Isn't God Awesome?

by Perry 450 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

  • AlanF
    AlanF

    Do keep it coming Vinny! You're far better at convincing people to avoid Christianity and other such religions than Richard Dawkins himself.

    At least you have the balls to try to stand up for your silly belief system by attempting to answer hard questions, unlike Perry.

    You attempted to answer my challenge about God enjoying hearing a psalm about his servants reveling in killing babies. But of course, you had to misrepresent the situation of the Psalmist to do so, by giving an incomplete picture. So let's review what the Bible actually says.

    The Jews of the southern kingdom had offended Yahweh by their idolatry and other evil practices. So Yahweh brought the Babylonians upon them as punishment and destroyed their nation along with many people, allowing a remnant of Jews to become captives in Babylon. Psalm 137 was apparently written by an exile who had recently returned to Zion after Cyrus released the Jews from captivity. Psalm 137:7-9 is a call for retribution on Edom and Babylon:

    O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destructionn, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us -- he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks. (Psalm 137:8-9; NIV)

    Now, how much sense does it make for a servant of Yahweh to call for retribution against the very instrument that Yahweh himself had used to punish him and his fellow sinners? None. It's completely nonsensical. It's immoral as well, because the small children of the Babylonians and Edomites had done nothing to deserve being smashed against rocks. The fact that you claim that this is good and proper shows your complete lack of a moral sense. Indeed, your morality is nothing more than blind obedience to someone you think arbitrarily dictates morality.

    But of course, we know quite well that lack of innate morality characterizes Fundamentalist Christians and a great many other sorts as well. This lack is not due to a genetic defect, but because whatever genetically (and what would normally be absorbed culturally) based morality might have been there has be trained out of them. The disgusting Crusades practiced by the Catholic Church are a case in point. Other examples abound.

    So Vinny has clearly indicated that he would participate in similar warring against "God's enemies" if he thought that God had told him to. He would even smash babies against rocks. This is what makes such Fundamentalists so dangerous to modern society, despite their self-righteous claims to being the moral examples of the world.

    Oh, and Vinny, thanks for giving an answer to the question that Perry is too embarrassed to answer: you most certainly would enjoy torturing babies if God said it was right and that you should do it.

    AlanF

  • Paralipomenon
    Paralipomenon

    And yet again, both Vinny and Perry ignore my points.

    Ah well, time to speak into the wind once more.

    Who pays the Piper?

    Well, the question there, is what are morals? Very simply put, moral are a universal code of ethics for interaction with each other. Theists will argue that morals were given to us by God.

    How do you determine if something is moral or not? It is very simple if you look at it in context of civilization. Do you have the right to any action if it negatively impacts another? We can all decide for ourselves whether we want to do something or not, but when our actions start to affect others, then we should evaluate the impact.

    Essentially, all morals are, is a big truce. Humans are social creatures that are driven to dwell in groups. Being that we are in groups, we need to accept that each person has basic rights.

    To really drive this point home, if there is a man that lives in the woods all alone all his life. Other than blasphemy, can he live an immoral life?

    So if there was no God, he would have lived a perfect life.

    Never meeting another human, he would not have had the opportunity to lie.
    he would have never lusted after another.
    he would have not stolen.
    he would have not murdered.
    he would not have coveted.

    It is then that Perry's whole argument goes up in complete flames. Therefore he must be damned for not knowing God because otherwise there is no means to find fault in him. Without sin that means he is eligible for heaven, and doing so without the benefit of Jesus Sacrifice.

    So we come back to morals. Anytime someone tries to disrupt the balance/truce/morality the balance must be restored otherwise mankind would destroy itself.

    Some are influential and/or powerful and upset this balance. They lie, they kill, they rape, they steal. But people will always try to work against that person because the balance is upset. Most people that upset the balance are actively fought against. Sometimes the balance is only restored when that person dies, but balance is always restored.

    Now I see morals as simply self preservation. Every person needs to give some and take some. When someone wants to take more than they give they run the risk of losing more.

    What happens if someone finds that they are too powerful to be controlled by the masses. They can upset the balance without accountability? That is, absolutely no accountability. Well I'd suggest you read the story of the Ring of Gyges. It's an ancient Greek myth. It just goes to show that as long as we are mortal, we are bound by the same moral code. If anyone found themselves unaffected by force of others, then they would no longer be bound by any morals.

    I feel I have sufficiently now answered the "who pays the piper" and the "red corvette" questions that both of you claim cannot be answered.

    I'd simply like you to address my question now of the Creation Lottery here:

    http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/132394/1.ashx

    Thanks,

    Para

  • TopHat
    TopHat

    Oh, and Vinny, thanks for giving an answer to the question that Perry is too embarrassed to answer: you most certainly would enjoy torturing babies if God said it was right and that you should do it.

    AlanF

    Alan, YOU, my dear fellow NEED serious HELP!.....DO IT has soon a possible

  • undercover
    undercover
    Alan, YOU, my dear fellow NEED serious HELP!.....DO IT has soon a possible

    Maybe it's Vinny that needs help...

  • Abaddon
    Abaddon

    The only outcome of this thread is that Vinny and Perry will carry on embarrassing the kind of Christians I'm happy to be friends with by showing just what some forms of Christianity can do to people, as long as we keep replying to them.

    Thus, this thread has educational value... a little late for Vinny and Perry, but there you have it... although I am sure that others also find their moralising, posturing and inability to give any straight or substantial answer as funny as I do, which is why I think other people (like me) are still keeping this going - it's not as though any of us think they will actually come up with answers, is it?

    Vinny, you utter poltroon, not only are you avoiding those questions I asked you (amongst others), you are failing to give me the 'spanking' you have boasted about.

    I have noticed that Perry has avoided answering me once in any thread of late... maybe he is too high and mighty... or has finally learnt from experience,

  • LittleToe
    LittleToe

    Nvr:
    I'd be dismayed if you seriously take the actions of a few to represent the whole. Sadly I have to confess that there are many poor examples of Christians, but most of the ones I've met are quiet and get on with their lives without casting wide aspersions and creating havoc.

    Vinny:

    Little Toe, I did not know you were a believer based on your earlier comments. I was going to ask you to stop worrying about how I deal with atheists since you only comment on just that and the bwaaahaha thing... ...But now that I see you are an Intelligent Design proponent, my only question is, what took you so long? Fire up your engines and hold on tight. Trouncing over atheists silly teachings is a real blast and easy as 1-2-3...

    You need to stop for a moment and consider the effects of your actions. Folks are telling you loud and clear, but you just don't seem to be getting it. You really aren't providing a good advert for Christianity. Please don't tell me you have a degree in advertising!?!!

    And for your information not all atheists believe in evolution and not all Christians don't. I belong in the latter category.

  • AlanF
    AlanF

    Good Lord, TopHat! Are you really as stupid as your posts make you out to be? Let's see why I ask.

    After posing a serious question to Perry and seeing him ignore it several times, I challenged Vinny with the same one, based entirely on Perry's 'reasoning' on the subject of naturalism and morality:

    ::: Vinny, if God said that it's fun to torture babies, and morally right to do so, and it was pleasing to him for you to do it, would you?

    Vinny eventually answered:

    :: If God asked me to do something that I thought was wrong, would I do it anyway? That was a part of your question I missed. My answer is YES. Abraham was willing to offer his own son and had the knife in motion. Would you do the same alan f? His account is a beautiful example of faith in the Creator. He was called faithful by God Himself for putting his trust in God completely. I would like to hope I would be like Abraham.

    Clearly, Vinny understood the import of my question, and seems to have answered truthfully and as I would expect any faithful Fundamentalist to do. Thus, my comment:

    :: Oh, and Vinny, thanks for giving an answer to the question that Perry is too embarrassed to answer: you most certainly would enjoy torturing babies if God said it was right and that you should do it.

    Completely missing all of the above, as is your wont, you said:

    : Alan, YOU, my dear fellow NEED serious HELP!.....DO IT has soon a possible

    So, TopHat, given the above, is my tentative conclusion that, based on your comments, you seem to be extremely stupid, correct? If not, why not?

    Of course, I know very well that you're going to respond with something so inane that I'd be hard put to invent it.

    AlanF

  • nvrgnbk
    nvrgnbk

    Nvr:
    I'd be dismayed if you seriously take the actions of a few to represent the whole. Sadly I have to confess that there are many poor examples of Christians, but most of the ones I've met are quiet and get on with their lives without casting wide aspersions and creating havoc.

    Point well taken Little Toe.

  • AlanF
    AlanF

    Vinny, you keep bringing up issues that everyone knows are unanswerable with present knowledge, and continue making the same mistakes. Here's a little summary:

    No one knows for certain how the universe originated.

    No one knows if our local universe popped into being because it was created by some higher intelligence, because the underlying laws are part of some much larger, possibly infinite, macro-cosmic universe that has always existed, or because of some completely unknown mechanism.

    No one knows if our local universe is all that was, is and ever will be.

    No one knows if there is such a thing as a macro-cosmic universe infinite in time and space.

    No one knows if there is such a thing as a supremely intelligent creator infinite in time and space.

    If you can present proof or disproof of any of these things, then do so.

    Your blustering is simply stupid, and tends to confirm the supposition of atheists that Fundamentalists are braindead morons incapable of rational thought.

    Your blustering is unable to distinguish between any number of possible intelligent creative forces, whether that be the Christian God, Allah, Vishnu, Thor or Tinker Bell.

    But I completely agree with Abaddon, that you and Perry, by your bluster and avoidance of real argument, your transparent evasions and even out and out lying, are an embarassment to many other Christians and that, as a result, this thread is quite educational. In this, you're much like almost all of the JW apologists who have come and gone from this forum.

    Abaddon, I disagree that Vinny is an utter poltroon. After all, he did admit to me that he would gladly kill and torture babies for fun if his God said he should. That takes courage, of a sort.

    AlanF

  • Vinny
    Vinny

    Just a short time today for atheist SPANKS. For those of you that wonder why I have not addressed you specifically (and I keep seeing this), you need to try READING what is actually written. I am addressing people in the ORDER with which they commented. Currently I am at the end of page 12, getting ready to start the replies on page 13. If I have missed anybody, out of order, then send me a PM. I will quickly put you at the front of the line. After all, ALL ATHEISTS DESERVE TO BE SPANKED IN THE ORDER THEY POSTED.

    : )






    Almost Atheist said today:...."Hey Vinny, You can skip my spanking. We've both got better things to do. You're obviously a decent guy, and devout. That's cool. You're not going to convince anyone that isn't already convinced, and it's clear nothing I say will affect you. On this topic, at least. So let's just agree to disagree, 'k? When at last we meet, beers are on me. Dave"


























    Atheism:noun the theory or belief that God does not exist.


    Einstein DID NOT believe in Atheism. Atheism is the belief that God does not exist.


































    I do agree with Almost Atheist that Einstein is just one man's opinion, and so what? He was wrong about other things throughout his life. Still, his "God does not play dice with the universe", sums up what I personally believe as well as many others today. It simply corroborated my own thoughts and comes from a very well-respected expert in that particular field of study.








    For his entire life, as he delved into the mysteries of the cosmos, Albert Einstein harbored a belief in, and reverence for, the harmony and beauty of what he called the mind of God as it was expressed in the creation of the universe and its laws. Around the time he turned 50, he began to articulate more clearly—in various essays, interviews, and letters—his deepening appreciation of his belief in God, although a rather impersonal version of one.

    One particular evening in 1929, the year he turned 50, captures Einstein’s middle-age deistic faith. He and his wife were at a dinner party in Berlin when a guest expressed a belief in astrology. Einstein ridiculed the notion as pure superstition. Another guest stepped in and similarly disparaged religion. Belief in God, he insisted, was likewise a superstition.

    At this point the host tried to silence him by invoking the fact that even Einstein harbored religious beliefs.

    “It isn’t possible!” the skeptical guest said, turning to Einstein to ask if he was, in fact, religious.

    “Yes, you can call it that,” Einstein replied calmly. “Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in fact, religious.”

    Shortly after his fiftieth birthday, Einstein also gave a remarkable interview in which he was more revealing than he had ever been about his religious sensibility. It was with a pompous but ingratiating poet and propagandist named George Sylvester Viereck, who had been born in Germany, moved to America as a child, and then spent his life writing gaudily erotic poetry, interviewing great men, and expressing his complex love for his fatherland. For reasons not quite clear, Einstein assumed Viereck was Jewish. In fact, Viereck proudly traced his lineage to the family of the Kaiser, and he would later become a Nazi sympathizer who was jailed in America during World War II for being a German propagandist.

    Viereck began by asking Einstein whether he considered himself a German or a Jew. “It’s possible to be both,” replied Einstein. “Nationalism is an infantile disease, the measles of mankind.”

    Should Jews try to assimilate? “We Jews have been too eager to sacrifice our idiosyncrasies in order to conform.”

    To what extent are you influenced by Christianity? “As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene.”

    You accept the historical existence of Jesus? “Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.”

    Do you believe in God? “I’m not an atheist. I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws.”

    Is this a Jewish concept of God? “I am a determinist. I do not believe in free will. Jews believe in free will. They believe that man shapes his own life. I reject that doctrine. In that respect I am not a Jew.”

    Is this Spinoza’s God? “I am fascinated by Spinoza’s pantheism, but I admire even more his contribution to modern thought because he is the first philosopher to deal with the soul and body as one, and not two separate things.”

    Do you believe in immortality? “No. And one life is enough for me.”

    Einstein tried to express these feelings clearly, both for himself and all of those who wanted a simple answer from him about his faith. So in the summer of 1930, amid his sailing and ruminations in Caputh, he composed a credo, “What I Believe,” that he recorded for a human rights group and later published. It concluded with an explanation of what he meant when he called himself religious: “The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man.”

    People found the piece evocative, even inspiring, and it was reprinted repeatedly in a variety of translations. But not surprisingly, it did not satisfy those who wanted a simple, direct answer to the question of whether or not he believed in God. For some, only a clear belief in a personal God who controls daily life qualified as a genuine faith. “The outcome of this doubt and befogged speculation about time and space is a cloak beneath which hides the ghastly apparition of atheism,” Boston’s Cardinal William Henry O’Connell said. This public blast from a Cardinal prompted the noted Orthodox Jewish leader in New York, Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein, to send a very direct telegram: “Do you believe in God? Stop. Answer paid. 50 words.” Einstein used only about half his allotted number of words. It became the most famous version of an answer he gave often: “I believe in Spinoza’s God, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of all that exists, but not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.”

    It may not have satisfied everyone. But it satisfied many. For like Einstein there are many of us who share an awed intimation of a God, manifest in all that exists, a sense that remains mysterious but real.

    Walter Isaacson, the CEO of the Aspen Institute, has been chairman of CNN and the managing editor of Time magazine. His new book, "Einstein: His Life and Universe," was published last month.















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