Trash THIS! (page 11)

OUTLAW

..Hillary_Step..You have many friends here..And..You know it!..Mr.Modest!..LOL!!.....Farkel..Your just as bad!.......You two are a Pair!!..LOL!!................For those of you,who wish to dismiss HS and Farkels contributions in Cyber Dub World.....Go for It!!.....You minimize yourselves here!!..You won`t even be a foot note in Dub History.....Just Brain Farts that happened to pop up every once and a while.................... Clint Eastwood ...OUTLAW

hillary_step

Burn,

Thank you for your personal mail to which I have replied. I am sure that we understand each other better now. As a fellow bibliophile, I am prepared to ride the Peace Train for the time being, if only riding shotgun! This is my ~~firstthirdfifthsecond~~ first post to this end.

Best regards - HS

Journey On,

Now, please, I am preparing my critique of Age of Reason, but if this back and forth silliness continues, you can forget it! (not that I think anybody really cares about my thoughts on the subject).

lol..Actually I do care. I just wish the Christians would not clutter up the thread with photographs of sacrificial dogs.

Okay, okay the both of you, easy does it.....I am just teasing. ;)

Sleep tight - HS

quietlyleaving

Journey-on

please share your ideas - I think political philosophy is a very useful topic for us xjws because it addresses the 'living in a multicultural love for all community aspect ' of JW teaching that I suspect attracted many of us to them and keeps many still ensnared as does fundamentalist religion.

journey-on

I was prepared to present a true critique of Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason. However, the deterioration of this thread has taken the "wind out of me", and I have decided that I will set aside the studious presentation I was preparing and address this essay personally.

Everyday we are presented with opportunities to grow consciously. Sometimes….every now and then….something exceptional is placed in front of us that moves us forward a few steps in our endeavor to find our personal path to enlightenment. This piece was one of those presentations for me. It came to me at the proper time. I think I had come face to face with this essay many years ago, but because of my JW mindset, I probably read the synopsis then tossed it aside.

Like "The Fool" standing on a precipice just waiting for Life to hand him his lessons, I recognized that today, this essay was for me. Now, I say that without arrogance, but with humble gratitude and in a general sense. It was a piece of my personal spiritual puzzle that I was able to recognize and apply in my jigsaw life.

I know there is a creator. (Yet, I had been pondering the nature of this God.) Is it possible this Almighty Eternal One would actually speak through special men to reveal his will? (I didn’t know for sure.) Is it possible The Bible is the Word of God? (I hesitated to say "no" and risk blasphemy.) Is Christianity the result of this Almighty God sending his special envoy, His Only-Begotten Son, to intervene on behalf of mankind in some unknowable cosmic justice? (I couldn’t quite understand this reasoning, yet I didn’t want to discard the possibility altogether.)

This essay, written more than 200 years ago, was written for me and people like me. It was like finding a rare jewel among a treasure chest of rhinestones

I know what I am now……a deist. Thomas Paine was NOT an atheist nor agnostic as many of his contemporaries believed.

"I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.".

" All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."

He was a man ahead of his time and few understood nor cared to understand the truth behind this essay. Although he spoke ferociously against all organized religion, whether Jewism, Christianity, or the religion we now call Islam (he called it Turkish), he believed in the Almighty Creator, but as he so eloquently yet simply put it, "My own mind is my own church".

He believed The Creator speaks to us in the Universal Language called the Creation:

"The WORD OF GOD IS THE CREATION WE BEHOLD and it is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to man."………

"The Creation speaketh an universal language, independently of human speech or human language…It is an ever-existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed…In fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not the book called the Scripture, which any human hand might make, but the Scripture called the Creation."………..

"We can know God only through his works. We cannot have a conception of any one attribute, but by following some principle that leads to it. We have only a confused idea of his power, if we have not the means of comprehending something of its immensity. We can have no idea of his wisdom, but by knowing the order and manner in which it acts. The principles of science lead to this knowledge; for the Creator of man is the Creator of science, and it is through that medium that man can see God, as it were, face to face."

Paine goes on to discredit the accuracy of The Bible and the authenticity of the so-called writers of it. He does this using nothing more that the scriptures themselves. His reasoning was simple yet undeniable.

After reading the Age of Reason, I walked away knowing absolutely within my very core that this man had hit the nail on the head and I found it difficult to understand how otherwise intelligent people could think anything else.

I had so much more to address, such as the section on Mystery, Miracles, and Prophecy. I wanted to talk about what he thought of Immortality. I wanted to discuss the way he speaks of the scientific principles and how they "speak" to mankind.

"Every part of science, whether connected with the geometry of the universe, with the systems of animal and vegetable life, or with the properties of inanimate matter, is a text as well for devotion as for philosophy--for gratitude, as for human improvement"

This brief personal critique is probably not what you were looking for, Farkel, and it’s not what I initially began to prepare. But I just wanted to write enough to let you know that this was just exactly the piece that helped me put yet another part of the puzzle together.

I'll leave the religious arguments and philosophical debates to the rest of you interested in this topic. I have taken from it what I needed....with gratitude, I might add.

AWAKE&WATCHING

journey-on - I think you should post that and start a new Thomas Paine thread. I appreciate your views and admire you for posting even though we are far from where the thread could be at this point.

I was happy to read that Farkel had helped you on your journey. He has helped many.

UnConfused

farkel - what is your critique of his essays?

tijkmo

suggesting

playing a bit fast and loose with the english language eh

hillary_step

Journey On,

I enjoyed reading your 'testimony' and congratulate you on your decision. I am sure that Thomas Paine would have been thrilled to witness your 'awakening'.

It brings up a very interesting scenario, as until very recently you seemed to have been an apologist, and a very fiesty one at that, for mainstream Christianity. How could such a strong 'faith; have been so easily overturned? Is Jesus no longer a savior?

Can you now see that the many who have read Paine, and actually moved even further along his road of self-discovery were ones who were trying to persuade persons such as yourself to see this vision? Though this thread was presented in what others describe as a crude, rude and ruthless manner, it seems to have hit home with at least one person. Maybe there is a method to Farkel's madness after all. ;)

The most important point however: does your experience not indicate that religion is matter of chemistry over logic, divided by environment?

Bets regards - HS

journey-on

Hillary_S

Where did you ever get the idea that I was a Christian apologist?! Point me to just one of my posts in the last 6 mos. that makes you think that!

I have stood my ground on the belief in an Almighty Creator, but not a sky daddy God that takes names and kicks butt. Perhaps, this stand in a belief in a creator has led you to connect that dot to the dot of Christian apologist!

Many times I have spoken out against organized religion of any kind! I'm a bit affronted actually that I have been this misunderstood by you and perhaps that explains the display of personal animosity toward me.....lol~!!!!!!

My dilemma has been whether the Bible is but another "message" to man but where religion has twisted its meaning. Paine's essay helped me come to grips with that dilemma.

My other dilemma was whether a man named Jesus was actually a messenger from God Almighty, and that his message was hijacked by the likes of Paul and others and made into a religion. I wondered if hidden within, however, there was truly a holy message. Paine's essay helped me find my answer.

journey-on

Having trouble finding one, Hillary_S? (No apology necessary....we all make mistakes in judgment sometimes....lol)

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