Where would you go(are you gone)? (page 2)

mraimondi

all religions are cults - someone else is making rules based on their interpretations of a "holy" book. I don't need it.

I am like many who have already posted. I no longer believe in a supreme being who requires that we give him a lot of attention. I have no issue with folks who want to be religious, but it is not something for me. I have spent the past 17 years since leaving the Watchtower studying the history of the Middle Easter religions and like all other religions I have studied, I find much more human reasons for their coming into existence than any of a divine source.

Don

gubberningbody

1) A little leaven ferments the whole lump. All lumps have leaven. Therefore, if you have found you don't like leaven, you avoid all lumps.

2) The first lights the fire which allows one to see the second.

3) See number 1.

mkr32208

We were always taught to think critically about OTHER religions just not ours. One day we developed some doubts so we turned that search light on our own beliefs and discovered they could not stand up to scrutiny, so we left.

For most of us though that searchlight hasn't gone out. So when another religion pops up we look at it critically and find it wanting. In my experience the only people who remain 'christian' or 'religious' are those that use intentional ignorance to blind that searchlight.

ziddina

(1) Recognized volcanic eruption being described in bible (Exodus 19: 16-19) as 'presence of gawd' - once I realized that (age 9), didn't actually believe bible was word of gawd... plus, as I stated below - from BadBoy's thread "What is JW View of Continental Drift":

"The fact that there are oceanic fossils at the top of Mt. Everest (roughly; the Himalayan peaks have sedimentary deposits comprising part of their rock masses) shows that those rocks were once underwater. If... one wishes to pretend that there was a global flood and those deposits are supposedly part of "Flood" debris, then the Himalayas were uplifted at a rate of 4,838 feet per year, and that's using a figure of 6,000 years ago for the supposed 'occurence of "Noah's" flood'...

Just to give you a little perspective, the great earthquake that hit San Francisco in 1906 moved the earth in one 296-mile-long section of earth a range of 8-30 feet. WOW! A whole 30 feet of ground-slippage, yet look at all the damage THAT caused!! Its magnitude was later estimated to be approx. 7.7 to 8.3 on seismic wave estimates, moment-magnitude, and Richter scale.

Going back to the illustration of Mt. Everest, if one divides the 4,838 feet per year by days, you get an average rate-of-earth-movement of 13 feet approx. per day - that would mean that the earth would have been experiencing at least a 7.7 earthquake DAILY just to 'build' the Himalayas - not to mention the Alps, the Rockies, the Andes, etc, etc.

Let's talk about the Atlantic Ocean!! The Atlantic is over 4,000 miles wide at its widest point(s). That's equivalent to 21,120,000 feet. Now, let's pretend that the Atlantic ocean began opening at the supposed 'beginning' of the supposed 'Creation' of the earth by a regional Middle Eastern god of a bunch of backward, superstitious, ignorant Middle Eastern nomads... Let's use the WTBTS' figure of 49,000 years. 49,000 years x 365 = 17,885,000 days. Divide the 21,120,000 by 17,885,000 = movement of OVER ONE FOOT PER DAY to open up the Atlantic Ocean - and that's assuming it actually began opening at the beginning of the Middle Eastern mythology...

Remember, too, that geologic processes aren't SMOOTH - generally speaking - so the Atlantic would have opened in jumps and starts - that is, if you believe that a Middle Eastern god of a buncha desert-dwelling nomads would actually have a CLUE about the makeup of the ocean - talking to Phoenicians would make more sense if you want to find out about oceans - at least THEY were master sailors...

[also remember that the mid-Atlantic Ridges are over 24,855 miles long. The earthquake that hit San Francisco in 1906 only affected 300 miles... How massive would earthquakes have to be to move 24 THOUSAND miles of rock, separating the land masses of Americas and Europe/Africa eventually by over 4,000 miles??]

Anyhoo, if the mid-Atlantic ridges were moving in jumps and starts, AGAIN you would have had massive earthquakes once every - oh, say, about two weeks. [Actually, since said earthquakes would have had to move along a 24,855-mile-long zone, every two weeks is massively understating the situation...] Add to that the massive earthquakes that 'must have been happening' to raise the Himalayas in 6,000 years -

NO HUMAN CIVILIZATION WOULD HAVE BEEN ABLE TO DEVELOP. There would have been massive, structure-destroying earthquakes every few days and every few weeks..."

That pretty much answers #2, also. As for beliefs, I'm with White Dove - in a way. I'm a Pagan Goddess-worshipping atheist - worship idea of female divinity as PSYCHOLOGICAL TOOL to offset destructive misogynistic Middle-Eastern-male attitudes in bible and WTBTS.

Zid

sinis

I do not believe in "God" in the perspective that religion lays out. Although I do not believe in the Bible I do believe it is just one piece in the bigger puzzle. Go far enough back and things are not what they seem. Life, origin of life, the future, are not black and white but rather shades of grey...

jamiebowers

I've gone to a place in my life where I don't have to have all of the answers and am able to feel good about that.

WTWizard

I never was that strong as a Christian before becoming a witless. And, afterwards, I had no trouble finding all the places, right in the Bible itself, where God initiated the use of force to destroy people and civilizations that were just minding their own businesses. "Unless you obey me, I am going to make your lives miserable and eventually destroy you" seems to be the theme of everything God says.

I also realized that Jesus never wrote anything, nor was any of his material written soon after it happened. It was written 40 years later (some was even more, closer to 60 years later). Now, how in hell can anyone remember critical details about it after 40 years? Plus, Paul mistook Jesus' words literally. That further confused the Gospel writers, who already had ample opportunity to mis-remember things. That meant that, even if Jesus taught the right thing (and it is all supposed to be symbolic), the writers of the Gospels had plenty of time to mess it up.

Then I go online, and find plenty of other places where it highlights the lies in the Unholy Bible. I also find a few Christian sites, and the sites that expose the Bible as fallacy actually made more sense. Believing in a God that loves us, yet initiated the problem of Original Sin so He can make a deal that usurps value from mankind, seems like believing in two different concepts that clash. And, any time one forces oneself to believe two contradictory teachings, that wastes intelligence and the person has to act more stupid and suppress whatever intelligence they have that might expose the two teachings as inconsistent with each other.

Apostapler

Went from the Witnesses to Wicca back to Christianity but I haven't officially joined the church I'm attending. I am too scared of belonging to something that won't let me go.

Black Sheep

1 & 2) I put Christianity and the Bible through the same level of scrutiny I had used for the Watchtower.

I now consider that all religious writngs are man's thoughts about God. None of them are God's thought about man.

You do not have to be a Christian to be a good person. Being a Christian doesn't preclude you from being a bad person.

There is nothing to stop you using the good advice from the Bible, or any other religious book, but do you really need them? Why not just be humanitarian?

3) I choose not to seek association with members of any high control groups, including scientific ones.

Welcome to the forum

Chris

Where would you go(are you gone)?