aroud----YES, WALKING AROUND in the (nice flourish here:) Breezy part of the day!!

  As if THAT makes any difference to anybody!!

  Give me a break."

  Ha, ha! Great thread, Terry.

  ASphere, Mary:

  Bluecanary: I love your link! Could you tell me what I have to do to send it to a couple of persons? I don't seem to be able to.
• 

  B_Deserter

  Not sure if this is related, but there is a sister in my old hall who we all suspected had Munchausen syndrome. Her kids...all of them...were chronically ill all the time. They were all alarmingly underweight, had poor color, and seemed spaced out all the time. The story is that there is some blood factor the parents both have that will cause health problems in their kids. One of the youngest is fed through a feeding tube that goes directly into her stomach. The doctors told them that she only needed it for the first six months or something but it's been years and they still use it. They're incredibly selective in what they listen to doctors about. But yeah the kids (except one) are all listless and weak all the time. Very suspicious.
• 

  B_Deserter

  Wouldn't you agree that either there were an Adam and Eve or else we evolved?

  Actually, no. According to the latest information, there was a female homo sapiens in which we all are descendants of. Likewise there is also a male we all descend from. The only difference is that this male and female probably didn't live at the same time. Anthropology is an interesting field. For example, it's utterly meaningless to trace your ancestry back more than 900 years or so. Why? Because you are actually related to every single person in the world who lived back then. You have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents, 16 great-great-grandparents, 32 great-great-great grandparents, and so on. At the 30 generation mark (assuming an average generation of 30 years, so 30 x 30 = 900 years), that's over 1 billion great^29 grandparents, more than the total population of the earth back then. That's why I chuckle at shows like "Who do you think you are?" when they trace ancestry back that far. Like when Brooke Shields was shown to be a descendant of the ancient Kings of France. So f'ing what? That's far enough back to where almost EVERYBODY can claim such a thing.
• 

  bluecanary

  goldensky, you have a pm.