hey guys.
i've had a pretty tough day today and i'd sure appreciate some good vibes and words of encouragment.. thanks..
Hi Abandoned, isn't this forum great?!
I want to officialy add my name to the list of people who care about you, and therefore help you be confident that you're among a bunch of nice people who will do their best to help you, and I would do what I can... Granted, given my current condition I can't do much other than tell you that I will do what I can, but you get the idea. I hope things get better for you.
LtCmd.Lore
hi, everyone.
i'm hearing rumors that a letter is going to be read at this week's service meeting here in the us about kids and the internet.
let me guess--its another "the internet is evil" propaganda letter trying to steer everyone away from going online....
Yep I can personaly verify that telling kids not to look up apostate stuff only makes them want to more... I thought: 'hey, what are we so scared of unless the apostates have at least something right?'
And now look at me... I was trapped by you demonized hethens!
And I wouldn't have it any other way either!
LtCmd.Lore
time and again the refrain is heard that belief and science are mutually exclusive, that belief somehow corrupts good science, that belief is not empirical.
i'd like to throw another slant on that, if i may.. belief is an inherent part of the human psyche.
the desire to know more about our environment and how it all works is also an inherent part of our psyche.
Acctualy there is a thing called the 'placebo effect', and it's a study of the mind.
It has been proven that if a patient has an illness, of whatever kind. The doctor can give him a pill, that doesn't do anything at all, and if he has confidence in the doctor he has a much greater chance of getting better. But it's all in the head. So I don't doubt that if someone has faith that god will help them, they may get better faster than otherwise. But it's all about the mental state, and has nothing to do with god...
I don't believe in god, but I believe in the power of the mind. Look it up, the wikipedia has a good article on it. Interesting stuff.
look at this quote from the watchtower society website:.
does any religion meet these standards?
the book holocaust politics, published in 2001, says: if more people practiced versions of what the jehovahs witnesses preach and practice, the holocaust could have been prevented and genocide would scourge the world no more.. wow!
A similar statement can be said of any religion:
If America was made mostly of muslims, the world trade centers would never have been bombed.
If everyone on earth were buddists we would have peace on earth. Or Amish, or whatever.
And every one of those statements is flawed to a degree. If everyone was a Jehovahs Witness, we would be living a super clean stone age... 90% of the planet would be janitors and only about 5% would be devoted to science, and those people would be considered weak and looked down on.
i am an ex-mormon who is fairly new to this forum.
i am currently debating with a korean jw on how old the earth is.
i'd appreciate it if anyone of you could tell me what wt's official statment on this issue is.. .
The bible says that god created the earth in 7 days... it later says that to god 1000 years is like a day. So at most, it could have taken god 7000 years to create the universe. Anything longer than that conflicts with the bible... but for the sake of argument, lets assume that the universe is only 1 billion years old. 1 billion years us would be like 1 million days to god, which equals 2,739 years in gods perspective... can you imagine, even if you lived forever, starting a project that would take a 2,739 years?!?
The very concept of it taking this long, makes god look pretty lame in comparison to what the bible acctualy says. That equals 391 years to god for every event that the bible says took a day.
It took 391 god years: to create light, not the sun, moon or stars, just light.
It took 391 god years: to create a division between the waters... Whatever that means. Presumably heaven.
It took 391 god years: to create the earth and the plants and the sea's
It took 391 god years: to create the sun moon and stars.
It took 391 god years: to make every kind of animal.
It took 391 god years: to make two people... in contrast it takes about nine months in human years, to make 1. Or 2 or 3 depending on whether they have twins or triplets.
And now he's in a 391 year rest period. And of these 391 year intervals are called 'days'
That's lame, especialy if you translate it back to human years in which case each day was 391,000 years!
Makes you lose a bit of respect for god if you look at him the JW way doesn't it?
Now in only 6000 years of our human existance, or less than a week to god, we have already created all the technology and scientific breakthroughs you see today, despite our imperfection.
LtCmd.Lore
what proof is there that the jws were chosen by jehovah to be a "people for his name"?
growth in numbers is not proof, other religions also have displayed such growth over the last 100 years.. material prosperity is not proof as other religions also have considerable wealth, both in cash, property and real estate.. printing the watchtower and awake!
magazines certainly is not proof!.
They're the only ones called Jehovah's Witnesses, Even though Yahweh is just as likely to be close to the original translation, and other religions do use both those names. But this is ingnored.
They are the only ones who use God's New World Translation. And the only reason they accept that translation is because they were chosen by god... insert circular reasoning joke here:
They're the only ones who preach Once again, other religions do this too but they choose to ignore that fact.
The only ones who correctly discerned Christ's invisible return in 1914 Which is unprovable, and acctualy able to be proven false, but is only accepted because gods chosen people said it. Once again, circular reasoning.
The only ones who correctly identified that the generation of 1914 wouldn't pass away. Which they admit is wrong... and is based on the incorrect concept of 1914.
They are the only ones dispensing Food at the Proper Time. Translation: They ignore their own false prophecies, make new ones, call them new light, and praise god. But if this simply meens any kind of teaching, then all religions do this.
The only ones who adhere to GOD'S standards on beards, suits and ties, length of hair and skirts. Which are in fact not taught in the bible.
The only ones with any moral standards Again most religions have moral standards but witnesses ignore that fact as well.
The only ones with love amongst themselves. Even though all religions do, and the witnesses chose to ignore this fact too, and they ignore it when there is a lack of love among each other...
How much more do you want? A lot more, this is fun!
Thanks for the list pubsinger... I was having trouble thinking of any proofs to shoot down.
LtCmd.Lore
luke 6:38: give, and it shall be given to you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom.
fieldservice or a bible study...or maybe they (in my past experience) give to a selected candidate as long as that person comes to the hall on a regular.
when do they actually give like normal people give.
Well in order to avoid giving for real, going door to door technically counts as giving, so a selfish witness could get away with nothing more than that and still feel superior to 'worldly people' who give gifts all the time.
But obviously they are not all like that, some acctualy do give real gifts and help out, but nobody can even be counseled for being selfish... Pretty pathetic
Beards: Not condemned in the bible, but will get you in trouble and will prevent you from getting privileges or positions of authority.
Masterbation: Not condemned in the bible, but will get you in big trouble, and prevent you from getting privileges or positions of authority.
Selfishness: Directly condemned in the bible, but will not get you in trouble OR make you lose privileges/authority.
LtCmd.Lore
when i was a child in the early 80's, i remember about twice a year being packed up into the family jdub-mobile and taking about an hour trip up to the grantville, pa assembly hall.
i think it was built in the late 60's, or early 70's.
back in the 80's, circuit assemblies lasted like 4 days.
I most certainly do remember it, in fact I will be going there in two days!!!
Pretty sure we're talking about the same place:
The carpet isn't orange anymore but it's still kind of wierd. They still have the piano there, but they don't use it anymore, they removed the waterfall backdrop from the pool, now it's just white with mirrors for a ceiling. They installed a camera and projector system, so now they pull down a huge screen on stage, and play live video from the baptismal pool for the people in the auditorium. They have carpets on the walls for some reason, and two big signs on the right and left of the stage in a carved out frame, with little spike things sticking out of them, on the left is the years text and on the right is the assembly theme. Ummmm, that's pretty much all I can think of.
By any slim chance will anyone here be going there this Saturday?
LtCmd.Lore,
satan threw open a challenge to jehovah (according to jw theology) that he could turn anyone against god and that peeps only served him by what they could get out of it ( living forever on a paradise earth........um) .
well, since yourve got to be a dedicated witness, everyone else is wrong, wicked, corrupt whatever.
who could claim victory for this................... 6 million out of satans 6 billion.. so, id say satan is the winner.
Interesting that Satan raised two arguments at once, and neither of them are being addressed:
1: Humans are better off without god.
2: Humans only serve god for what they can get out of it.
But he made us imperfect. Thus making everything that happens afterward irrelevent because our problems are caused by god, not mans inability to rule.
And offers everlasting life as a reward. Therefore everyone who follows god is doing it for what they can get out of it, proving Satan right, or at least not proving anything.
The best way to address both issues, is for god to let a race of perfect humans rule themselves and, everyone who is unhappy there can join gods people, and the only thing they would have to gain out of it would be a different ruler. That would answer the challenges.
(I think those where the only two challenges right?)
LtCmd.Lore
i truly love jehovah and jesus and no matter what i will always serve them, but sometimes i feel that jehovah and jesus are the blame for satan the devil getting totally out of control.
i just don't understand(and maybe never will) why jehovah and jesus have allowed satan and the demons to cause nothing but heartache for thousands and thousands of years.
people always talk about free will and that jehovah has a bigger plan ahead but why should people have to suffer misery in order to possibly gain happiness?
Well first let me say that I'm an atheist.
But here's something to think about: according to the 'issue of universal soverenty' satan thinks that humans would be better off without god. So, thinking logicaly, why would satan CAUSE trouble? In order to prove his point he should aspire for a global man ruled utopia, right?
So I highly doubt that Satan is the one causing the problems. I said this in my very last post, but I'll say it again: man gets sick and dies because god made us that way, man goes to war because god confused our langauges and instigated all the holy wars by making the super cryptic bible, and he cut us back over a thousand years in science by rebooting the human race with a flood.
LtCmd.Lore
