by brotherdan 185 Replies latest watchtower bible
Yeah, it applies to all of us, Stephen. The difference is some people have raised their awareness of the big sliver and are able to say I don't know without feeling uncomfortable.
Faith is already in there as "Shit you know" but might be more accurately called "Shit you think you know."
As for me, I am raising my awareness of the One who knows everything.
IMHO, the only important thing is knowing Him. In fact He doesn't do anything without letting us know first :)
Blessings,
Stephen
What religion were your parents, Stephen?
"Faith" would be a large slice labeled "Shit you don't know, but threw a filler explaination in for instead".
Example: "Why is the sky blue?" "Because God made it blue!"
- Lime
Forgive me SweetBabyCheezits, I only jumped into the thread because I enjoyed the chart!
I stand by my previous comments to Dan and I have no energy or time for the endless "debate" that accompanies these particular discussions.
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/bible/200415/1/Why-did-God-kill-children
That said, I will leave three verses as I go :)
23 Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Sovereign LORD. Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?
32 For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign LORD. Repent and live!
11 Say to them, 'As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?'
Blessings,
Stephen
I fucking hate this disagreement. We all know nothing. And we all claim to know it all. The ones that claim the argument AGAINST God have prayed and not had their prayers answered... or at least not acknowledged that God DID answer their prayers.
My mother tells a story where as a young pioneer, one night on the way to the meeting she noticed her pantyhose had a run in it, and prayed that god let it go unnoticed. Driving to the hall, she spotted a bag of grocieries along side the road - and inside was a pair of pantyhose!
It was a miracle!
My ex-wife tells a story where when she was very little her father would come home every day and yell and hit her mother, and yell and abuse her and her sister. She prayed to god every night that 'daddy would be nice tonight'... but it went on right up until she left the house at 18.
So you're position, BrotherDan is that my mom is justified in her faith, because God provides women desperately needed pantyhose.. but that my ex-wife is not justified in her non-belief - just because god doesn't help children out of violent abusive situations doesn't mean he doesn't still help some people.
(This reminds me of a dynamic that programmers who make video games have to keep in mind. If you make a big game like World of Warcraft, and players earn things based on random numbers... an odd thing happens: it doesn't automatically come out even. Some people get lucky repeatedly early in the game, and get this giant boost from it - and other people are repeatedly unluckly, and can never recover completely from it. With a million players - there is going to be someone who rolls '1' ten times in a row, and a person who rolls '6' ten times in a row.
The same is true with life. Some people are believers and get lucky. Some are believers and extremely unlucky. Some are non-believers, or people of other faiths who are extremely lucky.. and others unluckly. Were god were a significant factor - you'd think the statistics would bear that out. In a scientific study of the effect of 'prayer' in hospitals, turns out those that pray and those that don't have the same odds and speeds for recovery.)
- Lime
Is it OK to say sh*t here?
How about fu*k and Bi*ch, are they OK too?...
Just asking..not approving or condemning..
Snoozy
I've read all the defenses here for god - but I just can't buy it.
If Jesus reflects the personality of god - and upon entering crowds Jesus was repeatedly 'moved with pity' for them, and couldn't hold himself back from healing and helping - then the same should be true of god.
If the OT god was of the same mind, then upon forming his nation and seeing his beloved creation crawling in the dirt and dying - he wouldn't be able to 'hold himself back' from giving them basic information on sanitation and medicine. In the same way Jesus hung out with lowly prostitutes and tax collectors - Jehovah would be drawn to every nation of every suffering people (maybe even outside the middle-east) and instead of casting judgement he would seek any means he could to impress them to 'taste him and see that he was good'. (Not just send one prophet - an outsider, for which nobody in that land would have any reason to believe.)
He wouldn't give up on them, but would be patient and hopeful.
But that's not how the OT god behaves. He is angry. Rash. Quick to judge, to invade, and slaughter. Demanding of sacrafice. Unforgiving. He punishes offspring for the faults of their parents "to the tenth generation". He is violent and cruel. He plays favorites. A sexist (god has a penis?), and a racist. Subscribing to the idea that man can be 'cleaned' of sin by... killing animals.
Can you picture Jesus picking up a child and 'dashing them to peices'? Can you picture him lifting a sword and 'slashing open the pregnent women' of the romans? (If you're a JW.. you probably can.)
He is the polar opposite of the NT 'Jesus' - who prayed that sinners would be forgiven in spite of their sins. To anyone with a clear mind - he is clearly a primitive man-made tribal god.
- Lime
I stand by my previous comments to Dan and I have no energy or time for the endless "debate" that accompanies these particular discussions.
Stephen, I apologize for my post. I can now see that it was just a bait for all the angry atheists to post their rage and not use biblical reasoning to come to a conclusion.
I was looking for CHRISTIAN reasonings. Not atheistic reasoning based on faulty human thinking. Go ahead and quote that sentence, I won't respond.
Stephen, I apologize for my post. I can now see that it was just a bait for all the angry atheists to post their rage and not use biblical reasoning to come to a conclusion.
Why would an athiest use "biblical reasoning"? I mean seriously.
Do christians use 'islamic reasoning'?
If someone could give a GOOD biblical answer for the murder of children, we are still waiting for it. But everyone knows there is no valid reason to kill unarmed, uneducated, innocent children. It was a rhetorical question to begin with. One of those terrible 'apostate' questions that just might get some people to really think about it, and to ask themselves the question "Is this REALLY how an all-knowing, forgiving, merciful, caring, loving god would behave?"
"Evidently so."
- Lime
