by sabastious 5 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Witnesses relish in the fact they are "Bible literalists." And they use it as the ultimate authority.
Why then do they even pay attention to science? Science does nothing but contridict the Bible.
Why don't they just ignore science, call it demonic, and just read the Bible and their literature.
The world is CONTROLED by Satan, therefore ANY science is from the devil himself.
Why do they trust ANY of it?
-Sab
It's called cherry picking. Or like this quote I always remember from a statistics textbook: "Most people use statistics as a drunken man uses a lamp post - for support rather than illumination."
What the hell is wrong with those people???
"The whole world is lying in the power of the wicked one."
^ They are just reading their Bible.
-Sab
With regard to Bible interpretation, the WTS is far from literal.
They spiritualize everything so it refers to them rather than to what it literally says ("spiritual Israel," Cedar Point conventions, for example)
With regard to science, the WTS uses anything they think will convince people they are right, whether the WTS believes in it themselves or not.
Related. . .
Some may enjoy this recent opinion piece in USA Today by Jerry Coyne.
. . .
Without science, we'd all live short, miserable and disease-ridden lives, without the amenities of medicine or technology. As Stephen Hawking proclaimed, science wins because it works.
Does religion work? It brings some of us solace, impels some to do good (and others to fly planes into buildings), and buttresses the same moral truths embraced by atheists, but does it help us better understand our world or our universe? Hardly. Note that almost all religions make specific claims about the world involving matters such as the existence of miracles, answered prayers wonder-working saints and divine cures, virgin births, annunciations and resurrections. These factual claims, whose truth is a bedrock of belief, bring religion within the realm of scientific study. But rather than relying on reason and evidence to support them, faith relies on revelation, dogma and authority. Hebrews 11:1 states, with complete accuracy, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." Indeed, a doubting-Thomas demand for evidence is often considered rude.
And this leads to the biggest problem with religious "truth": There's no way of knowing whether it's true. I've never met a Christian, for instance, who has been able to tell me what observations about the universe would make him abandon his beliefs in God and Jesus. (I would have thought that the Holocaust could do it, but apparently not.) There is no horror, no amount of evil in the world, that a true believer can't rationalize as consistent with a loving God. It's the ultimate way of fooling yourself. But how can you be sure you're right if you can't tell whether you're wrong?
The religious approach to understanding inevitably results in different faiths holding incompatible "truths" about the world. Many Christians believe that if you don't accept Jesus as savior, you'll burn in hell for eternity. Muslims hold the exact opposite: Those who see Jesus as God's son are the ones who will roast. Jews see Jesus as a prophet, but not the messiah. Which belief, if any, is right? Because there's no way to decide, religions have duked it out for centuries, spawning humanity's miserable history of religious warfare and persecution.
In contrast, scientists don't kill each other over matters such as continental drift. We have better ways to settle our differences. There is no Catholic science, no Hindu science, no Muslim science — just science, a multicultural search for truth. The difference between science and faith, then, can be summed up simply: In religion faith is a virtue; in science it's a vice.
But don't just take my word for the incompatibility of science and faith — it's amply demonstrated by the high rate of atheism among scientists. While only 6% of Americans are atheists or agnostics, the figure for American scientists is 64%, according to Rice professor Elaine Howard Ecklund's book, Science vs. Religion. Further proof: Among countries of the world, there is a strong negative relationship between their religiosity and their acceptance of evolution. Countries like Denmark and Sweden, with low belief in God, have high acceptance of evolution, while religious countries are evolution-intolerant. Out of 34 countries surveyed in a study published in Science magazine, the U.S., among the most religious, is at the bottom in accepting Darwinism: We're No. 33 , with only Turkey below us. Finally, in a 2006 Time poll a staggering 64% of Americans declared that if science disproved one of their religious beliefs, they'd reject that science in favor of their faith.
. . .
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2010-10-11-column11_ST_N.htm
PS: If anyone would like to comment on Coyne's article, there is a thread about it, from a few days ago, here:
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/200164/1/Science-and-Religion-Arent-Friends
With regard to Bible interpretation, the WTS is far from literal.
This may be so, but from the Witness perspective, it is very far from the truth.
-Sab
