The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty 2596 Replies latest jw experiences

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  Oubliette

  kassad84: Take away God, ... and all life and meaning (for me) goes away.

  Well that just isn't true.

  And if you believe that, well that's just sad.

  So answer me this:

  • When your best friend, husband/wife/lover, son or daughter, mother or father tells you how much they love you, does that ONLY have meaning if God exists?
  • And, if so, why exactly would such expressions of love and appreciation be meaningless if there is no God? Be specific.

  When you listen to a particularly emotional piece of music, or enjoy a beautiful sunset, or enjoy a good meal with family or friends, or even laugh at a good joke, do you have to interpret it in the context of the existence of God? Or can these events have meaning independent of the existence of God?

  I posit that many theists believe that meaning originates from God, but that is a false premise even if it is true that God exists.

  God is neither necessary or sufficient to explain the reality of meaning as a very real part of the human experience.

  As Jesus said, "You are very much mistaken!" (Mark 12:27)

  Think about it and get back to me.
• 

  Twitch

  a question or two

  what if the god of the bible is only just that, the god of those who wrote the words?

  how has your understanding or interpretation of the "absolute" truth varied in your life?

  is the base argument only against one interpretation?

  how do you interpret what you don't understand?
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  kassad84

  And, if so, why exactly would such expressions of love and appreciation be meaningless if there is no God? Be specific.

  Expressions of love are good. But then, just like suffering, if we are to experience these things and go on and disappear into nothingness in a manner in which there is no difference whether we ever existed or not, what good is there in that? These expressions of love no matter how long or fleeting they will last, will just be a joke in the end, and a cruel one at that. It doesn't matter, if we are just accidents.
• 

  Twitch

  Expressions of love are good. But then, just like suffering, if we are to experience these things and go on and disappear into nothingness in a manner in which there is no difference whether we ever existed or not, what good is there in that? These expressions of love no matter how long or fleeting they will last, will just be a joke in the end, and a cruel one at that. It doesn't matter, if we are just accidents.

  I beg to differ. It would matter all the more.

  what else do you really have, other than this moment and the collective past effects of them?
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  kassad84

  what else do you really have, other than this moment and the collective past effects of them

  we have them as long as we exist and then we die and all our love ones, we journey on to oblivion, like nothing ever happened.. eventually the universe itself will die of heat death if we take on faith that these theories are true.
• 

  kassad84
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  humbled

  Something really wonderful there is in seeing beauty for what it is: Letting the sight of a baby, new-born come out of your body fill you with tears. Letting the stars on a dark night after a snow only bring you joy. Having the smell of your man's sweat fill you with gratitude for his being there, working hard by your side.

  If these things are fleeting, if they are moments so trivial because we die, so what? We give a man condemned to death a last meal of his choice and this is most absurd.

  That we will die is certain. But we still seek--and often find--joy in living.

  I used to worry that to give up my last shred of belief in God's existence would make my world hollow. But believing in God did not add to these ordinary yet wonderful moments--not at all. Especially when I understood that, by a caprice I could not understand, He might destroy these simple pleasures--as a part of His Grand Plan for my personal improvement???

  Various human societies describe the very practical Golden Rule. It still is the core teaching in christianity. God holds Christians to it. The bible says so. But God Himself does not operate on that basis. He has power, justice, knowledge and love we were told. Yet He has no consistency. He is above the Golden Rule.

  The Book of Job calls God out on this--and there is no answer.

  It seems likely that there is no God.

  and still I am glad I am alive--
• 

  sunny23

  if we are to experience these things and go on and disappear into nothingness in a manner in which there is no difference whether we ever existed or not, what good is there in that? kassad84

  Kassad, I'm sorry but that is such a narrow minded and selfish view. There are 6 people on this page 114 alone who are telling you they feel joy and great meaning in their existence without an afterlife. If you need an afterlife to have meaning in this life then you will also need an after-afterlife and so on. What happens to your consciousness after you die, does not dictate the meaning and importance of our existence in this very second. Without an afterlife everything you do matters all the much more. It becomes solely about your lasting positive or negative impact on family, friends and potentially the rest of the world to come.

  Imagine playing a video game. Any game. You play for hours and with each moment you know you can restart the level, respawn, etc. It becomes monotonous, until you realize you only have a little time left to play for whatever reason you have to leave. That last level, that last respawn, or that last car race, becomes the most important. Every second is crucial and methodically carried out with your devout attention and control of your faculties. It's the same with life. If all atheists took your pessismistic view of pointlessness then there wouldn't be any atheists excelling highly in the arts, humanities, or nobel prize winning scientists, yet there are more than you think.

  If this life is truly meaningless in comparisson to eternal blissful afterlife, then all Christians should be rejoicing when someone dies, gets cancer, gets hit by a car, and be extremely jealous of that death and not be sad. If you TRULY believed without a grain of doubt that you will be resurrected to a good afterlife then you would act like this...

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMaK6k4oZ20&list=UULhtZqdkjshgq8TqwIjMdCQ&index=53
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  defender of truth

  [this is the last off-topic post from me]
  
  Sunny said:"Kassad, I'm sorry but that is such a narrow minded and selfish view. There are 6 people on this page 114 alone who are telling you they feel joy and great meaning in their existence without an afterlife."
  Sunny, don't be too judgemental. I think I know where he is coming from. It is likely a view born of a depressed mentality, one that takes little or no joy in life because you think 'what is the point?'.
  You can't get past it at times.
  Then you go out, as others have said, have a nice meal, spend time away from this sometimes depressing or intense forum, play a favourite game or walk the dog and enjoy the scenery..
  And whilst you are enjoying that moment, you couldn't care less about heaven, God or anything else. But the cloud of depression is still there when you stop 'living', or slow down and overthink.
  
  Kassad.. Believe whatever helps you to enjoy this life, according to the evidence attainable from science it is all you have and, regardless of whether there is an afterlife, THIS is the only time you will experience life on earth.
  Just do your best to make it as happy a stay as possible for other people. Whilst you are doing that, religious beliefs or concerns are irrelevant.
  This quote speaks of the futility of waiting for an afterlife in order to live a good life:
  
  (the quote is unaltered, except for replacing 'excusitive' with excusive, it clearly has the intended meaning and the word originally used is not a word, so it may be a typo)
  
  “There is something profoundly cynical, my friends, in the notion of paradise after death.
  The lure is evasion. The promise is excusive.
  One need not accept responsibility for the world as it is, and by extension, one need do nothing about it. To strive for change, for true goodness in this mortal world,
  one must acknowledge and accept within one’s own soul, that this mortal reality has purpose in itself, that its greatest value is not for us, but for our children and their children.
  
  To view life as but a quick passage along a foul, tortured path – made foul and tortured by our own indifference – is to excuse all manner of misery and depravity, and to exact cruel punishment upon the innocent lives to come.
  I defy this notion of paradise beyond the gates of bone. If the soul truly survives the passage, then it behooves us – each of us, my friends – to nurture a faith in similitude: what awaits us is a reflection of what we leave behind, and in the squandering of our mortal existence, we surrender the opportunity to learn the ways of goodness, the practice of sympathy, empathy, compassion and healing – all passed by in our rush to arrive at a place of glory and beauty..”
  - from a book by Steven Erikson
• 

  Ruby456

  psac and cofty you've both raised a sgnificant issue and my contribution in support of both standpoints is to turn to what Jesus said -( simply because it makes what I want to say relevant and understandable to as many as poss here)

  Unless you change and become as children you will not enter the kingdom of the heavens Mat 18:3

  for me this verse and the passage it was taken from is very close to the idea of attributing inexperience not just to man but also to divinity (although I don't think that what we call matter and spirit are separarble). Heraclitus and the stoics say something similar. I'm not saying inexperience in a derogartory sense and please don't take it like that (Iwish). I'm saying inexperience in the sense that for something really new to come into being no one would know exactly what it is beforehand and if that is the case then God could be said to be inexperienced.