by StoneWall 347 Replies latest watchtower bible
The overwhelming emotion produced by fear is wild fight/flight. What does rationalism do to quell this cause and effect, since that is what rationalism claims to do.
Rationalism does not claim to quell fear. Running from hungry lion is a rational act. It may save your life.
Kneeling to pray to Jesus for back up at such a time, is irrational.
As I said, 'Being rational allows us to distinguish between real danger and imagination.' It also enables us to take appropriate action.
Do you think Jesus would tell me to kneel and pray? I seem to recall Jesus slipping through the crowds to avoid being thrown off a cliff. He told his follwers to evade persecution when they could by removing from one place to another. a little cut-and-run is a very respected tradition in Christianity.
So, Gladiator, you, too,would run under some circumstances?
This Jesus seems pretty fly for a Holy guy.
Me? Run? Getaway!
If you quote the words of Jesus and they cause problems, they are open to interpretation or exclusion.
If a man spent most of his life teaching in parables, then his words are open to interpretation.
To know which interpretation is right, we take the most important command that He gave, that all the gospel writers repeat consistently, and apply it to every other command or parable. Or at least this is what I do.
Because there are translation errors - just translating from one language to another can leave out important meaning to a thought. Not only that, but the meaning of sayings become lost over time. In a thousand years, someone could read 'Jesus dissed corporation-led religion'- and they would have to guess at what dissed meant. Plus we have sayings that don't make any sense, like 'healthy as a horse'. Horses actually require a lot of health care; they aren't all that healthy themselves.
This saying only makes sense because we know it. A thousand years from now people will probably wonder if we were all 'on glue'.
Keeping these things in mind - parables/translation errors/lost meaning in popular sayings - we have to interpret many of Jesus' sayings. (Something I find interesting is that if all of this was a farce, people would probably have done a better job of making sure there were no so-called inconsistencies.)
And that number one command of Jesus is to love your God with all your heart, mind, soul - and then to love your neighbor as yourself. We also have the golden rule - Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Every other command hinges on these. Love does no harm, and living with this love is how we obey Christ. (clean the inside of the cup and the outside will also be clean -> get your heart/values/conscience right and your actions will reflect that.)
Tammy
Our preconceived ideas are like tinted lenses.
What we see is colored just enough to distort the true nature of things and skew the result.
When we attach our life to a teacher or any authority figure, our first important decision is whether or not to process and filter things.
If we blindly accept what we hear without interacting on a personal level to apply a skeptical test.....we are at the mercy of the message.
But, if we "see" with the tinted lenses of preconceived false premises the vision is never clear or the conclusion sound.
What are we to do?
I can only think we have to take our core definitions and sort through them honestly one by one.
Where is our error?
Where is the poison?
In what atom of thought does the corrupt thing lie?
Tammy
You make scripture sound almost plausible. You are able to reconcile the fallacy of the bible, because you are by nature a person that seeks reconciliation over conflict. You seek to heal, to help, to be kind.
...get your heart/values/conscience right and your actions will reflect that.
You are talking about purity, something that eludes me. It's not in my job description.
All of the above makes me feel peaceful and good, Terry, Tammy, Gladiator. I sense a harmonic chord that I don't want to disrupt.
XJW
Wow! I thought JWs were masters at prooftexting! This entire video reminded me of Satan's temptations of Jesus in which he prooftexted Jesus with out of context quotations of the Old Testament.
You pegged it. That video might work on moralists/legalists like JWs.
Maybe there next video will be called the irrationality of atheism
Just because we love our enemies does not mean we can't defend ourselves against them when they try to kill us.
Peace
Just because we love our enemies does not mean we can't defend ourselves against them when they try to kill us.
BINGO!!!
So the rational part of our minds will cause us to realize that when being attacked to defend ourselves.
Even though it is written that he that lives by the sword will die by the sword, and to not return evil for evil to no one,
the author of this video is apparently trying to show that even professsed christians wil ignore parts of it when it doesn't
suit them or what their rational part of their brain is trying to tell them.
Is there anywhere in the bible record of where Jesus said to defend yourselves or retaliate?
We can all recall words such as turn the other cheek:
Matthew 5:38-39 "YOU heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye and tooth for tooth.’ 39 However, I say to YOU: Do not resist him that is wicked; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other also to him. (NWT)
In other words it so easy to read in the bible about selling everything you have and disperse it to the poor, but how many
christians will/would follow through with that part?
Even though I don't agree with all that is stated in this video, I think the author of said work makes some valid remarks about how
even "christians" have no problem disobeying parts of the bible or words attributed to Jesus, when it doesn't fit in
with their perceptions.
