(November 20, 2014 at 1:11 pm)polar bear Wrote: I questioned my religion. At first I was told it was healthy to engage god like this. As I continued asking further questions to answers that did not seem logical, I was told I was crossing a line that I should not.The JWs have this same attitude. On the one hand, the leadership pretends to encourage members to use the Bible to "test the truths" they are being given. But they word it in a manner that leaves no doubt as to what you are expected to do (ie, if you test this, you will see that we are right). If you approach it with the actual intent to question what you are being told, you will quickly find yourself on the fast track out of the organization as an apostate.
Which is to say, they are telling you to confirm what they want you to believe. But you'll only realize it if you aren't sufficiently indoctrinated to follow the script. I think that for many religions, there is a similar line where they "encourage" you to think for yourself, but only if you limit it to certain concepts and ideas, and not the core tenets of the religion. Any introspection that may lead you away from the religion is not allowed and will probably be punished severely.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
