TrueTomHarley

1 hour ago, Many Miles said:

Within the text we see what boils down to one person, the "physical man", that does not care to examine all things whereas the other person, the "spiritual man" wants to examine all things, and the latter does so without concern of whether this is popular among men.

Wouldn’t this put the materialist atheists who are scientists in the realm of spiritual men? Not only do they want to examine all things, but they insist that their tools, the tools of science, are the only means with which to do it. 

You spoke highly of acupuncture a while back.

On 11/26/2023 at 1:04 PM, Many Miles said:

Anyone today claiming acupuncture is pseudoscience is uniformed. For instance, scientific methods of information examination shows some peripheral neuropathies are demonstrated to respond to acupuncture. Such a systematic review falls within the realm of scientific method.

Practitioners of acupuncture will say it works by releasing/rebalancing the body’s chi, which they will describe as a life-force or energy. You will not be able to run this by the champions of science. They cannot detect any ‘chi’ with their science, so they insist it is pseudoscience. If you tell them of benefit of acupuncture, they will say that it is placebo. If you insist it is not, they will call you stupid.

2 hours ago, Many Miles said:

the "spiritual man" wants to examine all things, and the latter does so without concern of whether this is popular among men.

Do you think the spiritual man should look into what is described as ‘the deep things of Satan’ in the spirit of examining all things?

Thus far, I’m a little partial to @George88’s two preceding comments. If I didn’t fear their mix / fortification with ChatAI functionality, I would upvote them. I don’t want to get stuck upvoting, only to find I have upvoted a  ‘Danger Will Robinson’ robot. But I should probably work to overcome my phobia, as @Alphonse has.

6 hours ago, George88 said:

For if, wishing to fill up the number and measure of His creation, He had been afraid of the wickedness of those who were to be, and like one who could find no other way of remedy and cure, except only this, that He should refrain from His purpose of creating, lest the wickedness of those who were to be should be ascribed to Him; what else would this show but unworthy suffering and unseemly feebleness on the part of the Creator, who should so fear the actings of those who as yet were not, that He refrained from His purposed creation?

I think this guy [Clement] has been hanging out with the apostle Paul too much. 

4 hours ago, Juan Rivera said:

Rationalism is the notion that human reason is the sole source and final test of all truth.

4 hours ago, Many Miles said:

That's false, and thinking that way is a trap.

It does not take reason (logical construction) to know the truth that fire hurts you when you touch it, and so on ad infinitum.

Some things are self-evident. What's not self-evident we need to experiment to discover, or deduce from what we have already learned.

Where does 1 Corinthians 2:14-15 fit in? Or does it?

“But a physical man does not accept the things of the spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot get to know them, because they are examined spiritually. However, the spiritual man examines all things, but he himself is not examined by any man.”

Things that are “examined spiritually”—does rationalism help us to do this? 

Does the “spiritual man” hold an advantage over the “physical man?” Where does rationalism fit in? Are the results of things examined rationally superior to those examined spiritually?

3 hours ago, Many Miles said:

You do know what you just wrote, right?

Not at all. But if find that when my writing takes me into a tunnel, by continuing to write I eventually come out the other end..

9 hours ago, Srecko Sostar said:

So, the famously silly claim that God allows evil on earth because his credibility must be proven and that it takes time, a very long time, in which, among other things, millions of innocent children and adults will be subjected to the greatest suffering and torture, does not hold up to the argument .

The Great Courses professor (David Kyle Johnson: The Big Questions of Philosophy) says that it does makes sense. It alone is logically consistent. He traces it to Augustine and says, ‘Maybe God permits evil because it is essential to his pursuit of his greater goal of allowing free will.’ This is essentially what the Watchtower says, though they develop it more.. Moreover, you who sniff because uneducated ‘dumbbells’ say it today might not sniff upon learning that a highly esteemed and educated philosopher also said it.

Johnson extracts a similar lesson from the Book of Job, in which God finally weighs in but doesn’t answer any of Job’s questions, much less his charges. Instead, he says ‘Where were you when I did such-and-such?’ Whereas Carl Jung (Answer to Job) just thinks God is being a bully, Johnson rightly draws the inference that maybe there are greater questions at work to be settled that Job doesn’t know about.

That doesn’t mean that Johnson accepts this ‘theodicy.’ He is atheist. 

People speak of weighty issues as though they are in vacuum, but atheism changes one’s outlook on everything. If you do damage, or allow damage to happen, and you can fix it, that makes huge difference from one who does damage, or allows it to happen, and cannot fix it. Thus, a doctor who breaks a child’s arm and sends you his bill is different from a doctor who breaks a child’s arm in order to set it properly, and upon doing so, sends you his bill. Holocaust is horrific—not to minimize the human suffering involved, but if you can fix it, even that memory in time becomes like a bad dream, a former thing no longer called to account.

But if you’re atheist, there’s no fixing anything. Any damage done is this life is damage done permanently, since this life is all there is. That’s why, while I can understand people falling to atheism, I can’t see them embracing it as though, it, too, is ‘good news.’ It’s a great tragedy, if true. You ought to be sad about it, as H.G. Wells was when he cited the demoralizing lack of faith that ensued in the wake of rapid acceptance of evolution. It’s not good. It’s bad. But eventually, when they accumulate enough, perceptions flip, and it becomes yet another instance of what’s bad is good and vice-versa. That everlasting life you once envisioned? It’s like paper gains in the stock market; they were never real anyway. The sooner you awake from that notion to ‘live fully’ the two or three decades you have left, the better. ‘Imagine’ that, as you are dying of Covid on a ventilator, there is ‘above you only sky’—and learn to find comfort in that prospect.

You should always ask, in any forum where one is critical of the faith, ‘Has this fellow gone atheist or not?’ Criticism of the human the organization to declare the genuine good news may really just be attacks on the belief in God. Nobody would deny there are flaws in the earthy organization, to the point where one may unexpectedly take one on the chin, but if you don’t believe in God, they are everything, whereas if you do believe in God, they are merely painful, like that sliver jabbing you in the butt when you slid over in the lifeboat to make room. Atheist critics come around and say, ‘Do you realize you could wake up one day and say all your life has been wasted?’ Of course you do. It’s called ‘shipwreck of the faith’ when that happens. It’s not as though the notion has never occurred to a believer. “If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are to be pitied more than anyone,” Paul says at 1 Corinthians 15:19

Although black and white thinking in general is not a great thing, and one does well to banish it in most day-to-day considerations, certain issues, such as belief in God, are indeed black and white. This is true even when such belief results in inconvenience, such as when a car group of sisters was rear-ended by a cop in an actual black and white who was insufficiently focused on his driving. Had they been atheist, it wouldn’t have happened.

18 hours ago, George88 said:

Rights! The story of Job in Job 31 comes to mind. In his boldness, Job dared to confront God, demanding to be proven guilty or declared innocent. This raises a fascinating question: Did Job, despite his misguided assumptions, have the right to question the very Being who created him? How does the modern mental state change when we presume to question our creator, as if we possessed greater knowledge than him?

He did confront God and that might read shocking to some. In the end, though, all was forgiven and he was cut considerable slack due to the agonizing stress he was under. His three interrogators, on the other hand, were cut less slack, since they used their good health to pound their fellow into the ground with their ‘holiness’ and assumed ‘theology’ which held that if you suffer, it serves you right. You must have done something wrong.

The scripture from Job that makes our day as Jehovah’s Witnesses—you can almost hear the cymbals crash at Kingdom Hall when it is cited—is “until I die, I will not renounce my integrity.” Right it is that it should be highlighted, for it demonstrates that man can, under the worst of circumstances, maintain integrity to God.

But it is part of a package: The full verse reads: “It is unthinkable for me to declare you men righteous! Until I die, I will not renounce my integrity!”

Part of keeping his integrity lies in not letting these three bullies gaslight him, not ‘declaring them righteous.’ He knows who he is. He knows he is not what they say, a hypocrite who fully deserves his own downfall. Defending himself before these three louts is part of ‘not renouncing his integrity.’

Apparently, not renouncing his integrity even involves challenging God. Job begins his speech with a preamble just 3 verses earlier: “As surely as God lives, who has deprived me of justice, As the Almighty lives, who has made me bitter.”

Of course he ‘dares challenge his Creator!’ Unless there really is a hellfire, he couldn’t possibly suffer more than he is doing at present! What’s he got to lose? What’s God going to do—kill him? That’s exactly what he wants. Although we go on and on about Job’s faith in the resurrection, even writing a song about it (and it’s a good song, too), the context of his remark appears to show he doesn’t have any faith in a resurrection at all:

He says: “For there is hope even for a tree. If it is cut down, it will sprout again, And its twigs will continue to grow. . . . At the scent of water it will sprout; And it will produce branches like a new plant. But a man dies and lies powerless; When a human expires, where is he? Waters disappear from the sea, And a river drains away and dries up. Man also lies down and does not get up. Until heaven is no more, they will not wake up, Nor will they be aroused from their sleep.” (Job 14: 7-12)

so that the verses we like, the verses that follow, read as though something he would like to see, but fat chance that they will! Wishful thinking they appear to be, no more: 

“O that in the Grave you would conceal me, That you would hide me until your anger passes by, That you would set a time limit for me and remember me! If a man dies, can he live again? I will wait all the days of my compulsory service Until my relief comes. You will call, and I will answer you. You will long for the work of your hands.”

It’s a little hard to tell for sure, but those first verses hardly seem a preamble for a speech lauding God for the resurrection hope.

Nonetheless, God makes it all good at the end. Job makes no accusation to God beyond what can easily be explained by the suffering he undergoes. His companions, under no stress at all, go well beyond anything Job says. ‘What does God care if you do what’s right? It’s impossible to please him. Even the angels can’t do it!’ — they revisit the point several times. ‘The very heavens are not clean in his eyes,’ say they.

While one might come online and chew out an Eliphaz, Bildad, or Zophar, one does not do it with a Job, condemnatory though some of his reasonings were. That role must be reserved for God. Even Elihu, who has words of correction for Job, makes clear his motive: “If you have something to say, reply to me. Speak, for I want to prove you right,”  he says to Job. (33: 32) In the meantime, he’s not going to take advantage of his health to bully a sick man, as the other three fellows do: “Look! I am just like you before the true God; From the clay I too was shaped. So no fear of me should terrify you, And no pressure from me should overwhelm you.” (33: 6-7)

He’s not going to be a Zophar. No one wants to be a Zophar, who to put it in modern terms, visits a patient on a respirator with COVID-19, who has lost his entire family to that plague, has lost everything else as well, who says something rash in his agony, so Zophar responds: “I have heard a reproof that insults me—my understanding impels me to reply.” (!) You almost expect him to challenge Job to a duel! It’s his mission to defend God from any ill talk, regardless of circumstances, but there are times to give it a rest.

You can’t tell a person that their experience is not theirs. No one should try. Everyone will have their say until God debuts with 70 questions to make you say, as did Job, ‘maybe I was a little rash.’ They’re not going to say it to me, or you, only to God after he makes an appearance. Meanwhile, nobody wants to be a Zophar.

4 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

I’m on that one, too, if I can find it, and if its not too much an arm and a leg as i suspect it might be.

Ah. There it is on Amazon. They’ve made a Kindle version of it which is not too dear. Purchased. To be sure, it’s more than I get for my books, but then I’ve never been through the Holocaust. 

8 minutes ago, Many Miles said:

Have you read Under Two Dictators (1949) by Margarete Buber? It's an contemporary firsthand account of how female Bible Students coped with Nazi concentration camp oppression. In this case Ravensbrueck. Some of what went on, notably regarding the eating of blood and a couple other things, is pretty telling. A now deceased GB member's wife, Gertrude Poetzinger, was in the same camp at the same time, and she confirmed Buber's account.  It's worth the read.

I’m on that one, too, if I can find it, and if its not too much an arm and a leg as i suspect it might be.

3 minutes ago, Many Miles said:

You have good memory….Optimistic

Oh yeah? Well, I can out-compliment you, any day.

I like the handle, ‘Many Miles’ for its suggestion of ‘seen it all, not wound up too tight, and will help if I can.’ The profile photo is the coup de grace, homespun, simple, unassuming, nothing to be intimidated by. You might be a deposed Enron executive, for all I know, but the persona you have selected is very appealing.

5 hours ago, Srecko Sostar said:

suffering

So here I am plowing through some Great Courses professor lecturing on the great questions of philosophy and I’m getting madder and madder because it just seems a primer for atheism. I don’t recall philosophy historically being on such a mission. Imagine being a student in this fellow’s class, where you have to spit back some variation of what he told you, otherwise you get a failing grade. 

The litmus test for the problem of evil, he says, is the Holocaust. He cites some scrawling on a barracks wall from a prisoner who soon thereafter died to the effect that if he meets God in the afterlife, God will have to beg his forgiveness. It’s not hard to empathize.

15 hours ago, George88 said:

In his boldness, Job dared to confront God, demanding to be proven guilty or declared innocent.

Sometimes when your back is up against the wall and you’ve got nothing to lose you take a few shots.

Nonetheless, there were hundreds of Jehovah’s Witnesses also consigned to the camps. They were unique among the prisoners—actual martyrs rather than victims—in that they alone had the power to write their ticket out. All they need do is renounce their faith and comply with the war effort. Only a handful complied.

In the context of reviewing Carl Jung’s ‘Answer to Job,’ written in the early 50s, I explored the topic in a certain blog post, quoting first a Watchtower article, then adding my own comments: 

“From the Watchtower of 2/1/92:

'In concentration camps, the Witnesses were identified by small purple triangles on their sleeves and were singled out for special brutality. Did this break them? Psychologist Bruno Bettelheim noted that they “not only showed unusual heights of human dignity and moral behavior, but seemed protected against the same camp experience that soon destroyed persons considered very well integrated by my psychoanalytic friends and myself.”'

“Why didn't the well-integrated psychoanalytic-approved prisoners hold up? Probably because they read too much Jung and not enough Watchtower!! Not Jehovah's Witnesses! They weren't hamstrung by having been nourished on Jungian theology. Job meant something to them. It wasn't there simply to generate wordy theories and earn university degrees. A correct appreciation of it afforded them power, and enabled them to bear up under the greatest evil of our time, a mass evil entirely analogous to the trials of Job! They applied the book! And in doing so, they proved the book's premise: man can maintain integrity to God under the most severe provocation. Indeed, some are on record as saying they would not have traded the experience for anything, since it afforded them just that opportunity. (another fact I find staggering)”

https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2011/02/carl-jung-job-and-the-holocaust.html

14 hours ago, Many Miles said:

That's a pretty fatalistic perspective.

It’s just an exercise in writing, not to be taken too seriously. Sort of like what Schroeder said about that Watchtower. You might like this one better, also an exercise in writing:

She was an impish little thing, trying to make me change for my burger and fries. But a nickel in the tray kept evading her gloved finger. “Look how I can’t pull out this nickel,” she mused, “it just keeps slipping away.” Suddenly she looked up brightly, and with wisdom far beyond her years - or was it that of a child? – she said “Oh, well. I forgive myself!”

15 hours ago, Many Miles said:

Though the most we can do is try our best, I hold a positive view that we do not waste our time when we share our experience and training to help others

Yes. That permeates everything you do. It’s a very desirable quality. 

18 minutes ago, Many Miles said:

But, if Armageddon comes and a bunch of people are destroyed, objectively we can say whatever was responsible for the event had the power to destroy a bunch of people and did so.

I far prefer the term ‘Golden Rule’ to ‘Human Rights’ as the former preserves all that is noble about human rights, while discarding all that is pretentious. Our own bodies do not respect our ‘human rights,’ crapping out on us when we need them the most and finally shutting down altogether.

Moreover, it really seems that if they are ‘rights’ you ought to be able to do something about it when they are violated. Instead, rights are all-but violated with impunity today. We are reduced to saying people ought ‘take responsibilty’ and be ‘held accountable,’ neither of which happens with any reliability. Utter such lofty terms all you want; not much changes.

This years favorite word: ‘Unacceptable’

Use in a paragraph:

They finally hung that slippery politician that everyone knew should be hung. ‘Any last words?’ they asked him on the scaffold. ‘This is unacceptable!’ he cried, as the trap door swung open and the rope snapped taut.

Unacceptable or not, off he went, every bit as much as if it was acceptable.

53 minutes ago, Srecko Sostar said:

It cannot answer the question whether God has a legal right to be God. It is presumptuous to attribute such importance to oneself, to a human being

It is a little like the signs we saw posted repeatedly at the Columbus Zoo reptile house.

”How do you know if an animal is venomous?” they say, and then answer: “If it bites you and you get sick, then the animal is venomous.”

Pretty much the same answer applies here, I think. “How do you know if God has the right to rule? If Armegeddon comes, and you’re not around afterward, then he has the right to rule.”

7 hours ago, Thinking said:

Why do a re write….its good and truthful….it would help others who have been hurt…..

It is good and truthful, but not all of the book is satisfactory. I’ll put it in my next one, perhaps—which may be an exploration of ‘theodicy’ (why bad things happen). Does @Many Milesor anyone else know the origin of our ‘universal court case’ theodicy? I’d love to track that one down. @JW Insider once put me on the track of a Great Courses university professor exploring the subject and it was well-nigh insufferable. Not that I won’t have to plow through it again if I proceed, but I am reminded of a newly discovered and instantly favorite G K Chesterton quote: “The first effect of not believing in God is that you lose your common sense."

7 hours ago, Thinking said:

it had become a part of my occasionally obnoxious and overbearing personality. 

I have no idea what you are talking about. Why be so hard on yourself? 

It’s like when a car group of friends drove near a certain industrial complex. Surrounding blocks had been snatched up for parking, but here and there were some stalwarts who hadn’t sold their properties. Thus, there were a few rickety houses completely surrounded by blacktop. “These people are so stubborn!” Sam (who had worked there) grumbled. “The company needs that property. They pay good money for it.” He reflected a few seconds, then said, “I’m stubborn—but these people are more stubborn!”

Now, you know how brothers like to razz each other. Instantly, it started. “No! You, Sam—stubborn?! Don’t be so hard on yourself! How could you say that??!! Not you!”

Sam was probably the most stubborn person to have ever walked the planet.

3 hours ago, Many Miles said:

Just think about all the good that came from how Job lived his life

There could never have been a Mission Impossible without him.

3 hours ago, Many Miles said:

God is not dependent on humans organizing to get His will done.

No, but organizing does seem consistent with giving God a lot rather than giving him a little

3 hours ago, Many Miles said:

Because people organize to get things done does not mean to get things done you have to be organized.

It may be that as long as you don’t work to sabarolf organization, as though a freedom fighter, you’re okay—even as you stand apart from it yourself. Or it may not be okay. I’ll err on the side of sticking with what my experience tells me has worked to a reasonably fine degree, given that ‘we have this treasure in earthen vessels.’ I remember giving that talk on ‘Unified or Uniform,’ contrasting the unity of the earthly organization with the uniformity often demanding by nations, which goes so far as to stuff people into actual uniforms.

57 minutes ago, Thinking said:

I wouldn’t go so far as to say he was lying..more like acting like Abraham when he claimed Sarah’s as his sister….technically he wasn’t lying as they were actually closely related ( cannot remember how close ) .

Yeah—I always figured it was something like that. You said it well:

39 minutes ago, Thinking said:

Jehovahs people are no different to his people of old times…

40 minutes ago, Thinking said:

I’ve been there and experienced such pain that lead to a death

It makes a difference, doesn’t it? It’s a little bit like coming back from the dead when you finally get back on your feet.

I put the following in ‘No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash,’ a book I took down pending rewrite that I haven’t gotten around to, so now it is nowhere:

“After studying one book seemingly written for no other purpose other than to harp on dress and grooming and harangue about field service, the conductor said to me: “Tom, why don’t you comment? You know all these answers.” It was a turning point. He was right. I did know them all. It was time to stop sulking. From the circuit overseer on down, they had stirred up major chaos in the family. They had been heavy-handed and clumsy - but never malicious. And it had never been Jehovah. I had read of ill-goings-on in the first-century record. Congregations described in Revelation chapters 2 and 3 were veritable basket cases, some of them, but that did not mean that they were not congregations. Eventually things smooth out. Eventually 1 Timothy 5:24 comes to pass: “The sins of some men are publicly known, leading directly to judgment, but those of other men will become evident later.” “Later” may take its sweet time in rolling around but it always does roll around. Should I stumble when it becomes my turn? I’d read whiner after whiner carrying on about some personal affront or other on the Internet. Was I going to be one of them? 

 . . . Recovery didn’t happen overnight, for I have a PhD in grumbling. Indeed, I was so good at it that few noticed I grumbled, for I had never left the library – I had only strayed from the same page. Now it was time to get on the same paragraph. Was that book truly a dog? They’re not all dazzling flashes of light, you know, for the treasure is contained in earthen vessels. Or was it the conductor? Or was it me? No matter. If life throws you for a loop, you thank God for the discipline and move on. “For those whom Jehovah loves he disciplines, in fact, he scourges everyone whom he receives as a son,” the Bible says Tell me about it. “Half of those at Bethel are here to test the other half,” the old-timers said. Yeah – tell me about that, too.”

Everyone has a mid-life crisis or two, during which they have to reassess. It doesn’t even matter if it is a servant of God we’re speaking of. Everyone has a mid-life crisis.

5 hours ago, Thinking said:

Yes koalas are very cute but they have a big problem

Just to show @Thinkingthat we are thoroughly attuned to ‘down under,’ here are some pictures we took at the Columbus Zoo:

5 hours ago, Thinking said:

i don’t think pudgy looks as cute as that when he awakes…

No. He is probably more like this guy:

6 hours ago, Srecko Sostar said:

Blockhead? lol

I thought that by now you already had the chance to know my sense of humor and some kind of irony and sarcasm in some of the written sentences.

To the extent that is true it would appear that I am the blockhead.

1 hour ago, Many Miles said:

Plenty of children have comprehended that.

Well—had you put it that way in the first place . . .

41 minutes ago, Pudgy said:

I don’t know how else to say this, so here goes…. 

Do we REALLY want Elders in the Congregation to carry guns?

“What do you say, you fornicating punk? Ya feeling lucky today?”

30 minutes ago, Srecko Sostar said:

In the near future, when the WT JWorg takes over this world, then someone will need to be in charge of carrying out the judgments of the Judicial Committee. Who else but armed elders? 

You blockhead. I mean, Duh, if anyone discards belief in God they necessarily focus on only the inconveniences of being Christian in the present system, which no Witness would ever deny there are some, but they are compensated by realities to come.

If there really is a God, and if there really will be a new system in which He rules unopposed, then he will enforce his own standards. Just like during that circuit assembly in the early 70’s in which two resurrected ones were bellyaching over everything under the sun, impervious to the correction that the loving elders (who weren’t packing guns) were pouring on like syrup, then the lights went out, there was a loud zap and a flash from heaven, and they were gone! Oh, yeah—a ‘dramatization’ it was.

4 hours ago, Thinking said:

Thanks for trying but it still seems murky waters..if I had to say that to leave Australia I would think I was giving allegiance to our constitution thus our country…..so happy we never had this problem. Americans are very very political and religious compared to us…makes things so much easier on us.

Well, there’s plenty in Australia worth fighting for, like this guy:

Be honest. Doesn’t this remind you of Pudgy awakening from a nap?

18 hours ago, Many Miles said:

As an example, a teaching of what "soul" is. It's not a single thing by itself. Rather, it's two things in a state of composition that equate to "soul", when and only when those two things remain together as one. In the case of "soul", those two primary components are 1) a body formed from the earth and 2) breath of life. Together, those components were "soul". Apart neither is "soul". Only together is there "soul".

I dunno. I think of that verse where Jesus said God hides things from the wise and intellectual, while revealing them to babes. Can a babe understand the above? I’m not sure I can myself.

6 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

It is well not to describe religous interpretations as ‘lies’ when they cannot immediately be identified as such.

2 hours ago, Srecko Sostar said:

WTJWorg teaches believers that "truth" must be based on the Bible. Anything contrary to "Bible truth" is called, by WTJWorg, a "lies" or "false teachings". 

Within the Christian tradition, there is nothing inconsistent about these two statements. Except for a few scattered early mentions—no more than mentions—in early history, there is no place in which one can learn of Christianity but the Bible.

The ‘lies’ and ‘false teachings’ of the vast bulk of Christendom can immediately be identified as such. That the ‘soul’ is mortal and dies when the person dies, that with a single exception, ‘hell’ come from one of three original language words, none of which mean eternal suffering. That Jesus’s followers should be ‘no part of the world,’ whereas most Christian churches are fully part of the world—that God is not one-in-three persons, that the grand overall theme of the Bible is not, ‘be good, so you will go to heaven when you die,’—these teachings can be instantly identified by scripture as ‘false.’

Such ‘false’ religious teaching unfailingly paint those who espouse them into outrageous moral corners—such as ‘comforting’ bereaved parents that the reason their baby died was that God needed another angel in his garden, which is why he picked the very best—your child.

Most of the main teachings of churches are not found in the Bible. It is the attempt to read them in that causes persons to throw up their hands in frustration and even disgust. Deprived of nourishment, flooded with junk spiritual food, inquiring minds are left to scavenge elsewhere. Some settle for atheism, some for agnosticism, some settle on churches that pay scant attention to biblical things in favor of a social gospel, even a political one.

So, they are not just lies. They are harmful lies. They are lies that are near-universal in the church world. The GB has mounted a successful sustained, and worldwide assault on them. To ignore this and instead flail away about mistakes they may or may not have made is astoundingly small-minded to me.

10 hours ago, Srecko Sostar said:

Then, in the early 1930s, they changed their doctrine. Another example of "old truths and new lies" or "old lies and new truths", take it as you will.

It is well not to describe religous interpretations as ‘lies’ when they cannot immediately be identified as such. With your patience—and you are certainly a patient and tenacious fellow—let me try to develop a point: 

Congregations are lately covering the Book of Job. Here, Job is giving his testimony: “Let God weigh me with accurate scales; Then he will recognize my integrity.” (Job 31:6)

His life course is one of integrity toward God. If it was not, downfall would be justified, he believes, but it has been

“If my footsteps deviate from the way Or my heart has followed after my eyes Or my hands have been defiled, … If my heart has been enticed by a woman And I have lain in wait at my neighbor’s door, … If I denied justice to my male or female servants When they had a complaint against me, … If I refused to give the poor what they desired Or saddened the eyes of the widow; If I ate my portion of food alone Without sharing it with the orphans;… If I saw anyone perishing for lack of clothing Or a poor man with nothing to cover himself; … If I shook my fist against the orphan When he needed my assistance in the city gate; … If I put my confidence in gold Or said to fine gold, ‘You are my security!’ If I found my joy in my great wealth Because of the many possessions I acquired;” (31: 7-25)

All those things would be bad, meriting God’s disfavor, he believes, but he never did any of them!

“Have I ever rejoiced over the destruction of my enemy Or gloated because evil befell him?  I never allowed my mouth to sin. . . Have the men of my tent not said, ‘Who can find anyone who has not been satisfied with his food?’ No stranger had to spend the night outside; I opened my doors to the traveler. Have I ever tried to cover over my transgressions, like other men, By hiding my error in the pocket of my garment?” Have I been in fear of the reaction of the multitude, Or have I been terrified by the contempt of other families, Making me silent and afraid to go outside?”  (29-34) No, his life is not characterized by any of those things.

It is his testimony. He has always been upright. He’s ready to sign it: “I would sign my name to what I have said.” (31:35)

It is all peremptorily denied by his three interrogators: 

Eliphaz: Is [your suffering] not because your own wickedness is so great And there is no end to your errors? For you seize a pledge from your brothers for no reason, And you strip people of their garments, leaving them naked. You do not give the tired one a drink of water, And you hold back food from the hungry. The land belongs to the powerful man, And the favored one dwells in it. But you sent away widows empty-handed, And you crushed the arms of fatherless children. That is why you are surrounded by traps, And sudden terrors frighten you;  (Job 22:5-10)

Why does he reject Job’s testimony, instead charging just the opposite? Because it conflicts with his own ‘theology:’ “What I have seen,” Eliphaz says previously, “is that those who plow what is harmful And those who sow trouble will reap the same. By the breath of God they perish, And through a blast of his anger they come to an end. . . . Even the teeth of strong lions are broken.”  (Job 4:8-10)

His preformed—faulty, as it turns out—theology tells him Job must have been ‘plowing what is harmful’ for him to be suffering now. Job, who otherwise might have agreed with that theology, undergoes the worst of spiritual crises to accompany his crisis on all other fronts, because he knows he has not been ‘plowing what is harmful’—quite the contrary. So he works out his angst by blaming God for being both cruel and unfair. This further inflames Eliphaz and crew, already riled that Job is resisting their ‘correction.’ Now they read  false positive for apostasy and figure they must attack Job for that reason, too. Presently they are all but hurling epithets at the poor fellow.

Before chalking up the above to the oddities of religious people (or applying them to Witness HQ), reflect that all of society is that way. If you have benefited from acupuncture, say, and want to tell the world about it, you will find yourself derided among the materialist crowd for advocating ‘pseudoscience.’ What about your own beneficial experience, you will ask. ‘It will be attributed to ‘anecdotal evidence,’ inherently unreliable. It doesn’t matter how many like testimonies you can gather; it will all be attributed to ‘anecdotal evidence’ by those whose scientific ‘theology’ admits to no other view—they can’t replicate your experience in their test tubes, so they assume you are either deluded or lying. Mechanisms may differ, but the overall pattern is no different than Job’s ‘anecdotal evidence’ rejected by those of a different theology.

You can go along with the airy dismissal of ‘anecdotal evidence.’ Then one day you find it is your evidence they are trying to dismiss and you wonder how people can be so high-handed and stubborn.

I suspect—and it may be that the ‘air’ of the day determines it, and it may afterward be subject to reinterpretation—that ‘everyone knows’ certain legalese is just boilerplate crap and other legalese actually means something.