If all we need to do is pray for forgiveness from Jesus as we lay dying to be saved then our behaviour in life does not matter nor does it seem fair since those whose only crime is to die too quickly are at a disadvantage for salvation. It makes no sense. But then again, none of the salvation schemes make any logical sense so this shouldn't be a surprise.
Liberty
JoinedPosts by Liberty
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84
Heaven and Hell : Life after death
by bioflex ini am starting this topic to discuss the title.
i know many people on this forums dont believe in the idea of god , and even jw's reject the idea of a fiery hell even though the bible clearly states is.. this video contain testimonies osome people who even considered themselves as atheists until the point of practical death.. i just want to emphasize what one person said in the video at the point of death - " what if god is real, and what if all that which was being said about god was true" .
hope this helps whoever it may.. and one more thing, no matter what you do or how you live your life, just know that even at the point of death, jesus christ is able to save.
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84
Heaven and Hell : Life after death
by bioflex ini am starting this topic to discuss the title.
i know many people on this forums dont believe in the idea of god , and even jw's reject the idea of a fiery hell even though the bible clearly states is.. this video contain testimonies osome people who even considered themselves as atheists until the point of practical death.. i just want to emphasize what one person said in the video at the point of death - " what if god is real, and what if all that which was being said about god was true" .
hope this helps whoever it may.. and one more thing, no matter what you do or how you live your life, just know that even at the point of death, jesus christ is able to save.
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Liberty
I am baffled by the whole "I died and saw Heaven/Hell and then came back to warn you all about it" since it would assume that God either makes mistakes and has to change His mind about when to send folks to their eternal rewards or that He doesn't want people to be saved by faith but rather by "evidence" when letting some come back to talk about the after life.
If God wants to provide real evidence to save people from damnation it would make more sense to bring really-really dead folks back from Heaven or Hell after several years to give thier indisputable testimony to convice us rather than just the brought back quickly-almost "dead".
Hitler could come back and tell us all about Hell and DNA from his family could be used to verify that he was the real deal and Martin Luther King Jr. could come back and tell us about Heaven and use his family's DNA to verify as well. This is far better than easily disputed obviously live people telling us thier visions/delusions. God could use several people of varying moral or religious bents to satisfy the skeptics and save us from damnation and prove heaven awaits us without wishy-washy faith in the unseen.
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sincere question .....What could make you believe in God ?
by caliber inplease discuss why you don't believe in god and that which could convince you to believe in god ??
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Liberty
I would argue that the morality of God is a valid point of evidence. If God is the creator of morality and yet lacks morality He is a contradiction. Contradictions are evidence of falseness. If I am sickened and repulsed by the horrors evident everyday in "Creation" then God either cannot be real or He cannot be good. If I believe it is wrong to needlessly torture living things then why did God create a Universe so full of it. If God is the Creator of all this torture, pain, and death then how can I be expected to belief in something so horrible and yet call it intelligent and good? It is scientifically impossible.
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sincere question .....What could make you believe in God ?
by caliber inplease discuss why you don't believe in god and that which could convince you to believe in god ??
?.
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Liberty
I'm not so sure that Galileo had much of a choice when it came to professing a lack of belief in God since he was imprisoned and threatened with torture for merely discussing the clear and factual observation that the planets moved. He was at the 'mercy" of Church officials who routinly did things to people so horrible that it would make a decent person sick just imagining them so I don't think he would be candid about any atheistic thoughts.
Freedom of thought and religion were not recognized rights during Christianity's heyday so any evidence presented from anyone who professed belief not born in the last 200 years is very suspect considering the pressure they were under. To anyone who lived throughout a majority of Christian history horrific torture, imprisonment, death, and impoverishing shunning were very real threats to anyone who dared to discuss a lack of belief. In many Islamic countries today it will still buy you torture and death.
Even if societal pressure was not responsible for their professions of faith the fact that they were steeped in the folklore of their times does not mean that it is scientific to believe in the supernatural. very smart Greek and Roman scientists and philosophers may have mentioned dieties from their cultures as well but I don't think that this proves Zeus , Mars, or Hercules were real (nor that they even literally believed in them).
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sincere question .....What could make you believe in God ?
by caliber inplease discuss why you don't believe in god and that which could convince you to believe in god ??
?.
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Liberty
Since the basic "nature" of the Universe is cruel and uncaring we can only hope that there is no intelligent being responsible for it's creation. We can observe that all the living things known to us are subject to a myriad of horrific conditions which would clearly be considered torture if it were inflicted by another self aware and intelligent being upon them.
The Universe and all living things in it look exactly as one would expect if they arose from random chance rather than an intelligent plan. Birth defects, genetic disorders, the need to eat other living things which are constantly in short supply and/or are hard to get, the need to drink fresh water on a planet covered mostly in undrinkable salt water or deserts, extremes of heat and cold, beings like whales which are fully aquatic but must come up to breath air, parasites, disease, toxins, pain, death, etc. all speak to a non-intelligent origin or an incrediably cruel and sadistic one.
If God exists He has also chosen to either not communicate with us at all or has chosen a confusing array of puzzling books, beliefs, and religions which are self-condradictory and highly illogical. They illustrate a tantrum throwing child who is all-powerful yet demands we powerless apish primtives worship Him. It would be like me demanding that ants recognize me as a superior or I would stomp on and burn them while ranting about how ungrateful they are.
If God did reveal Himself in some incontrovertable way to me it would not change my opinion about His cruelty and stupidity so I'm not sure it would mean much to me. He deserves to be diposed by revolutionaries. I don't believe in the literal Devil but consider it very telling that the closest and most intelligent mythical intimates of God (the Devil and his demons) could not stand Him either and reject his cruel and ego-maniacle rule and defy Him.
Luckily , the evidence is pretty conclusive that such a being as God does not exist so I sleep much better knowing it is just random chance which is unconsciously cruel and coldly impersonal.
Just a quick explaination about a complex subject.
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The Dawkins Delusion
by brotherdan inso, i recently finished reading "the god delusion" by richard dawkins.
i read it with a certain amount of hesitation.
after all, i am still recovering from my disappointment at realizing that the wts is not god's organization.
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Liberty
Giving examples of "bad" religious people may really just be a way to counter the constant refrain from theists that human beings must believe in God in order to be "good". My parents argue this with me all the time and yet the evidence I have seen with my own eyes over 49 years of life clearly defies this assumption. Living in the Bible Belt of the USA I've seen that just having a large God believing population doesn't change the percentage of aberrant/criminal behaviours.
People are people and a certain percentage of any population are going to exhibit "bad" behaviour despite being Islamic, Christian, Jewish, Communist, etc. If Believing in Jesus were enough then there should be lower percentages of criminal statistics in places like Oklahoma City while Bejing China should be a cesspool of criminality. In short there is no difference between a non-Jesus population and a Jesus population when it comes to bad behaviour.
Dawkins, perhaps doesn't spell this out as well as he should, but that's what I got out of it. Catholic priests can be child molesters as can JW Elders, or Baptist ministers, or Communist Party chairmen. I'm not saying that Christians should all be perfect, I'm just pointing out the evidence that a human being is just a human being and belief in God is statistically not important when it comes to acting badly. Believing in God does not make you a better person. There are just good people who do or do not believe in God and bad people who do or do not believe in God.
As to faith, I won't speak for Dawkins, but for me alone. I find it impossible to have faith if there is no evidence. I don't know about you, but God has never spoken, appeared or revealed Himself to me in any way and the culture I was raised in presents for its strongest evidence a silly book of fairy stories (the Bible) that can be disproven over and over again. So no, I no longer have fath that an invisible super being named Jesus or Jehovah is running the show in the same way that I don't believe that Allah, Zeus, Oden or that pink unicorns make the Universe work and will judge me for masturbating while lusting after naked women. I have faith in things that provide some evidence for their existence like the reality of real things most of us live with every day. Allah, Zenu, Molloch, Thor are not real for me just as Jesus is not real for me. I have never seen or heard anything that provides any evidence that He still lives and controls the Universe, hence I have no faith in Him. What is faith to you? I guess I don't understand why you claim Dawkins and I don't understand your version of faith. Is faith belief without evidence?
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Why Did God Commission Russell to Preach to People Who Would All Die Before Armageddon?
by neverendingjourney ini've posted this thought before, but i've yet to get a lot of feedback.
it's also not a point i see brought up very much on jwd, but it seems like a very simple, logical way of disproving witness doctrine/eschatology.. witnesses believe that the parable of the wheat and the weeds is having its fulfillment in our time.
that's to say that jehovah began to gather his people in these last days so that those rightly-disposed can survive armageddon.
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Liberty
Great observation! Just one of many lines of evidence that can make the "whole JW house of cards" come tumbling down. Time has always been the Watchtower's biggest enemy. Time alone has 100% factually proven the Watchtower wrong over and over again. Objective time alone with no "apostate" opinion/propoganda involved has proven that the Society is/was completely wrong on a majority of their core beliefs.
Unfortunately, cult believers( like JWs) are unmoved by facts, logic, and reality. Another logical question to ask would be, What good does it do any serious warning movement if it cries wolf for well over 100 years and counting without any of the multiple relevant prediction cycles coming true? Why would God (if there were one) support such an ineffective wolf-crying turn off unless He were stupid and/or just plain cruel? Straight thinking tells us that He would not and yet JWs are convinced that they own "The Truth" about these multiple "nothing happens" warnings.
The excuse that God would need this much time to set up a "salvation infrastructure" as explained to BluesBrother doesn't hold water either since using this logic God should have just provided a continuous line of "true religion" from the advent of Christianity for 2000 years in order to build the largest possible population of "true belivers" to be saved when Armageddon finally happens. The Watchtower claims that there was no such true religion until they came on the scene relatively recently.
Nothing they have proposed makes any damned sense and yet people still continue to believe it. How can they have a vital and immediate warning mission which stretches on and on with no real end in sight? It is a complete contradiction. This alone is evidence for those who claim 1975 was never predicted as the End by the Society, how could it NOT be, considering that the End has always been right around the corner year after year for well over 100 years. Any year throughout this entire period has been the possible date of Armageddon since that is the entire stated purpose of being a Jehovah's Witness. They are always and only predicting that the End is near year after year. This is the stated purpose of their entire existance and yet they do not see how self contradictory such a position becomes after a few hundred years.
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Mind Control
by brotherdan inso i've been reading stephen hassan's book on mind control and he made an interesting point that made me think about myself.
he asks the question, "what makes some people just walk out of cults on their own, while others require much harsher measures from others to get them out?".
most of you know that i was thoroughly indoctrinated as a jw.
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Liberty
I think one of the primary reasons why only a certain percentage of people are able to leave a cult has to do with their self-honesty combined with how much they value objective truth. When exposed to even minimal alternative view points those predisposed to self honesty take the chance to reevaluate and test their "reality" against the evidence. Many people in the general non-cult population are not honest with themselves nor do they value objective truth(reality?) but this is less of a dailey concern for them than for a cult member since the cult member is required to examine and reexamine their actions and beliefs with much greater concentration along with the greater consequences.
The fact that most of us on this forum live in Western-style democracies does allow for us to be exposed to alternate views of reality, very unlike cult-countries like Saudia Arabia or North Korea where alternate realities are severly prohibited and punishable even by death, hence 98% compliance. In short, I think the percentage of self-honest people is the same throughout all populations but we see them more clearly in a cult like the JWs that thrive in mostly open societies(which are tolerant of cults since they are not directly competing with them for aligiance)
As I recall, Brother Dan you have pursued a higher education which exposed you to alternate realities beyond the "normal" JW, but even for those who avoid exposure in this way the free society leaks a great deal of allternative ideas in TV, radio, books, magazines, movies, games,"worldly" aquaintences, etc. This alternative information combined with a truth seeking personality leads to the realization that there may be other ways of looking at reality
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Favorite MOVIE SCENE - any genre - your pick!
by AWAKE&WATCHING in.
i realized i was hi-jacking another thread so i thought i would start my own topic.. one of my favorite movie scenes is the "to tip or not to tip" scene in reservoir dogs.
i don't care for all the blood in tarantino movies but he is, without a doubt, a genius.. .
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Liberty
Among my top favorites is Roy Batty's pre-death monologue in "Blade Runner". A beautiful scene.
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Disrespect of the Bible
by brotherdan ini am going to get a lot of flack for this post, but i need to do it.
i want to preface this by saying that i don't judge any of you and i believe in the right of freedom of speech and freedom of religion, including your freedom to not practice one.. however, i'm finding a trend among some ex jws here.
notice the word "some".
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Liberty
Just a reality check. You could not possibly have even the most cursory knowledge of science since you say its conclusions were based on faith. This is not an insult, just a fact. You need to study your subjects with greater intensity before you can make such definitive statements. You are inexperianced with living in the non-JW world, a natural scientific world. The natural world is completely different from the JW world view you are used to. Believe me I know. I have lived in both worlds now and they are diametrically opposed. You must receed further and further away from the JW world before you can see these differences clearly. You have not been out long enough, it is not your fault it just takes time and knowledge.
A book or two about science vs. religion is a start but hardly an "examination". Years of study are required in our search for "reality" and "truth" and you have only just begun. I highly suggest you take college level courses in all the sciences or at least read several books which are not religious in nature. You have been influenced for years by an anti-scientific cult indoctrination so you should at the very least be willing to equilize this with a sound scientific foundation. You cannot make an informed choice otherwise. You will also benifit from being freed bit by bit from unconscious JW superstition as you grow in scientific knowledge and critical thinking ability.
I wish you only the best in your search for truth.