About the name Jehovah;
Here is what I think about this. My experience has been, that it is only those in the EX JW community who hate the name of Jehovah. I have never experienced such venom poured out upon any subject as I have with the pronouncing of YHWH, which we all agree, the correct pronunciation is not known, we argue about a subject that we all agree we do not even know about, this is the childish nature of blind willful ignorance. But even beyond ignorance, which is simply “I don’t know” the definition of stupid is, “I don’t want to know” . But really, how important is the perfect pronunciation of the divine name ?
A google search of the worlds languages suggest that there is between 6000 to 7000 spoken languages in this world, and when the name Jehovah is spoken, it is pronounced different in every single one of them.
As I said in another comment, there is not one transliteratist or translator on planet earth that ever, not even once, translates YHWH as “Jesus” or “Satan” . Not one single EX-JW member has ever complained or called “Satanic” the name of Jesus. Yet the pronunciation is commonly agreed upon as being Yeshua, not even close to the name Jesus as pronounced in English, I have never in my life heard of anyone arguing that point. Every single one of the members of the EX-JW community freely use the name Jesus, not one of them have rejected that pronunciation. There are hundreds of thousands of people in the Latin cultures who have as their birth name JESUS. In conversational English, when we here the name of Jesus, we automatically, without having to give a thought to, know if it is a human we are talking about, or if it is the Biblical Christ we are talking about. It never turns into a knock down dragged out fight over the title.
It could easily be assumed that Satan himself would defame the name of YHWH by taking it on and applying it to himself and committing all sorts of blasphemous atrocities using that name. So what !!!!! Is YHWH supposed to change his name to accommodate Satan, each and every time Satan steals whatever name God would give himself, like a name game of wack – a – mole. ??? Is the creator of the universe not entitled to his own name ???
Solipsist
Solipsism was first recorded by the Greek presocratic sophist, Gorgias (c. 483–375 BC) who is quoted by the Roman skeptic Sextus Empiricus as having stated:
- Nothing exists.
- Even if something exists, nothing can be known about it.
- Even if something could be known about it, knowledge about it can’t be communicated to others.
Much of the point of the sophists is to show that “objective” knowledge is a literal impossibility.
There does not exist a human that does not have a preconceived consciousness beyond the limits of themselves, even a solipsistic person believe in a world they created, making them creationist as well, talk about narcissism, they believe that the entire universe is of their own creation, and only they themselves have the power to create. However solipsist have difficulty explaining their creations. They have no explanation as to why they create pain, earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, fires, pain, death, well you get the picture, they cannot even explain why their own consciousness brought them into existence in the first place, and when did their consciousness come into being. That is a real brain twister isn’t it.
Evolutionist
Evolutionist believe that an unidentified force spontaneously exploded into an endless variety of life on earth, in un-comprehensible complexity, in one massive explosion from a teaspoon of already existing matter, and the results of that explosion appear to any source of intelligence, as if it were all designed by a supreme intelligence. They have trouble explaining just where this teaspoon of matter came from, or how it was determined that to build this entire universe out of matter, which we don’t even know yet how expansive this universe actually is. But trust us, man has this all worked out, don’t worry yourself needlessly about such trivial matters as to how the universe came into existence, or how long it took, for decades it was 4.5 billion years, but then they changed it to 13.772 billion years, and Planck says it is 13.82 billion years old, so clearly they know exactly how all of this happened and how long it all took. Some call this intelligence, Mother Nature, but refuse to personalize this intelligence.
Atheism
Atheism is, in the broadest sense, an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities, no God, no spiritual beings, no intelligent life outside of man.
If you have ever spent 30 seconds talking with an atheist you will find that in fact, there are lots of things they believe in, that they cannot see or explain, they believe in intelligence, they just believe that an intelligent being cannot, and has not, created anything.
Agnosticism
Agnosticism is the view that the existence of God, of the divine or the supernatural is unknown or unknowable. Another definition provided is the view that “human reason is incapable of providing sufficient rational grounds to justify either the belief that God exists or the belief that God does not exist.”
Scripture Skeptic
Then we have those who believe that there is a God, who created this marvelous universe and all of the life on this earth, in overwhelming complexity and endless diversity, it is just that He is not capable of overseeing the writing of a book. Poor poor pitiful guy to be in such short supply of managerial skills.
Trinitarians
Trinitarians believe that Jesus Christ was and is God Almighty, Man, Almighty God, and a person called The Holy Spirit, all rolled up into one person. There are 349 denominations in the World Council Of Churches and to be a member you must teach the doctrine of the Trinity, just about all of the buildings in America that have the word “Church” on their building teach this doctrine. Jehovah’s Witnesses do not have the word “Church” on their buildings, and they do not teach or believe in the Trinity. The Trinity is not a scriptural belief, it goes against the entire Biblical message.
Islam
Islam has as one of their beliefs the doctrine of predestination, fore-ordination, “Belief in the Divine Decree: This article of faith addresses the question of God’s will. It can be expressed as the belief that everything is governed by divine decree, namely that whatever happens in one’s life is preordained, and that believers should respond to the good or bad that befalls them with thankfulness or patience. This concept does not negate the concept of “free will;” since humans do not have prior knowledge of God’s decree, they do have freedom of choice.” You should be able to see, if you still have one single brain cell left in your head, the obvious contradiction in this belief. This belief makes God the designer and instigator of all that is evil is actually the will of God. Satan, his demons, the evil working out upon man, is all at the hands of God. What a convenient belief system Satan developed with this one. The cruelty of cutting off the vulva of females with broken glass and pulling out the clitoris with a pair of pliers, with no anesthesia and forcing women to live out their lives underneath blankets in the hottest parts of earth, raping girls and women to force them into honor marriages and sexual slavery, blowing up people in shopping centers so that they can go to heaven and God reward them for carrying out his evil deeds with 70 virgins for the Muslim male to rape in front of God, while God video tapes the event and sells the tapes on eBay. To me it seems more like the epitome of evil, rather than a religion of peace, if you are still unclear, you need more help than I am qualified to deliver.
1 Kings 18:28 “And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them.”
Hinduism In India
I find those serpents curious don’t you. Hint, Garden Of Eden
Hindus believe that all living creatures have a soul. This soul – the spirit or true “self” of every person, is called the Atman. The soul is believed to be eternal. According to the monastic/pantheistic theologies of Hinduism , this Atman is indistinct from Braham, the supreme spirit. The goal of life, according to the Advaita school, is to realize that one’s soul is identical to supreme soul, that the supreme soul is present in everything and everyone, all life is interconnected and there is oneness in all life. Dualistic schools understand Brahman as a Supreme Being separate from individual souls. They worship the Supreme Being variously as Vishnu, Brahma, Shiva, or Shakti, depending upon the sect. God is called Ishvara, Bhagavan, Parameshwara, Deva or Devi, and these terms have different meanings in different schools of Hinduism.
Hindu texts accept a polytheistic framework, but this is generally conceptualized as the divine essence or luminosity that gives vitality and animation to the inanimate natural substances. There is a divine in everything, human beings, animals, trees and rivers. It is observable in offerings to rivers, trees, tools of one’s work, animals and birds, rising sun, friends and guests, teachers and parents. It is the divine in these that makes each sacred and worthy of reverence. This seeing divinity in everything, makes the Vedic foundations of Hinduism quite distinct from Animism. The animistic premise sees multiplicity, power differences and competition between man and man, man and animal, as well as man and nature. The Vedic view does not see this competition, rather sees a unifying divinity that connects everyone and everything.
The Hindu scriptures refer to celestial entities called Devas (or devi in feminine form; Devata, used synonymously for Deva in Hindi), which may be translated into English as gods or heavenly beings. The devas are an integral part of Hindu culture and are depicted in art, architecture and through icons, and stories about them.
Buddhism
I find that serpent curious, don’t you. Hint, Garden Of Eden
Buddhism is an Indian religion attributed to the teachings of the Buddha, supposedly born Siddhārtha Gautama. The basic orientation of Buddhism is we crave and cling to impermanent states of being and things, which is “dukkha”, “incapable of satisfying” and painful. This keeps us caught in samsara, the endless cycle of repeated rebirth, dukkha and dying again. But there is a way to liberation from this endless cycle to the state of nirvana.
Rebirth refers to a process whereby beings go through a succession of lifetimes as one of many possible forms of sentient life, each running from conception to death. In Buddhist thought, this rebirth does not involve any soul, because of its doctrine of anatta which rejects the concepts of a permanent self or an unchanging, eternal soul, as it is called in Hinduism and Christianity. According to Buddhism there ultimately is no such thing as a self in any being or any essence in any thing.
The Buddhist traditions have traditionally disagreed on what it is in a person that is reborn, as well as how quickly the rebirth occurs after each death. Some Buddhist traditions assert that “no self” doctrine means that there is no per-during self, but there is avacya (inexpressible) self which migrates from one life to another. The majority of Buddhist traditions, in contrast, assert that vijnana (a person’s consciousness) though evolving, exists as a continuum and is the mechanistic basis of what undergoes rebirth, re-becoming and re-death. The rebirth depends on the merit or demerit gained by one’s karma, as well as that accrued on one’s behalf by a family member.
Each rebirth takes place within one of five realms according or six according to other schools – heavenly, demi-gods, humans, animals, hungry ghosts and hellish.
In East Asian and Tibetan Buddhism, rebirth is not instantaneous, and there is an intermediate state “bardo” between one life and the next. The orthodox Theravada position rejects the wait, and asserts that rebirth of a being is immediate. However there are passages in the Samyutta Nikaya of the Pali Canon that seem to lend support to the idea that the Buddha taught about an intermediate stage between one life and the next.
In Buddhism karma “action, work”) drives samsara – the endless cycle of suffering and rebirth for each being. Good, skillful deeds “kusala” and bad, unskillful deeds ” akusala“ produce “seeds” in the unconscious receptacle “alaya” that mature later either in this life or in a subsequent rebirth. The existence of karma is a core belief in Buddhism, as with all major Indian religions, it implies neither fatalism nor that everything that happens to a person is caused by karma.
A central aspect of Buddhist theory of karma is that intent “cetana” matters and is essential to bring about a consequence or “phala” “fruit” or “vipaka” “result”. However, good or bad karma accumulates even if there is no physical action, and just having ill or good thoughts creates karmic seeds; thus, actions of body, speech or mind all lead to karmic seeds. In the Buddhist traditions, life aspects affected by the law of karma in past and current births of a being include the form of rebirth, realm of rebirth, social class, character and major circumstances of a lifetime. It operates like the laws of physics, without external intervention, on every being in all six realms of existence including human beings and gods.
A notable aspect of the karma theory in Buddhism is merit transfer. A person accumulates merit not only through intentions and ethical living, but also is able to gain merit from others by exchanging goods and services, such as through “dana” (charity to monks or nuns). Further, a person can transfer one’s own good karma to living family members and ancestors.
Shintoism
Shinto is a polytheistic belief system involving the veneration of many deities, known as kami. The Japanese language makes no distinction between singular and plural, and hence the term kami refers both to individual kami and the collective group of kami. This term has been translated into English as “god” or “spirit”. According to Japanese mythology, there are eight million kami, and Shinto practitioners believe that they are present everywhere. They are not regarded as omnipotent omniscient, or immortal.
The term kami is “conceptually fluid”, and in Japanese it is often applied to the power of phenomena that inspire a sense of wonder and awe in the beholder. Kami are seen to inhabit both the living and the dead, organic and inorganic matter, and natural disasters like earthquakes, droughts, and plagues; their presence is seen in natural forces such as the wind, rain, fire, and sunshine. Shinto regards “the actual phenomena of the world itself” as being “divine”. The Shinto understanding of kami has also been characterized as being both pantheistic and animistic.
In Japan, kami have been venerated since prehistory, and in the Yayoi period were regarded as being formless and invisible. It was only under the influence of Buddhism that they were depicted anthropomorphically.
Kami are often associated with a specific place, often one that is noted as a prominent feature in the landscape such as a waterfall, volcano, large rock, or distinctive tree. The kami is seen as being represented in the shrine by the go-shintai, and its presence may be symbolized by an object such as a mirror or a sword. Kami are believed to be capable of both benevolent and destructive deeds. Offerings and prayers are given to the kami to gain their blessings and to dissuade them from engaging in destructive actions. Shinto seeks to cultivate and ensure a harmonious relationship between humans and the kami and thus with the natural world. More localized kami may be subject to feelings of intimacy and familiarity from members of the local community that are not directed towards more widespread kami like Amaterasu.
Kami are not understood as being metaphysically different from humanity, and in Shinto it is seen as possible for humans to become kami. Dead humans are sometimes venerated as kami, being regarded as protector or ancestral figures. One of the most prominent examples is that of the Emperor Ojin, who on his death was enshrined as the kami Hachiman, believed to be a protector of Japan and a god of war. In Japanese culture, ancestors can be viewed as a form of kami. In Western Japan, the term jigami is used to describe the enshrined kami of a village founder. In some cases, living human beings were also viewed as kami. In the State Shinto system of the Meiji era, the Emperor of Japan was declared to be a kami, while several Shinto sects have also viewed their leaders as living kami.
To Be Continued, this is a long subject ……………
Clarence Sisk 