by Robdar 47 Replies latest jw friends
Hello Robdar,
Thank you for the link. This young man experienced an emotional connection to religion not too dissimilar from many Christians. His spine tingled, he found himself speaking in tongues etc. This is not the religion Jesus taught. Jesus did not teach speaking in tongues. It is an emotional experience foreign to the teachings of Jesus.
"Graceful degradation" is the natural result of a religious belief based on the teachings of men and not God.
DTW:
"Graceful degradation" is the natural result of a religious belief based on the teachings of men and not God.
Hi DTW. I haven't seen your posts before, so welcome to the board.
If you watch the rest of the videos, I believe he will cover that issue.
Thanx for posting. Marking for later.
Jeff
Robin,
Interestingly enough, I rarely posted about my journey from born-in JW to where I am now.
When I left, my mantra was "fuck God", which I guess could be considered a natural reaction to the "God" I was sold by the Watchtower religion who didn't deliver on any promises the seller of that God said He would.
The next 10 years I was an agnostic. (I was never any atheist, but I might as well have been). Then I did the Eastern Philosophies, Buddhism (especially Zen which I found quite enlightening), then I read the "Tao" by Laozi (Lao Tse) which was very illuminating. Simple. Elegant. Meaningful. No God. Just "Heaven" personified. The Tao was "The Way. The Path." Personified. Interestingly enough, Jesus talked about The Way, also. Only Jesus was hundreds of years later than Laozi.
Then I studied science at the quantum level, but only as an uneducated idiot, and I learned a lot from that.
Then I read "The Age of Reason" by that great Revolutionary patriot Thomas Paine, a friend of Thomas Jefferson and the other great patriots of that era. I realized that the Bible is not just a book that contains bullshit, the Bible is a book that is full of bullshit.
I became a Deist, just like Paine, and just like Jefferson. A deist believes a Creator exists, but is not at all involved in His creation. Whereas a theist, (like dubs and most Christians) believe the Creator IS involved in his creation and does miracles, saves lives, and even makes a miracle possible for you to catch up on your car payments! (While also letting a 4 year old little girl get raped and tortured and brutally murdered a few blocks away while you are celebrating catching up on your car payment and thanking God for being able to do it.)
Then I had another epiphany about science. It was the Big Bang. Science can not and will not address the sticky issue about HOW the super-condensed stuff that exploded to cause the Big Bang itself came into existence. It is not something that can be understood and tested. No time existed whenever the "stuff" that the Big Bang came from was just a bunch of stuff. There was NO such thing as TIME then! How did it get there? Who made it, or who provided it? Where did it come from?
It had to be a Creator or Creators. There is no other explanation.
No. Despite all the claims of the assholes who cannot clearly understand my thoughts on this subject which I've articulated for years, I am NOT an atheist.
I am a Deist.
(Side note: and the optimist in me says the Creator DOES care about us, and there just might possibly be more to us than just our bodies who will all eventually rot and get eaten up by other creation whose purpose it was and is to do that to keep our planet clean of the rubbish and stench of our bodies.)
Farkel
No. Despite all the claims of the assholes who cannot clearly understand my thoughts on this subject which I've articulated for years, I am NOT an atheist.
I am a Deist.
Farkel and Robdar and others.....
I am also a deist of sorts. While I want to believe god deals with some people, I can't make a single good argument other than I wish it were so.
I have enough life experience to realize that wanting and wishing something true doesn't matter a good damn bit.
I too believe that we were somehow created. But that's it.
I am much more interested in what makes a quality person tick, and how a quality person leads a quality life and how she/he can impact others in a quality way.
I am really into quality. ;)
Jeff,
: I am really into quality. ;)
I'm still into boobs. Quality boobs.
Farkel ;)
Farkel,
I'm still into boobs. Quality boobs.
Did you learn nothing from JW's?? Natural is still better then artifical boobs. JW's are like Pam Anderson's boob's, they look great from 50 yards, but you have to commit to the skank to get a real good look, and when you do, they still won't let you touch them. Besides, there is way too much scarring from all the times the boob's changed. They were never real.
Farkel, I've often wondered about your belief system. Thank you for sharing your story.
When I left the JW's my mantra was also "Fuck God." I used to look straight up at the sky and stick up my middle finger and tell him if he existed, I hated his g.d. guts. I was atheist all the way. But then one day I wasn't for reasons I'd rather not go into on this forum.
I, too, have studied the Eastern philosophies and religions and found them to be fascinating. I finally cchose Judaism because it is a religion of life. The only thing I have to do as a reform Jew is live my life, try to be good, and try to help others. Judaism mixes nicely with my pantheistic tendencies.
LOL @ Farkel and ATJ!
Then I had another epiphany about science. It was the Big Bang. Science can not and will not address the sticky issue about HOW the super-condensed stuff that exploded to cause the Big Bang itself came into existence.
Your epiphany was incorrect. Many people study that very thing, try to look farther into the past for clues, build super colliders to create more elementary particles to study, ever more complex math is used to try to figure out the physics of it. To say sciene is not addressing it is just flat out wrong.
This... No time existed whenever the "stuff" that the Big Bang came from was just a bunch of stuff. There was NO such thing as TIME then!
... matches perfectly with this .... Then I studied science at the quantum level, but only as an uneducated idiot
It had to be a Creator or Creators. There is no other explanation.
Good job moving the goalposts back. Now where did all of the stuff that made the creator(s) come from? I am glad you aren't actually doing science for a living. When you stop asking questions or fail to understand WHY you should be asking ever more questions, you have failed at science.
Will we ever know the origen of the Big Bang? Maybe, I hope so, but maybe not. Doesn't mean we should stop trying to figure it out and just say "God. No other explanation." That never got anybody anywhere with learning anything.
