Posts by Razziel

190

The Two Trees - My Genesis Ponderings

by cedars in

i've just posted a new blog article to jwstruggle.com on the link below:.

http://www.jwstruggle.com/2012/03/the-two-trees-my-genesis-ponderings/.

the purpose behind the article is to explore my own doubts and long-standing confusion over the genesis narrative - particularly the events surrounding adam and eve's expulsion from eden, and the "two trees" (namely the "tree of life" and the "tree of the knowledge of good and bad").. in my article i discuss my confusion over what the exact properties of the "tree of the knowledge of good and bad" may have been, and the fact that evidently by eating of the fruit adam and eve did not become sinful but more godlike.

Razziel

I got to this thread late. My first thoughts expand on james_woods mention of "free will" and tec's mention of "knowing the difference between good and evil". Eating the forbidden fruit is the first mention of humans exercising free will ,right? And the difference between "knowing good and bad" could mean understanding the consequences of good and bad actions? Or it could mean losing your innocence and naivety?

Isn't that the price that most people pay for "learning the hard way"? The consequences of poor decisions catch up to you, and at the same time you destroy once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. (innocence, health, familial relationships, criminal record, etc.) Knowledge and understanding gained from bad decisions and experiences often exacts a price on your health, future success, or standing in society (symbolized by the tree of life?), all of which were ruined in Adam & Eve's circumstances.

34

Tell me---We all have regrets about being in the organisation,what's yours?

by MsGrowingGirl20 in

what is/are your regrets?

do u wish that you'd have pursued something or dealt differently with a situation?.

Razziel

I've been able to make up for most of my regrets after leaving. One thing I really regret though is missing out on high school sports, particularly football.

24

How did you visualize Jehovah when you were young?

by Matsimus in

i was born as a third generation (perhaps even fourth gen. but my great great grandfather never got baptized) jw.

i remember that when i was young, perhaps about five years old, i would think about jehovah as this big black ghost with yellow eyes.

to me he was quite frightening, and i was constantly catious not to piss him off.

Razziel

Zeus with a lightning bolt in hand. Ready to electrocute my ass if I jacked off or had impure thoughts.

11

The lying upper class??

by darthfader in

interesting article:.

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/02/shame-on-the-rich.html?ref=hp.

the team's findings suggest that privilege promotes dishonesty.

Razziel

There's a sucker born every minute. There's also a liar/exaggerator/embellisher (whatever you want to call it) born every minute. The point of the research is to find if certain classes have a greater propensity for it.

Do the results really suprise anyone? I won't defend the third test in the article, but I find the first two very in touch with reality. Intelligence, merit, hard work and ambition go a long way. But so does embellishment. Intelligence, merit, and hard work particularly is generally enough to ensure you make enough to pay the bills, but in most business environments that won't get you above middle management. If you want to make it to the top, it takes the ambition to aggressively pursue it, a little well-timed embellishment to accentuate your accomplishments, and a little luck. Hard work and intelligence alone won't get you there unless it falls in your lap, which is next to never.

Especially in the test with the dice, I don't consider that lying (though technically it is). It doesn't matter how smart you are, you have to sell yourself and your abilities to get ahead. You have to portray yourself as a "winner". You need to have the ability to step in dogsh!t and come out smelling like roses.

22

Are you a pecker?

by keyser soze in

jw
friends

or do your fingers move fluidly across the keyboard when you type?.

i admit, i'm far more proficient with letters than i am with numbers and symbols..

Razziel

Our high school required us to take a typing class as an elective. I'm embarassed to say I won the award for fastest typist at the year-end school awards ceremony. 112wpm. A few years back, after getting laid off, I had to take a typing test at the unemployment office. Dropped down to the 90's. I'm probably sub-80 now, I don't type as much as i used to.

17

$15,OOO,OOO,OOO,OOO FRAUD EXPOSED in UK House of Lords

by ProdigalSon in

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oak5xzeyq7i&feature=player_embedded.

Razziel

I'm pretty sure the bulk of these loans were interbank lending loans, the "overnight" type. It wasn't pretty, but those type of loans were necessary to avoid global economic collapse. The total amount is a little misleading. If a large bank took out a $100 billion overnight loan from the Fed and then renewed it for seven days while raising capital, it looks like the Fed handed out $1 trillion in loans. Some of these institutions only needed the short-term liquidity, and others had a real capital problem. That's one of the reasons why the actual "bailout" was much less than the amount of liquidity loans the Fed gave out. Whether individual bailouts were necessary is a matter of debate. But the liquidity issue had to be addressed or the whole thing would have come crashing down.

31

Should you ever tell tour aging parents the truth about the truth

by Star tiger in

since finding out the truth about the truth myself and having successfully extricated myself and my parents about the jw's, i find myself with a new dilema that being they still believe the bible as a literal book for their salvation as i has read all of thomas paines works and how the bible is not very good for the human family, as they are of advancing years would it be inappropriate to shatter their illusions of some kind of paradise and let them flounder in a moral precipice and wonder what their lives have been about.

on the flip side once their time has come how would i feel for not telling them their false views.

at the moment i am in the deist point of view, with a tendency of the agnostic, it is quite a dilema!.

Razziel

I recently revealed to mine that I'm atheist now, and I think their reaction was worse than if I had told them JW's were just a carrot on a stick. When we talked doctrine before, they rallied around canned answers or got defensive if I really struck a nerve. We had given up talking the bible, but recently my mom mentioned something about JWs and I casually mentioned I'm athiest now.

This time, they just got sad. And it wasn't sad for me, their son the unbeliever, either. It was the "we're old, and tired of life" sad. And it is sad. I won't go into detail because it's about the only thing that can bring tears to my eyes, but to give up all your hopes and dreams in life because a religion told you it was the way to salvation, to have no retirement planned and basically have to work manual labor until the day you die old and decrepit, and then to begin to realize in the last few years that something is wrong with the whole belief system is sad beyond words.

When the parties involved are relatively young, helping friends and family out is a service. But eventually, it's not a service anymore, it's just selfish. People pursue noble goals for selfish reasons all the time. I wonder if sometimes we do the same thing. I think it's a mixture of wanting to help them, but wanting to help ourselves too.

11

The lying upper class??

by darthfader in

interesting article:.

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/02/shame-on-the-rich.html?ref=hp.

the team's findings suggest that privilege promotes dishonesty.

Razziel

I want to know... does privilege promote dishonesty or does dishonesty promote privilege? Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?

40

Random thoughts about the organization. In 20 years.....

by stuckinamovement in

jw
friends

many people will scoff at the thought that the org will collapse.

i agree that it will never collapse but the crumbling has begun.

think about the following.....they have a serious lack of potential future leaders.

Razziel

When the baby boomers (born 1946-1964) are all in retirement and heading into nursing homes, which oddly enough happens to occur right in the leadup to 2034, it will be the end of a JW era. I'm sure the organization will go on, but it will change. They way I reckon it, there have been four major generations of JW's.

1. The ones from "the lost generation" that saw the pre-Rutheford days, and were old and dying during the institution of "organization". 2. Those of "the greatest generation", born during the great depression, seeing WWII, and reaching retirement during the 1975 debacle into the 1980's reorganization of the organization. 3. The "baby boomers", who lived their most productive years during the 1970-1995 glory days of end time prophecy are starting to retire now. So I think we're due for the next big organizational shift in the next 10-20 years, regardless of outside influences such as the internet. I'm not sure what to call the 4th generation, but I think they will get left holding the bag, only to find it's empty. The prophets of gen 2 are long gone, and nobody has lifted up the flag to take their place.

89

+$4.00 Gasoline. How does it change the Energy game

by designs in

will it put pressure on politicians to approve the keystone pipeline.. should the nation's refineries stop selling as much gasoline as exports.. how does +$4.00 gasoline affect your monthly budget, how do you adjust..

Razziel

Solar is a good option in some locations for powering homes and offices, but I don't think it will see much large-scale use in powering vehicles, at least in the US. The Nissan Leaf is rated at 34kw-hr/100 miles. The average home in the US used 31.5 kW-hr/day in 2010 per the DoE. There's just too many cars, and we drive too many miles (over 3 trillion miles per year in the US) for solar to be used to provide a great percentage of that power.

I did another quick calculation, and if we drove those 3 trillion miles in Nissan Leafs (not possible since much of that is commercial trucking) running off solar, we'd have to cover 750 square miles in solar panels. A little less land area than the State of Rhode Island. Much better to concentrate our efforts to onsite solar power generation for homes and offices, utilizing unused space on roofs like you mention, designs. I think we're going to have to use another energy generation source for transportation.