My Weak Agnostic Testimony

by besty 67 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

  • leavingwt
    leavingwt
    Religion in my opinion causes more trouble than anything.

    I get smarter every time I read Grace's posts. Anyone else?

  • drwtsn32
    drwtsn32
    A Father who was an atheist ...
    then one day when I said "COR BLIMEY" he sat me down & read me the riot act about if I kept saying that GOD WOULD blind me..

    So your atheist father said God would blind you?

  • mouthy
    mouthy

    So your atheist father said God would blind you?

    Yes! So now do you wonder why I am very screwed up person????

    Dont answer that LOL

  • besty
    besty

    thanks for the replies

    @superpunk - to clarify I meant 'weak agnosticism' to indicate that I'm almost 100% convinced there is no god, so for the sake of accuracy I'm mildly agnostic, a functional atheist if you like :-)

    @drew sagan - nothing wrong with traditions and a lot of good comes from them. Its beholden on atheists/agnostics to create their own family traditions and adapt as required - for example Christmas now is acceptably non-religious to many atheists - all the fun, none of the irrationality.

    @Mouthy - I'm not surprised you wanted to thank somebody after a miraculous escape like that during WW2. Of course 42,000,000 other civilians in WW2 got an instant chance to thank God face to face! You were lucky - many were not. I apologise for the trick question about Afghanistan. It should have read 'Would you be Sunni Muslim or Shia Muslim if you had been born in Afghanistan?' 75% chance you would have been Sunni. 24% chance Shia. 1% chance Hindu/Sikh. 0% chance you would be Jewish or Christian. My ill-made point is that religion chose you (at birth), you didn't chose it - unless you are one of the few people who have made a huge cultural leap. I hear you when you say you have found inner peace via spirituality - likewise I'm sure there are many older ladies in Kabul who have found inner peace and pray to Allah for salavation, just as you pray to Jesus for the same reason. Rinse and repeat for all the major faith groups on the planet. Respectfully I apologise and say that the argument from beauty for the existence of God doesn't make sense to me. If the universe and our planet were ugly but functional would that mean there is no God? Does beauty = design and ugliness = random chance? And of course the old atheist standby - who created the Creator?

  • mouthy
    mouthy

    who created the Creator?I dont care ! All I know is when I walk out & smell my flowers
    when I hear the birds, Stand at the Falls ,see the stars, feel the sun,
    watch the snowflakes,see a new born baby, when I had sex,
    I know their had to be a CREATOR....Because I am just one of the
    created,I dont know nothing,I do believe that CREATOR made the one
    big error ( IN MY OPINION)when he created MAN!!!! Because theyhave from day one wanted to have HIS own way ( SORRY MY LORD GOD)

    You were lucky - No I wasnt my baby died 3 days after that bombing

  • mindmelda
    mindmelda

    I tried agnosticism for 3-4 years. It was a lot better than being a Witness.

    I went out and investigated everything from astrology to Zen, and I still find I still love Christ, nothing out there has the same appeal for me. I probably will never be a Bible literalist or anything but a crazy mystical liberal type of Christian, but it seems that's what suits me best.

    I only need God to be one of the better and more reasonable explanations for the inexplicable and even the explainable to believe he exists.

    I don't know why some people have this need to believe in a higher power and some don't but I'm apparently stuck with it. I found agnosticism kind of unfulfilling, but again, still better than the JWs.

    I was drawn to religion as a young child, even though my parents where agnostics then and never went to church. I'd go to different ones occasionally with friends and usually loved what I felt there.

    I wanted to get that from being a Jehovah's Witness all those years but rarely did. It was drudgery, an emphasis on being productive in a non-spiritual sense, and no joy or spirituality that I ever felt in it. It's a very Nihlistic religion, full of Puritanical legalities and morality, tiresome doctrinal nitpicking, Bible hopscotch (to my shame, I thought I knew the Bible, at least, and it turns out that I know absolutely NOTHING about it except what I've learned from non-JW sources...they carefully edit what they let you know about the Bible, but nearly everyone that studies for 6 months with JW believes they're God's gift to Bible scholarship) and it's just plain old the most joyless religion EVER out there. Even their MUSIC SUCKS HUGELY.

    The best thing about most religions is their music and they can't even get that right!

  • besty
    besty
    You were lucky - No I wasnt my baby died 3 days after that bombing

    I'm truly sorry to hear that Mouthy - I have 2 wee boys myself aged 2 and 4. I hope my trite comment didn't upset you but I wasn't to know that piece of information. By lucky, I meant 42,000,000 other civilians lost their lifes in WW2. Your luck was to stay alive. Their luck was to die. I don't see the hand of God in your particular experience, any more than I see the hand of the Devil (or God) for those that died.

    If you are happy with the answers you have found in life then I'm happy for you. But I do feel that the points you haven't addressed are still valid.

    @mindmelda

    I went out and investigated everything from astrology to Zen, and I still find I still love Christ, nothing out there has the same appeal for me.

    Did you investigate what it was like to be born a Muslim in a 100% Muslim country? How would your love for Christ have fared in those circumstances? I propose you would have had an equally passionate love for Muhammed/Allah etc.

    The point is our religion is frequently an accident of parentage. We might chose the flavor and the window-dressing but nothing of substance changes, and to some extent I include JW's who become born-agains in there. <runs for cover>

  • mindmelda
    mindmelda

    I agree, most people in an predominately Islamic country would no doubt become Muslim by default. Christianity is the most predominant (but far from the only) religion in America, but there's one thing that is pretty nice about living in a country like America.

    It's such a melting pot of cultures that you can investigate a huge variety of belief systems. And it's pretty wide open, so you can do that without fear of reprisal (except if you're a baptized Witness or one of the more nuttier, controlling sects out there!) so I talked to Ba'Hai people for quite a while, with Jews, with some Muslims along the way. I studied astrology and palm reading and still have Wiccan and Pagan friends who have shared their beliefs with me too. One of my friends is a chi master of martial arts. I was interested in it all. I took away gems of wisdom from it all.

    I learned that some of these faiths had things I had wanted as a Witness but never gotten from it, like a feeling I was connected to the universe, a feeling of wholeness. They had mysticism, that feeling of how small and insignificant and yet how individual you are in the the universe. They had joy and freedom. They had devotion, modesty of spirit and kindness and peace.

    But, I still find the sayings of Christ express it all for me. I don't know if that's cultural conditioning, the only pre-JW contact I had with Christian churches was 3 or 4 rare visits with a friend or relative. My parents never set foot in a church except for an occasional funeral. They were agnostic, healthily skeptical about religion. Jehovah's Witnesses somehow managed to get through that,...they're good at that, as we all know. It well could be I AM influenced by the prevalent Christian culture around me, we are all a product of all we encounter in life, not of the things we do not have opportunity to discover.

    I'm still a skeptic, believe it or not. My bullshit o-meter is as high as anyone's is who has learned to recognize who is selling snake oil. I suspected Witnesses were quite a while ago, but I fought it for years, not wanting to believe emotionally what my intellect had discovered and deconstructed.

    For me, religion is not so much about who has the most excruciating correct theology, although blatant deception is inexcusable. It's about having the freedom to discuss, interpret and define for oneself what is "the truth" and what isn't. There is an illusion of that freedom among the Witnesses, or at least there was at first, for me. Some other Christian sects also brook no questioning their doctrine or restrictions without censure. Those aren't for me and never will be.

    But, that's not what I'm looking for. I want a God that is love, who embodies love, that is all. I want the promised freedom that the truth is supposed to give you that being a Witness denied me.

    I will only find that within myself, I'm sure, and discovering that faith can be individual, intimate and personal is wonderful. That's another thing denied me by this awful false sect of Christianity, this distortion of Christ and everything he stood for. That I matter to God as a PERSON. I never had that as a Witness. If I'd had that freedom, that closeness and a true feeling of unconditional love, fatherly love, I'd still be a Witness. But it's not there.

    So my spiritual journey took me inward, which is where it is no doubt supposed to. I won't find what I'm looking for in a building, an organization, a church, a mosque, a synagogue or a congregation. I will find it in me and that is something I cannot be disfellowshipped from or separated from. If you're lucky, you will find a few to go on the journey alongside you, to be supportive, to understand, but they can't do it for you.

  • mouthy
    mouthy

    I don't see the hand of God in your particular experience,

    No I didnt see the hand of God in my experience either .

    But I truthfully believe the devil rules the earth...
    & wars are from his leading....
    My hope is that the Creator( of good & evil) will take it back...( world)
    I guess if I was born in any faith,,, I would be as good
    as I was taught to be.
    But you see I am an independent thinker now.
    I dont care what people think of my "thoughts"
    my beliefs, & you "aint" gonna lead me in to YOUR thoughts.
    NOBODY IN THE WORLD KNOWS WHAT GOD IS GONNA DO
    OR WHEN HE IS GONNA DO IT>>>>

  • allelsefails
    allelsefails

    Stephen Colbert says "An agnostic is just an atheist without any balls." (sorry couldn't resist) I do look at the existence of man as evidence of God. Evidence - not proof. I think evolution explains so much of the natural world ..... and then Humans come along. The spark of life - that made that first cell replicate and the "evolution" of true consciousness and conscience make it difficult for me to accept the purely "rational" explanation of our world and our true selves. Like Pascal's Wager. I can't prove God exists, but Im going to bet on it because I have nothing to lose. (I guess that means my balls are gone too right?) allelsefails

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