by Terry 65 Replies latest watchtower bible
Neither can anybody else.
You can't say this as if its a fact. We can know who God is, through Christ. True, we may not have all of Christ's words about him, and we may misunderstand what is written... but if we can get the sense of who Christ is, then we can get the sense of who God is. Of course, all this is dependent upon having faith in Christ, in the first place.
Tammy
TAMMY expostulates: You can't say this as if its a fact. We can know who God is, through Christ. True, we may not have all of Christ's words about him, and we may misunderstand what is written.. . but if we can get the sense of who Christ is, then we can get the sense of who God is . Of course, all this is dependent upon having faith in Christ, in the first place.
Okay, let's take this one step at a time.
Neither you nor I have seen God. We haven't touched God. We haven't smelled God. We haven't tasted God. We haven't heard with our natural ears the Voice of God.
You'd have to go all poetic and metaphorical and start sighing in breathless phrases about "seeing" God through His creation, being "touched" by the power of His love....etc. to work around the clear undebatable facts of NON-GOD evidence.
Secondly, talking to God (praying) over years and years is constant self-programming reinforcement of the premise that God HEARS you! Who wants to admit they are crazy enough to talk to NOBODY? You've rigged the outcome in advance!
There is a desperate and unquenchable famine in mankind's vanishingly small life which craves MORE AND MORE of it and the only conceivable solution--so far--is postulating a HERO JESUS who yanks our bacon out of the fire.
So, I can't really blame anybody if they grasp frantically for all they come up with as they are drowning. Who knows, maybe a brick can float??
Thirdly, every Jesus story you've ever read which is purported to be factual comes directly out of a fragile document called the Holy Bible.
This concoction of many "little books" has no chain-of-ownership untampered, uncorrupted and verifiable by any means other than very LOUD and THREATENING assertions by others who earn their living from getting you to accept its gravitas and authority.
It had been told as stories as word of mouth. It was contradicted and retold. Finally, it was written, copied, recopied and translated while be interpreted. The first two chains of connection (wriiten as originals and recopied) have VANISHED UTTERLY! We begin to find tiny postage stamp fragments and then: BOOM! Full-blown Catholic approved manuscripts. TA DA!!! Nothing suspicious there, eh?
Protestants completely revamped the Bible officially approved by the universal church fifteen hundred years after it was "sealed" as canon.
They reworked it and declared that ANYBODY with the aid of Holy Spirit can understand God's message!
Presto! Thousands of competing and disagreeable denominations sprang up like mushrooms after a spring rain!
Each person who desperately believes in Jesus has to rely on their imagination and a bogus hand-cranked piece of rhetorical gibberish called the Bible.
But, you are certainly entitled to your own opinion.
Look above at the large words I've blown up for emphasis. (In the Tammy quote.)
IF leads to THEN. Based on what? Rigging the vote by automatically ACCEPTING the whole concoction in the first place without a shred of evidence! If you begin believing something BEFORE you review the evidence it is called BIAS.
So, Tammy--in short, I say to you: BAH HUMBUG!
Cheers!
- Gene Roddenberry
That helps us measure the "success" of God.
I'm a DON'T KNOW person; i.e. Agnostic.
I just don't know.
Kind of a softball position if you ask me. (I know you didn't ask me- just prodding you.)
Then you are an agnostic as far as Flying Sphaghetti Monster or the Teacup in Orbit go, also. You will never "know" unproveable things.
Take a stand. I know the Bible is in error. I know that a "God" has not made itself known to mankind in a clear way. I am an atheist. Atheists leave room for God/Jesus/Thor/Zeus/Jupiter/FSM to show up with proof anytime.
Neither you nor I have seen God. We haven't touched God. We haven't smelled God. We haven't tasted God. We haven't heard with our natural ears the Voice of God.
True.
You'd have to go all poetic and metaphorical and start sighing in breathless phrases about "seeing" God through His creation, being "touched" by the power of His love....etc. to work around the clear undebatable facts of NON-GOD evidence.
Perhaps... but I see God only through His Son, though because of that, then I can more fully appreciate the gift of life and this world that He gave us. But you don't have to believe in God to appreciate the gift of life and/or this world.
There is a desperate and unquenchable famine in mankind's vanishingly small life which craves MORE AND MORE of it and the only conceivable solution--so far--is postulating a HERO JESUS who yanks our bacon out of the fire.
More and more of life, you mean? If that is what you mean, then I don't cling to Jesus because I'm afraid of losing my life. I'm not afraid of death (besides leaving my children behind), and I'm certainly not afraid of nothingness. In fact, I'm sure there are tons of people who are just so weary and tired of life that nothingness seems peaceful in comparison.
I 'cling' to Jesus for the simple fact that I love Him and believe He is Truth - by word and deed.
Thirdly, every Jesus story you've ever read which is purported to be factual comes directly out of a fragile document called the Holy Bible.
Plenty of stuff about Jesus that never made it into the bible. I've even read a bit of it. As for those who would use it to threaten and bully and abuse their followers... well, no one should be following them to begin with. Even the book they're using to do that with, says so.
Rigging the vote by automatically ACCEPTING the whole concoction in the first place without a shred of evidence!
Terry, each written account in the bible is a shred of evidence. That might be enough for some people to believe in the person those accounts are witnessing to - even knowing that those accounts don't give us the entire picture. It might not be enough of a shred for others.
But, you are certainly entitled to your own opinion.
As are you.
So, Tammy--in short, I say to you: BAH HUMBUG!
A wink and a kiss blown to your Bah Humbug, just to be a brat. Besides, love conquers all... not cranky bah humbugers ;)
(Sorry about the craziness with the quote boxes; it is my very new skill)
Tammy
All the gods ever created by men were done so out of human ignorance of the world they lived in, the same world we live in today.
With every creation of these gods came a surmountable list of embellished stories of how great and powerful they were, in all the good they
were toward the civilization of when they were created and equally how vengeful they could be to people outside of the select civilization,
the bible is testable proof of that fact.
One thing that has to be acknowledged through the long list of gods throughout history that men were always trying to place themselves
into the power of the gods as an attempt to improve their own personal stature within their own civilization. The so called spiritual seers were
usually treated lavishly with the most power and respect as well material prosperity because of this. You can even see this today in
a number of religious organizations, so from a human viewpoint god is indeed quite successfully, even though the never was any factual evidence
of one ( god ) ever existing.
dear Terry...
with any shred of evidence of God and Jesus Christ comes the witness of honest people that have no reason or desire to obtain power over you...interestingly you seem to have no perception of the fact that these same people also warned you about the evil one and his desire to overpower YOU by leading you away from God. it's a solid truth that satan has been able to do that...evidence has been mounting has it not?...call it evidence of anti-christ, which word, or entity has ABSOLUTELY no meaning WHAT-SO-EVER without the truth of JESUS CHRIST...but exists as a living force within your person...the entity generates emotions, thoughts and action apart from what you would call your "gained knowledge".
...I don't expect an answer to that question either...but maybe you can stew in the truthfulness of it...
love michelle
If people would research ancient history there were 100's of gods strewn about the middle east and abroad, does not believing any of these gods
also reveal the evil one has taken over people's minds as well ?
Yahweh was just one god from the ancient Israelites of Judea.
Now take a speculative guess what other civilizations thought of people who didn't believe in their god.
And yes those civilizations told many stories of how great and powerful their god was over other gods including Yahweh.
Which God, which Jesus.
I was at a funeral today for a very dear friend and the point was made to the audience that only Jesus was the only way to Heaven. I was sitting with a close Muslim friend.
There were so many gaps and leaps of logic in the many Testimonies given by the family. One was that we are here only as a temporary home, this is not our real home one of the songs lyrics said but heaven. Wait a minute- Nearly all Christian Seminaries teach that at the Second Coming Christ returns to the earth with his Church and after a few events they live forever here, that's Christian eschatology 101.
All of this confussion between Sunday School theology and Seminary theology- how is someone suppose to get it 'right', meaning their life depends on it if the basics are mistaught.
Maybe the 'God' part of the equation needs to be rethought.
dear desighns...
the thing is that no one's "life" does depend on knowing if we spend eternity in heaven or on earth. eternal life depends on whether we have had our sins blotted out by the blood of Jesus Christ so that we can live before the Holy God who can not "abide" with sin.
love michelle
Michelle- This concept of one person dying for the sins of the human race is just not a Jewish concept, and Jesus is pitched as being a Observant Jew. How could Jesus saves Jews who were already 'saved'. They had a very developed concept of how God had already taken care of everybody- Jew and Gentile, and it didn't involve human sacrifice. Saint 'Paul's' rants against Judaism in Romans show he may never have spent much time with real Jews.
It may be time to understand Judaism and then see that the NT is arguing against a false conception of Judaism. Like buring people as Witches in New England, false charges lead in all sorts of bad directions. 'Paul's' rants against a fictional Judaism led to the wholesale slaughter of Jews by Christians, 'Paul's' endorsement of Slavery (something Jews had abandoned for centuries) led to institutionalized slavery in the Christian world that lasted for over 1800 years.
Sometimes we need to deconstruct what we learned. We did this as xJWs with good results.
