I find it very hard to believe in a god

by Newborn 65 Replies latest jw friends

  • Qcmbr
    Qcmbr

    Tammy - I do not understand what you have written. It is not making sense. You kinda believe in the bible but not that it is inerrant (so why use it at all since you openly acknowledge that it is untrustworthy?) You are happy to say it points at Christ (the flood points at Christ?, magic sticks to make animals reproduce a certain way points to Christ?, Solomon's concubines point at Christ?..sorry they don't) You apologise away the flood because you know full well that there never was a global flood even though the bible clearly states this.

    You are happy - when the proof is undeniable - to claim the bible is in error but anywhere else is a testament to Christ - the most important guide in your life. Can you understand why that position is flawed?

    I'm very interested in why you think Christ is teaching you, personally, about art(ok unfair :) but about anything)? Do you have real conversations? Do you write down these scriptures (surely direct communication with Christ should be recorded.)? Or - as I suspect - are you in exactly the same boat I was in - living in a religious construct without the tools to recognise your own situation.

    The hardest thing I have ever done to date is to come to terms with the realisation that the relationship I felt I had had with Christ, the one that had moved me to tears at times, that had given me moments of religious ecstasy, the one that had revealed deep meanings to the book of Mormon and the bible, the one that had protected me from a very visceral demonic attack while a missionary, the one that guided me while I converted 74 people in my two years of missionary work (I am so sorry for that), the one that occupied my every waking moment and I used to school my base emotions with; that relationship was all in my head, my brain made it all up and even though it was real to me it was never real beyond my own personal madness. Letting go was traumatic, painful, risky but ultimately empowering.

    I don't need the bible to be anything but I know it to be written by men. I hope I can spend what few times I have with my family and friends not allowing that book of dreams to further occlude the fullest experience and expression of life.

    If religion was harmless fluffyness I wouldn't make such hard points about it but the cost it exacts is so evil, so immoral and so stupefying to each individual so enslaved by its grasp that I cannot type line after line of gentle, polite nit picking in the hope that people will avoid it. Religion has had years to perfect it's schtick and snakeoil, for years with the sword and king as it's authority. Religion deserves no less than to be repeatedly held to account for a millennia of bloodshed and tears. To clear it's name all it is required to do is hold up one piece of irrefutable evidence and it can't.

  • The Scotsman
    The Scotsman
    I'm sure it made perfect sense to the holocaust victims and the Rawanda genocides victims

    Oh right - so we are now blaming God for what humans did!

    Both of these examples merely highlight that humans can be downright evil to each other.

    And qcmbr - LOL. Your list has been debunked a 100 times!

    I am not a young earth creationist - the earth is clearly billions of years old. I am just saying that a higher intelligence was likely involved in the beginning of life. For me this was God.

  • The Scotsman
    The Scotsman
    And the bottom line - even if there are some so-called holes - no evidence exists whatsoever that says the god of the bible is the answer to those wholes

    I will make a general point - one word - PREPOSITION!

    All of us approach the evidence based on a preposition - what we already believe. To say that "no evidence exists whatsoever that says the God of the bible is the answer" shows a lack of an openness on your part. Billions of people believe in a God of some kind and we are to assume not a shred of evidence exists to support this?

    Your faith is clearly stronger than mine - to assume no God - i.e. - nothing became something is beyond science, all evidence available and basic logic.

    Nothing in - nothing out.

  • Curtains
    Curtains

    cofty said

    Be careful you don't get your image of the natural world from Walt Disney. Symbiosis is wonderful but its at one end of the spectrum of parasitical behaviour that is the norm in nature. Nature is "red in tooth and claw" - Tennyson

    you are warning me about getting my image of the natural world from Walt Disney and you are quoting a poet - now this is ironic

    eedit: okay as I want to be helpful - here is a good book - - it is entitled Demons in Eden and is by Jonathan Silvertown

    http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=bk3nq9QBc8sC&printsec=frontcover&dq=demons+in+eden&source=bl&ots=uSkJks5fWp&sig=Hmpsqq6g3peHcuBGbmJDQejQCes&hl=en&ei=Zi0bTY7cGYOzhAeW8ai3Dg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

  • Qcmbr
    Qcmbr

    Scotsman - I've read these posts and I fail to see any evidence to back your position except to argue that unless we accept your presupposition then we are not open. Let me correct you. I, and I suspect most non-<insert god of choice> believers would be swayed by some real evidence. That is open minded. When exposed to factual evidence, the kind that anyone can find or test without the need for a priest and a donation, it is the religious who ignore the fact. I hope you will agree that this is actually what being close-minded actually is?

    What you are describing is faith(which is by definition not open minded), the art of believing in something made up while pretending that it is as valid as assertion as fact. To accept that you could be right would be to accept by the same shoddy standards that any religion, past, present or yet to be concocted could be correct. Is this what you do? Do you accept that Allah, Pan or Zeus are equally valid? If not, this - to quote "shows a lack of an openness on your part."

    I do not reject Jehovah because he's let me down as in the OP's experience ( I have a really quite lucky and lovely life) but purely because in my search to find out what I believed in I realised that all religions use similar techniques to spread similar stories built on similar myths with similar immorality and prey upon flaws in our own logic and our brains weaknesses. That's why your Hindu, Mormon, JW, Muslim etc. member will believe, with faith, ardently that they are right to the exclusion of all else.

    I'd like you to explain why 'billions' of people believe in different deities - if you can do that you will find out why billions of people can believe in blue gods, elephant gods, invisible gods, jackal gods, maize gods yadda yadda. Unless you would like to provide evidence for these gods I'll happily say in response:

    "we are to assume not a shred of evidence exists to support this?"

    Yes.

  • ProdigalSon
    ProdigalSon

    I find it very hard to believe in a god but I find it equally hard to believe in the evolution theory so for now, I chose not to believe in anything but myself and love

    Sounds good to me!

    "You are gods" ~John 10:34

    "God is love" ~1 John 4:8

    "...the body of YOU people is [the] temple of the holy spirit within YOU, which YOU have from God..." ~1 Corinthians 6:19

    Pretty simple, isn't it?

  • Newborn
    Newborn

    oh wow! thanks all for your posts. This subject will certainly be discussed for eternity...and I guess we will never know for sure and just have to accept that.

    I respect all your comments and different views.

    I guess I want to believe in a god and the wonderful, amazing earth, universe, nature, humans and animals, makes it hard for me to digest that it's all here by chance but then all the wickedness. It seems as if there's a god he doesn't care...

    I've read some good books on the evolutionary theory and I can see that it has some "swiss cheese holes in it" but I know way too little. All I can say is that I'm not convinced....yet, in a way envy those who are. The chance of life to evolve the way it has must have bene sooo remote??!

    It's perhaps to vast for me to grasp.

    I may agree for now with Mandette, that there might have been a higher force who started it all and then evolution took over..

    /Newborn

  • The Scotsman
    The Scotsman
    I've read these posts and I fail to see any evidence to back your position

    Right back at ya!

    why billions of people can believe in blue gods, elephant gods, invisible gods, jackal gods, maize gods yadda yadda.

    I view it like the branches of a tree - all separate and distinct but all are attached to the trunk - different paths to the same destination.

    What you are describing is faith

    Correct. Not everyone has faith and this is where the problems start - people with no faith lecturing people who do have faith.

    Faith is beyond science. I am merely trying to tell you that you cannot rubber stamp everything as "fact" because somehow science has decided to accept it as a fact.

    the art of believing in something made up while pretending that it is as valid as assertion as fact

    You dare to tell me I am not open minded and you say this....LOL

    Bye.

  • Qcmbr
    Qcmbr

    Newborn - try calculating the odds that you, with your exact DNA and cultural background would exist from the union of ooo let's pluck an arbitrary number of generations - 10 pairs of parents in your family line. The number you come out with is so huge, the likelihood of exactly you resulting is so vanishingly small that - with probability theory alone- you cannot reasonably suggest that your being is anything other than pure divine providence. Except it clearly isn't. If you could roll back the clock and change anything in the past for any of those ten parents pre baby then your genetic material gets shuffled differently and you never exist instead replaced by an equally improbable sibling. Please don't be awed by the numbers into drawing illogical conclusions regarding the need for magic to explain this reality.

  • Qcmbr
    Qcmbr

    http://onlinesurgicaltechniciancourses.com/2010/25-intriguing-scientific-studies-about-faith-prayer-and-healing/

    Science studying faith.

    Scotsman - Ill gladly re ieve the ball back in my ourt. What proof would convince you that you are talking tosh? Please list anything you'd accept since you've rejected my tools of logic, science and factual evidence.

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