SBF: For many people the idea of God explains why there is something rather than nothing, because he is understood to be a being outside of material reality who is the ultimate cause of everything that exists. For many people this makes more sense than simply asserting that reality exists and no further explanation is required or even possible.
Who said "no further explanation is required or even possible." People are searching for answers and Krauss's "something from nothing" is still far from accepted, but it's progress. We will get it one day. We will laugh at primitive understandings of dark matter/energy and the like.
So man created the gods to explain rain, lightning, sunshine, etc. Even as man developed, gods were a great explanation for anything and everything. Then science developed enough to start making gods less needed in explanations. We then had the god of the gaps- gaps in our understanding of how things happened.
Slim, we grew up as a species to the point where we realize that the god explanation is flawed. It just pushes back one level at the question of how we came to be. We would still have to explain how "God" came to be or accept that something was eternal or came from nothing.
I struggled with "If that eternal something had to be a god, is it because of needed care and guidance?" Well, between sincerely turning to God for guidance and winding up in a dangerous mind control cult, and looking at all the thousands of children torn away from their parents to die in a tsunami, and seeing senseless pain and suffering among people, I concluded that a caring and guiding god doesn't exist.
Man is still just living with the ideas of that same god who made the rain and lightning. But a group of control freak priests in the middle east twisted at the idea of god enough to add that "He" was nothing but good. Before all that, even "Jehovah" was a warrior god. And then it got worse- politicians in Rome trying to salvage their empire added Jesus to the mix and "How dare you attack Jesus?"
When a person tells me their prayers are answered, and that's proof-enough, I just fall back on tsunami victims and suffering humans and my own cult time. Yeah, that's proof enough to me that praying for small enough "miracles" leads to coincidences. And we are grown-up enough to stop believing in a tooth-fairy-type of god.
OnTheWayOut
JoinedPosts by OnTheWayOut
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Proof of God
by MrDantastic ini'm an atheist as i do not see any evidence for the existance of a god.
i encourage critical thinking in everyone and am ready to debate anyone on whether or not there is a god and what that god might be like.
hmu..
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OnTheWayOut
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Spiritual "Protection" - a Menace on Psychological Development
by Wake Me Up Before You Jo-Ho innot quite a week ago, @lost in the fog created a thread entitled: do you have this illness?.
https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/5187824140681216/do-you-have-this-illness.
in my year of being on this forum, i have browsed many a disillusioned thread of ex-jehovah’s witnesses expressing similar symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder when detailing their awakening - my own story included.
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OnTheWayOut
"Watchtower’s suppressive approach to the flock freezes their development to that of a helpless child, unaware that critical thinking even exists. It strips members of opportunities to solve their own problems under the guise of protecting them and dressing it up as “convenience”."
So true. Instead of the equivalent of a college education, many JW's are homeschooled to protect them from "worldly" teens wanting sex, and they barely qualify to pass the high school equivalency test. They wind up introverted, but don't even know that because they can stand at a door and do a presentation in front of a stranger. (The animated Disney movie TWISTED can help ones see what that is like.) Even the ones who go to public schools are discouraged from anything beyond basic involvement and they avoid after-school athletics, music, dance, anything that makes them a more rounded person, and then are told that college is bad.
JW's don't really have opinions. They are used to looking to their Watchtower library to see what they are supposed to think about issues.
Many who leave Watchtower by way of inactivity suffer incredibly "in the world" because of their inability to think for themselves and a skewed sense of morality. -
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Do you still want to be identified as a Christian?
by eyeuse2badub inmost americans want some form of religious identity - even atheists are creating churches.
by j. warner wallace | fox news.
the number of self-proclaimed christians is shrinking in america.. i’ve been collecting data on this trend for over 10 years, and the surveys reveal an important truth: fewer people claim a christian affiliation than ever before, and those who claim no religious affiliation are the fastest growing group in america.. but while fewer people may belong to christian churches or communities, americans will likely retain some form of religious identity – especially if what’s happening in europe is an indicator of things to come.. a new pew forum survey conducted in western europe reveals that christianity is waning there even faster than it is in the united states.
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OnTheWayOut
I think the data in the initial post is skewed a bit.
In my humble opinion, Americans desirous of a religious identity are not increasing in numbers.
American Football is the Sunday religion here.
Polls suggesting high numbers of "believers" are about those who will say it, but don't really live it. Heck, a higher power could be the aliens who helped build the pyramids. -
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The biggest news of the year for Mr. and Mrs. Totally ADD
by Still Totally ADD inthis is bigger than christmas and birthdays wrap into one.
thanks to the australian royal commission our youngest son has woke up.
we received a e-mail from him tonight where he apologized to us for shunning us all these years, how bad he felt for doing this.
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OnTheWayOut
Well, it won't post. It just says AWESOME!
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Teachings/beliefs that fade into oblivion without explanation.
by smiddy3 in"millions now living will never die" that teaching persisted for a number of years from the early 1920`s ,sad to say that their would not be anywhere near millions alive today.and with another few years their won`t be anybody alive .. the year 1925 was supposed to see the resurrection of faithful men of old such as abraham issac and jacob and noah who were to be princes in the earth.
of course no such thing happened and we don`t here anything more about that prediction anymore.. the time period between adams creation and eves creation was an excuse why armageddon was delayed in about october 1975 because they didn`t know how much time had elapsed between the two.
that`s all forgotten about now.. six thousand years of human history was supposed to have ended in about october 1872 according to studies in the scriptures vol.2 1906 , the "time is at hand" page 11 (forward 1916 ) puts the start of the one thousand year reign of jesus christ as of the year 1873. so in 1906 they the i.b.s.a.
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OnTheWayOut
-That originally, a water canopy rendered the entire planet temperate and this was the source of the flood waters
-That human lifespans fell drastically after the flood because of some sort of shielding effect provided by this water canopy.I know that they don't say any of that any more, but I would assume that is still current doctrine.
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The Ultimate Solution to the Mishandling of Abuse within the bOrg
by Wild_Thing ini feel like the world needs to wake up and realize that bethel, the home of the governing body in warwick, new york is the "vatican" of the jehovah's witness world.
their doctrines, edicts, and policies affect every jehovah's witness man, woman, and child around the world.
i don't feel like the politicians in foreign countries understand this.
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OnTheWayOut
Governments can mandate certain things. So there could be special circumstances due to individual governmental laws that cause things to differ in Australia from anywhere else.
But the only ultimate solution is the admittance of wrong and ending any involvement of children beyond attending with their parents (such as the recruitment work), telling parents and children about what has happened, and always always always treating any accusation of a crime as if it were as serious as murder (because it certainly is that serious to a victim).
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Do You Think Many Jehovah’s Witnesses Truly Believe?
by minimus ini did for many years even if i had doubts that i would put on the back burner.
but i thought the majority of witnesses believed, even if they were “weak” in the faith.. obviously, we have elders , pioneers and ministerial servants that are here and they are not true believers.. do you think many jws simply do not believe what they are preaching?
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OnTheWayOut
It's the cognitive dissonance thing- They mostly DO BELIEVE the Watchtower crap, but it creates a mental discomfort when they think about it in a way that tries to be specific, such as planning for getting old and dying "in this system" or just counting on the end arriving before old age arrives.
My mother accepted that the end did not arrive in 1975 because "we don't know how many years passed from Adam's creation to Eve's creation, therefore YADDA YADDA YADDA." But since it has been so long since then, she has just become a JW with her self-thinking ability on the matter changed in a way that Flipper describes in this thread- her brain neurotransmitters have been singed. "Well, the end is still soon and no matter what explanations Watchtower gives for delay, it's coming."
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New brother to have a bible study with
by Akid48 inwell i moved to a new congregation, and i have no one to study with and i didnt have a bible study in weeks and i was loving but one meeting my aunt said ''im going to set up a bible study with brother bob (dont his name)''.well come to find out brother bob is a man that puts a lot of pressure on you to join the school etc.. well right now im like fuck,because i dont know how to deal with brother bob so i just wanted to know if any could help me..
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OnTheWayOut
The school is all-volunteers. It is not a requirement. I also agree with moreconfusedthanever.
p
You have to start asserting your feelings on this, no matter how uncomfortable it gets.
"No, I will not join the school." Many sign you up without your permission at that age. Just don't do it. Treat it as the first step of a slippery slope toward baptism. Field service is another one. I also agree that if they make you get out there, don't offer to say anything to "householders." -
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Very little that is factual in the Bible?
by TerryWalstrom inhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mryipltf3i.
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OnTheWayOut
I would run off with Bible scholar Dr. Francesca Stavrakapoulou. A hottie who knows her stuff.
I might have thrown into the argument that some of the best fiction is set in an actual historical past- GONE WITH THE WIND, THE THREE MUSKETEERS, A TALE OF TWO CITIES -
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The urban legends we heard as JWs!
by stuckinarut2 inhow often have we heard some sort of sensationalist urban legend as jws?.
here is an example i was told as a kid:.
the experience of a sister who knocked on a door and was greeted by a big fierce looking man- intimidating and mean.
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OnTheWayOut
There was some third world JW pioneer who was going to have to stop pioneering to get food for his family. As he prayed over the matter, a huge wild animal (apparently not of the killer kind) came running into his hut and he easily killed it and had enough food for a couple weeks and his situation got better in that time to never come off the pioneer list.