The JW answer is that while God has the power to see the future, he restricts his exercise of this power in order to leave room for the free will of humans in relation to his purpose. So God wasn't pretending not to know the outcome when he tested people in the Bible. He really doesn't know if any particular individual will serve him faithfully or not until it unfolds.
slimboyfat
JoinedPosts by slimboyfat
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#1 ANSWER THIS: Why would an omnibenevolent and omniscient god put us through tests of faith?
by EdenOne ini'll be starting a series "answer this:" with thought-provoking questions for debate.
your arguments for and against are most welcome.. i'll start with this: .
why would an omnibenevolent and omniscient god put us through tests of faith?.
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JW's Should Be Banned!
by mr_doubtful ini'm all for religious freedoms.
i am not for a religious organization demanding freedoms from the government that they in turn take away from their own members.
why should the organization get religious freedom when they take that very thing away from it's members?.
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slimboyfat
I guess JWs outside Russia may find the situation interesting, or mildly fortifying. But as for bringing many more people into the JWs, I doubt it.
How about we organise our own letter campaign? Wouldn't it be cool if we could manage thousands of letters to JW headquarters saying:
"Dear Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses,
As former Jehovah's Witnesses we fully support your freedom to worship in Russia and we wish your campaign to protect religious freedom every success. At the same time we wish that your organisation would respect the religious choices of those who have been Jehovah's Witnesses at any time, without seeking to alienate former members from family and friends. As the Awake! magazine said in 2007: "No one should be forced to worship in a way that he finds unacceptable or be made to choose between his beliefs and his family." Please could your organisation begin living up to this principle by discontinuing the practice of shunning former members who make alternative religious choices? Not only is this the right thing to do, but discontinuing such harmful practices may actually help you argue for and secure your religious freedom in Russia and elsewhere.
Yours faithfully,
Former JW members" -
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JW's Should Be Banned!
by mr_doubtful ini'm all for religious freedoms.
i am not for a religious organization demanding freedoms from the government that they in turn take away from their own members.
why should the organization get religious freedom when they take that very thing away from it's members?.
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slimboyfat
It's a myth that JWs grow better under ban. None of the major examples support this idea. There were fewer JWs in Germany at the end of the Third Reich than at the start. And JWs only grew very slowly in the Soviet Union. Only when communism collapsed and JWs were legalised in the 1990s did JWs grow rapidly in Russia and Eastern Europe. Similarly JWs grow better in African countries where they are well tolerated and less so in countries where they have been banned or restricted. So it's a myth that persecution is good for JW growth.
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Have you ever believed something that turned out to be wrong?
by slimboyfat inapart, of course, from the obvious example of believing the evidence-free assertion of the governing body to be god's representatives on earth.
not to side-step that issue, but i wonder if it might be interesting to relate that huge mistake to other things i've been wrong about and how they compare and contrast with the big one.
a couple of examples of things i was wrong about:.
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slimboyfat
Rainbow Troll that's an interesting list of beliefs. Why do you think the moon landing never happened?
bohm why was peak oil wrong? It seemed to make sense.
shepherdless I'm not sure about climate change. It might be right in broad outline, but probably wrong in lots of details. There's too much confidence about such things where it's not warranted. Which is not the same as saying right wing anti-science people have got it right.
ILoveTTATT according to David Trobisch the basic idea is that an editor (possibly Polycarp) collected the books of the NT into a canonical edition in the middle of the second century. This was when the divine name was removed and nomina sacra introduced as standard. We don't have any fragments of NT with Kyrios passages from before 150 CE. What we do have is a number of LXX fragments from the period that use the divine name.
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Have you ever believed something that turned out to be wrong?
by slimboyfat inapart, of course, from the obvious example of believing the evidence-free assertion of the governing body to be god's representatives on earth.
not to side-step that issue, but i wonder if it might be interesting to relate that huge mistake to other things i've been wrong about and how they compare and contrast with the big one.
a couple of examples of things i was wrong about:.
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slimboyfat
Incidentally you are quite wrong about the possibility of finding early NT manuscripts.
The papyri from Oxyrinchus are only being published very slowly. In recent years fragments of the NT have been published, as well as new fragments of the LXX containing the divine name, including a fragment of Job and a fragment of the Psalms.
This early fragment of the NT published in 2009 for example:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_125
Job fragment with divine name published in 1983.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_Oxyrhynchus_3522
Psalms fragment with divine name published in 2011.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_Oxyrhynchus_5101
It's estimated that only 1 or 2% of the total material recovered from Oxyrhynchus has been published so far.
http://www.seeker.com/amateur-archeologists-invited-to-decipher-papyri-1765340100.html
There may be fragments of the NT with the divine name among them.
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Have you ever believed something that turned out to be wrong?
by slimboyfat inapart, of course, from the obvious example of believing the evidence-free assertion of the governing body to be god's representatives on earth.
not to side-step that issue, but i wonder if it might be interesting to relate that huge mistake to other things i've been wrong about and how they compare and contrast with the big one.
a couple of examples of things i was wrong about:.
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slimboyfat
Which MS is only 50 years removed from the original and contains Kyrios?
Basically I believe the NT originally contained the divine name because the LXX used the divine name and the earliest Christians probably copied its practice. Secondly, there are lots of verses that simply make a lot more sense if it originally used the divine name. "The Lord said to my Lord" is bordering on gibberish for example. Plus the whole book of Acts is a confused mess of which "Lord" is meant where. All of which suggests to me the text was corrupted by removal of the divine name.
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Interpret John 1:1 by John 1:1.
by towerwatchman ininterpret john 1:1 by john 1:1. .
the greek language has the definite article which has approximately thirty variations, is translated into english as “the”, and points to an identifiable personality, someone we have prior knowledge of.
but the greek language has no indefinite article corresponding to the english “a”, or “an”.
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slimboyfat
John 1:1 doesn't say which "beginning" it is talking about. The assertion that it's an "eternal" beginning, rather than the "beginning" of physical creation as in Genesis is just that, an assertion. And not very likely it seems to me. John seems to have Genesis 1:1 in mind.
Besides which, the clearest possible statement about whether Jesus is eternal or not comes a few chapters later in John 6:57, "I live because of the Father". You don't get much clearer than that.
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Found a new difference between the old NWT and the new one...
by ILoveTTATT2 inyesterday i read jeremiah 8-11 because that's what was studied in the clam.
i am in a different city and decided to go to the meeting to check it out and possibly ask the witnesses some questions and see how they treat a "newcomer".anyways...nwt, 1984 version:.
(jeremiah 10:13) 13 at [his] voice there is a giving by him of a turmoil of waters in the heavens, and he causes vapors to ascend from the extremity of the earth.
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slimboyfat
Interesting topic. I got a book on conjectural emendation from the library the other week. It's a good read. Basically a conjectural emendation is where a textual critic suggests a reading for the text that he argues is original but has not survived in any extant manuscript. Apparently this is common practice when it comes to many ancient texts that are not well attested. It is less commonly used with biblical texts for two main reasons 1) biblical texts are better represented than other ancient texts so critics don't need to resort to conjectural emendation as often and 2) there is an understandable inhibition on the part of believers to suggest novel readings that imply the whole textual tradition has been corrupted.
I think there is a good argument to be made in favour of conjectural emendation at various points. Don't know about this particular verse.
The JW assertion that the divine name was originally used throughout the New Testament is of course an extreme case of conjectural emendation.
The book I'm reading.
https://www.amazon.com/Longer-Written-Conjectural-Emendation-Restoration/dp/9004235337
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Have you ever believed something that turned out to be wrong?
by slimboyfat inapart, of course, from the obvious example of believing the evidence-free assertion of the governing body to be god's representatives on earth.
not to side-step that issue, but i wonder if it might be interesting to relate that huge mistake to other things i've been wrong about and how they compare and contrast with the big one.
a couple of examples of things i was wrong about:.
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slimboyfat
Apart, of course, from the obvious example of believing the evidence-free assertion of the Governing Body to be God's representatives on earth. Not to side-step that issue, but I wonder if it might be interesting to relate that huge mistake to other things I've been wrong about and how they compare and contrast with the big one.
A couple of examples of things I was wrong about:
1. In about 2007/8 I read a lot about "peak oil" and was totally convinced the end of the oil age was imminent. The evidence seemed pretty clear, with all the graphs, statistics, and examples from history. I couldn't think of any way it could be wrong. Yet it came to nothing, as far as I can tell. Oil and carbon seem to be as abundant (and cheap) as ever and no one talks about peak oil any more.
2. In 2016 I was convinced my vote to "leave" the EU was totally harmless. I believed this because: 1) I was sure "remain" was going to win anyway 2) voting "leave" was calculated to help the cause of Scottish independence which was a greater priority (complicated reasons) and 3) even if it did happen it wouldn't be the end of the world and might just shake things up a bit. Well how wrong could I be? Firstly, shock horror, "leave" did win. Secondly voting "remain" would have been a better strategy to further independence, it turns out. And arguably the "leave" vote led to a sequence of events that put Trump in power, threatening the future of civilisation itself. Oops.
All sorts of self delusion involved there. In the first instance I paid to much attention to books and YouTube videos promoting a particular view without considering the other side. In the second case I paid to much attention to the media that said "remain" was going to win and didn't take the vote seriously enough,
I wonder what other things I currently believe that will turn out to be wrong. I guess I hold "minority" opinions on various subjects that could turn out to be wrong:
1. I believe the New Testament originally contained the divine name.
2. I believe the "singularitarian" view of the future taken over by strong artificial intelligence is probably correct.
3. I believe the classical secularisation thesis is correct. (Although pretty redundant, now I think about it, in view of no. 2 above)
4. I believe the distinction between conscious and unconscious matter is problematic and there are problems with materialist conceptions of reality generally.
5. I believe it's more likely Trump will either be removed from office or will start a world war than that he will reach the end of his term with the planet intact.
Is anyone else willing to share, either things you were convinced were correct, but turned out to be wrong, or minority views you currently hold that may turn out to be incorrect?
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What Irony! Another Hall Closure!
by freddo innote these excerpts from awake!
articles: (bold italics mine).
*** g93 9/8 pp.
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slimboyfat
I remember the photos in the magazines of converted churches.