hey guys.
i was recently talking to a old friend who is a very active elder.
i was talking about ' the truth' and he suggested i sounded like an apostate because i used terms like ' the society' and ' watchtower '.. i am aware that ' dubspeak ' has changed over the years and i am pretty sure that someone posted about it here but i can't find the thread.
In the mid 1990s when I was most active we used to talk about "the Society" all the time. Then there was an article telling us to stop using the term (around 1999?) so we did.
Phrases like "the Watchtower organisation" have always been borderline opposer/apostate as far as I know.
alone, without my safety net of "god" being there to remember me when i die.
after much consideration, examining science, history and using logic, i have come to the conclusion that there is no "god" at least certainly no loving, personal "god.
" shortly before my final conclusion was reached, i read an excerpt from an expression attributed to marcus aurelius, .
And like the rest of the Gallileans and the rest of sinful humans for that matter. All need to repent. The point is Jesus was contradicting the idea that disasters befall people because they are especially sinful. Of course Jesus also taught that all humans are sinful, but his point here is that people who suffer calamity are not especially sinful.
alone, without my safety net of "god" being there to remember me when i die.
after much consideration, examining science, history and using logic, i have come to the conclusion that there is no "god" at least certainly no loving, personal "god.
" shortly before my final conclusion was reached, i read an excerpt from an expression attributed to marcus aurelius, .
Well I'd be interested if any commentary reads it that way. I find the straightforward interpretation easiest, for example Matthew Henry:
Mention was made to Christ of the death of some Galileans. This tragical story is briefly related here, and is not met with in any historians. In Christ's reply he spoke of another event, which, like it, gave an instance of people taken away by sudden death. Towers, that are built for safety, often prove to be men's destruction. He cautioned his hearers not to blame great sufferers, as if they were therefore to be accounted great sinners. As no place or employment can secure from the stroke of death, we should consider the sudden removals of others as warnings to ourselves. On these accounts Christ founded a call to repentance. The same Jesus that bids us repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, bids us repent, for otherwise we shall perish.
alone, without my safety net of "god" being there to remember me when i die.
after much consideration, examining science, history and using logic, i have come to the conclusion that there is no "god" at least certainly no loving, personal "god.
" shortly before my final conclusion was reached, i read an excerpt from an expression attributed to marcus aurelius, .
Jesus says they were "no more guilty" than anyone else. Are you reading the same thing?
alone, without my safety net of "god" being there to remember me when i die.
after much consideration, examining science, history and using logic, i have come to the conclusion that there is no "god" at least certainly no loving, personal "god.
" shortly before my final conclusion was reached, i read an excerpt from an expression attributed to marcus aurelius, .
Like 13:4 Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? 5 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”
It doesn't sound like Jesus was saying that it, it sounds like he was saying bad things can happen to anyone.
alone, without my safety net of "god" being there to remember me when i die.
after much consideration, examining science, history and using logic, i have come to the conclusion that there is no "god" at least certainly no loving, personal "god.
" shortly before my final conclusion was reached, i read an excerpt from an expression attributed to marcus aurelius, .
Actually, according to the gospel of Luke, Jesus apparently thought that innocent people die in disasters and he did believe this was compatible with his view of God. (Luke 13) So the idea of a God who allows innocent people to die does not contradict what Jesus taught, in fact it is exactly what he taught.
To be clear: I am not saying that I believe natural disasters don't pose a challenge to the idea of a loving God. They pose a very serious challenge. And the 2004 tsunami is what made me lose faith in God.
What I am saying is that it is at least possible that there are some facts or some perspective I have not considered that could alter the situation in ways that I would currently find surprising.
alone, without my safety net of "god" being there to remember me when i die.
after much consideration, examining science, history and using logic, i have come to the conclusion that there is no "god" at least certainly no loving, personal "god.
" shortly before my final conclusion was reached, i read an excerpt from an expression attributed to marcus aurelius, .
How do you know we have "all the relevant data"?
How do you know that an almighty being cannot see a logical solution where you see none?
alone, without my safety net of "god" being there to remember me when i die.
after much consideration, examining science, history and using logic, i have come to the conclusion that there is no "god" at least certainly no loving, personal "god.
" shortly before my final conclusion was reached, i read an excerpt from an expression attributed to marcus aurelius, .
That's agreed then.
alone, without my safety net of "god" being there to remember me when i die.
after much consideration, examining science, history and using logic, i have come to the conclusion that there is no "god" at least certainly no loving, personal "god.
" shortly before my final conclusion was reached, i read an excerpt from an expression attributed to marcus aurelius, .
It's as if some people have simply never encountered surprises in life or have never read literature or even watched a good movie.
How often does it happen, even in mundane every day situations where: you think you've got everything worked out. You know all the details. You've thought about all the scenarios and all the logical counter arguments. You've covered absolutely everything. And then the event comes, or you meet a new person with a different perspective, or you find that you were wrong about some detail - and it changes everything. And it changes everything in a way that you simply couldn't even have imagined prior to the event, encounter, or new detail. Does that never happen? If it can happen in everyday life, if it's the basis for all good stories, then is it inconceivable that it could also happen in relation important to questions such as: is there a God and why is there suffering?
If we are going to imagine a scenario as awesome as an encounter with the almighty, it seems intelectually impoverished in the extreme, not even to leave open the possibility of a surprising outcome. To insist that we are going to be in a position to lecture God about how he got it wrong and that he will have nothing worthwhile to say in response. It tells us nothing about the ultimate questions themselves, about which atheists are in no better position to offer definitive answers than anyone else, and tells us everything about the closed mind of the person making the assertion.
alone, without my safety net of "god" being there to remember me when i die.
after much consideration, examining science, history and using logic, i have come to the conclusion that there is no "god" at least certainly no loving, personal "god.
" shortly before my final conclusion was reached, i read an excerpt from an expression attributed to marcus aurelius, .
He never said God couldn't tell him anything, in fact, the man in the video said that he couldn't tell God anything about himself that God didn't already know. (If God really is omniscient.)
Yes that's what he said. Which presumes that because he "knows" that he himself doesn't believe in things for convenience, therefore it is a "fact" about himself, and that any God would also "know" the exact same thing.
It's as if the possibility simply hasn't occurred to him that it could be otherwise. He can't conceive that he could genuinely think that his beliefs are objective, and not based on wishful thinking, and yet he be wrong about that. It's as if he's never considered that his views may be based on wishful thinking on a level which he has not appreciated or perhaps is not able to appreciate. It's as if he thinks that God, even if he exists, couldn't possibly have a greater insight into his mind than he has about his own mind.
What if he were to say to God:
I never believed in you, but you know me God, I arrived at my beliefs honestly and never believed anything just because it was easy, but because that's the conclusion I honestly came to. You can't fault me for that God.
And God replied:
Well actually those beliefs performed this or that function in your overall worldview and enabled you to do this and that while believing yourself to be consistent. You may have believed you were acting objectively but you were fooling yourself in this way and for the following reasons.
Or indeed if God gave some other reply which contradicted his understanding of himself in some important way which we can't even imagine or begin to sketch out. Maybe not, but if it's almighty God we are talking about here, can we really rule out the possibility of a surprising or informative reply?
In reality there is a mountain of evidence that humans are extremely poor judges of their own motivation and limitations of their own knowledge. There is a deep irony involved in the fact that it is often those who claim to be the most ardent rationalists who are most reluctant to accept the clear and voluminous evidence for the frailty and limitations of the human mind.
