by cofty 14 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
The following video sums up why I not only reject theism but oppose it...
If you worship a god who hears your prayers please invest 6 minutes to listen and ask yourself how you would respond. Then ask yourself whether your answer requires the same special pleading and double-think we used to indulge in to defend our JW beliefs....
...I'm waiting for the Manna to show up, how hard is it for God Almighty to make Manna.
Even as a JW it made me mad t hear about people praying to be able to attend convention and then poof......they get the day off, or some mess like that. Even then my thoguht was.....hey dude 10's of thousands of people died today due to very little if any fault of their own....but Jehovah gave you Friday off so you could fry in the heat and remember about 2% of what you heard?
While I have a hard time going the full athiest......its where I tend to lean more and more.
9 million children die every year before the age of five.
Picture an Asian tsunami of the sort we saw in 2004 that killed a quarter of a million people. One of those every 10 days killing only children only under 5
24 000 children under 5 die ever day - 1 000 per hour.
Think of all those parents praying at this moment for their children to be spared, and their prayers will not be answered.
Any god who would allow children by the millions to suffer and die in this way, and their parents to grieve in this way, either can do nothing to help them or doesn't care to.
He is either impotent or evil....
I don't know how many Christian Evangelicals I have asked to pray to end this starvation. I have asked if making Manna is easy for God, they all say yes.
"Whatever you ask in my name" that is the promise isn't it from Jesus "whatever you ask in my name".
Today 20,000 children under 5 will starve to death.
Where is the Manna.
Not defending it, but you know that JW's just smugly respond by saying they'll all get a resurrection, and that this horrible suffering is only temporary to answer a bigger long-term issue, a bit like an infant needing an operation going into hospital to suffer short-term pain for a long-term solution.
short-term pain = since forever began
cofty: He is either impotent or evil....
Or doesn't exist.
Christopher Hitchens summed this issue up very succinctly:
"Let's say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, have been on this planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter of a million. I'll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years. Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2,000 years ago, thinks "That's enough of that. It's time to intervene," and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don't let's appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let's go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can't be believed by a thinking person."
Yadda said: "..this horrible suffering is only temporary to answer a bigger long-term issue, a bit like an infant needing an operation going into hospital to suffer short-term pain for a long-term solution."
There are several problems with that illustration, as I see it.
....
1) God is the one who inflicted the life threatening ailment that requires an operation.
(He supposedly decided what sin would be defined as, then once Adam 'sinned', He cursed all of Adams descendants to sin, grow old and die.)
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2) He is not a helpless parent with a dying child who has no choice but to go through with the operation..
He is more like an egocentric specialist doctor overseeing the work and watching his own child suffer.. And He could cure the infant at any time, WITHOUT the need for a long and painful operation, and yet CHOOSES NOT TO, in order to show that people cannot live happily and eternally in an ailment free world where nobody can be harmed- (which is meant to be the successful outcome of the operation in this illustration) - without completely submitting to Him and obeying His every word..
Which has ALREADY been proven, seeing as He is the only person that has the skill to bring about the successful outcome of this cruel 'operation', anyway. All the patients and their parents KNOW that THEY can't achieve this, as it is physically impossible, and beg that He would just cure them, without all of the suffering and dying.
But He just decides to keep putting a countless number of infants through the painful operation anyway, in an endless stream of crying, pain and finally death..
Apparently because He is patient, and waiting for the miniscule percentage that might live through this agonising operation and come out successfully. (an operation, remember, that He invented after first inventing and inflicting the ailment).
In summary, He could cure His child and skip the operation, but He chooses not to.. to prove that nobody else can.
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3) There are countless infants who will go through the terrible and painful operation, only to be actually murdered by God, at a completely unknown time (Armageddon), just because their parents happen to be alive at the time, and disagree with His neglectful parentage, or are speaking out against the cruel 'operations' on infants that He decided were necessary, or they simply had the private opinion that He was not actually a loving person, or even someone they could have empathy for, but rather an egocentric murderer.
Ironically, after He kills the children, and their parents who thought of Him in this way (at Armageddon), they would have been proven to be correct. Not much comfort, though.
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4) If there was an issue with a fellow doctor (Satan); who challenged that no parent or their child would go through a horrific and painful operation, that was unnecessary except for the purposes of the challenge, whilst doing whatever He (God) said.. along with holding Him in high regard, thinking of Him as fair and just, and even loving Him, whilst experiencing pain and suffering caused by the ailment He gave them and the operation He put them through..
Why did He not simply kill, render speechless or even just ignore the other doctor (Satan) who challenged Him?
Let me guess, because it wouldn't prove the other doctor wrong?
If some sadistic man said to you, 'Hey, I bet that.. if you were to give me your children, each one for an undefined time, maybe just for a day or maybe for over a hundred years..
I want to emotionally and physically torture them, cause them to suffer infinite types of agony whilst they call to you for help, and you would have to ignore their tears and pleas for rescue.. whilst you stand there and watch it all happen.. I bet they wouldn't still love you, think you are the best and most loving parent possible, and do anything you say throughout that time. Don't worry though, you can have them back and bring them to life, even give them eternal life when I'm through with them.. just as long as they are one of the few that will pass the test, or you'll have to leave them dead for giving up on you and being disloyal'.
..What would you do? Especially bearing in mind that this guy (Satan) had already tried to get your kids to do something that would get them killed, right in front of you (think 'story of the forbidden fruit', they were told they would die and Satan knew that, so he effectively tried to get them killed, bear with me here).
Even if he wouldn't shut up, would you feel that you HAD TO prove the guy wrong? Or would you: restrain him in some way/ignore him/render him unconscious/kill him? Surely you'd do anything but accept the challenge..
Would your sense of 'fairness' and 'justice' cause you to feel that you had NO CHOICE except to settle the issue with that sadistic man once and for all?
