given the fact that religion has been such a divisive force throughout history amongst all nations and tribes of the earth , i wonder how things might have been different had their been no god / creator / religion in the mix.. of course religion alone has not been the cause of all mankinds troubles & conflicts with each other , nationalism , polotics , racism , to name a few are also guilty of these problems.. but it seems to me that religion , beleif in a creator / god and its consequences of such a beleif are the cheif causes of mankinds troubles.. remember this is your thoughts if a creator , god , religion didnt exist in human conscience .. what are your thoughts ?.
smiddy.
but did not stop deists/ believers to greatly contribute to progress.
Yes, but not because they were believers... but in spite of it. It took the Catholic Church until 1992 to admit that Galileo had, in fact, been correct; and the Earth did orbit around the Sun- in spite of what the Bible said! And scientists used to believe that the centre of the Earth was composed of water- because the Bible said so. Religion has been a disaster for humans.
given the fact that religion has been such a divisive force throughout history amongst all nations and tribes of the earth , i wonder how things might have been different had their been no god / creator / religion in the mix.. of course religion alone has not been the cause of all mankinds troubles & conflicts with each other , nationalism , polotics , racism , to name a few are also guilty of these problems.. but it seems to me that religion , beleif in a creator / god and its consequences of such a beleif are the cheif causes of mankinds troubles.. remember this is your thoughts if a creator , god , religion didnt exist in human conscience .. what are your thoughts ?.
smiddy.
LOL, I don't think that makes much sense, prologos! What if there was a god/creator, but nobody knew? Whichever way... the forgetful, resentful, and totally childish god of the OT certainly didn't create the universe!
Without religion we probably would have had computers hundreds of years before we did. Christianity has always held back science.
what kind of god are you looking for?.
the one i want to hire has to fill these requirements:.
1. kind to a fault without being a namby-pampy hippy.
LOL, we are all gods already. All you need is in your head- where god has always existed anyway, lol.
Man has a symbolic identity that brings him sharply out of nature. He is a symbolic self, a creature with a name, a life history. He is a creator with a mind that soars out to speculate about atoms and infinity, who can place himself imaginatively at a point in space and contemplate bemusedly his own planet. This immense expansion, this dexterity, this ethereality, this self-consciousness gives to man literally the status of a small god in nature, as the Renaissance thinkers knew. -Ernest Becker.
when you were a devout jw.
did you feel that you had an actual "relationship" with jehovah/god just from praying to him and reading the wt or bible?.
or that this was actually even possible deep down?.
To the OP: if you click on the 'search' box in the blue banner at the top of the screen, and type in 'relationship with jehovah' or 'relationship with god' you will find many threads on this topic. It is one of the puzzling things about this religion. I never got baptised because I couldn't make Jehovah 'real'- and as I found out later, there is a good reason why this is so difficult...
waisted days and waisted nites.. freddy fender..
Shattersphere- Lost In The Flames:
No God can save you now
My God, I have no faith
I'm stuck in this f****d up place
(My son, I'm right here next to you)
I try to live and learn
But I still feel the burn
(My son, I'm here for you...)
I've spread my love and all my faith
I've done it all in seven days
I never thought it would be this way
And I'm still bleeding
So I fall down to pray
But I think I've lost my page
(My son, it's lost in the flames)
Lost in the hands of time
Hands of time take me away to where I want to be
Lead the way because I can't see the life in me
I was lost in the flames as I screamed
My God, I've failed again
I wait for your crushing hand
(My son, I'm afraid it's too late)
Is this for real?
Save me now
Life's tough when you're young and trapped in a KH with a bunch of fools, lol...
a couple of days ago in town i met a jw guy i have known since he was a kid in diapers, he is now an elder and must be 40 yrs old, still a kid to me, though.. he gave me the spiel about "we would love to see you come back " , i said that i could not come back to the religion i had left as it no longer existed (a line i got from my friend bill), this elder replied that there "had been changes, but the basics remain the same".. i just was not quick enough with this one, i just sort of nodded at that and went on about what i simply could not swallow as "truth".
overlapping generation etc etc.. what he was meaning by the basics being the same is that nothing has changed on the "what jw's don't believe in" front, i.e trinity, immortal soul etc.
the reality it is that the basics of jw/wt teachings about what they do believe in have all changed !.
Well, they are still waiting for Armageddon... no change there, lol ...
i really can't wrap my head around how people can still consider god loving with such atrocious biblical accounts such as, 1 samuel 15, (god ordering the slaughter of amelikite baby's and children) 2nd kings 2, forgot the verses (god sending bears to maul 42 children) and many others.have you ever asked a witness or anyone elsewhat they think about these accounts?
what was their response?
i'd love to ask one, but unfortunately i'm still physically in the cult and i wouldn't want to raise any suspicions.
Mormons don't mind a good massacre...
the constant references to 'window washers' as something derogatory.. i understand the context of it-that most jws are uneducated, and unqualified to do much more.
but sometimes the references seem snobbish, almost mean-spirited.
one poster, on another thread, essentially referred to window washers as 'losers'.
I don't see anything wrong with jokes about window cleaners. It's a fact of life about JWs- the congregations really are usually made up of working-class people. The real joke is that the elders are no more 'spiritual' than my cat, and they probably spend most of the meeting thinking about the jobs they will be doing in the next few days. It's just the blind leading the blind. At least in a real church, they clergy may have some years of theological training- and although they really don't have any answers, at least they understand the questions.
do you beleive our spirit lives on in other dimensions or are we really just dead?
?.
From Terry Lane's book 'God: The Interview'(1993):
GOD: So at what point in the evolutionary process did Homo-sapiens acquire a soul? At the transition point from Neanderthal man to Cro-Magnon perhaps? Somewhere in the evolutionary process humans must have acquired this peculiar characteristic which you apparently do not share with any other creatures. Did Cro-Magnon man have a soul?
Or Neanderthal man? Do you think that I've got a bunch of Neanderthals up here somewhere enjoying eternal bliss- a bunch of hairy angels with beetling brows whose knuckles drag on the clouds? Do you see what you are proposing?
You know that every living creature on the earth has come about by a process which began in the Big Bang. Out of all that stardust that was flung around at the time life has emerged and organised itself into forms of ever greater complexity. And in the process one lot of genes have got themselves set up in a body with an outsize brain, rather than one with a fancy tail or great muscles for hopping.
And you are proposing that at some point in this process-fairly recently, apparently-the Homo sapiens branch of the evolutionary tree took a unique turning and somehow acquired a characteristic which it alone enjoys, called a soul.
But you can't tell me exactly when this is supposed to have happened and what the difference was in the creature before and after this curious development, except that presumably before it didn't have the capacity for immortality and afterwards it did.
Does that sound very probable to you?
Houston, we have a problem...
yup, the apostate is happy.
i shouldn't be, right, because my life is empty without "jehovah" and the organisation.. but i just got a job at one of the best theme parks in the world, which is so what i want to do, and it's the first permanent job i've had since i lost my government job in 2012!.
the job pays minimum wage but i don't care because working in tourism and entertainment is what i want to do!
Excellent! You deserve some good luck after all you have been through.
