Splinter Group Cocoons
In the world of religions, every group without exception lives within the walls and confines of the thinking of its founders and leaders. Every Bible college and every Bible correspondence course is tailored to the thinking of the author or authors of those institutions and study courses. Bible colleges are manufacturers of clones of their own making. There is a two fold purpose for Bible schools and this is to perpetuate their peculiar beliefs and $money. They are businesses that provide income to their existence and like a machine they make molds of their own teachings, which are rubber stamped in the young people who are caught in their web.
In the Worldwide Church of God, Ambassador College was the means to a never ending supply of Herbert W. Armstrong clones. Young people are very impressionable, pliable and like clay---moldable. Only those who are capable of independent thought and thinking, break out of the mold. Many live their entire lives within the confines of their programmed minds and thinking, while some eventually break free and run as fast as they can.
This is true not only of the Worldwide Church of God and its many splinter groups who live in religious cocoons, but it is true of all groups, including Mormons (Brigham Young University), Jehovah Witnesses (Watchtower Bible School of Gilead), Southern Baptist (many colleges), Seventh Day Adventist (Southern Adventist University), and the list is endless. Of course many "Bible" schools and colleges also offer liberal arts and studies in non-religious venues.
Every religious group wants to perpetuate itself and there is no greater means to do so than "Bible" colleges. In reality they are not "Bible" colleges, they are clone manufacturers of their own particular beliefs. Many young people aspire to position and influence over others and so hence off to "Bible school" they go to become "pastors" and "preachers" of "truth." What they really become are clones of how they have been indoctrinated to "think." Have you ever had two people knock on your door and attempt to persuade you to listen to them or read their Jehovah Witnesses material? Many have and I have also. I admit that these people are generally friendly, sincere and zealous, but at the same time they are NOT independent thinkers, they are parrots. They are programmed robots of Jehovah Witnesses indoctrination. I always feel sorry for the two young people that I have seen with white shirts and ties walking down the street, who are intent to proselytize anyone who will give them an ear to Mormonism.
Young people in general don't have the experience to discern, but with time you would think that as people become older they would become wise. Sad to say, many never become wise to the serpents, snakes and wolves in sheep's clothing who devour. Worldwide Church of God splinter groups are all led by clones of Herbert W. Armstrong and they are NOT "the Way, the Truth and the Life." There is NO mediator between God and man, aside from Jesus Christ, for those who still believe in Jesus Christ. Religious cocoons are not a new phenomenon and they have been in existence for a very long time. Public persuaders are often pretenders. Most likely the common factor as to why so many will follow these fake religious rulers is simply FEAR. However, God is NOT a monster. The "Bible" may portray God as a monster, but I would suggest that in fact the so called "Bible" so misrepresents and distorts the true character of God is so many parts, that it is the very reason so many have warped views of the true nature and character of the Creator of all life and the universe. No loving parent would act toward their own children the way the Bible portrays God as acting toward His own human creation, in many parts of it.
Splinter groups of the Worldwide Church of God, are living inside religious cocoons. In nature, cocoons break open and the butterfly or moth is set FREE.
That's how a virus works. It can't reproduce itself without hijacking the cell. Alone it would die but once in, game on.
ReplyDelete"Splinter groups of the Worldwide Church of God, are living inside religious cocoons. In nature, cocoons break open and the butterfly or moth is set FREE"
The caution is to let the potential butterfly go through the struggle of breaking free. Many a well meaning child has pulled the struggling butterfly from the cocoon to help only to find the butterfly did not have the strength built up by the struggle to fly away. Easy prey for a passing bird as it sits there bewildered and weak.
M.T.Cocoon
Ambassador was certainly a clone manufacturing enterprise. The world is filled with similar institutions.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing I take issue with is the premise that there really is a "god" responsible for the universe and everything in it. This has been abundantly proven false by science and reason.
In one of my own blogs, I quoted the statement of a little 6-year-old girl who said: "If God put us here, who put God there?" When I get a sane answer to that question, I'll consider the possibility of a god existing.
Until then, I'll stick with my standard retort to Mormons and Witnesses when I tell them to "Take your cult crap somewhere else."
We used to joke about the "UAP", an acronym for "Universal Ambassador Personality". This spoke so loudly that most of the citizens of Pasadena could instantly recognize AC students, whether they were in stores, on busses, or just walking down the street. Some were actually proud of this, and made concerted efforts to cultivate it. It was often held up as being a mark or sign of conversion. If you happened to be an exception, well.......... (you can just imagine the peer perpetuated penalties for resisting the borg!)
ReplyDeleteAnyhoo, it's good to be a moth or butterfly.
BB
Allen, the non-existence of god has not been proven by science. Since science is limited to the study of natural objects, substances, and processes, scientists cannot test hypotheses about the supernatural. That realm is simply out of reach.
ReplyDeleteWhat science can do and has done is provide natural explanations for phenomena people in their ignorance have attributed to the workings of god--the so-called "god of the gaps." A personal example: Uncle Cecil looked up at cumulus clouds scudding across the sky one day and asked, "What holds those things up there? How can anybody look at that and say there is no god?" Even as a high school student, I understood how Brownian motion suspended tiny droplets among caroming molecules in the air. However, it would have taken so long to explain all that to Uncle Cecil that I did not try.
What scientists have done over and over is crowd god out of such gaps by filling them with data from the natural world. At the same time, we have to acknowledge that the universe is so vast that we can never fill every gap in our knowledge of it. It will never be possible to say there is no god in (or surrounding) the universe with the same confidence I can say there is no unicorn in my tool shed. My tool shed has only four corners.
However, I and many others see the gap-filling that scientists have accomplished, project it into the future, and predict they will go on doing it. Like other prophecies, this is no proof. I don't have faith that science will ever totally eliminate the possibility that some god lurks unseen in some gap somewhere. On the other hand, I do hold the working assumption that it's safe to ignore the possibility that one does and go on about my business as if no god will ever interfere with it or call me to account for it.
I explained all this to my son to defend my claim that I am an agnostic and not an atheist, which I took to mean "Someone who has faith there is no god."
He said, "Dad, there are two kinds of agnostic: the kind that doesn't know but acts as if there is a god and the kind that doesn't know but acts as if there is not. You're the second kind. That makes you a practicing atheist."
There's a lot I don't know, Prof, but I do know something happened thirteen point something billion yaars ago. If that something that happened had to have someone conscious bring it about, then something even greater with an even higher consciousness had to orginate whatever that was, something much more great had to originate that originator, etc., etc.
ReplyDeleteUltimate reality may not be fathomable, but we'll keep on looking and speculating. That's much better than the common attitude of resorting to non-answers as if they were real answers.
Allen, you're right; reason (which is necessary to science but can be exercised apart from the data required for science) gives us many causes to doubt the existence of god. The "turtles all the way down" conundrum you refer to is one.
ReplyDeleteThen there is the simpler Occam's Razor principle, of which "turtles all the way down" is the recursive form. I had never heard of Occam's Razor as an Ambassador student, but still realized that positing a creator actually complicated the task of explaining the universe, rather than simplifying it as claimed. I couldn't explain the universe, but at least I could observe parts of it and freely ask questions about it. My fellow students felt that positing a god fully explained the universe but were oblivious to the irony that the god explanation raised the much more difficult problem of how one can possibly understand an imperceptible entity that the ministers forbade us to question independently.
These rational considerations are almost enough to give me as much faith as you have in the non-existence of a deity. They at least give me confidence that I am safe from divine retribution for rejecting Armstrongism.
So many prefer the security that comes with slavery than the uncertainty of freedom Van and that's why few ever break free of their chains. In the name of "security" our liberties are gradually eroded, but it's nothing more than a costly illusion. It's exactly the same with those who presume to know and speak for God. It's only more subtle, however.
ReplyDelete