by slimboyfat 99 Replies latest members campaign
That’s interesting. I notice William Lane Craig is talking about an evolved Adam too.
I don’t know. I keep a few possibilities open: all creatures evolved including humans, or all creatures evolved except humans, but least likely seems to be that all living things were created separately. Natural history seems clear that is not the case. Humans are special in many respects, not least in our capacity for reason, so the Bible’s claim that we are special among creation seems worth exploring.
Humans are special in many respects, not least in our capacity for reason, so the Bible’s claim that we are special among creation seems worth exploring.
🤣Slim How many humans do you know capable of reason? I would say without a tiny minority of particularly intelligent human beings, the rest of us wouldn't know reason & logic if it slapped us around the face with a wet fish. There I said it. Bit eugenicist of me, but....¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The thing with military is a difficult. On one hand you are a coward, if you dont defend your loved ones. On the other hand, the soldier is not to think, but to obey orders and so the leaders command the soldiers to do evil in evil times. The American solution is imo the best; everybody should be armed with great responsibility. So they can defend their loved ones, even in those extreme times where the government turns mad and commands its mindless soldiers to oppress and kill the citizens.
I can agree with SBF that there is something slightly appealing about JW to those of us who believe. Even when I have denounced just about every JW doctrine you can imagine and must shake my head at the abysmal endtime teachings, I see still see a people with a dedicated fellowship, eventhough God has no org. We cant deny that shunning is part of the success. Mankind has herd mentality and there must be discipline among the sheep. Could they become "sane levelheaded"? I doubt it
FFGhost - "...Growth is not the raison d'etre of the WTS. Control is their motivation..."
Not quite.
Being "God's Exclusive Earthly Organization" is the WTS's raison d'etre.
Everything they do...
...everything...
...is, ultimately, done in the service of maintaining that fiction.
Without it - by their own internal rules and rhetoric - the WTS has no theological right to even exist...
...and for the leadership, that possibility is unthinkable (for a whole shit-ton of reasons).
Which leads to their secondary motivation... the Org's continued survival...
...after all, "God's Exclusive Earthly Organization" can't die... if it did, it wouldn't be "God's Exclusive Earthly Organization", and since that's unthinkable...
... they are therefore compelled to take any and all actions necessary to ensure said survival.
The irony (that would be fucking hilarious if it wasn't so facepalming) is that as time goes on, and they make bigger and bigger blunders, and their own inability to adapt (for all kinds of reasons) paints them ever more tightly into an ideological and legal corner...
...the very actions that they feel they have no choice but to take in order to survive cannot help but - ultimately - actively undermine the Organizational claim.
Vidiot, you made an excellent insightful point. The fact that the WT (at least soon after the death of Charles Russell) in its literature presents itself as "God's Exclusive Earthly Organization" (and that it presents "Jehovah's witnesses/Witnesses" as defined by them as the only true worshipers of God) is one of the things which now annoys me when I read WT literature. Lately I have been carefully reading (with a critical and yet opened minded eye) a number of the WT books which I read as an unbaptized child and which I read as an active JW and I am annoyed by much of what I read therein.
All of their books on Bible prophecy, and all (or nearly all) of their books designed as primary books for conducting Bible studies, devote a considerable percentage of their content to making the claim that the WT is "God's Exclusive Earthly Organization". That annoys me.
In number of places the books start off as claiming to help people to understand the Bible (and thus could appeal to those who are already in a church which they like), but later in the books the books start specifically promoting the WT as being the organization which God and Christ are exclusively using. The doctrine pertaining to 1914 CE (as well as the ones about 1918 CE and 1919 CE) is one of their key means for making the claim that they are "God's Exclusive Earthly Organization, and that doctrine about 1914 CE is taught in all of the books (at least since the Rutherford era) they use for conducting personal Bible studies, as well in numerous other WT books.
Though the JW governing body (gb) claims that Christ is now ruling on the throne of David, in a sense the gb also writes as though they are sitting on David's throne (or at least sitting on princely thrones) and acting as rulers over the other JWs!
Update: In browsing through the What Does The Bible Really Teach? book (in the first edition, the one of 2005) I don't see that book directly promoting the WT. That pleases me, but the book does urge people to attend JW congregational meets and to become JWs. Also in its appendix it teaches briefly the doctrine about 1914.
As an example of what I wrote in my prior post consider this. Chapter 22 of the You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth book (the First Edition of that book came out very soon after I became baptized) is called "Identifying the True Religion". The last paragraph of that chapter invites those studying the book to begin attending "meetings at the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses." The very next chapter of that book is called "God's Visible Organization" and it includes multiple photographs of the WT's main headquarters (at the time) and of some of their foreign (non-USA) branch headquarters. Chapters 16 and 18 of that book are heavily about 1914.
For another example note "Chapter Twenty-Three: Gathering the Last Ones Of God's Spiritual Nation" in the WT's book from 1958 called From Paradise Lost To Paradise Regained (which my sister and I studied together as very young children with our JW father conducting the study).
DISILLUSIONED JW:
That claim also annoyed ME as well…I was raised Roman Catholic and felt it was presumptuous for any religion to make such a claim that they were supposedly “God’s Exclusive Earthly Organization”. I didn’t really think that one religion was better than another.
Did the God of the universe tell them this? IF SO, just how and when did God supposedly communicate this to them?..An event like this would be dramatic like something out of the Old Testament.. In fact, it would have to be for anybody to know it occurred.
I would sincerely like to shake the hand of the special person that God communicated with..A person this special should be carried down the Avenue on a parade float!!!
This was one of many claims of the JW religion I let go in one ear and out the other.
Vidiot Not quite.
Being "God's Exclusive Earthly Organization" is the WTS's raison d'etre.
Everything they do...
...everything...
...is, ultimately, done in the service of maintaining that fiction.
Without it - by their own internal rules and rhetoric - the WTS has no theological right to even exist...
...and for the leadership, that possibility is unthinkable (for a whole shit-ton of reasons).
Which leads to their secondary motivation... the Org's continued survival...
...after all, "God's Exclusive Earthly Organization" can't die... if it did, it wouldn't be "God's Exclusive Earthly Organization", and since that's unthinkable...
... they are therefore compelled to take any and all actions necessary to ensure said survival.
Bloody good points.
We always say 'follow the money' and the reason they do anything is either for 'legal or financial'......but you're right. The reason they do those things is for survivals sake. And they must survive, as you say, because they are Gods one true Earthly org👍
In this, the Watchtower Society is somewhat unique among corrupt religious organizations.
For the majority or them, the financial benefits are the primary goals (whether they admit it or not).
For the Org, however, the legal and financial objectives are a means to an end.
This is why - compared to most millionaire megachurch leaders - the Watchtower upper echelons actually seem to live somewhat modestly....
...by all anecdotal evidence, the guys at the top are True Believers.
The WT heirarchy is designed such that one can only rise through the ranks by being True Believers.
