Atheists..... throwing the baby out with the bath water ?

by snare&racket 403 Replies latest jw friends

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  Violia

  Yes, good men and women who stand up and demand an accounting and don't wait for God to fix it all. We must take care of the earth and each other. I felt this way even as a jws, we were responsible to the world we lived in and the folks around us.-except jws were waiting for paradise for God to fix it all.

  It has been hard giving up on paradise- it is such a great idea, but the fountain of youth has always been an easy way to sell anything. I think my life experience with religion has been a bit extreme, but not so unlike many in Fundy religions. Jws just happen to be among to worst of the worst in the area of judging and shunning.

  It was hard for me too to realize that so many of the jws I knew were social jws. They really did not believe this at all, they had just invested their lives in it and as they say " in for the penny, in for the pound". I did not see it as a social system , I believed it was the truth until jws showed me it was not. Apostates did not do that, jws did.
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  Berengaria

  If I thought I would really lose my children, I don't know if I could leave. My mother left so she wouldn't lose hers.
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  JonathanH

  This is a post I made in a spinoff topic from this one that died pretty much immediately. But it's relevant here too, so I'll just reprint it.

  The problem with religion is that it is a humanity that insists on being taken as a science. If it were actually about love, and empathy, and oneness or some such, then it could go off and do it's own thing. But insists on making fact based assessments of the universe and itself...until somebody tries to bring facts and logic in to counter it's absurdist claims, then it retreats to the "humanities" way of thinking until the conversation is over...then it starts making fact based claims again.

  It's like an art critic admiring van gogh's "The Starry night" and then insisting that we all go to the stars when we die, and that is literally what happens, stars are just the souls of dead people, we die then fly up and become a star, this painting demonstrates the truth of that. Until somebody brings up how nonsensical that is, points out what stars really are, reasons how illogical that is based on what we know of the universe, and biology, then the art critic responds with a curt "well, you just don't understand art. Go get a color wheel, study some impressionism, and come back when you're ready to have a real conversation." That is religion.

  If the big monotheistic religions didn't base their dogmas on a wizard making the universe, specifically creating this planet just for us, then guiding biological evolution to produce humans (or worse yet, poofing humans into existence), and then all of the miraculous and superstitious nonsense that is picked and chosen after that, then it could rest happily unmolested as a branch of philosophy. But it doesn't, it insists on continually demanding that empiricism bow before it's bronze age mythologies in order to get to the philosophy aspect of it.

  So yes, there are things that science is not qualified to talk about, namely the subjective areas of human thought covered by philosophy, art, music and literature. Unfortunately religion is not content to live in that realm, and until it is, science will continue to kick its ass.
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  ziddina

  EXCELLENT post, Jonathan H...

  You've described the behavior patterns of those believers who, when confronted with inconvenient facts, resort to ever more convoluted versions to twist their way around the facts...

  And when one confronts them with more facts, or a line of logic, they claim, "That is a comparison to something you THINK I have said. But you are not understanding what I am saying...."

  So, no matter what we who base our conclusions on scientific information may comment, somehow we "are not understanding what [they - the creationists] are saying..."

  I do understand dissembling when I hear it...
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  ziddina

  "It's very comforting for believers to think that atheists haven't really thought it through properly. ..." Cofty

  Oh, but when an atheist DOES show that they HAVE thought it through - as in my case, since I was 7 years old; the theists pounce on the atheist's reasons and factual foundations for lack of belief, and attempt to intimidate them with quasi-philosophical reasonings and a bizarre form of "mirroring" the atheists' statements back at them - but with a creationist twist...

  As yet another example from tec demonstrates...

  "Theists do not do anything atheists do not also do, when it comes to generalizing and pigeon-holing the other 'side'. ..."
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  OnTheWayOut

  I used to bath in the waters of the lies within "the truth." I definitely did not simply throw the bathwater out. I looked at it closely as I continued to bath in it. I examined the water fully and knew what was wrong with it. By the time I threw out the bathwater, I knew there was no "baby" in it to keep.

  And before you say how that only applies to Jehovah's Witnesses, NO! The water I was examining included Christianity and the fairytales of the Bible along with belief in general.
• 

  tec

  One religion, two religion, three religions... they're all variations of the same thing. Led by men. Some trying hard to follow Christ and care for people, but making mistakes as we all do... and some caring mostly about their own bottom line and finding followers of themsevles.

  Faith is not religion. Religion is the bathwater. Even the bible is the bathwater. Christ and God are the baby.

  I left religion, and though I searched around a bit after the jw's, it just seemed pointless. How could I trust myself to know if I had found the truth THIS time? They were (mostly) all claiming to have the truth.

  But the truth cannot be owned. You can know the Truth (Christ), but you cannot claim e x clusive rights and ownership of it.

  So I stopped looking to them. I also set the bible aside and stopped looking to it for a time. Because I could feel my faith grow in strength, and then I would check my faith against something that was written, and the peace and the love that I was feeling would be bogged down by words written on paper, that I was still looking at with the eyes they (religion) taught me to use. So I set the bible aside too. I could do this without losing faith in Christ and God because my faith was never in religion or the bible. My faith was in God. I never had to, and I never did, set God or Christ aside. It just never occurred to me to do so, or that I even had to do so. I knew that God existed. I knew that Christ e x isted. And I knew the false things taught about him were from men, and not from Him.

  And once I put my trust in God, and asked Him to guide me where He wanted me to be... to Christ... well there was just no point turning back to religion. What a poor trade-off.

  Some people build their faith on a weak foundation. Religion. The bible (an inerrant or infallable bible). Then, if and when those foundations crumble, then so does their faith.

  Peace,

  Tammy
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  ziddina

  "One religion, two religion, three religions... they're all variations of the same thing. Led by men. Some trying hard to follow Christ and care for people..." tec

  Really?????????

  So Hinduism is "all variations of the same thing..."???????????

  And Buddhism is "all variations of the same thing..."??????????

  And Wicca is "all variations of the same thing..."????????

  And you can't see how inaccurate your comment is?????

  It's as if you have an innate blindness that totally prevents you from seeing anything that doesn't fit your "worldview"...

  You've completely overlooked the FACT that there are other religions out there which have absolutely NOTHING to do with the Christian dogma...
• 

  tec

  Yes, Zid... all are led by men (and women), and as such, are prone to mistake and corruption and weakness. Because WE are limited in our knowledge, and our biases, and our views.

  However, I was speaking about Christianity, as most of this thread concerns itself with that... but unless you think another religion out there is led by something other than men (and women), then it probably applies to them as well. But that is not for me to say; that is for them to say.

  You've completely overlooked the FACT that there are other religions out there which have absolutely NOTHING to do with the Christian dogma...

  I have not overlooked any such thing. You continue to read into my posts something that is not there.

  Peace,

  Tammy
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  ziddina

  And again you're trying to duck responsibility for your inaccurate comment...

  You specifically said:

  "They're ALL VARIATIONS OF THE SAME THING...."

  Then you said:

  "SOME TRYING HARD TO FOLLOW CHRIST...."

  So, by your own words, you were lumping in ALL religions...

  "Religion is the bathwater. Even the bible is the bathwater. Christ and God are the baby. .......Yes, Zid... all are led by men (and women), ..."

  The term, "religion", applies to ALL religions, not just bible-based religions... Which, if we were to be more accurate, doesn't even involve Judaism [does not consider the New Testament to be part of the inspired word of god] nor Islam [uses the Quoran, instead of the bible...]

  Also, nowhere in your statements were you acknowledging the existence of GODDESS-WORSHIPPING Hindus and Buddhists and Wiccans.... And more importantly, what the existence of GODDESS-WORSHIPPING religions does to your claim that 'they' are ALL VARIATIONS OF THE SAME THING... "