As an ex-JW I have certain fixed things burned into my brain. Is there anything more powerful than the idea that the supreme ruler of the universe is going to kill you??
But, such an idea, upon examination, is ludicrous in the extreme. The idea of a Supreme Being who gets pissed off is laughable. These are ancient ideas from unelightened, frightened primitive minds. Stop and ask yourself how the world can be "out of control" in the face of an all-powerful being with the power to make things happen (and prevent them).
The whole "Divine Plan" of the ages is rickety and homemade; very low-tech and ill-advised upon closer examination. Instead of putting things in order when they go awry (like any competent Chief Executive) we are told this Supreme Being has to come up with an emergency plan that will enable him to prove to lesser creatures that he is not a liar! The world becomes this vast wind-up machine where this goes here and that falls off there and hits a lever which pops up and.....a RUBE GOLDBERG cartoon! 6,000 years it takes to "vindicate" God's name? Huh?
What utter nonsense! I can understand somebody standing in Athens in 800 B.C. entertaining the idea that Zeus might hurl a thunderbolt at him if he doesn't grease the palm of the local priest with a bribe---because they didn't know any better. It was barely feasible--but, maybe a safe bet to be religious and play it safe. But, thousands of years later we have found out how things actually happen. The mysterious has become comprehensible.
Divine agency is a thing of the past--the unconscious mind! We make our own lives now. The undercurrents of demons and ghosts and things that bump in the night are a dream we have awakened from. Our nightmares now are the Muslim fundamentalists who STILL BELIEVE all those silly stories are true! The terrorists are terrified of the modern world because it is proving them to be backward idiots with their heads stuck in the sand. They will not face up to the modern world and the destruction of their world view. So, instead of growing up and joining a productive society; they simply wish to destroy the proof that they are clinging to nutty belief systems.
Why should we be like them? Why fear the unseen and quail at a patchwork book (the bible) that is a vast accumulation of constant revisions of extinct ideas, fears and guesswork of bygone civilizations? We live TODAY--not thousands of years ago!
Would you treat an illness with leeches? Would you bleed a man who has pneumonia to let out the "bad humours"? Why then, cling to the idea of a wrathful deity who is "coming to get you" if you aren't a good sheep??
Be free. Just be done with Medievalism. Jump into the pool and swim.
I had to start all over and learn how the world really works.....from scratch.
I got a book on Physics and learned how things work.
I read some books by Joseph Campbell about how all Myths are the same from culture to culture and religion to religion.
I read about the Documentary Hypothesis and learned how the Bible was the work of several redactors working from disparate sources. I studied historians. I read enlightenment authors and traced the path of civilizations. In short--I started all over. I got rid of the nonsense that had accumulated in my brain that was a FALSE idea of how the universe works and replaced it with state-of-the-art information which is current.
So, it is not unlike a fellow who, one day, throws away his rabbit's foot, burns his astrology books, simply takes the shortest root under a ladder laughing at his previous superstitious view of the real world.
You are on your own. There is no vengeful deity. The real enemies are the religious nuts who won't let go of fairy tales and who won't let you get on with your life.
If you don't join the collective mentality of the cultists; they seek to annhilate you by wishing you dead at Armageddon.
There is no Armageddon. Armageddon is today: wipe out the mysticism from your brain and join the real world. You'll enjoy your freedom. You really really will.
Terry
Danny cares and shares