just read this thread.. sounds a lot like a character from the Meredith Gentry books written by Laurel K Hamilton... feyness. psychic powers passed down from families...
I guess books are powerful things after all..
I'm curious- why 'god'?
by rimfiredancing 34 Replies latest jw friends
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PrimateDave
Welcome to the board, Rimfiredancing. This is an interesting topic. With respects to the topic, I do not believe in the god(s) of the Bible, but I used to.
I was raised as one of Jehovah's Witnesses. Before becoming Witnesses, my parents and grandparents belonged to churches. In fact my European-American cultural heritage is traditionally based on the presumption of the accuracy of the Bible and the existence of its god. I have seen it on this board, too; the premise goes, "Jehovah's Witnesses are wrong, but my cultural heritage is right. The Bible is true and God exists." I think that kind of conclusion is most often prevalent among those whose arguments are over doctrinal issues such as the Trinity or whether the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses is God's approved instrument. These are the ones you are primarily addressing in your post.
In my experience, however, and at the opposite end of the spectrum from yours, my complete lack of any "supernatural" experiences helped me call into question the Bible and its god(s). Once I permitted myself to objectively study the theory of Evolution and the Documentary Hypothesis of scriptural origins, I no longer accepted the Bible as anything more than a piece of literature, created over centuries and modified to suit the cultural perspectives of its writers and editors.
Looking back I ask myself: When I was a Witness and a believer in the Bible, knowing what the Bible said about its god, why did I believe in him and defend him and "his word"?
The answer is not so difficult to perceive now.
Any belief system that resorts to logical fallacies should be held suspect, but most religions are not likely to educate their followers about said fallacies, are they? As a Witness I was basically ignorant of logical fallacies.
We have a tendency to accept the first things told to us, the things we learn early on in life, as "true", and to view with skepticism anything which contradicts those first held beliefs. When I was young I was told that there was "one true God." It took decades to overcome that belief. As Timothy Campbell explains in his "Introduction to Antiprocess" website, when we encounter information that causes us mental discomfort, our subconscious filters it with a "stop thought". If a believer encounters the thought "God is not Love", then subconsciously s/he will filter it with a "stop thought" until the mental discomfort is eased. That mental discomfort is visibly evident as emotional agitation expressed towards the origin of the disagreeable thought. See why even Christians aren't very "Christian" in a religious argument.
Then, there is a tolerance for cognitive dissonance that allows one to hold contradictory thoughts at the same time. For example, righteous people don't commit incest. The Bible says that Lot was a righteous man (who got drunk and had sex with his daughters!). King David was a righteous man (who committed adultery and murdered the husband). Or, God is the Supreme Ruler of the Universe, but we have to suffer to prove his point that we can't live without him. Funny how much that sounds like the old "end justifies the means" argument.
Now, about your paranormal experiences, I am curious. Just because I have never experienced "odd" things, doesn't mean I cannot accept their occurrences. At least by now I would know enough not to attribute them to "Satan and his demons". I agree with your assessment of scientific "proof". At best we have theories about how the world around us works, though for the most part I think many theories are pretty solidly based on observable evidence. Still, as individuals we exist only in our own minds which receive the filtered content of our senses and then we filter some more. I've read about Ceremonial Magick, Tarot, and meditation. Any thoughts on these? A bit off topic, I know.
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Eliveleth
rimfiredancing,
When I first read this post, I thought it was just another attempt to get a reaction. But you have been on my heart all yesterday and all night and this morning I thought I would reply to your question.
I cannot answer for every Christian, we are all at different places in our walk with God. What we do agree upon is that Jesus is the Son of God and He came to earth to show us the love of His father and to die for the world.
I believe God has given me some insight into the things in the Old Testament, that I too wondered about. Many people have the tendency to think of death as the end of life. Probably because they do not believe in God, thus this life is all there is.
One thing I will address is genocide: There have been three times in the Bible that I can recall that whole nations or cities were wiped out. The flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, Canaan. I myself questioned," why God?" and I feel because of things I have read in the Bible that removing them from off the earth is to put them in a place to teach them. There is a scripture in 1 Peter 3:18-20 which intimates this. It says: "Christ died for sins once and for all time. The One who did what is right died for those who don't do right. He died to bring you to God. His body was put to death. But the Holy Spirit brought him back to life.
" By means of the Spirit, Christ went and preached to the spirits in prison. Long ago they did not obey. God was patient while Noah was building the ark. He waited, but only a few people went into the ark. A total of eight were saved by means of water." Genesis 6:5-7: The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. So the LORD said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth"
God cares about mankind. Nothing He does is because he hates us. It says God was grieved and his heart filled with pain because he saw what the majority of mankind was doing. It says "(he) wiped mankind from the face of the earth". Could they have not been transferred to another place? There are a lot of things in the Bible that give clues, but not details. I think that we have to really search to find why things happened the way they did and that seem to portray God in a negative way.
When people do bad things or break the law, where do we, as humans, put them? In prison. We take them away from the rest and put them in prison to prevent them from harming others. I believe this is what God does also. I believe that God removes them to a place to really rehabilitate them, unlike our prison system that merely removes them. Jesus said as much when he spoke of the day of judgment at Matthew 11:23-25 and Luke 10:12,13: "I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town. "Woe to you, Korazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes." Why would He speak of repentance if it were not possible.
Instead of the general diatribe against God, would you please give some specific cases that you are speaking about? Why you feel the way you do about Him? I don't know that I have all the answers you are asking for but I would like to try and give you some of the reasons that I love God in spite of all the things that I don't understand.
Please give me example of the places in the Bible you are speaking about and I will try and give you my thoughts on them as well.
Love and hugs,
Velta
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rimfiredancing
kinjiro- I'm familiar with Laurel K. Hamilton's faerie series. It wasn't my cup of tea, being basically the same premise of the Anita Blake series except without the angst about having a great deal of sex and sexual partners.
Simply because ideas are used from one history (as Laurel has done for her fey series), does that then imply that all things mentioning these aspects are forever after ganked from a novel? Laurel K. has done some admirable *research* into the history of the Tuatha De Danann ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuatha_Dé_Danann ) as well as other original faerie histories ( particularly of the Unseelie Court, which is a sort of 'dark side' of the faerie world, compared to modern twinkles and star shaped wands that never actually existed in the histories). She did not, in fact, make it up out of her own imagination.
What now the less than subtle suggestion that I read some Merideth Gantry books and decided 'yep, that's what I am?'
Some families have reputations for 'having the Sight' or whatever ways the locals want to describe it. It's no big thing when it comes down to it: there is little understanding of how these things work, so is it so impossible that such things could be genetically inherited? The human genome has a ratio of 'junk DNA' that range from 80 to 90%, which means that there is a LOT of DNA that science currently has NO idea as to why it's there. For me, it's not a big issue, because I have grown up with this.
I appreciate that you have a different world view. I don't appreciate it being assumed that my world view is a cardboard pastiche because it's different. -
rimfiredancing
eliveth: while I appreciate that you obviously believe in the bible, I honestly find your answers do nothing to address the observation that I made, which is *how people can still believe the bible after having read it*.
My reading of your post (and I'm aware my reading could be flawed) is that you seem to have done what others I know have done: you've changed *in your own mind* what's actually there. The scriptures, as far as I'm aware, are pretty plain on the subject of death, being killed by god, and what happens after death: the jews had *no concept whatsoever* of life after death. 'His spirit goes out, he goes back to the ground' is one that springs to mind. So, given this foundation, it is pretty obvious that in reading the genocidal accounts, god is a) not happy with his creation and b) decides he's going to do something about it. At *no point* in the accounts is there *any mention whatsoever* of their being destroyed in order to be shifted somewhere else for 'teaching'- "I will *wipe mankind out* is unequivocal language. The verse says he 'felt pain', because people appeared to be a bad idea. So he wiped them out.
The verse you quoted is very ambiguous, so any inferences made would, at least to me, be interpretations and 'matters of faith'. I'm not interested in faith, which seems to allow all manner of rationalisations, manipulations and distortions that allow the person doing the 'interpreting' to skew things whichever way they see fit. How is this any different from what the jw's do? It isn't. It all hinges on the claim of the person interpreting that *they* have the 'correct' version of things.
god murders people in the bible. Lots of them, in lots of different ways. As other posters have pointed out, he also praises incest, murder by rape, child sacrifice and a whole heap of other things. Given what you say about its ambiguity, I think that god perhaps doesn't actually have a clue? If the claims of all powerful that are made for god are actually accurate, why can't he write a book that is clear and makes sense? It's meant to be a manual for negotiating life, but it's actually more like those manuals one gets where the English has been translated from the Japanese by a native Swahili speaker who has done two terms of Japanese at school. Not terribly helpful.
And therein is part of the problem, because as soon as this point is made, the cry of 'matters of faith' goes up and it all goes down the drain. Was god actually unable to foresee the confusion that would arise from utterly ambiguous writings?
You mention that we put wrongdoers in prison, that that's where mankind puts them. Actually, the Hebrew god *ordered them to be killed*. Yup, he said they were to be stoned to death, depending on their crime. Many people today are executed for their crimes. Some people cite the scriptures as reason for their punishment schedule, because god started the trend. Even if your interpretation is correct, *it's actually not stated as such in the bible* but rather you are interpreting scriptures to make up the picture.
Instead of interpreting, can you show me the scriptures that *clearly state*, not suggest, what you are saying? If it isn't in the bible, why not? Why would a just and loving god leave people confused as to what he actually means? If people who were wiped off the face of the earth are actually somewhere else, why isn't this clarified instead of being left to dubious and debatable interpretation? Is this god's modus operandi, confusion and conflict, and if so, what does that say about the kind of god represented?
I'm not actually interested in going over specific scriptures because of the whole 'open to interpretation' thing: I'm interested in the scripture being read just as it is, discussed just as it is, in context with the writing around it. As it stands, the scriptures that you have used to support your argument actually don't read the way that you are interpreting them. god clearly says, wipe them off the face of the earth, nothing more, so anything else is something that you are interpreting by adding other scriptures to the story and saying 'these apply here because of this'. The *bible* doesn't infer that at all.
What do you read when you stop interpreting things to make it easier for you to believe in it? How is the god of the bible read then? How do you feel about god when you stop rationalising scriptures together and simply read that god didn't like how things were going with humans and wiped them off the face of the earth by drowning them? Drowning is a distressing way to go, as well as punishing the earth for the 'sins' of humans: if god felt so strongly about it, why didn't he just remove the life force from the condemned? There are instances in the bible of him doing that, so why the 'global' deluge, dramatics and cruel way to do things? Wasn't he upset at the supposed cruelty of humans? Was the whole point to strike terror and fear into the remaining humans and make them frightened of what could happen to them if they didn't do things god's way? Sounds like god works like the b0rg, if that's the case.
I understand that faith has its own definitions: I'm coming from the perspective of someone who observes a great deal of harm being done in the name of god by people who all think they have exclusive understandings of the 'correct' interpretation of the bible. The world is full of examples of what happens to any organisation where the guidelines and rules are murky and ambiguous... -
rimfiredancing
jaguarbass: I fully grokk the zombie analogy, we use it a lot in our family as it's really applicable. There are a number of theories that endeavour to find the root cause of the insanity (Alan Carter's dopamine addiction theory, which is in essence a stress response, is one that looks at the situation with a view to 'what is actually going on here?'), but the bottom line is that it's getting to the point where possible explanations are becoming irrelevant: the ecological situation on the planet is going to lever a shift one way or the other.
Which is in part why I'm interested with regards to this particular blind spot in many people's minds: I'm always looking for ways to uncover my *own* blindspots and use the experiences of others to explore my own subjective view of the world. I'm even curious about the questions regarding life that we have, because they seem to emerge from a shadow space rather than from a joyous one: humans seem to really struggle with the actual experience of being *alive* and that seems to be directly linked to the absolute mess that they make of it.
"Where do we come from and why are we here?" seem to my observation to be *inward turning* questions that actually draw us away from the experience of the physical world and the beings around us. They create an immediate sense of disconnection and a following immediate sense of isolation, distress, dissociation and fear that then causes people to go off and do all manner of bizarre things, such as religion, civilisation, destroying their planet and each other, etc etc. We fear our singularity, the physical embodiment that we think puts us in isolation from *true* joining with another.
I have been wondering if this is a manufactured fear, a deliberately cultivated one. It certainly serves a multitude of very specific purposes. What if we existed, experienced life, without that fear, without that sense of isolation? What if we experienced life as being a unique part of a world matrix that existed simply to experience what it's like to be 3 dimensional? What would our way of being in the world look like then? From all my mind experiments around these possibilities, people become virtually psychosis free (psychotic in this instance being the way I describe how civilisation trains and causes people to behave), they lose all motivation to do harm to themselves or others and they become childlike in their willingness to engage with the world around them.
Curious, that. -
Eliveleth
A few other thoughts. On Incest. Probably you are speaking of the account in Genesis of Lot and his daughters. Do you believe
that God told Lot's daughters to have sex with their father? Is there anything in the Bible that indicates that God was pleased
with that?
The Bible says that "Lot was not aware of what they had done at the time".
I am not excusing him for what happened, I am just saying that humans behave in ways that are hard for me to understand,
even today. The account in Genesis says: "The older daughter had a son, and she named him Moab ; he is the father
of the Moabites of today. The younger daughter also had a son, and she named him Ben-Ammi ; he is the father of the Ammonites
of today" If you read the accounts in the Bible about these nations, you can see that God did not approve of them or bless them.
How could it have been God that instigated this?Should we condemn America, as the Muslims do, because of the perversion and immorality that goes on every day, every minute?
How can immorality be legislated? Would we want it to be dealt with like it is in the Muslim world?I think that in some of the cases you listed, you are condemning God for human actions. Juat because it is written in the Bible
does not mean that God approved of these things. The Old Testament records the things that the Nation of Israel and the Israelites
did. It is candid, does not just tell us the good things they did, but the evil as well. But many of the things were done because
the nation did not listen to God's laws and followed their own human nature.Your partner said: *There is NO level of 'proven' in science, because science understands that in order for something to
be 'proven' it would have to be tested under every possible opportunity in the universe*.You said: *There is NO level of 'proven' in science, because science understands that in order for something to be 'proven'
it would have to be tested under every possible opportunity in the universe*.I think this rule should be used when dealing with God and the Bible. Each person decides in their mind and heart what they
perceive as "true". There are things in the universe as you say that have not, cannot be proven. God is one of these things.
We can only work with our experiences, in what has happened to us as individuals.`You said: (I am) psychic (and a very strong one), an energetic healer and someone around whom 'supernatural' things happen all
the time, which means I'm either demon possessed or a 'witch' according to the bible and fit only for burning, spitting on,
denouncing etc etc, so *very* subzero interest in conversion).You said,according to the bible. Don't you mean according to some religious people? Many who claim to worship God have their
own ideas of what the Bible says. They interpret passages to mean what they perceive it to mean. I believe in the supernatural
and supernatural things have happened to me, but the difference in us is, that I believe it is from God. A lot of what people
condemn about the Bible and Christianity comes from their experiences with religious people.You said: "I find that people are completely unwilling to take on the burden of 'proving' that the paranormal *isn't* possible,
but of course that's besides the point as far as they consider it."I do not deny that people can have psychic abilities. I do not understand it, but I do not condemn it either and I have found
no where in the Bible that does. In fact, it doesn't mention it, to my knowledge. In fact, your belief in the paranormal is
very similar to one believing in God isn't it? It is true to you because of your experiences. I believe in God because of my
experiences with Him. Everything in my dealings with God has been for my good. Even my years with the Watchtower has made
me stronger in my faith. It has made me search to be able to prove to myself things about God and the Bible. I refuse to accept
what man tells me and take it at face value anymore.Love and hugs,
Velta
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real one
I see Satan is accomplishing his mission in some respects....what a shame
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rimfiredancing
Dave: thanks for your reply, I really enjoyed it. I agree with you on the points of logic fallacies ( a subject I have just begun diving more deeply into, as a means of exploring the foundations of post civilisation communication, post civ 'tribal' societies and the psychology/thinking that supports a sustainable and healthy way of being) and also the 'stop thought' mechanism. I've long been interested in uncovering my own blindspots and observing the reactions and responses I have when these are touched on: in this way I've been looking for patterns that can assist other people to move through their own blindspots and fallacies without the degrees of volatile reaction, rejection and upset that generally go along with the process. To my way of thinking, these things form part of the story of 'why civilised humans make such a colossally bad job of living on the planet and where the tribes got themselves stuck in a rut'. It's a long title, but the story intrigues me. :D
I have heard of Timothy Campbell's work but was unaware of the existence of a website: I shall call on the Oracle of Google and go exploring after this weekend, as we're househunting in the rainforest this weekend. Thanks for the heads up about it.
As to the off topic, I'm quite happy to share my experiences with you: in fact, I was talking with my sisters last night (as in by telephone, not ouija board or telepathy, heh heh heh) and I got onto the subject of our mother, who died of cancer last April. I was not close to our mother, who was extremely violent and abusive when I was a child (and I was the recipient of that abuse); over the years she settled down with regards to the violence but she was never a mother figure, which is why what's been happening these past few weeks had me really puzzled. I have been very aware of my mother's presence lately, to the point where I have felt at times that she was standing right next to me: I have been aware of her in a way that she never manifested in life and have felt very strongly that she was trying to get a message to me.
I asked my sisters about it and it turns out that they have been experiencing it too, to the point where one sister and her eldest daughter (who is 15 and also has our family's abilities) have been seeing an apparition in their house, in my niece's bedroom. My niece wasn't scared, she was simply aware it was happening. It's been happening for the past month. In addition, my sister has experienced multiple incidents since her father died (16 years ago, she is his only child) of strange things happening that clearly indicate she is being 'watched over'- one of the main ones is the 'leaping Santa', an ornament of her father's that periodically likes to dance, leap into the air and move itself around the shelf it sits on, sometimes while watched and other times not. It's a given in her home that the santa simply moves itself around: it disturbs her youngest to the point that my sis has put the santa in her own bedroom.
This is just one small example of the kinds of things that have been going on in our homes since we were all kids: my children are used to what we call 'sliders', etheric beings that are fond of turning up in any house I live in. My 10 year old recalls as a younger child playing with some of the 'strange little animals' that used to come out of the walls in one of our houses; she even recalls what is was like to hold some of them in her hand, as they weren't afraid of her and she wasn't afraid of them. I'm looking forward to moving to the country as sliders seem to dislike the constantly noisy house we are currently in and all of us are finding it a little odd not to have their presence around.
All my kids reported seeing people others couldn't see, from childhood; each of the children have different kinds of abilities in this area and are all comfortable with the 'otherrealms', ways of being outside traditional 'normal'. They all accept that I 'know' things about people, they have spoken in childhood of the places they remember being 'before' (and this was when I wasn't openly talking about such stuff because of being in the b0rg- even when I wasn't talking about it as if it were natural, it was still happening. When we *did* talk about it, I never attributed things to satan or satanic forces, because what was happening with my children was exactly what had happened to me as a child and I refused to label it as 'evil' or 'wrong' just because *other* people were paranoid).
Since childhood I've 'known' things, to the point that at one time my mother's born again group decided I had been 'annointed by spirit' to prophesy. This was fine for them up to the point where I started talking about things I *wasn't* supposed to know in the congregation, such as who was cheating on who with whom, what was actually going on in people's heads, etc: then I was labelled as possessed by the spirit of satan and had unpleasant exorcism experiences and a lot of stuff yelled at me. My mother was a religion junkie (tried everything but Catholicism and Islam, from memory) and this was my experience of every group.
I 'see' stuff, including auras, can 'see' where people are hurting on any level, can often 'hear' what people are thinking, I just 'know' things. I see sliders, have out of body experiences, used to astral travel all the time (often with my sister; it used to creep my mother out big time to hear the two of us discussing our night adventures together in the mornings. One of my younger sisters once told our mother about watching us 'fly out the window, like Peter Pan and Wendy'). My mother first started bashing me in response to my telling her at about age three that I 'didn't come from here' and that I could remember where I *did* come from.
So that's just a little of it. Do I think it's something outside possible human experience? Nope, not at all: I happen to see it like other things I can do, such as pick up languages without trying, learn by osmosis (which was the only way I learned things as a child), I taught myself to play classical piano from the age of 7. What others describe as 'paranormal' I just see as a different 'frequency' that some people are tuned to and others aren't: some people are very mechanically minded whereas others are not. Does this mean something is awry? It's just the way people are: it happens to be that in my family line, we're tuned to things that most other people can't see, but that indigenous communities were very familiar with.
It's an amazing multiverse and I don't have any rules about how things are 'supposed' to be, I just know how it happens in my and my family's experience. :) -
rimfiredancing
real one: don't worry, satan doesn't exist except in religion and as I don't participate in religion, I'm exempt from his influence. Unfortunately, I'm not exempt from the actions of religious adherants, particularly fundamentalists, but I'm hopeful that the coming global environmental and economic crash will cause them to annihilate each other in a bout of religious fervour, which will leave the space for non-religionists, indigenous groups, tribal worldviews and the possibility of a more wholistic way of life to be explored.
I'm looking forward to the end of the most destructive group of people ever seen on the planet: the loyal members of civilisation and all its supporting religions.
According to some accounts, one of satan's 'crimes' was questioning god. Funny, that.