RE: Converting to Atheism?
June 4, 2015 at 1:05 pm
(This post was last modified: June 4, 2015 at 1:23 pm by Tonus.)
(June 2, 2015 at 9:51 am)Cato Wrote: 63. They must go from door to door weekly to gain convertsThat one has a fairly reasonable response: JWs believe that 144,000 will ascend to heaven to serve with god forever, and everyone else who is saved stays on Earth for eternity. Since the assumption is that man was created to live forever on Earth, it's reasonable to think that the vast majority would continue on that course.
Answer: Since JWs believe that there is a maximum occupancy requirement in heaven (144,000), this mandate seems a bit self defeating. JWs cannot be sure of their salvation so why increase the rolls and further jeopardize your chances?
It might suck to be the heaven-sent ones, when you think about it. The Earth-bound get to continue to enjoy human life, the heaven-sent have to listen to Yahweh's lame jokes forever and ever.
Item number 6 ("6. Heaven is limited only to 144,000 Jehovah's Witnesses. There are only 9,105 alive today (2006 figures)") is one that might make a member wonder, if he does the math. jwfacts.com has a page on the 144,000 that shows a number of problems with the assumptions made regarding those who are heaven-bound. It's the sort of thing that can be easily missed when you are inside the JW bubble, especially since any questioning of doctrine is discouraged.
"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