No problem, glad to help. Have you done a search via the TrustOnline link? I can't afford it.
defender of truth
JoinedPosts by defender of truth
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Anybody know what happened in this lawsuit, Frank Otuo suing the WT of Britain and an elder for defamation?
by AndersonsInfo inthis lawsuit was discussed on jwn five months ago: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/284881/brave-ex-elder-sues-over-defamation-over-fraud-claims?size=20&page=2 .
anybody know what the present disposition is in this case?.
the following link is to the actual newspaper article: .
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defender of truth
ToesUp said:
"At 6:15 they state, "it's not the responsibility of a religious organization to protect children from sexual abuse by other congregation members.
They provide education to parents on the risk of sexual abuse."
'Providing education'
is the only responsibility of the organisation?
Just telling parents what to do in order to protect children, that is all they are able to do?!
Your average JW will likely accept that is all that the organisation can do.
After all, the organisation is basically just a legal structure for a literature printing corporation.
It can't control what anyone does at a local level...
But wait a minute!
What about the Elders that the organisation trains, appoints, and then tells what to do on a daily basis?
Isn't the organisation responsible for what they instruct Elders to do in these cases?
And what kind of education and instructions do they receive from the organisation, regarding child molesters?
'We will tell you who is a predator or not.
And we will tell you whether to call the police, or if you should stay silent.
Listen, obey and be blessed..'
And even with the letters from the Governing Body, or the lack of a legal necessity to report child abuse in the UK and some parts of the US... when it comes to handling such serious matters as the exploitation and harm of children, you would think that an Elder would want to warn their flock and protect them from danger.. not only spiritually, but physically.
Quote from an excellent article on the Mark Sewell case:
" A church [Watchower] spokesman said:...
“The spiritual and physical welfare of Jehovah’s Witnesses is of paramount concern to the elders who have been appointed to ‘shepherd the flock’ ." -
754
Theists, why does God allow suffering..
by The Quiet One in..specifically, the suffering of animals.
you can talk about free will/sin/people choosing to not listen to god etc to explain human suffering being allowed.. but how can you love a god that allows animals, that haven't sinned or chosen to not have anything to do with god, to have their short lives ended in often long, drawn out, painful ways.
i could list stories i've read that would probably make you feel ill, but i'm not looking to shock anyone or start an emotional debate.
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defender of truth
Fisherman:
Can you please just state your point, or maybe take some time out to think on what has been said, and come back with a reply that is actually a response to the question of the topic?
Rather than just picking on parts of others posts and being vague?
You stated earlier that I am ignoring what you were saying about knowledge and belief, but frankly I'm not even sure what point you were trying to make.
People lead busy lives you know, forum discussions seem to be more productive when someone answers a point directly and clearly, not giving vague responses and long stories with no explanation.. then expecting everyone to take the time to work out how their post is relevant.
In my last post, I took a lot of time, and I don't have much to spare, to plan out a response to you.
To help you to see that trying to reconcile animal suffering with a loving and caring God is really a waste of time. Especially when evidence for that God is utterly lacking, in reality.
Everything becomes clearer once you stop wasting your life pondering on theological questions, trying to relate a cold and merciless universe to a loving and personal God who designed it..
a God that I am certain does not exist, based on the evidence available in this thread and throughout natural history.
I was trying to help you, in my own way.
You then pick on the word 'perhaps', seemingly ignoring the context of the post, that shows I am an atheist.
I am certain that a caring God does not exist because there is no evidence of it, at least none that does not fall apart under scrutiny.
Whether an uncaring and impersonal God exists is not the theme of this thread, it's about the concept of people believing in a personal God that they can love, yet ( even if it were to hypothetically exist)
it has allowed, and is allowing animal suffering to continue with no logical justification. So how is that loving or caring?
If you can read from the OP onwards and follow the context of the discussion, you will find that to be the case.
The Bible God (a concept of a divine being based on attributes mentioned in the Bible) is often brought up because millions of people still believe in and worship it, as though their god existed and gave a damn what they do or are going through right now.
Logic cannot be applied until someone defines their belief.
So what kind of God do you believe in?
A God that created all things and cares for the creation?
When I used the word 'perhaps', I spoke in a way someone might speak to a child and say, for example: ''Well, I don't think Santa will be able to bring you an F1 racing car this year, it might not fit down the chimney. Perhaps you need to choose a different present?'...
The parent in the example doesn't want to destroy the child's belief that a Santa Claus exists at this point, but someone needs to tell them that they cannot have what they want, and they need to consider a different option because reality doesn't afford us the power to make everything how we would like things to be. That's life. Santa Claus and Superman don't exist.
I think that my point was clear, seeing as the next two posters understood it.
As to your story, if you had examined the available physical evidence (by measuring the money out in this example) in the first place,
you would have discovered the fact that you did not have the right amount of money. Your own assumptions, as well as your trust in the teller, had led you to the wrong conclusion.
I am guessing that was your point (until you explain yourself clearly), and also you are inferring that atheists are making assumptions.
A person can go on believing that they have a true understanding of reality, and they feel that they 'know' a higher power must exist that cares for his creation, despite all evidence to the contrary. (Like you thought you had the correct amount of money).
That's up to them.
But some of us try to help others to first measure there beliefs, such as a belief in a loving God, against (referring to your illustration)
the 'ruler' of evidence and reason, as the creditor in your story did, because it saves a lot of otherwise wasted time.
Some even throw away their lives because of a belief.
The 'God of love' of the Bible is both internally inconsistent within the Bible, and also with all available physical evidence throughout millions of years.
So he can be verified as not existing, by using logic and the available evidence.
Do you have a response as to why your loving God has either caused or allowed (dependent on your own view of creation) innocent animals to suffer and even to go extinct, long before the so-called 'fall' occurred?
I'll await your response, though I expect just another long story or a quote of one word from my or someone else's post.
In which case, I'm not wasting any more time in replying. -
754
Theists, why does God allow suffering..
by The Quiet One in..specifically, the suffering of animals.
you can talk about free will/sin/people choosing to not listen to god etc to explain human suffering being allowed.. but how can you love a god that allows animals, that haven't sinned or chosen to not have anything to do with god, to have their short lives ended in often long, drawn out, painful ways.
i could list stories i've read that would probably make you feel ill, but i'm not looking to shock anyone or start an emotional debate.
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defender of truth
I was replying to what you said to Caedes. Sorry if I was unclear.
Just saying what I thought, I'm not having a go at you.
I'll leave you to think, then.
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754
Theists, why does God allow suffering..
by The Quiet One in..specifically, the suffering of animals.
you can talk about free will/sin/people choosing to not listen to god etc to explain human suffering being allowed.. but how can you love a god that allows animals, that haven't sinned or chosen to not have anything to do with god, to have their short lives ended in often long, drawn out, painful ways.
i could list stories i've read that would probably make you feel ill, but i'm not looking to shock anyone or start an emotional debate.
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defender of truth
Fisherman: Perhaps the Bible God does not exist, and the Bible's description of his qualities are nothing more than the imaginings of men who died a very long time ago?
Perhaps the god you believe in did not curse anything after any kind of 'fall' due to any kind of 'sin', and he never designed anything in the first place.
Once you give up fighting to reconcile endless suffering, going back millions of years into the past before anybody had 'sinned', with the concept of a loving and just higher being that designed it all..
Then everything starts to make sense. Don't ignore evidence and logic just because you want to believe something. That's all.
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IMPORTANT NEWS: ABC News' Nightline will air a segment about the Watchtower (JWs) Wednesday morning at 12:35 a.m. EST
by AndersonsInfo inimportant news:.
here in the united states, on wednesday morning, march 11th at 12:35 a.m., est, barring any breaking news the day before, the program, nightline, will air as their lead story a 9-minute segment about the watchtower (jehovah's witnesses).
the program is 30 minutes long and this segment is only one part of the show.
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754
Theists, why does God allow suffering..
by The Quiet One in..specifically, the suffering of animals.
you can talk about free will/sin/people choosing to not listen to god etc to explain human suffering being allowed.. but how can you love a god that allows animals, that haven't sinned or chosen to not have anything to do with god, to have their short lives ended in often long, drawn out, painful ways.
i could list stories i've read that would probably make you feel ill, but i'm not looking to shock anyone or start an emotional debate.
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defender of truth
Whenindoubt, I hope you respond to my post, those examples should prove that predation and suffering predated 'sin'. -
754
Theists, why does God allow suffering..
by The Quiet One in..specifically, the suffering of animals.
you can talk about free will/sin/people choosing to not listen to god etc to explain human suffering being allowed.. but how can you love a god that allows animals, that haven't sinned or chosen to not have anything to do with god, to have their short lives ended in often long, drawn out, painful ways.
i could list stories i've read that would probably make you feel ill, but i'm not looking to shock anyone or start an emotional debate.
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defender of truth
Whenindoubt said:
"Whether man sins against man,
or the animal kingdom against each other, or man against animal,
vegetation, water, earth, or air, is an inherited trait by sin. Therefore sin continues..."
You seem to keep saying that animal suffering
(specifically that of animals harming and killing each other in various ways)
only happens because the world and all those living on it are either 'sinful', or affected by Sin.
If 'sin' is the answer, then why does evidence exist that animals hurt and killed each other millions of years ago, long before mankind supposedly brought sin into the world?
Here are two examples for you, but then you'll have to do your own research:
"Entelodonts lived in the forests and plains where they were the apex predatorsof North America's early Miocene and Oligocene, consuming carrion and live animals and rounding off their diets with plants and tubers.
They would have hunted large animals, like the cow-sized artiodactyl Eporeodon major, and the sheep-sized cameloid Poebrotherium wilsoni, dispatching them with a bite from their jaws.
Some fossil remains of these other animals have been found with the bite marks of entelodonts on them."
"Entelodonts, sometimes nicknamed hell pigs or terminator pigs, are an extinct family of pig-like omnivores endemic to forests and plains of North America, Europe, and Asia from the late Eoceneto early Miocene epochs (37.2—16.3 million years ago)"
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entelodont
"Scientists working on fossils from Kangaroo Island, South Australia, have found eyes belonging to a giant 500 million-year-old marine predator that sat at the top of the earth's first food chain...
It is considered to be at the top of the earliest food chains because of its large body size, formidable grasping claws at the front of its head and a circular mouth with razor-sharp serrations.
Supporting evidence of this predator's dominance includes damage to contemporaneous trilobites, and even its fossilised poo (or coprolites) containing the remains of its prey...
The existence of highly sophisticated, visual hunters within Cambrian communities would have accelerated the predator-prey 'arms race' that began during this important phase in early animal evolution over half a billion years ago."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111207132908.htm -
754
Theists, why does God allow suffering..
by The Quiet One in..specifically, the suffering of animals.
you can talk about free will/sin/people choosing to not listen to god etc to explain human suffering being allowed.. but how can you love a god that allows animals, that haven't sinned or chosen to not have anything to do with god, to have their short lives ended in often long, drawn out, painful ways.
i could list stories i've read that would probably make you feel ill, but i'm not looking to shock anyone or start an emotional debate.
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defender of truth
[These will be the right posts. I,m sorry, Simon.]
"any sovereign ruler or government entity can define what is good and what is bad, not you.
The definition of good or bad can mean that he can drop a nuclear bomb destroying animals and people and whatever he wants."
Fisherman...
Your reply to the issue of how a loving God can allow animal suffering is that
'God can kill or cause suffering to anyone he wants to, including innocent animals,
therefore he is right to do so.' ?
Apparently, to Fisherman and so many other believers..
Might = Right.
Strangely enough, most believers in the Biblical God would usually disagree with that philosophy
(think of Hitler and his views of what was 'good' and 'bad'),
except for when their concept of a 'just and loving' personal God is being questioned.
'But God can kill any people or creatures that he wants to, because he is God.
Whatever he does is right, and he has the right to do it because he has the authority!' is what believers (those who defend the concept of a loving God) essentially say.
Matt Dillahunty responds to that argument much better than I could..
(Please watch this, it's only 8 minutes)
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ecYTgCrVhGM