Do you still believe in God

by solidergirl 52 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Guest with Questions

  My plan this morning was to read a few posts while having breakfast. I'll remember not to do that again.

  I haven't read the responses but Flying-High's caught my eye. At times I feel the same way. I continue to believe in God but sometimes wonder if He believes in me.

  In the Count of Monte Cristo there is a scene where Dantes, imprisoned with a priest, says that he no longer believed in God, and the priest saying ah, but He still believes in you. I so needed to hear that at that particular moment.
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  avidbiblereader

  Guest, sorry if anything I have said added to your morning where you did not hear what you wanted but

  continue to believe in God but sometimes wonder if He believes in me.

  He does, I wish people would stop equating the WT with God and Christ, old things die harder than what we might want to admit.

  abr
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  Guest with Questions

  avidbiblereader: I'm glad I came back to this thread. You totally misunderstood my meaning when I said "My plan this morning was to read a few posts while having breakfast. I'll remember not to do that again." It had nothing to do with this thread. It was just a joke because whenever I say to myself that I will only stay for a short period it's always longer than I intended. But I can now see that someone could misunderstand and think that I was offended with this thread.

  I have never been a witness. Sorry for the confusion.
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  avidbiblereader

  OK

  I have never been a witness. Sorry for the confusion

  I was and so were many here, that is where the problem started and still lies.

  abr, have a GREAT DAY and WEEKEND
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  OnTheWayOut

  All the Bible research that I actually did made me think.

  JW's told me that God could protect a book- a simple little book, to make sure
  that Humanity got the message from him. They told me the message wasn't
  just a manual, but was written in a way that caused people to have to dig in it
  for the treasures. Without getting all philosophical and technical about it, I was
  taught that Jehovah could make sure His Word reached all people, but He made
  that Word complicated and necessary to study to make His believers sincere.

  WELL, I was told that the Bible was all in harmony- I found out it is not all in harmony.
  I found out that the Bible wasn't well protected like they said. Even their own literature
  admitted the "GREAT APOSTASY" after the first century that allowed the Bible to be
  passed on without the name of God in it. Then later, I saw how liberal-with-thought, the
  translators of the NWT were. I thought about how the NWT English version was
  translated into the other languages, so that it could get even worse for them. (They
  didn't have the Hebrew and Greek translated to Spanish or Japanese, but went through
  the English to further pollute their ultimate result.)

  I just found all kinds of problems with the Bible and I learned how serious research and
  discoveries were ignored by Christianity. The books not included in the Bible canon
  may have been just as valid as the books in the canon. The Israelites "discovered" the
  Bible books that had been lost- isn't that precious? I imagine they were the first to
  have any Bible in that form.

  I am getting off subject. My point is that I decided that this Bible could not be from
  God. Besides all my problems with it, it encouraged Genocide and Racism and Hatred,
  then had another section that denied that it did that. If the Bible is not from God, then
  Christianity or Judaism couldn't be from God. That still leaves all the rest of the religions,
  so I am not dogmatic in my belief that there is no God. I was wrong for nearly 2 decades
  about JW's, so I won't insist that I am right now. Still, I won't get fooled again.

  I hope that answered your question.
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  Homerovah the Almighty

  Since God's were developed and structured on human ignorance is it socially responsible for us today to believe in one or many ? .........ummmmm

  In a contrary suggestion perhaps it is are responsibility for the benefit of mankind today to leave behind are past ignorances and work within the known

  reality of the world we live in.

  I personally think that it would be better for the sake of mankind to accept and embrace the fact that ancient times were indeed ignorant times

  Mankind on his own initiative as made the human experience better for himself with intensionally distancing with any religious ideology intact.

  I am an atheist as you can tell but I'm also a humanist at heart as well.
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  serotonin_wraith

  Thanks for the reply, blueviceroy. I've never quite got my head around this spiritual being/deist god idea. I still don't see how people can claim it exists now.

  I only speak from experience , in that I mean I have experienced something that is beyond anything this world can describe.

  Can you share this? I'm looking for more than a 'feeling' or 'I just know' though. The problem with that is that people have feelings all the time that Yahweh is real, that Jesus is real, that Allah is real, that Krishna is real, etc. Obviously, most of these feelings are misleading, as they're not ALL real.

  It is what I am inside ,and it is what you are inside , if you don't understand it without some further clarification , then i'm afraid there is nothing more I can add ..

  Stardust, energy, all that stuff. I agree if you mean that.

  As to proof what do you mean exactly?

  Well what makes you believe?

  Are you numb to your own sense of what you are?

  Do you have a presence of energy in your being?

  But with this, there's no reason to think it's a conscious force. We're all connected in some way, all we know of our universe is connected in some way, I do get that. Energy flows through everything. But why think it is some kind of god?

  I see it as completely natural. Awe inspiring sure, but still natural.

  I've had this kind of discussion before, and I end up agreeing with most of what being 'spiritual' is about to most people. But when they add this 'god' or something else that makes it more than just a natural event, I wonder how it can be done honestly.
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  dogisgod

  I would really like to but I trust no avenue (religion) available. Prayer? Who to...who thru...does it matter? Don't know.
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  B_Deserter

  "I think so many misplace their anger and pain caused by the WT onto them and as a result feel they no longer believe."
  
  I take exception to that. It's like telling a lesbian she is really straight but just hasn't "had a real man yet"
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  BlakeSeeley

  I think part of it is that the JWs are screwed-up with regard to the Bible in the first place.

  They teach that you have to study the Bible to learn the truth about God…like it all comes down to reading some “manual, because there’s gonna be a test later” or something.

  I like your example of the car. I think if someone were to write a biography of me, they couldn’t get everything about me in that book…yet that’s what the JWs try to make us believe about the Bible.

  The Witnesses “control” God in a way, I believe, by making God something you can learn everything about and no his mind on everything by reading his book. If you keep trying to find God in a book, you’ll never find him. He’s not just there. You only get a part of the picture.

  If God is really a spirit, someone mystical and beyond us, you have to have some mystical experience of some sort like most other religions do. The Witnesses don’t; they consider it all demonic. That might, and only stress MIGHT, be one factor for some to think it was all hogwash.

  But you can’t compartmentalize people who decide they cannot believe in God or don’t want to or feel there is no proof or reason to after leaving the JWs. They’ve all got their own story to tell, and I am sure they’ve all used their minds to come to the conclusions they have…maybe for the first time since being in the Watchtower where, as you know, using our minds to think for ourselves was anathema.

  Each person is an individual with a thinking mind, feelings, wisdom, and other deep aspects to them, too deep to fully describe here. We leave the Watchtower and we all start at one place and arrive…the best our minds and consciences and hearts can do…to some other place. I am now something I never thought in a million years I would ever be upon leaving the JWs, a Roman Catholic. Whether it’s an atheist or Catholic or whatever, at least we’re all free to follow the best way we feel we can.