I Don't Believe in God, or wait, Maybe I Do. . . a little wisdom please?

by Pioneer Spit...oh, i mean Spirit 26 Replies latest jw experiences

• 

  Abandoned

  Good luck on your journey. I'm pretty sure that my journey, as far as god is concerned, has already ended. My mom has been a lutheran all her life. She gives blood as often as she can. She volunteers at the church and that old bitty of a secretary takes advantage of my mom at every opportunity. She sends one charity a donation and ten more send their letters with their hands out. My mom divorced my dad when I was little. I never learned why they divorced, but although she dated a few guys while I was growing up, she never found anyone else to fall in love with. Now, my mom is the kindest person I know. She would give anything she has to anyone who asks. I know, because I've seen her do it. She worked eighty hours a week to help my brother pay for his epilepsy pills before he qualified for state assistance. She didn't let anyone else in the family know he needed help.

  Now, this is a wonderful person and she's going to die alone. I hate the way god runs our little corner of the universe. I hate his arrogant demand for worship while not even proving himself worthy of it.

  When men get a woman pregnant and then skip town, we call the guy a dead beat. How is god any differnet from that guy? Oh yeah, now I remember, he lets it rain on the righteous and unrighteous. Pardon me god for not dropping everything to thank you right now.
• 

  reneeisorym

  If you can get to the point that you realize that the Bible tells us that its beneficial to us to follow all the rules but its impossible to do that. The only reason there are rules is to show us that we are so very imperfect and sinners. You realize that you want to follow all of the rules but you don't get upset if you don't. The only thing you need to do to become a child of God and go to heaven is to trust in Jesus alone for salvation. That means not trusting in yourself/your good works/your not sinning -- you just have faith that Jesus paid the penalty for your sins already. He paid that penalty and all you have to do is to believe in that and you will get a free gift of a wonderful afterlife in heaven. ... Its really simple if you can ever wrap your head around it.
• 

  ICBehindtheCurtain

  In all my searching, which was at times very painful, because you get to a point when you feel the need to part ways with strongly entrenched beliefs and ideas, I have arrived at a very peaceful and happy place. I no longer believe in the bible god, since I have seen the evidence that this book is not from the Creator. But....I still believe there is a creator, I found Deism to be what best identifies with what I now believe, there are many people that believe this way, but have never heard of Deism. Many of the founding fathers of the US were Deists, like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine the author of "The Age of Reason" a great book, reading it was the final nail in the coffin, when it came to believing that the bible is from god, funny thing is he only used the bible itself to prove the bible was not the inspired word of god. If anyone is interested in finding out more about this you can go to www.deism.com. Below is a snipet of what Deists believe.

  The antiquated practice of forming an idea of God based on purely past material experience, such as referring to God as "King", is also rejected by Deism. The extremely limited picture of God as the jealous and paranoid king of kings sitting on his throne upset that his subjects were going to reach "heaven" by building a brick tower is due to the limited vision which the Bible writers had of both the Creator and of the universe. This fear the Bible god had of the Tower of Babel is based on fear of humanities acquisition of knowledge. The Creator the Deist venerates invites all of us to learn as much as possible about absolutely everything, for this is the best way to learn about God.

  Another problem with the idea of God as promoted by the revealed religions of Christianity, Judaism and Islam is its depiction of God as a man. By limiting God to the status of a man, women are consciously and subconsciously relegated to a lesser standing in society. After all, if God is characterized as a man, then men are closer to God then women. Perhaps this accounts for the multiple instances of women bashing found throughout the various "holy books." By limiting the advancement of women through their subjugation to men, revealed religion has limited the advancement and progress of all of society. And a very sad element of this anti-progress mind-set, advanced by revealed religion, is that it claims God as its author.

  DEISM REJECTS VIOLENCE

  All religions claim they reject violence. History, of course, proves them wrong. From the grotesque horror stories of slaughter and rape at the alleged command of God found throughout the Old Testament, to the claimed words of Jesus regarding bringing not peace but a sword, to the blood soaked Inquisition through religiously approved contemporary wars, revealed religion goes happily hand in hand with violence and war.

  Deism's rejection of divine revelation excludes it from falling into the same violence promoting business that the revealed religions are in. There are no written words from the Almighty that can be twisted to sanctify one human being killing another. This makes Deism less useful to the ambitions of the power-elites. Could this be why very few people are aware of Deism and of the Deistic influence of the Enlightenment and the American Revolution?

  Nuclear realities have made the waging of war an unacceptable proposition. War was never justifiable, it only exposed man's mental limitations at being able to formulate a workable solution to a problem. However, in the nuclear age humanities ignorance can lead to the extermination of civilization and life itself on our planet. The shallow chauvinism of the various revealed religions take us all one step closer to that irreversible catastrophe. Deism, by its reliance on reason and rejection of violence, serves as a block to the apocalyptic nightmare that is so central to the major revealed religions.

  IC
• 

  J-ex-W

  For those of you questioning what the 'borg' reference is all about, it's from the old 1980's "Star Trek: The Next Generation" TVseries and subsequent big screen movies. The BORG was a group of (I think) half-man/ half-androids who were connected telepathically and literally shared "one thought, one mind" and were obssessive in fulfilling that one purpose. Calling the organization 'borg' refers to the extreme to which the JW's as a group tend to apply that scriptural admonition to be of "one mind, one line of thought." [Sorry for not citing the scripture--don't have my Bible next to me; too lazy to get up...bad JW!]
• 

  sass_my_frass

  Part of my comfort zone as a JW was thinking that 'this is it, I don't have to keep looking, I've found it and don't need to question it'. Now I'm comforted by the exact opposite: that I will probably never know the answers, and that's what is going to make life so fantastic. Now I know I want to keep my mind open, keep learning, and never again settle on an easy explanation that excludes all other options.
• 

  sass_my_frass

  Its really simple if you can ever wrap your head around it.
• 

  AlmostAtheist

  I wanted to reply to this thread, but why should I when everyone else has already done such a crackerjack job?

  >>I accept that my not believing in him doesn't mean he isn't there, I've been wrong before.

  >>If fervour leads to having to tell everyone about it all the time, with a proselytising air, then IMHO that is more likely the very human aspect of fundamentalism and is no more godly than a bullet!

  >>He has apparently removed the scales from your eyes for a purpose...you are currently in your Damascus Road experience.

  >>Open yourself to discovery and realization of the true depths of Reality that beliefs only hide.

  >>Perhaps the biggest legacy of religion is the need people feel to have iron-clad belief systems in place about things for which, gosh darnit, there's just not that much data available. It's okay not to know.

  There seemed to be a lot of "let yourself not know" comments. We had "Truth" (capital T) pounded into us for so long, it's hard to accept that we couldn't know the truth about something so simple as god's existence. But we really can't. So examine what you DO know the truth about, and see where it leads you.

  Good luck!

  Dave of the "replied anyway" class