For the board atheists....

by Jack C. 79 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  AwareBeing

  Many scientists like us novices', humbly make the statement that "The universe is so big that we can't wrap our brains around it!"

  Anthropology is ever changing in it's placement of bones discovered and regional developments.

  Over the last two decades, an increasing number of biologists have declared faith in The Creator of the intricate cell and it's amazing functions.

  Those who hate WT lies and religious rules, have a hard time ever trusting in the Bible and God again.

  This is a common result of "religious abuse", known clinically as; RTS .

  Though there are many who don't have this condition, do deliberately chose atheism.

  People have always believed what they want, regardless of a lack of definitive facts; and that works both ways.

  God or evolution, they're both a matter of faith.

  One side says the Bible is incomplete, the other explains the theory of evolution as having wholes in it's story!

  Yet, considering the subject over most of our lives, the logical thing that keeps coming to mind is;

  "too many (good) chance happenings occurred" for it to be without direction.
• 

  tec

  Then HE needs to get better material out there.

  He has it. Christ. Love.

  The same is true with the Jesus. Just looking at what some guys wrote. Need to fix that.

  Some don't just look at what is written. But regardless... why do YOU look at the OT instead of at CHRIST when determining what God IS? When the bible that points to Christ says LOOK TO CHRIST? Its the same question I ask some christians, who treat the bible the same as you do.

  That is what my original question was asking.

  I wasn't there, I don't know how it went down. Perhaps it was a peaceful transition of power. Given God's propensity to kill the ever loving shit out of anyone that had to audacity to live in the wrong place be descended from the wrong humans, it may have been a little more conflicted.

  Or maybe you're just making it up because you like it better?

  So yes it is. God was the management, killing everything and loving forskins was his product. Jesus came along as new management and loving everything was his product. New mangement AND new product, at least for him. It was a ripped off product from others, but new to him.

  I answered this above. Christ came to teach what was true from the beginning, but that man had warped and misunderstood and abused due to their own limitations/faults/reasons. Same management. Again, you are disregarding what Christ said to believe parts of the OT - that even the prophets contradict, IN the OT. Why do you do that?

  So which belief was false?

  As I said, the one Christ showed to be false. Since Christ is the Truth. So again, why would you go with the one that has the least 'evidence'?

  I know. He couldn't even mention it. Words matter too. All that time talking and not even one sentence. Must not have been that important to him.

  You ignored what I wrote, love, and just said the same thing. Why? Did you read what I wrote, think about it, look it up, take a class ,think about it some more, then get back to me?

  Do unto others... and love others AS YOURSELF... not to mention the new command... love others AS I HAVE LOVED YOU.

  What do those mean to you? Could you enslave someone if you did not want to be enslaved? Could you beat someone if you did not want to be beaten? Could you treat others as inferior if you did not want to be inferior? Did Christ himself beat people, enslave people, or treat women as inferior?

  All one has to do is look at HIM, to know how one should be treating others.

  Since He also died without recanting his words, his Father, or his treatment of others (including forgiving those who tortured and killed him), then yeah, I guess it was pretty important to him.

  Peace,

  Tammy
• 

  Franklin Massey

  Awen, I have no problem discussing the Bible with a believer who wants to use it to explain their stance. As a former believer, however, I feel that bringing the Bible into the discussion is like bringing a noodle to a knife fight. The Bible can be too easily picked apart when it attempts to prove God. As New Chapter said earlier, for many non-believers, the Bible was the first step toward disbelief.

  I consider myself an open-minded agnostic headed toward atheism. But I will always have discussions with open minded believers on the subject of metaphysics because first, I could be wrong - and maybe I missed something along the way - and second, I think both camps have a lot that they can agree on. Instead of our religious beliefs tearing us apart, we should try to come together.

  I have had many believers, including JWs, share personal experiences with me of how God has worked with them in their life to acheive positive results. Although I'm not a believer and not superstitious, I can't argue with positive results. In fact, I celebrate positive results. Plus, hearing how much the experience means to the believer hits an emotional chord with me. The stories can be absolutely beautiful, whether I believe them to be of divine origin or not.

  An atheist and a believer have a discussion on being good to their neighbors. The atheist finds motivation in an instinctual sense of moral good that is a product of evolution. They also have understanding that at this point in the road of human evolution, it is our duty to be good to one another as it leads to a better existence now and a better chance of the human species surviving into the future. The believer finds motivation in an instinctual sense of moral good that they believe was put there by God. In addition, God says in the holy books to be loving and treat each other well. If one does this, they will be happier and have a better future in the afterlife. Both viewpoints help both people make better choices now, while simultaneously thinking abut the future results of their actions. This is where I feel that the expression "all roads leading to the same place" applies - even allowing for non-believers to travel on the road as well.
• 

  JonathanH

  OP: It's two different discussions. Am I arguing against the god that people actually believe in, or am I arguing against philosophical conception that only a tiny fraction of a percentage of educated people believe in? Dawkins argues against the former because it's that belief in god that is damaging to society. The ivory tower version of god is pretty meaningless, it has nothing to do with society and it's only real relevance to religious people is that somewhere out there some guy has a phD and believes in god for intellectual reasons. What those reasons are don't matter in the slightest to the baptist preacher, or pentecostal rolling in the floor.

  The problem is alot of people arguing for god can't seem to seperate the two arguments. Arguing for deism is not even remotely the same as arguing for theism. But the average fundementalist will still bring up deistic arguments thinking that it provides evidence for his theistic beliefs. So in a real debate or discussion on the topic, the two sides (the god people actually believe in, and the ivory tower god) end up becoming intwined.

  I could be open to deism (but I find it redundant and unnecessary), but the door is closed on religious theistic views. There is nothing to support them other than people that insist they are true because they know it in their heart, which is true of every religion, even though it can't be true for every religion, and if this theistic god required you to hit a single specific target out of thousands blindly, then that god would be a dick (thusly contradicting the conception of this theistic god religions provide.)
• 

  AwareBeing

  Very true Jonathan. More simply put though; is that,

  most people can't see the difference between (org.)religion, and (honest)worship.
• 

  JonathanH

  That's not at all what I was saying AwareBeing. I was saying people can't see the difference between a fairy tale deity and a philosophical notion of a necessary being. Worship is what people claim to do towards the former, religion is when you get a handful of them together and they begin to make exclusions as to who is allowed in and on what basis. Simply seperating oneself from religion doesn't make a difference as to whether they believe in the fairy tale god of the hebrews or the ivory tower deistic necessary being, or if they even know the difference.
• 

  JonathanH

  Also the last sentence of your previous post shows considerable selective bias.

  "too many (good) chance happenings occurred" for it to be without direction.

  could just as easily be written

  "too many (bad) chance happenings occurred" for it to be with (good) direction

  Humans are poorly built, nature is a savage ballet of brutality, violence, famine, and disease, and the planet is an ever shifting death trap attempting to annihilate the specs of life that dare reside on it. If you're going to pray, pray that nothing intelligent created our world, and if it did, pray that you never meet the fiend.
• 

  Qcmbr

  I rarely get a chance to debate with religious people face to face :( if I did however, I'd meet them on whatever ground they built their idols and batter them there be it bible cherry pickings or mystic philosophy babbling.

  All religious belief distills down to faith in utterly unprovable stories. Whether they paint themselves into a corner by biblical literalism or attempt to avoid critical skepticism by hiding in subjective delusion it matters not. The religious thinker fails to understand the most basic rule of reality, evidence.

  No matter how convinced, how sold, how blindly loyal they are they never, ever produce evidence, just words, just stories, just fairytales. It matters not whether they write them in fancy leather bound books or merely spout them on Internet forums it's all just make believe.

  The further I get from my own indoctrination and religious brainwashing the more gutted I am that I didn't have the character strength to make peace with my logical and rational side earlier and accept that I had to grow up.
• 

  AwareBeing

  Hi Jonathan; I don't have a disparaging take on life, or a fatalistic view of the earth.

  I'm more happy than most, and especially so because of a hope for the future.

  By the way; breaking free from an "abusive relationship"(cult-corp.),

  also goes a long way in feeling better about life.

  Where I was coming from in regards to religion; is that I think of it as organized by and for men.

  However; when I think of worship, I think of freedom, and purity... a link to God with no man as arbiter!

  Thanks' for asking.
• 

  Anony Mous

  My point is this (and I have been thinking about this a lot lately). I am an atheist. Doesn't mean I don't absolutely believe in God. If you can prove God, that's fine with me, I can adjust my thinking. The question is can you do the same too? If I disprove God or at least the non-caring of God would you want to adjust YOUR thinking?

  However why would a loving, all-knowing, all-powerful God write a book that's hard to read, hard to interpret, easy to interpret wrongly, appears to condone or encourage morally wrong things and thinking. Wouldn't the words magically change or wouldn't somebody be given absolute visible authority to interpret these things? If God exists, why doesn't he reveal himself to us upon request, why doesn't he listen to fervent prayers (the movie Bruce Almighty shows a great point about prayer as well), why do we need to seek him out and have issues seeing it clearly always wondering if we have it wrong? Why does God need (according to the Bible) ~8-10,000 years to fix the issues.

  Even if a day is like a thousand years or whatever, if you had a house that is being ruined and violent people live there and you have the power and means to remove them, would you be like God and send 100's of 1000's of people every hour and every minute of the day to "warn" them in order for those people to be killed by them, send your own Son to warn and get killed (as if only your Son being killed gives you legal reason to remove someone from your house) in order to wait a few more days and have more people being killed and have generally miserable lives to kick them out?