Posts by alice.in.wonderland

15

Why People Believe Invisible Agents Control the World

by alice.in.wonderland in

any thoughts on the existence of invisible agents as a potent force in human affairs?.

why people believe invisible agents control the world.

a skeptic's take on souls, spirits, ghosts, gods, demons, angels, aliens and other invisible powers that be.

alice.in.wonderland

"So, we're to believe other ancient legends support the truth of the Bible? How preposterous! They are just myths, and so is the Bible."

When I first started participating on this website I at times copied from the Watchtower CD without citing the source, simply because I didn't want people to know I was one of Jehovah's Witnesses. They all know my religion now. I made the connections between Greek myths and the pre-Flood conditions found in Genesis:

The Bible Is Genuine History

it-1 p. 1001 Greece, Greeks

In considering the Greek myths, it is of interest to see how the Bible sheds light on their possible or even probable origin. As Genesis 6:1-13 shows, prior to the Flood, angelic sons of God came to earth, evidently materializing in human form, and cohabited with attractive women. They produced offspring who were called Nephilim, or Fellers, that is, “those who cause others to fall down.” The result of this unnatural union of spirit creatures with humans, and the hybrid race it produced, was an earth filled with immorality and violence. (Compare Jude 6; 1Pe 3:19, 20; 2Pe 2:4, 5;) Like others of the post-Flood times, Javan, the progenitor of the Greek people, undoubtedly heard the account of pre-Flood times and circumstances, likely from his father Japheth, a survivor of the Flood. Note, now, what the writings attributed to Homer and Hesiod reveal.

The numerous gods and goddesses they described had human form and great beauty, though often being gigantic and superhuman. They ate, drank, slept, had sexual intercourse among themselves or even with humans, lived as families, quarreled and fought, seduced and raped. Though supposedly holy and immortal, they were capable of any type of deceit and crime. They could move among mankind either visibly or invisibly. Later Greek writers and philosophers sought to purge the accounts of Homer and Hesiod of some of the more vile acts attributed to the gods.

These accounts may reflect, although in greatly expanded, embellished, and distorted form, the authentic account of pre-Flood conditions found in Genesis. A further remarkable correspondency is that, in addition to the principal gods, the Greek legends describe demigods or heroes who were of both divine and human descent. These demigods were of superhuman strength but were mortal (Hercules being the only one of them granted the privilege of attaining immortality). The demigods thus bear a marked similarity to the Nephilim in the Genesis account. Posted by Metropolis

Response:

These demigods weren't real. They were invented in the imaginations of unknown ancient Greeks, casting about blindly trying to come up with some magical explanation for themselves and everything around them. Just like the Jews, Babylonians, Assyrians, Romans, Egyptians, Chinese, Mayans, and every other civilization in the world. Therefore there's nothing "remarkable" about "gods" of both divine and human descent, any more that it's "remarkable" that somebody dreamed up Spider-Man 50 years ago. Posted by GiordanoBruno

116

2nd video on 1919 Watchtower's Wacky Chronology

by Awakened at Gilead in

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfrz4bepvye.

.

i had some time to put this together... let me know what you think... .

alice.in.wonderland

In retrospective, the John class is applying the 1,260 days (1919 – 1922) to their own experiences as Jehovah's Organization was developing in the twentieth century.

re chap. 27 pp. 183-184 pars. 24-26 God’s Kingdom Is Born!

While the first world war was being fought, Jesus’ brothers faithfully kept on with their witnessing to the extent possible. This was done in the face of intensified opposition from Satan and his vicious henchmen. Finally, the Bible Students’ public witnessing was virtually stopped. (Revelation 11:7-10) That was when they had an experience quite similar to that of the Israelites in Egypt who also endured under great oppression. It was then that Jehovah brought them swiftly, as if on wings of eagles, to safety in the desert of Sinai. (Exodus 19:1-4) Likewise, after the bitter persecution of 1918-19, Jehovah delivered his witnesses, as representing his woman, into a spiritual situation that was as safe for them as the desert was for the Israelites. This came as an answer to their prayers.—Compare Psalm 55:6-9.

In the wilderness, Jehovah brought forth the Israelites as a nation, providing for them spiritually and physically. Similarly, starting in 1919, Jehovah brought forth the seed of the woman as a spiritual nation. This is not to be confused with the Messianic Kingdom that has been ruling from the heavens since 1914. Rather, this new nation is made up of the remnant of anointed witnesses on earth, who were brought into a glorious spiritual estate in 1919. Being provided now with “their measure of food supplies at the proper time,” these were strengthened for the work that lay ahead.—Luke 12:42; Isaiah 66:8.

How long did this respite for the seed of God’s woman last? Revelation 12:6 says 1,260 days. Revelation 12:14 calls the period a time, times, and half a time; in other words, three and a half times. In fact, both expressions stand for three and a half years, extending in the Northern Hemisphere from the spring of 1919 to the autumn of 1922. This was a period of refreshing recuperation and reorganization for the restored John class.

If the remnant of anointed witnesses on earth were brought into a glorious spiritual estate in 1918 they would have said so. The fact that there is a gap does not mean that the 1,260 days in Revelation 12:6 cannot be applied to (1919 – 1922). While dates are noteworthy, they don't carry the importance to Jehovah's Witnesses you stipulate. There's not a system of dating for the outworking of events in God's purpose in its entirety that can be followed. There doesn't need to be if you're on the right side of things.

10

Stairway to heaven

by exwhyzee in

i remember in the 70's my friends mom started partaking of the emblems.

she said she had developed a preoccupation with heaven and of wanting to know everything she could about jehovah and could hardly go a minute without reading the literature or the bible...even while on the toilet.

her formerly "opposing" husband had recently studied and gotten baptized.

alice.in.wonderland

Does anyone know the meaning of the lyrics to Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin)? It seems to have some kind of religious meaning. I think “buying the stairway to heaven” means all the wealth that goes into organized religion and this makes the song writer “wonder” about ulterior motives that may be associated with religion.

And he carried me away in [the power of the] spirit into a wilderness. And I caught sight of a woman sitting upon a scarlet-colored wild beast that was full of blasphemous names and that had seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and was adorned with gold and precious stone and pearls and had in her hand a golden cup that was full of disgusting things and the unclean things of her fornication. And upon her forehead was written a name, a mystery: “Babylon the Great, the mother of the harlots and of the disgusting things of the earth.” Revelation 17:3-5
"Stairway To Heaven"

There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold
And she's buying the stairway to heaven.
When she gets there she knows, if the stores are all closed
With a word she can get what she came for.
Ooh, ooh, and she's buying the stairway to heaven.

There's a sign on the wall but she wants to be sure
'Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings.
In a tree by the brook, there's a songbird who sings,
Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven.
Ooh, it makes me wonder,
Ooh, it makes me wonder.

15

Why People Believe Invisible Agents Control the World

by alice.in.wonderland in

any thoughts on the existence of invisible agents as a potent force in human affairs?.

why people believe invisible agents control the world.

a skeptic's take on souls, spirits, ghosts, gods, demons, angels, aliens and other invisible powers that be.

alice.in.wonderland

Any thoughts on the existence of invisible agents as a potent force in human affairs?

Why People Believe Invisible Agents Control the World

A Skeptic's take on souls, spirits, ghosts, gods, demons, angels, aliens and other invisible powers that be

Souls, spirits, ghosts, gods, demons, angels, aliens, intelligent designers, government conspirators, and all manner of invisible agents with power and intention are believed to haunt our world and control our lives. Why?

The answer has two parts, starting with the concept of “patternicity,” which I defined in my December 2008 column as the human tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise. Consider the face on Mars, the Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich, satanic messages in rock music. Of course, some patterns are real. Finding predictive patterns in changing weather, fruiting trees, migrating prey animals and hungry predators was central to the survival of Paleolithic hominids.

The problem is that we did not evolve a baloney-detection device in our brains to discriminate between true and false patterns. So we make two types of errors: a type I error, or false positive, is believing a pattern is real when it is not; a type II error, or false negative, is not believing a pattern is real when it is. If you believe that the rustle in the grass is a dangerous predator when it is just the wind (a type I error), you are more likely to survive than if you believe that the rustle in the grass is just the wind when it is a dangerous predator (a type II error). Because the cost of making a type I error is less than the cost of making a type II error and because there is no time for careful deliberation between patternicities in the split-second world of predator-prey interactions, natural selection would have favored those animals most likely to assume that all patterns are real. Continued...
This here contains some plagiarism (plagiarism from the Watchtower CD is very common on the internet) from the 06/01/2007 Watchtower p. 4, “The Source of Evil Exposed!”

http://www.rense.com/general85/rootof.htm

The Root Of All Evil: Manipulating Order Out Of Fear

Not surprisingly, many have rejected what they consider to be wild, superstitious notions about the Devil. Even back in 1726, Daniel Defoe derided people's belief that the Devil was a frightful monster "with bat's wings, horns, cloven foot, long tail, forked tongue, and the like." Such ideas, he said, were "weak fancied trifles" manufactured by "devil-raisers and devil-makers" who "cheated the ignorant world with a devil of their own making."

Is that how you see things? Do you agree that "the devil is in reality man's invention to account for his own sinfulness"? That statement appears in The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, and many who profess to be Christians think that way. Christendom's theologians, says Jeffrey Burton Russell, have by and large "dismissed the Devil and the demons as superstitious relics."

Yet, to some people, the Devil is very real. They reason that there must be some kind of superhuman, malignant force behind the recurrent evils that pervade man's history. "The horrors that the twentieth century has produced," says Russell, provide one reason why "belief in the Devil, after a long lapse, is rapidly reappearing." According to author Don Lewis, a number of modern, educated people who "smile patronisingly" at the superstitious beliefs and fears of "their artless ancestors" are "once again becoming enthralled by the evil element in the supernatural." -Religious Superstition Through the Ages.

The Book of Genesis tells us that Lucifer induced other angels to join him in rebellion. Like he himself, these `Fallen Angels` took an improper and perverse sexual interest in humans with disastrous consequences.

Evil Fills the Earth. In Genesis 6:1,2 we read: "When men started to grow in numbers, and daughters were born to them, then the sons of God began to notice the daughters of men, that they were fair; and they went taking wives for themselves, namely, all whom they chose."

Who were those "sons of God"? The Bible refers to them as the Nephilim, the `Fallen Angels` who joined with Lucifer in rebellion against God. Having copulated with mortal women, they produced a race of hybrids who grew into giants, known in the scriptures as the `Anakim`. They are described as "the mighty ones who were of old, the men of renown" Genesis 6:4.

The Nephilim and their progyny took wickedness to new lows. "The earth came to be ruined in the sight of God and became filled with violence," Gensis 6:11. And it was not long before humanity adopted the violent, depraved ways of the newcomers in their midst.

How did these `Fallen Angels` and their offspring exert such a powerful evil influence on humans? By appealing to mankind's sinful inclination and desires. The result? "All flesh . ruined its way on the earth." Finally, God destroyed that world in a global Deluge, sparing only righteous Noah and his family. (Genesis 6:5, 12-22). The scriptures tell us that the incarnate angels returned to the heavens in disgrace. As debased demons, they continued to oppose God, and they have remained a potent force in human affairs.

Myths Legends or Hidden Truth. Stories about demigods, giants, and a cataclysmic flood are found in ancient mythologies worldwide. For example, the Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh mentions a flood, a ship, and survivors. Gilgamesh himself was described as a lustful, violent demigod, or part god, part man. Aztec mythology tells of an ancient world inhabited by giants and of a great deluge. Norse legend describes a race of giants and a wise man named Bergelmir who constructed a large boat and saved himself and his wife. The combined testimony of all such legends corroborates the Bible's testimony that all humans have descended from the survivors of a deluge that destroyed an ancient wicked world.

24

Not a big deal to some but a big deal to me!

by Simon Morley in

jw
friends

2010:07:01 offically "inactive" - whats next?

- flurry of calls?, co/coboe "we want to encourage you..."?

given the vitrolic nature of my exit i doubt they want to come around.

alice.in.wonderland

"2010:07:01 offically "Inactive" - whats next? - flurry of calls?, CO/COBoE "we want to encourage you..."? Given the vitrolic nature of my exit I doubt they want to come around. Anyway, it was a big deal to celebrate that today...."

On the road leading off to life, it's easier to do what's wrong than right when you begin your journey. However, after you do what's right for a certain amount of time, rewards follow and it becomes easier. Considering the path you're taking, there's nothing to celebrate by changing lanes.

“Go in through the narrow gate; because broad and spacious is the road leading off into destruction, and many are the ones going in through it; whereas narrow is the gate and cramped the road leading off into life, and few are the ones finding it. Matthew 7:13-14

156

Worldly Shunning

by alice.in.wonderland in

i hear quite a bit of criticism about jehovah's witnesses enforcing 1 corinthians 5:9-13. while jehovah's witnesses have a formal system of maintaining the organization's core values; egocentric, self-worshiping secularists have an informal system of rejecting those of whom they have nothing in common with.

http://www.objectivistcenter.org/cth-32-390-religion.aspx.

most major religions have believed in the existence of a supernatural realm, a realm beyond the natural world of physical objects and bodies governed by causal laws, the world we perceive with our senses and can study by rational methods.

alice.in.wonderland

"I have seen many people post links here in direct response to you, showing how JW's match the characteristics of a cult."

The word cult has more than one definition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult

The word cult pejoratively refers to a group whose beliefs or practices are reasonably considered strange.

--------------------------

This here is strictly in the mind of the beholder as many religions teach very different things. To me everything Jehovah's Witnesses teach (comprehensive view of existence) makes perfect sense.

By the 1940s the long held opposition by some established Christian denominations to non-Christian religions and supposedly heretical Christian sects crystallized into a more organized "Christian countercult movement" in the United States. For those belonging to the movement all new religious groups deemed outside of Christian orthodoxy were considered "cults".

In the late 1980s psychologists and sociologists started to abandon theories like brainwashing and mind-control. While scholars may believe that various less dramatic coercive psychological mechanisms could influence group members, they came to see conversion to new religious movements principally as an act of rational choice.
A person who is a member of a religion out of rational choice can easily debunk theories like brainwashing and mind-control that others try and apply to them. To me, a cult is a religious group that confuses loyalty to institutional church leaders with loyalty to God. Some members of clergy appear to have deified themselves considering titles like Holy Father and the Infallible Pope as only God is infallible.

http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/003275.html

[The Church] was also much concerned with man, with man as he really is today, with living man, with man totally taken up with himself, with man who not only makes himself the center of his own interests, but who dares to claim that he is the principle and [the] final cause of all reality. Man in his phenomenal totality ... presented himself, as it were, before the assembly of the Council Fathers.... The religion of God made man has come up against the religion--for there is such a one--of man who makes himself God.

And how did the Council respond to this specter of godless man, of "man who makes himself God"? Far from condemning this falsehood and asserting the superior claims of the Christian faith, the Council, said the Pope, was filled only with an endless sympathy. The discovery of human needs--and these are so much greater now that the son of the earth has made himself greater--absorbed the attention of the Synod.... We also, we more than anyone else, have the cult of man...

Thus, alongside God, the Church had added a second Lord, man, with everything ultimately focusing on man instead of God. Archbishop Karol Wojtyla, later Pope John Paul II, fully subscribed to the Vatican II doctrine, having been one of its leading framers. In his first encyclical after becoming Pope, he repeated the theme of Gaudium et Spes, declaring that human nature has been permanently "divinized" by the advent of Christ.

156

Worldly Shunning

by alice.in.wonderland in

i hear quite a bit of criticism about jehovah's witnesses enforcing 1 corinthians 5:9-13. while jehovah's witnesses have a formal system of maintaining the organization's core values; egocentric, self-worshiping secularists have an informal system of rejecting those of whom they have nothing in common with.

http://www.objectivistcenter.org/cth-32-390-religion.aspx.

most major religions have believed in the existence of a supernatural realm, a realm beyond the natural world of physical objects and bodies governed by causal laws, the world we perceive with our senses and can study by rational methods.

alice.in.wonderland

I'm not whoever "Raniia," "Reniaa" is.

156

Worldly Shunning

by alice.in.wonderland in

i hear quite a bit of criticism about jehovah's witnesses enforcing 1 corinthians 5:9-13. while jehovah's witnesses have a formal system of maintaining the organization's core values; egocentric, self-worshiping secularists have an informal system of rejecting those of whom they have nothing in common with.

http://www.objectivistcenter.org/cth-32-390-religion.aspx.

most major religions have believed in the existence of a supernatural realm, a realm beyond the natural world of physical objects and bodies governed by causal laws, the world we perceive with our senses and can study by rational methods.

alice.in.wonderland

"Rachel,

you have just as much right to post your veiws as anyone else, thats what this forum is for

and puting all jokes aside i hope you continue. ( Call me a glutton for punishment). But try putting

yourself in our shoes being involved with this cult took away alot from us, self esteem,

confidence, family and a whole host of other things. You come here trying to demean us is not a great

idea. We got fed up and left this cult because of that mess we're not gonna take it from you ,so

when you come here talking the way you do, your jumping into a bees nest. And rightly so.

And with that said i hope simon give us free reign on you. this is his site we need to respect it,

but i hope he gives us free reign when you start demeaning us"

I constantly see people here refer to Jehovah's Witnesses as a cult without being definitive. What religion isn't a cult?

As people go throughout their life and make changes, the decisions people make have an effect on their overall well being. You weren't always indignant toward Jehovah's Witnesses if you used to be one. Some decision you made evidently changed the way you perceive the organization.

As long as people remain in their constitutional rights, I've found there's more freedom of thought if you don't blame others.

156

Worldly Shunning

by alice.in.wonderland in

i hear quite a bit of criticism about jehovah's witnesses enforcing 1 corinthians 5:9-13. while jehovah's witnesses have a formal system of maintaining the organization's core values; egocentric, self-worshiping secularists have an informal system of rejecting those of whom they have nothing in common with.

http://www.objectivistcenter.org/cth-32-390-religion.aspx.

most major religions have believed in the existence of a supernatural realm, a realm beyond the natural world of physical objects and bodies governed by causal laws, the world we perceive with our senses and can study by rational methods.

alice.in.wonderland

"A normal person would see your bantering with this crowd as self punishment, but not you do not, you just keep on going for us it's just like ordering pizza for a hungry crowd."

Wasblind, that's because immunity to “this crowd” is easily acquired. There's only a few militant types I've come across here that manifest the same mindset toward Jehovah's Witnesses as Jihadists have toward Americans.

http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=8402

There is no shortage of aggressors lusting for American blood, and they grow bolder with each display of American compassion.
-------------------------

Being “nice” to these individuals doesn't calm their spirit of aggression, but none-the-less, cyberterrorists can't do any real harm over the internet so there's no cause for alarm on my part.

114

The old big orange "Paradise" book

by aquagirl in

anyone remember that?

i learned to read on that book.there were some very disturbing images,like the earth opening up and people falling into it.like upside down ladies and hippies.id love to get a hold of one and peruse it with a friend and some herbal medicine.maybe there is one in the attic?anyway,that and the image of the snake talking to the beautiful,bare shouldered eve,who was holding an apple,made a big impression on me.any else have any faves from that book?is it still being used?.

alice.in.wonderland

One of my favorite older publications: