This Made Me So Thankful I am No Longer A Christian

by cofty 126 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  tec

  Hello Q - how have you been?

  Tec - do you think that this validates your belief?

  I made no statement as to validation. Only what faith does for me, and can do for others who have it.

  How do you square this statement as having any value if you realise that faith in Thor is likely to have eased many a Vikings passage through death?

  Faith in something bigger than yourself causes hope to some, and hope always helps. Regardless of whether the faith is in something true or not. So I can't 'square' it, but I wasn't really trying, like I said.

  If you believe faith has a positive effect on suffering, you admit that faiths effect is disconnected with truth and you still fail to provide a moral reason for suffering.

  It can be disconnected from truth, yes. Though faith in something/someone bigger than ourselves runs common among all religions past or present. So people have sought something that I believe they sensed was there. But I digress... As to a moral reason for suffering, I don't think I was trying to provide one. Don't know if there is one. Only implied that suffering is not caused by God, but can sometimes be used to turn a bad thing (suffering) into something good (strength, integrity, wisdom, whathaveyou).

  When you talk about 'your Christ ' you openly admit that you find the biblical description of 'Christ ' to be repulsive to you in certain places and so you are simply making up a modern Christ that meets your sensibilities.

  The biblical description of Christ is what I look at. Perhaps you mean the biblical description of God. Since for most they are one and the same? But since they aren't for me, then I can look at Christ alone to see God. Not the OT or anything that contradicts that image of God, in Christ.

  A Christian descendent of yours in a few hundred years will look upon our relatively vulgar society , including you, and will conclude that we ( you )never believed in Christ since her Christ is firmly committed to non- violence and therefore couldn't possibly have acquiesced to solving the worlds problems by divinely appointed violence ergo that scriptural account can be ignored and crucifixion was just a barbaric lie.

  I don't think you understand what I believe, Q, to make that kind of statement about a descendant of christianity. I don't know all the truths surrounding Christ dying on the cross. I do know that he set us an ex ample. Stay loyal even unto death. Do not fear death because it has no hold on you. Do not be afraid to lay down even your life for the ones you love... who are many since the command is to love friend and enemy. Christ showed those things in the cross. He did for us what we are unable to do... AND... he forgave those who put him to death and tortured/mocked him.

  Whitewashing the NT account of Jesus to match your Christ as flower power hippy is intellectual empty. Your Christ is purely a construct and a poor one at that.

  Well you give me some ex amples and we'll go from there. Because I don't know what you think I'm whitewashing.

  Peace,

  Tammy
• 

  tec

  I would be intersted on your thoughts about the OP Tammy?

  Honestly, I think its disgusting.

  God gives people cancer so he can get glory when he cures you of it?

  I think that kind of reasoning is based on a lie. A lie that includes the thought that God created us to worship Him, so everything is done to glorify Him. God wants us to do good to one another - THAT is the kind of worship that He wants from us. God does not visit evil upon people.

  Peace,

  Tammy
• 

  cofty

  Interesting thanks Tammy. Its a shame there is no evidence for your god, he sounds like a nice guy.

  I think the psychology of christians like John Piper is similar to that of conspiracy theorists. They need to know that somebody is ultimately in control, that there is a big picture.

  Life is unpredicatable and capricious, part of growing up is accepting this reality.
• 

  tec

  What is faith? So people with afflictions have no faith and those with hangnails have faith.

  Of course not. We are all afflicted equally. I think I said that as well. The 'righteous' and the 'unrighteous'. However, faith is required for faith healing. I don't know too many people with that level of faith. Even in the bible, few had that faith. Recall how Christ did not perform any miracles in his home town, because those people did not have faith in Him, or that He could do as He said.

  I was taught faith is a gift from God.

  It is. I think you might have to want it though? Which requires at least a tiny speck of faith that He is out there and could gift you with faith.

  I simply do not believe God chooses to help us based on faith. It is as arbitrary as blue eyes or brown eyes. Faith's manifestation seems to have little to do with grace as Paul wrote and much to do with temperament. Temperament that we do not choose. We pop out of the womb with it.

  You can choose to believe that if you wish. But my experience shows me otherwise. The faith that I have been given, and the gifts that come with that faith, have not been due to my being a good person or deserving it. Because I am not and do not. The gifts that come with faith are just those... gifts due to our faith in receiving them... and due to the love and mercy of God.

  Now Christ did ALSO say that if we love him, we will obey his teachings... then God will love us, and they will come and make their home with us. So asking for faith is one thing. But doing as Christ taught perhaps shows that we are also trying to act in that faith... esepcially if we trust that He will keep his promise. Which in itself, is also a tiny speck of faith.

  Tammy, You post nicely. I rarely agree with you but you are not obnoxious at all. In fact, your tone enables me to hear you more than the crazies who post.

  I am glad you can hear me. Some people respond better to different 'mannerisms'. That doesn't make one way any better or worse than another, mind you. Just different. Crazy is a pretty nasty accusation, and baseless, imo.

  But as long as you realize that it is you who has a problem with certain styles, and that the blame does not necessarily lie on someone else for their style. I understand that you have triggers. That you have been hurt. So have most people on here. I, however, have not been hurt. No triggers as to my time with the jws.

  I am not enraged with you but the immense denial.

  What denial do you mean?

  Is faith following a script without question. I have no idea how old you are.

  No... faith, like trust, is based on something... on evidence. When someone has your full trust, you do tend to follow without question sometimes... because they already fully earned your trust. Oh, and 36 :)

  Do you really think the WWII HOlocaust occurred b/c all those victims had no faith or did not ask.

  Of course not. I think the holocaust occurred because of man's need to hate someone else in order to hide his own problems. Or just take it out on someone else. Or just take what someone else has for himself. I think the holocause happened because its leaders had no faith and no love for neighbor - friend or foe, and a lot of fear in the case of those who didn't agree, but didn't do anything to stop it from happening; not because its victims had no faith.

  Peace to you,

  Tammy
• 

  tec

  Interesting thanks Tammy. Its a shame there is no evidence for your god, he sounds like a nice guy.

  Well, there is Christ ;) The evidence that counts over anything else said or written about God.

  But I hear what you're saying Cofty. There are lots of other voices out there trying to drown out His. We have been part/victim of some of those other 'bodies'. We both know that there are tons more.

  Still hope you can know Him one day, or perhaps be known by Him.

  Much peace to you, and strength!

  Tammy
• 

  cofty

  Still hope you can know Him one day, or perhaps be known by Him.

  Thanks honestly, but I have that t-shirt already. Never again!
• 

  ziddina

  "I think there is a reason why, when a Homo Erectus died, they threw the body on a trash pile and, when a Homo Sapiens died, they buried him with flowers. ..." Sulla

  

  NO. There is no evidence that homo Erectus EVER had any sort of "burial practice", but as homo Erectus did NOT have any recognizable form of "town" or "city" - based on the discoveries found at this point of time - there was NO WAY that their dead were 'tossed' onto a "trash pile".

  "Trash piles" are characteristic of SETTLED GROUPS. Homo Erectus probably wasn't a "settled" dweller; they were probably nomadic in 'hunter-gatherer' groups - so NO TRASH HEAPS!!!

  And although "homo Sapiens" DOES currently bury their dead with pomp and ceremony, it was NEANDERTHAL man who first buried their dead - but ONLY the MALES - with "flowers" - AND smeared the body with red ochre - red dirt - in a ceremony that PROBABLY represented the act of "birth" from MOTHER EARTH...!

  Here's a website that discusses the differences...

  http://www-staff.it.uts.edu.au/~simmonds/Sophy/early_man.htm
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  xchange

  This thread got me thinking of what Benjamin Franklin wrote in Conflicting Motives for Human Conduct: Pleasure or Virtue - "Dialogue Between Philocles and Horatio" (1730). This reference is also in Christopher Hitchen's Arguably: Selected Essays.

  "Created sick, and then commanded to be well".
• 

  cofty

  So true.

  I often heard Hichens make that reference, thanks for source.
• 

  steve2

  Oh let's look at all the nasty things the nay sayers have done and define you all that way.

  Well go ahead - I don't claim to be the (Biblical) "one true god" who orders all and sundry to bow down in obedience. BTW, the OT is quite clear that this "true god" ordered the genocide of specific peoples right down to their babies. It's not gossip, it's not innuendo, it's in scripture. It's hard ignoring that inconvenient little nugget when listening to people proclaim the righteousness of the "true god".