richard dawkins revealed that he celebrates christmas on radio four's today programme.. here is is quoted as saying: .
'i am perfectly happy on christmas day to say merry christmas to everybody,' dawkins said.
'i might sing christmas carols - once i was privileged to be invited to kings college, cambridge, for their christmas carols and loved it.
My wife and I went to our granddaughters nativity play yesterday (she's a few weeks from her 5th birthday). It was joyous to see her and all her little classmates singing and performing.
What does it matter that the story is mostly myth and fable? It was an end of year opportunity for the children to shine and the parents/grandparents to get a little dust in their eyes.
Christmas is the same. The fiction doesn't matter, the people you love do.
hello my friends,.
here are some encouraging scriptures for the day:.
revelation 21:2 i also saw the holy city, new jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from god and prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.. hebrews 11:10 for he (abraham) was awaiting the city having real foundations, whose designer and builder is god.. revelation 21:24 and the nations will walk by means of its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it.. revelation 22:1 and he showed me a river of water of life, clear as crystal, flowing out from the throne of god and of the lamb 2 down the middle of its main street (of the holy city).
PetrW, imagine the story of the enslaved Hebrews without God. Moses repeatedly petitions Pharaoh to release the captives without success. Eventually Moses resorts to terrorist action, sending assassins into Egyptian homes where tens of thousands of children are murdered in a single night.
Who wouldn't condemn this act? I believe even you would. So when I ask you to justify the similar Biblical account without resorting to the supernatural it's merely to prove a very simple point.
I'll make that point after your response.
And yes, I'm prepared to read lengthier posts but don't try to obfuscate. The question of theodicy is not in the least bit difficult.
hello my friends,.
here are some encouraging scriptures for the day:.
revelation 21:2 i also saw the holy city, new jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from god and prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.. hebrews 11:10 for he (abraham) was awaiting the city having real foundations, whose designer and builder is god.. revelation 21:24 and the nations will walk by means of its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it.. revelation 22:1 and he showed me a river of water of life, clear as crystal, flowing out from the throne of god and of the lamb 2 down the middle of its main street (of the holy city).
I still think God was right to act at the time. I can "rationalize" it for you,
Please do. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you are an otherwise rational and compassionate person. I'm going to bet (and it's a bet I always win) that you can't justify the deaths of all these innocent children without an appeal to the supernatural.
hello my friends,.
here are some encouraging scriptures for the day:.
revelation 21:2 i also saw the holy city, new jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from god and prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.. hebrews 11:10 for he (abraham) was awaiting the city having real foundations, whose designer and builder is god.. revelation 21:24 and the nations will walk by means of its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it.. revelation 22:1 and he showed me a river of water of life, clear as crystal, flowing out from the throne of god and of the lamb 2 down the middle of its main street (of the holy city).
God shows goodness to both good and bad, because He still hopes that people will repent.
He didn't show much goodness to thousands of Egyptian kids when he had them killed in their beds did he?
uh oh, looks like the mega thread gave up the ghost, so while i investigate / fix it just continue the discussion here .... it's been a long 9 years lloyd evans / john cedars.
LMSA, when this is all over you should write the book. I'm not kidding. Plenty has been written about JW's and their history but I can't recall a single work about the exJW community.
It'd be pretty niche for sure and I doubt you'd make much out of it but to have this period properly documented for the record would be a valuable marker moving forward.
I'd buy it.
we might have russians involved in the middle east and are attacking israel.. wait.. i thought the watchtower and tract society was the central figures in the end times.
.
not that i believe in any of this nonsense but any news in jw world about how the evangelical narrative might be playing out closer than the wts stupidity.
You shouldn't serve God at all, not if you have any moral integrity.
in light of the recent attack on indian jws i did some research about christianity in india and found out that india has a long history of christian influence, and not, like many of us probably believed, brought by the british, rather india has had christians for 2000 years.. matter of fact, they may be similar length and claim to the ‘original’ christians only equal by the roman (european), syrian (middle eastern) and ethiopian (african) christians.
the story goes that judas thomas (aka doubting thomas or dydimus) (literally translated: dydimus = twin (greek) and tomas = twin (aramaic)), the twin brother of jesus travelled to india and did some miracles along the way, started the church there, hence deification of thomas is common there.. i found some articles written by eg.
bart ehrman supporting this theory, personally not that much of a fan, but i know many interested in jw exegesis as he supports various fringe theories including wtbts claim to the name jehovah.. the claims of jesus’ twin brother seem to be supported by the original writings, including the gospel as we know it in the west (almost every canonical gospel writer alludes to the twin), but also various other non-canonical writings and at least 3 complete gospels claimed to be by thomas himself (although the oldest writings stem from the first, second and third century respectively).
Jesus didn't have a twin brother, please stop reading gnostic non sense and concentrate in actual Church history
I'm curious Raymond, why do you value traditional church history over gnostic accounts?
my wife zoe and i often talk about her grandmother who has never been a jw but is an excellent christian by other opinions.
she has led such a good life always kind and tried to follow jesus example.
before the agm new light my wife often thought according to current light is that as long as she dies before armageddon she will be resurrected.
seems to be a good place to gather truly great people who have high morals and are trustworthy
I understand what you're trying to say but think about it for a minute. Most parents teach their children to be honest, trustworthy and to have good morals. Hindu's, Muslims, Christians and even (shock horror) atheists all are mostly good people trying to do the right thing.
If you want to decide whether the morality of a particular group is something exceptional it has to be on the unique identifiers of that group.
So;
Shunning - immoral.
Instilling sexism and homophobia - immoral.
Abusing developing young minds with a demons/Armageddon worldview - immoral.
Teaching anti-science - immoral.
Sacrificing lives over blood treatments - disgracefully immoral.
For the record, I think most Jehovah's Witnesses are good people but the morality specific to Jehovah's Witnesses is appalling.
even elders can be part of the new jw lite brigade these days.
they don’t need to go on door to door anymore and there is no requirement for anything really.. taking meeting parts is all dead easy you could turn up on the day with zero preparation because it’s all in the meeting workbook.. quarterly elders meetings are just old men having a good old natter just like old men do down the pub.. congregations could be likened to pubs or bars these days just without the drinks, those come at other times.. no need for territory maps, these almost went away with covid letter writing now they are extremely slow getting finished as those who still go door to door only do ten mins.. you could even voice your questions these days about things the gb say and then just say “we can’t be dogmatic we just don’t know”.
i predict they will say this about 1914 soon..
They really are talking about this openly. And the answer is calm discussions in the congregation
Hmmm. Talk is cheap, I'd like to see this new direction spelled out in print in a publicly available publication.
it's been a while since i've been online here so, forgive me if i seem clueless.
i found a doc with a link newchapter posted several years ago.
she was writing about violence and abortion and gave quite a few stats.
One side says you have 'Trump Derangement Syndrome' the other says you're in the 'Cult of Trump'.
I can only comment as an outsider, a Brit' (and I don't speak for all Brits). I know next to nothing about American politics and am not qualified to judge Trump in that arena.
Trump the man however. Well I guess your politicians don't have to be likeable to get the job done but by being SO divisive he does seem to be hurting his country.
Just how I see it.
