Beth Sarim I ceased believing the WT teaching that the League of Nations became the United Nations. The League of Nations ceased to exist. The UN is a separate organization from the League, not a renamed League of Nations. But the UN is partly patterned upon the League.
Disillusioned JW
JoinedPosts by Disillusioned JW
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30
What really is UN doing with religions?
by Kosonen inoccult un forces seek to hijack religion for globalism.
https://thenewamerican.com/occult-un-forces-seek-to-hijack-religion-for-globalism/it does not look like religions dominate un but the other way around.
journalist alex newman gives a totally different picture about the real state of affairs.
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Disillusioned JW
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25
How are things in bethel right now?
by Hellothere inany news how things are at bethel just now?
been thinking, strange they have gb members giving speeches when they look so depressed.
but maeby there is not many others too choose from.
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Disillusioned JW
The following news article might be of interest: https://bronx.news12.com/news-12-tours-jehovahs-witnesses-249-acre-property-where-massive-production .
' “It will consolidate our other studios that we have around New York, and it will have six state-of-the-art audio and video production studios on site and the residents who will work in those facilities," says Matthew Mordecki, Jehovah’s Witnesses/Lighthouse.
It will be located off Sterling Mine Road.
“We have our world headquarters about three minutes just down the road from here. That’s 1.5 million square feet. This is about 1.7 million square feet," says Mordecki.Mordecki says the campus will be environmentally friendly, producing a lot of its own energy....People who work at the studios will also be able to live on campus in the residences that will be built along with fitness and dining facilities.
The public will also be able to get a peek at their work.' -
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Who raised Jesus from the dead?
by Blotty ini have seen arguments surrounding jesus' resurrection being proof of "the trinity" - now while in some cases it's a good argument the evidence for it remains very weak.
(bible quotes are from the nwt but other bibles are referenced, use whichever you please) this following version of it is a good example.. "the bible indicates that all [persons] of the trinity was involved in jesus’ resurrection.
galatians[1:1] says that the father raised jesus from the dead.
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Disillusioned JW
James Tabor also makes the claim that Jesus was never considered God in the earliest Christian faith! See https://jamestabor.com/was-jesus-god-in-earliest-christian-faith-the-answer-is-simple-and-clear/ . There he says the following.
'.. the late Jimmy Dunn, Christology in the Making (Eerdmans 1966) ... shows that nowhere in the New Testament documents is the Lord Jesus confused with YHVH the God of Israel–in terms of Being. Alex Finkelson, who writes the blog “Scribes of the Kingdom,” sets things out very clearly below.
... The following is Alex’s post–please read and circulate.
The Lord among lords: Christ’s imperial cult '
That link at https://scribesofthekingdom.com/2021/11/13/the-lord-among-lords-christs-imperial-cult/ makes a strong case that Paul did not consider Jesus to be God and that he did not consider Jesus to be Lord in the sense of "the LORD God" (Yahweh/Jehovah) That article says in part the following.
'In the first place, Christ’s status as “Lord” need not identify him as the Adonai of the Hebrew scriptures (i.e. Yahweh). On the contrary, Paul and other early Christian writers recognize Jesus as κύριος insomuch as he has come into possession of the earthly political order. “Lord” in this context is a practical and not an ontological designation.3 Christ receives God’s lordship but is not himself the Lord God. Rather, allowed to rule in his father’s stead for a time, the prince remains the monarch’s son.
... The narrative logic of these texts is not that Jesus became the Lord God, but that the Lord God entrusted to him his own lordly authority. For these first Christians, God’s shocking action to exalt the crucified Christ as Lord—that is, as imperial sovereign over the nations—conformed to the mythic skeleton latent in Psalm 110:1—”Yahweh says to my lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.'” What was at stake in this lordship, the lordship of Christ, therefore, was not Christ’s identity as God but his function as God in these last days of the present evil age. Now installed as God’s right-hand man, Christ alone would “shatter kings” and “execute judgement among the nations” on the day of God’s wrath (Psalm 110:5-6). He alone would exert and establish God’s rule, God’s judgement, and God’s mercy within the world by subjugating “every ruler and every authority and every power” (1 Cor 15:24, cf. Rev 2:27-27, Mt 28:18). Once this task had been accomplished—the messianic kingdom firmly rooted in the inhabited world—Christ would then hand over the kingdom to its true owner, God the Father, and thus dispose of the authority he had been given when the purpose of delegated divine lordship had finally exhausted (1 Cor 15:27-28). As in his obedient death, therefore, Christ would again prove to be a submissive son—first by dutifully managing his father’s estate (i.e. Israel’s kingdom) and second by humbly ceding the property back to God once every enemy had been defeated.'
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Who raised Jesus from the dead?
by Blotty ini have seen arguments surrounding jesus' resurrection being proof of "the trinity" - now while in some cases it's a good argument the evidence for it remains very weak.
(bible quotes are from the nwt but other bibles are referenced, use whichever you please) this following version of it is a good example.. "the bible indicates that all [persons] of the trinity was involved in jesus’ resurrection.
galatians[1:1] says that the father raised jesus from the dead.
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Disillusioned JW
I think that James Tabor has the correct idea of the earliest Christians considered to be meaning of resurrection and the type of the resurrection they thought Jesus had. He describes it at https://jamestabor.com/why-people-are-confused-about-the-earliest-christian-view-of-resurrection-of-the-dead/ .
He says that the Jews original concept of resurrection was that the fleshly body of the dead would be reconstituted and recombined with the spirit/soul (which was in Sheol and existed as a shade while the fleshly body was dead). He further says that at the time of Jesus Christ however, the Jewish view and the view of the early Christians was not that view. Instead it was the view that an incorruptible spirit body would be created by God and combined with the spirit/soul of the person who had died. Except for the idea of the persistence of the spirit/soul it seems to me to be essentially identical to the view of the WT and the JW governing body regarding their teaching of the resurrection/recreation of the anointed ones. James Tabor says the following.
'Matthew says that at the death of Jesus many of the dead came out of their graves and walked about in the city (Matthew 27: 52). Peter raises a widow and Paul revives a young man who fell from a window (Acts 20:9-12).
What is important to note about all these stories of “resurrection” is that these people returned from death to live again, but they then they subsequently died again. This notion of a temporary return from death, basically a revival of a corpse, is not the view of resurrection of the dead that Jews in the time of Jesus believed and that followers of Jesus were affirming about him.
The Hebrew Bible says very little about resurrection of the dead in this more extended sense. The single unambiguous passage is from Daniel, but it is a key to understanding the concept at its core ....The metaphor of “sleeping in the dust of the earth” and then awakening captures precisely the core idea of resurrection of the dead. The bodies of the dead have long ago decayed and turned to dust, so this is no resuscitation of a corpse, nor is it even Ezekiel’s vision of reclothing dry bones with sinew and skin. This is an entirely new concept that has begun to develop in Jewish thought and Jews like Jesus, as well as the Pharisees, believed that on the “last day,” the dead would be raised. What people mix up is the literal idea of resuscitation or the “standing up” of a corpse, and the fully developed Jewish idea of resurrection at the end of days. The latter does not involve collecting the dust, the fragmentary decaying bones, or other remains of the body and somehow restoring their form. According to the book of Revelation, even the “sea” gives up the dead that are in it—which can hardly mean one must search for digested bodies that the fish have eaten and eliminated—as unpleasant as the thought may be (Revelation 20:11-15).
Corpse revival is not resurrection of the dead–at least in its classic sense of what happens to all humankind in the end of days.
... The fully developed view of resurrection of the dead among Jews in the time of Jesus was that at the end of days the dead would come forth from Sheol/Hades—literally the “state of being dead,” and live again in an embodied form. The question was—what kind of a body? And it was there that the debates began. The Sadducees, who denied the resurrection, poked fun at the Pharisees, who affirmed it. How could God raise the dead—what if a woman had had seven husbands in her life, each of whom died and she kept remarrying—in the resurrection whose wife would she be? Jesus was confronted with this question in the gospels (Luke 20:34-40). His answer was clear and unambiguous—when the dead come forth they will be in a transformed body, much like the angels, not the literal physical bodies that they once inhabited—there will be no “marriage or giving in marriage” as there will be no “male or female” in terms of physical sexual gender. There will be no birth, no death, but a new transformed life.
Paul is the crystal clear on this point. Some of his converts in the city of Corinth were denying the resurrection of the dead. They were most likely thinking along the lines of Plato—if the immortal soul is freed from the prison of the body at death, why would it ever return to the body? And yet that is precisely what Paul defended—a return to a body—but as he makes very clear, it is not a natural or “physical body”—the one he calls the body of “dust,” but a spiritual body—literally “wind body,” (pneumatikos), that is transformed and not subject to death (1 Corinthians 15:42-50).
Resurrection of the dead, according to both Paul and Jesus, has nothing to do with the former physical body.
... This has everything to do with the earliest Christian view of Jesus’ resurrection, the resurrection hope his followers had, and our Talpiot tombs. That is why the presence of bones—even the bones of Jesus, next to statements of faith in resurrection, were not a contradiction. The confusion has come over the accounts in the gospels of the empty tomb of Jesus, and his “appearances” to his followers following his resurrection–all of which were written after 70 CE when the links with the faith of the Jerusalem community had been severed.
The evidence we have found in the Talpiot tombs is primary evidence of what the first Christians believed about resurrection faith. It is not theology, but it is firm archaeological testimony that allows us for the first time to reconstruct the full picture. The tomb evidence agrees completely with the teachings of both Jesus and Paul about the new spiritual body. The confusion has come in the gospels because of a fundamental misunderstanding of the empty tomb. There was an empty tomb—but it was the first tomb, the temporary one in which Joseph of Arimathea placed the corpse of Jesus until the Passover and Sabbath were past. The Talpiot Jesus tomb was not empty—the “Jesus son of Joseph” ossuary held his bones, and as we will see, we have been able to even do DNA tests on those remains. This is no threat to the original Christian resurrection faith, it is actually an affirmation of that faith. Paul knows nothing of that first empty tomb. He knows that Jesus died and was buried and on the third day he was raised up. He then appeared to his followers, not as a resuscitated corpse, but in Paul’s words, as a “life-giving spirit” (1 Corinthians 15:3-8). These words of Paul are our earliest testimony to faith in Jesus’ resurrection—until now. We now have testimony by his original followers that predates Paul, and predates the gospels by many decades. Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John were written between 70-100 CE. The names on the books are traditional. They are not included in the text but added later as “titles” to the manuscripts. In other words, Mark does not begin, “I Mark, having witnessed these things, do hereby write…” Nor does Matthew, Luke, or John. In that sense all four gospels are pseudonymous—we don’t know their real authors.
... What Luke and John introduce here, namely that Jesus appeared in the same body that had been placed in the tomb represents a major departure from early Christian resurrection faith. This understanding of Jesus’ resurrection has led to endless confusion on the part of sincere Christians who do believe Jesus was raised from the dead. These stories are secondary and legendary. We know this because Mark, who wrote decades earlier, does not know them, and Paul, who is still earlier says plainly that the new body is not “flesh and blood” (1 Corinthians 15:50).
The explanation provided by James Tabor is excellent and makes a great deal of sense. It explains why a number of biblical passages are worded the way they are, including the contradictions between some of them. It explains what Jesus meant by the resurrection and why the resurrected ones do not marry. It also is fully compatible with atheistic naturalist views and enables an excellent atheistic naturalist explanation of what happened to the dead fleshly body of Jesus, of why the earliest Christians believed that Jesus was raised from the dead if his fleshly body hadn't really been raised bodily from the grave, and how Christianity could have spread (allegedly rapidly) after the death of Jesus if the fleshly body of Jesus did not come back to life. WOW!
I read Tabor's article months ago, but I don't think I grasped the full significance till now. Now I can provided a comprehensive complete scientific naturalist explanation of what happened in regards earlier Christian views about their idea of the resurrection and of what really happened to Christ. All of the 'puzzle pieces' available to me about the matter now can be fitted perfectly together by me. Yea!
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98
Who raised Jesus from the dead?
by Blotty ini have seen arguments surrounding jesus' resurrection being proof of "the trinity" - now while in some cases it's a good argument the evidence for it remains very weak.
(bible quotes are from the nwt but other bibles are referenced, use whichever you please) this following version of it is a good example.. "the bible indicates that all [persons] of the trinity was involved in jesus’ resurrection.
galatians[1:1] says that the father raised jesus from the dead.
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Disillusioned JW
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/3sKDOjejTQE has an interesting discussion about Lewontin's review of Sagan's book. A source indicates that Lewontin's article was much longer than the quotes from it, namely that the article was on pages 28–32 in the New York Review of Books, issue dated January 9, 1997. In contrast the quote was only from page 31. I hope to find the entire article so that I can read it in full.
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98
Who raised Jesus from the dead?
by Blotty ini have seen arguments surrounding jesus' resurrection being proof of "the trinity" - now while in some cases it's a good argument the evidence for it remains very weak.
(bible quotes are from the nwt but other bibles are referenced, use whichever you please) this following version of it is a good example.. "the bible indicates that all [persons] of the trinity was involved in jesus’ resurrection.
galatians[1:1] says that the father raised jesus from the dead.
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Disillusioned JW
Sometimes the words of Richard Lewontin are hard to understand correctly. The following might be helpful regarding Sea Breeze's quote of Lewontin. The quoted words of Lewontin are from an article of Lewontin called "Billions and Billions of Demons" which was published in the "NY Review of Books" dated January 9, 1997. Lewontin's article was a review of Carl Sagan's book called The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. That book by Sagan is copyright 1996. I own a copy of that book by Sagan and I have read much of it and I am very impressed by it. The book talks about many unscientific beliefs that many have, including the belief that demons and other spirits haunt our world. The book is also about using the methods of science to discover what is really real and to identify those ideas which are merely superstitions. It also about defending science from attacks by those those promote supernaturalism.
[The back cover of my copy of Sagan's book says the following. "How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don't understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience, New Age thinking, and fundamentalist zealotry and the testable hypotheses of science? ...]
Regarding Lewontin's quoted words of "We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs ..." the following sentence in Lewontin's article immediately precedes those words. "Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural." Creationist sources which quote Lewontin's comment about "We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs ..." typically leave out that sentence which immediately precedes it. But I think that sentence about the "the real struggle between science and the supernatural" is important to understanding what Lewontin meant. Regarding "scientific claims that are against common sense" I think Lewontin means that sometimes that which is common sense is actually false, such as that everything outside of the Earth (such as all the stars) goes around the Earth, and that scientific claims include the correct claim that the Earth goes around its Sun.
Furthermore, the creationist sources tend to leave out the following from Lewontin, which immediately follows Lewontin's words of "... for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door." It is also important to read those words, namely the following. "The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen."
My source for the extended quote of Lewontin is http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Nave-html/Faithpathh/lewontin.html (see also https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/107915.Richard_C_Lewontin ).
The following is thus how I understand Lewontin's words. There is a battle between the human forces which cherish science and defend it and between the human forces which cherish the concept of supernaturalism and defend it. Many of those who promote the concept of supernaturalism do so by attacking much of science, much of scientific knowledge and even of the scientific method which made such knowledge possible. Those who believe in God are capable of believing in anything [for example some young Earth creationists say 'God made photons en route in their travel to Earth, which made it look like they traveled a much longer distance than they actually did and made it look like the universe is much older than it really it is.']. Such God-believers due to their ability to believe anything (including believing in demons and immortal human souls and supernatural miracles) would thus destroy science if they had their way of imposing their supernaturalistic views upon subjects of science. As result we scientists and naturalistic lovers of science must not give them any leeway, any wiggle room, any opening, for their ideas, that would allow them to claim something happened by God doing a miracle. In other words, in that sense we must not "allow a Divine Foot in the door". That is because if we 'threw to them a bone' (metaphorically speaking), and 'opened the door a tiny crack for them' (metaphorically speaking), they would then abuse that 'opening' (that conversational opportunity), in such a way as render science meaningless and thus to destroy the field of study called science. It would be like giving them the means to make a 'wedge' (which the creationists could then use for the purpose of promoting "intelligent design') which the creationists would use to undermine the theory of biological evolution and of cosmological evolution. I also think that Lewontin is saying that the only type of mechanisms/means that science is capable of testing are naturalistic (or materialistic) ones, not supernatural ones, and thus scientists must stick to only proposing materialistic ones.
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What really is UN doing with religions?
by Kosonen inoccult un forces seek to hijack religion for globalism.
https://thenewamerican.com/occult-un-forces-seek-to-hijack-religion-for-globalism/it does not look like religions dominate un but the other way around.
journalist alex newman gives a totally different picture about the real state of affairs.
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Disillusioned JW
Organized religions (though possibly not all currently existing ones) will very likely outlast the UN, but the UN could still be in existence in the year 2123 and beyond.
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98
Who raised Jesus from the dead?
by Blotty ini have seen arguments surrounding jesus' resurrection being proof of "the trinity" - now while in some cases it's a good argument the evidence for it remains very weak.
(bible quotes are from the nwt but other bibles are referenced, use whichever you please) this following version of it is a good example.. "the bible indicates that all [persons] of the trinity was involved in jesus’ resurrection.
galatians[1:1] says that the father raised jesus from the dead.
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Disillusioned JW
I am especially fascinated by the portion of the Newsweek article which the following.
'"The most interesting aspect of this is [the patient] starts to have full memories of everything they have done and all their thoughts and intentions toward other people throughout their entire life," he said, relating the memory recognition as equivalent to an instant computer data download.
... "It's a purposeful, meaningful reevaluation of every aspect with a focus on morality and ethics and how they conducted themselves. It's really quite bizarre," he said.
... "What seems to be happening as a person is dying, their brain is shutting down and in this process disinhibition, braking systems [in the brain] are being removed because they are no longer relevant," said Parnia, referencing how people can only access a small part of their brain's consciousness at one time.
"This disinhibition seems to give access to parts of the brain become activated and seeing spikes in EEG activity and gives access to dimensions of reality they otherwise did not have access to, including full consciousness." '
I would love it it I could access my consciousness and/or memories, without being in a dying process, to a far great extent than I ever have been able to do thus far. I would also love it if by so doing I would increase my IQ tremendously.
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98
Who raised Jesus from the dead?
by Blotty ini have seen arguments surrounding jesus' resurrection being proof of "the trinity" - now while in some cases it's a good argument the evidence for it remains very weak.
(bible quotes are from the nwt but other bibles are referenced, use whichever you please) this following version of it is a good example.. "the bible indicates that all [persons] of the trinity was involved in jesus’ resurrection.
galatians[1:1] says that the father raised jesus from the dead.
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Disillusioned JW
Jeffro, I didn't mean they might support Sea Breeze's claims about 'souls' but rather the claims of the human consciousness perhaps not being dependent upon the brain. After all one of the articles said the following. '
- the other instead considers that consciousness is separate from the brain and can influence brain activity independently of the brain.
Parnia explains that the observations that "the human mind, consciousness, or psyche (self) may continue to function when brain function has ceased during the early period after death" (such as during the AWARE study, but not only) points to the possibility that the second model may have to be taken into account. -
98
Who raised Jesus from the dead?
by Blotty ini have seen arguments surrounding jesus' resurrection being proof of "the trinity" - now while in some cases it's a good argument the evidence for it remains very weak.
(bible quotes are from the nwt but other bibles are referenced, use whichever you please) this following version of it is a good example.. "the bible indicates that all [persons] of the trinity was involved in jesus’ resurrection.
galatians[1:1] says that the father raised jesus from the dead.
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Disillusioned JW
In one the pages of this topic thread Sea Breeze provided a link to https://island.lk/lucidity-before-death-brain-releasing-consciousness/ in an effort to support his claims regarding “terminal lucidity”. That article presents ideas which challenge some of my beliefs regarding human consciousness. After reading it I then found an article at https://www.newsweek.com/near-death-experiences-out-body-phenomenon-study-1757602 which might provide some support for some of Sea Breeze's claims of “terminal lucidity” and of the idea that the human mind might not be a product of the brain. Newsweek is a news journal which I have trusted since childhood as a reliable source of news, including on matters of science. The article has numerous quotes of Dr. Sam Parnia, the lead investigator of a study "which was presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2022". The article says the study "showed a spike in gamma wave brain activity. Gamma waves are active when a conscious person retrieves memories and mentally processes information." The article also says the following.
'Researchers across 25 institutions were equipped with electroencephalograms (EEGs) and other equipment. When emergency personnel was notified of a person in cardiac arrest, the researchers also were notified and were able to record the patient's brain activity while the medical team provided life-saving care.
According to the study, humans recalling a lucid heightened experience reported similar happenings and themes during the experience.
... But a different experience specifically caught Parnia's attention.
"The most interesting aspect of this is [the patient] starts to have full memories of everything they have done and all their thoughts and intentions toward other people throughout their entire life," he said, relating the memory recognition as equivalent to an instant computer data download.
... "It's a purposeful, meaningful reevaluation of every aspect with a focus on morality and ethics and how they conducted themselves. It's really quite bizarre," he said.
One of the most fascinating discoveries, according to Parnia, is that a person's consciousness doesn't die when the body dies.
"What seems to be happening as a person is dying, their brain is shutting down and in this process disinhibition, braking systems [in the brain] are being removed because they are no longer relevant," said Parnia, referencing how people can only access a small part of their brain's consciousness at one time.
"This disinhibition seems to give access to parts of the brain become activated and seeing spikes in EEG activity and gives access to dimensions of reality they otherwise did not have access to, including full consciousness."
The study, which was internally and independently peer-reviewed, found those who survived resuscitation and recalled a lucid heightened experience returned to regular consciousness and came equipped with a higher purpose.'
After reading that article I then found and read the article located at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Parnia about Parnia. It says he is "... associate professor of Medicine at the NYU Langone Medical Center where he is also director of research into cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The article also says the following.
'Parnia and others have suggested that a mind that is mediated by, but not produced by, the brain, is a possible way to explain NDE.[5][28][29]
...In a review article published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences,[31] Parnia admits that the nature of consciousness is still uncharted territory for science. Two different major models have been postulated about the nature of consciousness:- one envisages the psyche/consciousness/mind (self) as the result of neuronal activity. So a causative relationship exists between cortical activity and consciousness.
- the other instead considers that consciousness is separate from the brain and can influence brain activity independently of the brain.
Parnia explains that the observations that "the human mind, consciousness, or psyche (self) may continue to function when brain function has ceased during the early period after death" (such as during the AWARE study, but not only) points to the possibility that the second model may have to be taken into account.[31] '
That also might also support some of Sea Breeze's claims.
I plan to comment more about these articles after I do the following: do some other tasks, analyze further the three articles, and do further research on the topic.