Without the promise that a god would reward you in the afterlife, I think you would find far less volunteers to become suicide bombers
GOD: GOING.....GOING...Going...going....GONE!
by Terry 46 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Vernon Williams
Terry,
Good post...well written.....logical.....
The cool thing about God: His patience with our limited intellect, level of perception, our over abundunce of self awareness in this cosmos, .....all that restricts and blurrs.
Give me a "popped" God over a cosmos guided by emptiness and guess, anytime.
Jesus: I believe the Story.
That makes me a gulible idiot, I reckon. It is a role and position I, readily, will submit to.
Sorta like Apostate: a true Badge of Honor.
Keep posting: you cause people to think and chanllange.
Yours in this Journey,
V
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done4good
Great post, Terry. One of your best so far.
j
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GoingGoingGone
GOING.....GOING...Going...going....GONE!
And here I thought this post would be all about me!
VernonWilliams: The cool thing about God: His patience with our limited intellect, level of perception, our over abundunce of self awareness in this cosmos, .....all that restricts and blurrs.
How do you know God is patient? You missed Terry's point, I think.... You believe the story, why? I'm not trying to be critical of you personally, I truly want to know how someone professes belief in someone who they claim is almighty, yet who allows suffering, unjustness, and (if you believe the bible) takes pleasure in genocide. I don't get it.
GGG
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dorayakii
AlmostAtheist: One of the few things left is 'how did life originate'?
Scientists do not claim to know everything about the natural world, but even then, science is making headway on possible and theoretical answers to this question.
Chapter 6 of Richard Dawkins' "The Blind Watchmaker" (called 'Origins and Miracles'), offers a brilliant, insightful surprisingly simple and non-counter-intuitive way in which organic molecules could have become self replicating.
His book "Unweaving the Rainbow" in chapter 12 ('The Balloon of the Mind'), explains how consciousness and a feeling of 'self' could have evolved from the interface that was created due to the intricate network of neurons in the brain.
"Climbing Mount Improbable" is another insightful book that shows how great complexity can come about not by 'chance' but by cumulative natural selection. In fact, he likens the "God Hypothesis" to pure chance. For example, what are the chances of a "god" just miraculously appearing in thin air, uncreated and existing eternally, then deciding to create a universe by speaking it into existence?... It's comparable to the chances of a Boeing 747 with all its complex engineering simply appearing in a junk yard at the click of a finger. Any type of god, even if he DID exist, would himself have to have come about by cumulative natural selection...
In fact, it is creation theory which is based on chance, and NOTevolution theory, as the sky-blue creation book claims.
Dawkins developped this arguement in full in his latest book "The God Delusion". Dawkins' arguements are extremely difficult to refute. The gist of it can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Boeing_747_gambit
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Vernon Williams
G, G, G,
I am a Christian.
I believe the Story.
I trust the Promise.
I move toward the Nourishment in this Journey.
Here is a letter I wrote on Faith, I was going to post it on a new thread...stilll might...it may answer a few of your questions:
We need to hesitate just a bit and look at a couple of thoughts.
First, and, I know this is odd for someone from our backgrounds....I
have not appealed to an examination of the Bible. I have not said:
"Let us look at verse such and such and see what it says about
Jesus...." Why? I guess the easiest answer is this: I am not a "Bible
Believing Christian" if what you mean is that I base my"belief" on the
Bible. I do not. I base by "belief" on the The Story and my
confidence in the truthfulness of the Story Tellers.
If Christians were to be called by any other name, I think the best
would be "The Tellers of The Story." The Story has been told
everywhere under every type of circumstance and to every type of
person. Miners share it underground, sailors on the sea, airtravelers
in the sky, in prisons and in open air, in cathedrals and saloons, in
mansions and mud huts, in war and peace, in famine and harvest.....on
and on. The Story is told and people accept it with the vigor of the
Story Teller, him or herself. Sometimes with no threat, other times in
great peril. Sometimes with a great change and, sometimes, with
a slight shift.
And, always, this "thing," this phenomenon occurs. We call it
"Faith." We value The Story to the extent that it becomes central to
our beings and lives. Now, Faith is a slippery noun that is hard to
define. I have been meditating on this for a bit and the thing about
Faith is it's uncertainty, it's fluid-like state. It is always in movement, it seems to me.
Faith is not certainty. It is not absolute. We can not state the
elements of Faith in the way we list multiplication tables or a "chart
of the elements." Faith is a thing in motion and requires the attention
we give to objects that move. Faith is a semi-truck not a football stadium.
The best explanation I can give of Faith is this: Faith is a
jousting match between two opposites: Doubt, un-knowing-ness on one hand and a
blend of common sense, good humor, and child like innocence on the
other. Doubt, the lack of knowledge, of provable facts is our constant
companion. We need something to overcome the results of doubt. Doubt
causes drift away from The Story. We are drawn back to The Story by
the other three. The resultant "tension" between these two with the
continued victory of the three elements in opposition to doubt is
Faith.
An early Christian said "Faith is not the possession of all
men." He is right, I think. Most people spurn common sense due to self
interest or comfort. They consider the innocence of children better
left to little ones as it does not bring logic or profit to an adult.
And, they find it hard to look at themselves and smile at the
ridiculousness of a situation they are in or how they might look to
others.
So, then, the Bible. The Bible is a "data" source. It is
information. And, it has it's place. But, as with all information,
it can be "used." You can argue with data, twist it, distort it,
manipulate it, question it. It is specific and fixed. It is this
exactness that makes it so usable: for the Story believers and
the Story critic: for those that want us to draw closer to the Promise
that follows the Story for our good. and, for those that want us
to drift away from The Story for their benefit as they feel more
justified and stabilized as they see the result of their criticism.
Am I belittling the Bible? Making it "less than?" No. I am saying
that, from the beginning it went like this:
Story (with the results of Faith).
Understanding the Promise.
Being nourished to the personal fulfillment of the Promise.
The Bible fits into the last portion. By placing it there as a means
of nourishment rather than a means of proof, it's value is enhanced
not de-valued in some way. We approach the Bible "in Faith" because of
it's association with The Story. But, our Faith proceeds the Scripture
as it came first.
To put it all another way:
If the Bible rests on our Faith it is upheld with an unmovable
conviction because we are, constantly, overcomming doubt in a dynamic,
ongoing manner due to this "tension" condition I mentioned, above.
If our Faith rests on the Bible, it is only as solid as the "best
argument" in support of or against the data.
Because I will take Faith over convincing arguement any day, I think
the three fold approach listed above is the best introduction. True,
it took four years to see this, however, it was a four year cost well
invested.
Next letter: The Promise.
Yours in this Journey,
V -
Gopher
This thread made me think of the WTS's book "Mankind's Search for God". As Terry stated, it all started with shamanism and superstitions. Then worship became more organized and sophisticated. The book does a pretty good job showing how religions have led their followers down the garden path...until it gets to the end where it claims that finally, only through Jehovah's Witnesses, mankind's search for God has at last been resolved.
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TopHat
So if there is no God.....Humans have no one to blame but themselves for all the pain and suffering....Is that what we have evolved into and the question is what is worse....Atheist can now stop pointing fingers at God for their sorrows? Evolution is no better than God?
Something went wrong in the brain process of evolution in humans?
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GoingGoingGone
Thanks for your explaination, Vernon.
I guess I believe that if there is a god who created all mankind, he would make it known beyond a shadow of a doubt to each and every human being that they are loved, that he is there for us, and that he cares. We would KNOW.... we wouldn't have to have "faith"... or have to believe a story that someone else tells us.
I've had Christians tell me that feeling the love of God in my life is a grace. So that means, then, that since I don't feel it, I'm not good enough. God is withholding his love from me. Come to church, worship daily, then you'll experience God's love! Sorry, but that smacks of control to me.
God isn't real because lots of people believe in him, either. I don't know if he exists or not. But the fact that Christians 2000 years ago martyred themselves for him, and the fact that others today are willing to fly themselves into buildings for him, proves only how deeply mind control can reach. And it's scary. If you're convincing enough, and get enough people to believe that what you say is God's will, you can tell them anything and they'll do it. Because if you call it "having faith", that makes it so much more holy and good.
GGG
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kid-A
"So if there is no God.....Humans have no one to blame but themselves for all the pain and suffering...."
> You betcha! And maybe if humanity could collectively abandon primordial superstitions and ACCEPT responsibilty for their own actions rather than "the devil made me do it" or realized that there is no magical sky daddy that is going to step in and make everything OK.......perhaps we could continue our evolution on a more successful trajectory.
"Is that what we have evolved into and the question is what is worse....Atheist can now stop pointing fingers at God for their sorrows?"
> Atheists dont believe in any god, so why would we point fingers at something that does not exist? If I experience "sorrow" I use my rational mind to try to solve the problem rather than clasp my hands together and mumble some obeisance to an empty sky.
"Evolution is no better than God?"
> The comparison is meaningless. Evolution is a biological process open to empirical investigation, it has nothing to say about supernatural belief structures.
Something went wrong in the brain process of evolution in humans?
> Yes......our primordial ancestors decided to invent supernatural creatures to explain the unexplainable, leading to the endless curse of religion upon civillization.