living forever

by finnrot 11 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  finnrot

  I remember when I was a kid I used to assuage my fear of dying with the comfort and knoweledge that I was one of the "Millions now living that MAY never die." But even as a kid, I used to think to myself that after a thousand or so years of living with these boring people that I see at the Kingdom Hall, that sooner or later I would become bored as hell. After all, everything really fun seemed to be a sin and after a thousand years of bowling with my fellow Witnesses and groveling on my knees thanking Jehovah for every breath that I took, wouldn't I get bored at some point?

  Also, what would happen if Jehovah got bored with us or somebody pissed Him off and he decided to wipe us all out and go on to another project.

  Am I the only Witness kid who thought of these things?

  "Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
  Terry Pratchett.
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  Amazing

  Finnrot: I am sure other JW kids had similar thoughts. Believe it or not, I wondered about being bored before I joined the religion ... but the Watchtower spent time assuring everyone that Jehovah would keep them busy with plenty of work. Looking back, I have this terrible feeling the 'work' would be boring as hell.

  Today, as long as I had good health, and stayed young, living forever does not bother me. This part of the JW teachings is the least offenseive to me.
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  dmouse

  It would take more than a thousand years for me to get bored!
  However, I don't think we have any idea what it would be like living forever.

  Imagine a mountain of hard granite 10 miles high, every 1000 years a butterfly comes and brushes the top just once. This begins to erode the mountain and after unimaginable eons the mountain is worn down. Now, imagine you have been forced to monitor this event, not once but a million times. You haven't even scratched the surface of what it would be like to live forever.

  You could rearrange every molecule in the galaxy in all possible combinations again and again and again and still not have started to live forever. Still think you wouldn't get bored?
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  RunningMan

  Actually, I consider the JW delusion of living forever to be one of the more attractive religious delusions. You don't have to do something new to find it enjoyable. How many times do you have to have sex before it becomes boring? And, just think of how good you would get at Nintendo. Although, forever is a pretty long time...

  By the way, the talk and booklet "Millions Now Living Will Never Die" was written around 1918. The gist of the booklet was that armageddon was guaranteed to come in 1925, so certainly, the readers and those in the audience would still be alive when it came. Well, my wife's grandmother died last summer, mostly from old age. She was born in 1916, so she would have been a child when that talk was originally given.

  Those "Millions Now Living", who were old enough to hear and understand the talk, are mostly dead.
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  myMichelle

  Forever is a mighty long time...

  A billion billion years after starting an everlasting life, you still have forever to go...If travelling the universe becomes possible, and why wouldn't it after working on the problem for a few milenia? After you circle the universe a billion times, seen it all, done it all, you still have forever to go...

  Makes reincarnation a bit more appealing aspiration...fresh new start, new life. But it's not like there's a choice, whatever will be will be.

  Michelle
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  Xander

  think of how good you would get at Nintendo

  Nintendo? With all those violent games?? Oh, no - there would be no Nintendo in the new system.

  In fact, I had a weird justification when I was 'in'. I honestly believed they had the whole and complete truth and felt obligated to tell everyone else about it so they had a chance to live the society's promise of forever-in-paradise.

  I wanted nothing to do with it myself, though. I LOVE wargames (miniature and pen-and-paper). I LOVE computer games - shooters and action/adventure and flight-sims. I LOVE studying military history. I LOVE computers (can't build them in the new system without polluting the environment, and where does the electricity come from? - besides, who needs them? So what if it takes 1000 years to solve an equation now, we've got the time!)

  Sex is great, but you can't do it all day every day. Without the above hobbies (all no-nos in new system according to COs and DOs), I'd just as soon not live forever.

  and still not have started to live forever

  And what about population? Can't leave the planet without building rockets, which pollute the environment. How many generations of humans that won't ever die do you think the ecosystem could support?

  (We once had a CO that simply assumed after a certain point humans would just stop having sex - no need to reproduce, and since that was the only god-approved reason for sex, our 'sex drive' would just be turned off - we'd be 'as the angels' were - living only to praise god day and night - and he actually seemed to ENJOY the thought!!!)

  A fanatic is one who, upon losing sight of his goals, redoubles his efforts.
  --George Santayana
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  RunningMan

  In "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" books, Douglas Adams creates a character named "Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged". He is one of the rare immortal entities of the universe.

  After doing everything imaginable, he became bored, not to mention cranky. So, to keep himself busy, he took on the task of personally insulting every member of the universe, in alphabetical order. Needless to say, this took a lot of travel, giving him time to think up new insults.

  So, it would not be unusual for a spaceship to appear, in a completely unrelated part of the book, and Wowbagger to walk out, say something like "Arthur Dent, you're a jerk", then get back into the spaceship and fly away.
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  Beck_Melbourne

  Hi finnrot

  Aaah...I love to remember. Yes as a kid I used to love looking at the colourful WT art about paradise...and I would visualise sliding down the neck of a giraffe...and patting the tame lion...and I could almost taste the fresh fruit and smell the spring flowers.

  THEN...one day...I looked at it and wondered where the plastic drinking utensils came from....and where did the fabric for their clothing come from...were there going to be manufacturing companies and industrial establishments??? I wondered about the lawns...did they mow their lawns and use petrol operated mowers, or would the grass stay very long, or would one shuffle their sheep from one end of the yard to the other...would they have a back yard?? Would there be a need to have fences...and would there be disputes as to the distribution of land. Who gets to distribute the land??

  As a kid I accepted it all...but as an adult...NUH!!

  Beck
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  ofcmad

  (We once had a CO that simply assumed after a certain point humans would just stop having sex - no need to reproduce, and since that was the only god-approved reason for sex, our 'sex drive' would just be turned off - we'd be 'as the angels' were - living only to praise god day and night - and he actually seemed to ENJOY the thought!!!)

  ______________________________________________________

  Believe it or not, I have heard that one before. My dad used to propogate that theory. Then I had heard a brother, (shortly thereafter get counseled), that maybe we would start inhabiting other planets, and maybe be able to explore demensions...

  ofcmad
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  Beck_Melbourne

  ofcmad....didn't anyone ever tell that brother that Jehovah MIGHT let us go and live on other planets??? LOL...that was one theory I heard. Since the world will be perfect...and the people are all perfect...and we are using our perfect brains to do perfect things....then we could quite easily transport our perfect population to other plantets. Star Trek!

  Beck