Are you an atheist? ...

by Nicolas 56 Replies latest jw friends

  • azaria
    azaria

    I never intended to ramble on so much and get off track. I am emotional right now and feel the need to dump my feelings. I really don’t expect anyone to read this.

    Hi SNG First, I do believe that animals feel and can show compassion for other animals or to people. I believe that dogs especially, have a very keen sense when it comes to their owners, but I doubt that they have morals. Like I stated, I’ve never heard of any animals organizing and coming to the rescue of another. A monkey might have compassion for another but do you think that he stops to wonder how he could help this other monkey in stress, that he thinks to himself that the person doing the experiment is unjust.

    There may be many atheists and Christians alike that would change their minds if they received new information. I also think that many people on both sides would never consider an alternative. Some people are very stubborn. I know stubborn. I’m Dutch. Likewise I think many Christians believe something because they were "told" it was true. Their families told them it was true. I’ve always been a bit concerned when someone says that they gave their heart to the Lord when they were 8 years old. Now maybe they were truly sincere, and I really shouldn’t question it. For me it has been a long struggle to come to this point.

    Both my parents were agnostic. I’m not sure if they ever thought about it much. My mother swore like a truck driver, said things I would never say. She said it in Dutch; guess she thought it wasn’t as bad saying it in a different language. Conveniently she has no recollection of this now. They became witnesses because (I believe) of my mother’s desperate need for attention. I can kind of understand that. What I can never understand is how my father came to believe in this organization. He had very strange views and was very contradictory. Maybe he liked that the man was the "boss" in the family. Like my brother said, it fit their own life style. No recognizing birthdays, no sense of family togetherness; it wasn’t a priority in their lives to have any relationship with their kids; only for my mother when she needed us. She’s still that way today. I’m there for her but I know she would never have done the same for me if things were reversed. How the 3 of us (there are 4 kids) survived and turned out as decently as we did surprises us. I’m not going to say that my parents were these horrible, evil people but they had emotional problems and they couldn’t cope with 4 kids, or with life.

    There was a time in my life when I rejected God. I was so angry, so frustrated. But part of me is logical. First I did wonder, is there a God? I realize that no one can absolutely prove His existence. But then nobody can positively prove that there is no God. It is a belief. I guess it’s a bit like the wind or love. We can’t see them physically but do see the effects of them. (Please don’t say that JW’s also use those comparisons) I see the effects in people’s lives when they truly believe. I also sense His presence in the universe itself. I think too many people are so blasé about it. I look around and am so awestruck. I just can’t believe that all this just happened from nothing. That to me is too illogical. I didn’t embrace everything that came my way. I did reject JW’s and Calvinism. I am on a journey and I will probably never have most of the answers but I strongly believe in God. There are things in my life that I wish I could change but for the most part I consider myself fortunate. I see the struggle of so many people, like now in the Caribbean, specially Haiti, and I think why not me. Last night I was able to sleep in a clean comfortable bed, my stomach was full, my children were fine and I think of these people struggling and I do think why. But we, who are capable, need to help others who are less fortunate. I posted about people here helping out financially and there was only one response. That breaks my heart. People who ask why is there suffering, but can only blame God. (I guess I have to believe that people will donate but are just not responding to the post. I hope that’s the case)

  • Max Divergent
    Max Divergent

    I thought (hoped?) I was an athiest, but really I'm a highly skeptical agnostic...


    But I think it's a bit context driven... in the context of the strict JW, most of us are athiests because we attempt to prove Jehovah does not exist like he's described in the WT - hence we deny the existance of God.


    But if there's some sort of a god or superior spiritual entity(s)'out there somewhere' that we wouldn't try to deny becuse we're not sure that they don't exist, then as I understand it that makes one an agnostic.... I can't deny 'somthing might be out there', so I'm impure in thought & belief... :-)





    Max - an apostate JW and heritic athiest :-)

  • AlmostAtheist
    AlmostAtheist

    Yeah, I'm an atheist. Which makes it weird when I lay down at night and feel like it's time to pray! But I really can't buy the inherited sin thing, which means any alleged god has little excuse for allowing all the pain and suffering he could easily halt. The easier, simpler explanation is that there is no god, there is no one watching everything, and it's all just a tending of things to do what they tend to do, just like water tending to run downhill. Though he's as preachy as any fundamentalist preacher, I recommend Dawkin's "The Blind Watchmaker" book. He makes a good case for the world being here without God. Then you start to see that religion is just natural selection's way of trying to make the species continue, realizing that it is truly a blind guide and couldn't care less if you're happy during your existence on the earth as long as you procreate.

    (Dawkins doesn't make the religion point, I just happen to believe it.)

    Dave

  • Farkel
    Farkel

    : Personally, I consider myself as a "soft-atheist".

    Is that like "amost pregnant?"

    Farkel

  • Farkel
    Farkel

    [Edited for its own thread]

    Farkel

  • Satanus
    Satanus

    Lol @ farkel.

    S

  • crownboy
    crownboy

    From most philosophical debates I've read on this topic, "atheist" and "agnostic" tend to have slightly different meanings from what you might get from a straight dictionary definition. Usually, it's defined as follows:

    strong atheist: a person who does not believe in a god and does not believe a god can be possible.

    weak atheist: a person who does not believe in a god but could be persuaded to believe otherwise if some convincing evidence is presented to them.

    strong agnostic: a person who believes that knowledge of a god cannot ever be definitive one way or the other.

    weak agnostic: a person who believes knowledge of a god cannot be definitive one way or the other but could be persuaded to believe otherwise if some convincing evidence is presented to them.

    strong theist: a person who believes in the existence of a god and does not believe disproving that existence is possible.

    weak theist: a person who believes in the existence of a god but could be persuaded otherwise if convincing evidence is presented to them.

    (Even though deism and theism are obviously different, I just usually make the former a subset of the latter.)

    I've been through the entire spectrum through my rather short life (mostly during a one year period when I was really trying to sort out my belief system after being a "strong theist" JW for most of my life), but right now I'd say I'm a weak agnostic who leans deistically. But as Euphemism mentioned earlier, I don't think anyone should be labelled "stupid", etc. for their beliefs. The important thing is that people respect other people's opinions/ beliefs and not force their ideology on others.

    In the USA, that mainly means that fundy Christains need to stop trying to tear down the church/ state wall and trying to have their "religious values" reflected in our public laws. The church and your own personal life are the two places you ought to practice religion, not on my rights.

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