Ruby said: "Something along the lines of a truth process would establish why the asian tsunami caused such huge loss of life in that area under those social conditions"
... Something along the lines of God stopping the Tsunami, would have established that he loved the people who were killed by it, and that he loved their families.
Mark 4:35
That day when evening came, he said to his disciples,“Let us go over to the other side.”
36 Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him.
37 A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped.
38 Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”
39 He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.
40 He said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”
41 They were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”
...
Ruby said: "Another aspect of Theism in action would be to ask the people who lost family and property how they feel now. Do they still see themselves as victims? Which organisations or what thinking helped them to heal?"
Have you ever lost someone in death that you couldn't ever replace? Some wounds never heal.
You sound like a philosopher with no experience of what they are talking about.
defender of truth
JoinedPosts by defender of truth
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2596
The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday
by cofty inyesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.
we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.
they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.
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defender of truth
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2596
The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday
by cofty inyesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.
we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.
they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.
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defender of truth
Psacramento said the following:
"A god of love can still choose HOW and WHEN to express that love and it may be in a way that we find horrific based on our understanding."
"As some hard-line fundamentalist would say, 'No one is innocent, so no one is above suffering'.
We may not like the argument, but it is a valid one."
"I openly admited I do NOT have an answer for this question that would satisfy an unbeliever and presented one that I personally have a hard time refuting myself and believe MAY hold part of the answer.
All I know is that God does allow suffering and I do NOT know why."
"It may seem to you to be morally repugnant to allow the death of 250K people and I agree 100%, even the death of ONE person is one too many if it can be avoided, BUT that doesn't have any bearing on whether there IS a reason for it happening.
We may not like the reason or agree with it, but it is still a reason."
"If it doesn't then suffering has no point, if there is a purpose (such as to develop compassion) then it (suffering) has a purpose."
@Psacramento- So.. even with all of your theological training, after spending time putting together the main points that you've made regarding the topic, from your posts on this thread;
the best that you can offer in defense of the Christian God, in a discussion of the important and life-altering (life ending for many victims) issue of why God allowed the tsunami to kill those people and berieve countless others, is basically:
"All these death must have benefited someone, although I don't know how they did.
This is an argument that even I don't feel comfortable with or find entirely satisfying. I may or may not agree with it morally depending on whether or not it was necessary, which I do not know.
All suffering may or may not have a purpose, but my point is that we should understand that it could have a purpose, although nobody knows what it is yet."
Without your even providing a specific example, this is comparable to defending illogical nonsense like the Trinity doctrine merely by saying:
'Well, God COULD BE (from a human point of view) entirely illogical, contradictory and incomprehensible, or He may not be, but you must admit that it is possible that such a God exists, although I am not entirely convinced that he does, I just have a hard time refuting it as being a possibility. Just because the Trinity's existence is wholly unverifiable; along with being contradictory, illogical and nonsensical, doesn't mean that there is not a valid and believable explanation of it that we are yet unaware of.'
... After all, nobody can PROVE that all suffering from natural disasters has no hypothetical greater purpose to make us 'better' people;
except, that is, by looking at the available evidence, such as stories from events like the Tsunami (if you have even read or seen the accounts of what some families have been through), or by using our own human logic. Logically, for instance, the people killed in the Tsunami are not now 'more compassionate' people..
And if the people who lost loved ones are supposed to have been purposefully allowed to go through that horrible experience, then their loved ones were seemingly nothing but cannon fodder, expendible pawns that were better able to serve a greater purpose once they were dead.
Therefore, your statements seem essentially meaningless, unless I've missed something.
To summarise:
Your hypothetical God, (who IS love, but at times can choose not to show love, according to you)
that you defend with a hypothetical argument about all suffering having a purpose, hasn't told us, even if he existed, what the hypothetical purpose for allowing suffering is...
(maybe because he doesn't exist, therefore there is no purpose? No, that's too simple.) -
77
Give me a reason not to go back
by chukky 594 inbeen out now for 10 yrs but life is a mess.
starting to think its because i have no spiritual compass.
why shouldn't i consider going back?.
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defender of truth
a Watcher isn't being sarcastic, he is a believing JW.
....
And as for slimboyfat..
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/265690/1/Goodbye-JWD-JWN-my-last-post#.VAEK5l2t-o8 -
2596
The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday
by cofty inyesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.
we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.
they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.
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defender of truth
"But she has lost her joy and sense of purpose."
humbled- I'm sure that mostly everyone reading this thread feels deeply for her, and having lost someone myself recently in a sudden and shocking way, I hope you can give her my condolences, if that means anything from a complete stranger..
.....
According to the best defense that Psacramento has offered on behalf of fundamentalists, such an event as the accident involving your friend's son had a purpose.
It seems odd to me that (even assuming the accident did have a purpose, which I find repulsive personally) this so-called loving God has not told her what that purpose is, or that all kinds of suffering has a purpose, or even let her know that her son is safe and well in some kind of afterlife.
Yet the Christian God IS love?... -
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NEWS UPDATE: Stats from Bethel
by Da.Furious ini received some statistics from a friend in bethel in brooklyn.. here are the numbers:.
jw.org:840 million visits1 billion publication files downloaded150 million videos watched/downloadedwebsite available now in 540 languagespublication available in 700 language for downloadover 100,000 online bible study requests availablenew caleb/sofia video will be available from 1 september (topic: caleb & sofia's visit to bethel) .
pioneers: 167,000 vs 2010 no of pioneers: 132,000 - increase of 6.1%p.a.
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2596
The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday
by cofty inyesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.
we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.
they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.
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defender of truth
Ruby- Are you suggesting that God did not know how to make the earth capable of supporting life without natural disasters? Or that God can't work out how to undo his work now, and is powerless to prevent these disasters from happening?
Please be specific in saying how this relates to the topic. -
152
HOW TO AVOID THE A-HOLE SPIRIT OF SOME HERE...
by DATA-DOG in1) take meds for your megalomania and delusions of grandeur.. .
suggestions welcome.. .
dd.
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defender of truth
As Viviane said, I too would like to see a specific example from FlyingHighNow.
I have never pressured anyone to be atheistic. -
2596
The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday
by cofty inyesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.
we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.
they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.
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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 -
152
HOW TO AVOID THE A-HOLE SPIRIT OF SOME HERE...
by DATA-DOG in1) take meds for your megalomania and delusions of grandeur.. .
suggestions welcome.. .
dd.
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defender of truth
Pressuring someone to become atheistic really would be a foolish waste of time.
It'd be like telling someone they should believe in something just because you said so.
Questioning and challenging a belief does not equate to pressuring someone to stop believing in something, in the same way that saying things like 'you atheists are ignorant of the evidence of Gods design, how can you not see it?' is not pressuring someone to believe in a God.
'Believe in a God or be destroyed/burn in hell, or never speak to your family again', on the other hand, is pressure. Those religions know it.
Atheists don't get brownie points or rewards for making people think about their beliefs. It is mostly done in self-defence, to protect others from controlling religious groups, or to stimulate thinking so that people can see through flimsy excuses or superstitions.
Why would an atheist pressure anyone to not believe in a God? -
77
Give me a reason not to go back
by chukky 594 inbeen out now for 10 yrs but life is a mess.
starting to think its because i have no spiritual compass.
why shouldn't i consider going back?.
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defender of truth
If you wanted to share what country you live in perhaps a meetup could be arranged. But if you need a religious group, it may be that you don't quite know yourself and your own moral standards, or you may be unsure.
That being said, even atheists are supposedly welcome in the UU, so if you feel that you need social structure and a group with a moral code...
Let us know what you decide. As an active JW, I know that I'd rather throw myself under the nearest car than see anyone unwillingly trapped in this endless cycle of meetings and service. I'll never convert or return to any interested person.
If you do not HAVE to return because of family issues, PLEASE don't throw your life away on a controlling, pathetic little cult.
This is some info on the UU movement, if you are that desperate for some structure/purpose..
"The movement proclaims the importance of individual freedom of belief, and it includes members from a wide spectrum of beliefs....The movement does not have an official definition of God, but allows members to "develop individual concepts of God that are meaningful to them." Members are entirely free to "reject the term and concept altogether...Services in the movement's churches do not make much (if any) mention of God. They emphasise human, ethical and social issues, and do not assume a belief in God."
...
"Unitarian Universalism is a liberal religion born of the Jewish and Christian traditions. We keep our minds open to the religious questions people have struggled with in all times and places.
We believe that personal experience, conscience, and reason should be the final authorities in religion. In the end religious authority lies not in a book, person, or institution, but in ourselves. We put religious insights to the test of our hearts and minds...We affirm the worth of all women and men. We believe people should be encouraged to think for themselves."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/atheism/types/unitarianuniversalism.shtml