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The degree of wisdom an individual acquires in their lives is NOT a function of which college they choose to attend, cram for the exams, and achieve some passing letter grade. Rather, the truly wise individual attends the courses he or she is potentially interested in, reads the concentrated knowledge the prof is supposed to assemble and present, and then comes to their own well-thought-out conclusions about the course content and it's possible implications.
It's what you then do with the information presented to you that is of vital importance. As well, you are free to evaluate the school's or professor's credentials or teaching skills, including their ability to communicate complex ideas to a room full of essentially disinterested kids who came to the "U" simply to avoid having to go work (yuk!) for a living.
This is especially effective when you advance to the grad school level where you are very much more on your own and become completely responsible for designing and implementing original research, which taxes the mind and logical thought processes so many students have big troubles achieving. Those all-important critical thinking skills come into play.
Proselytizing generally side-steps these processes, and constitutes a simple rote-chanting kind of philosophical parroting of some established set of talking points. Rarely do the proselytizers have any independent and commonsense contributions to add, but rather they just rattle on, trying to spew enough tripe onto the situation to overwhelm the poor listener.
Hmmmm! Makes one think - doesn't it?
I'm sorry, but the question was: "college guarantees what? Does it impart wisdom?"
What is wisdom?
How can a person tell if a certain course of action is or was wise?
Do you think that anything mentioned in your last two paragraphs or, rather, your entire post, can determine what is wise?
I think one's religious beliefs should be a private thing they share in their church or their home, with like minded friends and family.
I don't want anyone knocking on my door to try to "share" the good news about God or Jesus, or whoever.
I've been around awhile, I've heard about God, Jesus and the "news" about them, if I were really interested, I'd attend church. I'm not interested.
Hmmmm! Makes one think - doesn't it?
I'm sorry, but the question was: "college guarantees what? Does it impart wisdom?"
What is wisdom?
How can a person tell if a certain course of action is or was wise?
Do you think that anything mentioned in your last two paragraphs or, rather, your entire post, can determine what is wise?
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Wilson
College is an opportunity, not a guarantee. It offers you the opportunity to gain the knowledge and perspective from which wisdom can grow.
You ask how a person can tell if a certain course of action is or was wise. I can only respond that those are some of the subjects taught at college. and if you search you will have the opportunity but not the guarantee that you find the answers to those questions.
Wisdom is the ability to use knowledge to rise above the knowledge.
Degrees don't impress me for all they indicate is effort to retain information at least long enough to regurgitate it back onto an exam. We have many educated idiots from this process.
It is my understanding that you, Nimpy, and other detractors, claim the Society has discouraged the taking in of education in the past.
I would like you to point to the material, in our publications, that do so.
If you can't, then you are instrumental in spreading lies.
You see, I can produce material from the past that says otherwise.
How about it?
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( ‘ .‘ )
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Wilson
You might want to try reading my posts before accusing me of being a liar. I was defending your position, not challenging it.
Years ago, an elderly friend of my mother-in-law was living at our house (through no choice of my own, believe me). She was a really militant Seventh Day Adventist who was quite vocal about the meat and beer in my refrigerator, TV, my doing house cleaning and laundry on Saturday, etc. I had to hear lectures and preaching every day, but what really made me angry was her trying to prosletyze to my oldest daughter and her friends (who were 8 to 11 years old at the time). She scared the crap out of them with her interpretation of Revelations. I told my mother-in-law that if I got any angry complaints from the kids' parents, I'd route them to her. This woman also used to go sit in the laundromat of our little town all day and preach and hand out Ellen White tracts to the poor unsuspecting folks who came in to do their laundry.
My in-laws are SDA also, but not as whacky as this lady was. It was during the time we were relocating across state to our present home, my in-laws were caretaking the house for us, and they just invited her to "stay for a few days" as the house was vacant. It turned out to be MONTHS, long after we'd moved out here. I know not all SDA's are like this, but this woman was a piece!
“I thoroughly believe in a university education for men and women, but I believe a knowledge of the Bible without a college course is more valuable than a college course without the Bible.” (American educator William Lyon Phelps)
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“The study of the Bible is a post-graduate course in the richest library of human experience.”(Herbert Hoover)
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“I cannot too greatly emphasize the importance and value of Bible study—more important than ever before in these days of uncertainties, when men and women are apt to decide questions from the standpoint of expediency rather than upon the eternal principles laid down by God Himself.” (John Wanamaker)
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“If you were to take the sum total of all the authoritative articles ever written by the most qualified of psychologists and psychiatrists on the subject of mental hygiene—if you were to combine them and refine them and cleave out the excess verbiage—if you were to take the whole of the meat and none of the parsley, and if you were to have these unadulterated bits of pure scientific knowledge concisely expressed by the most capable of living poets, you would have an awkward and incomplete summation of the Sermon on the Mount.” (A Few Buttons Missing: the Case Book of a Psychiatrist, James Tucker Fisher)
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It is my understanding that you, Nimpy, and other detractors, claim the Society has discouraged the taking in of education in the past.
I would like you to point to the material, in our publications, that do so.
If you can't, then you are instrumental in spreading lies.
You see, I can produce material from the past that says otherwise.
How about it?
These platitudes are all too common, but explain how one can worship the OT God so fervently after reading Dawkins cogent summary. Also explain how you can reconcile Christ's clear and unambiguous revelation of God's true nature with the OT Jehovah.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
It strains the heart to comprehend what kind of person could worship such a God or why the clear and unambiguous true nature of God as revealed by Christ would be rejected in favor of it.
In regards to a JW reading a book by Dawkins - it isn't going to happen. They have no way of coming to any conclusions about the contents.
This also goes into the heart of the matter of why debating a JW is an enormous waste of time: you are not debating that individual person, you are debating the JW's organization. They are not debating and thinking using their own thoughts and conceptions - they all stem from what they are taught - much more so than an average Christian.
If you make a point that needs to be addressed, they will not "think" it out or do independent research - they will run to their Insight Into The Scriptures volumes, the Watchtower, and find out what the 'official' ruling on the matter is. It is very common to hear a JW tell you "I'll get back to you on that after I look it up" - there's only a few acceptable places for a JW to do research, though. And any book you hand them, they will look at suspiciously and protest, and then check to see if it's okay to read it. They won't check by actually reading it, though. There are official rulings on books, in many cases. What is acceptable, what is not. The first suspicion starts with the fact that it will be a non-JW published book - thus, in their eyes, completely mistaken.
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