The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty 2596 Replies latest jw experiences

  • adamah
    adamah

    Humbled said-

    The trouble with a liar is you can't trust a thing they say--even if they are telling you something you like.

    Ain't THAT the tooth, Humbled! ESPECIALLY if they tell you something you'd want to be true.

    Confirmation biases is a central theme in the Garden of Eden account, where it was trivially easy for the clever serpent to deceive foolish Eve, who coveted God's forbidden fruit which promised to make her wise. The serpent had an incredibly-low threshold of evidence to overcome her gullibility, as she needed only the slightest-nudge, a plausible explanation and slightest excuse to rationalize her action, to get her to do what she wanted to do. And when stated with emphatic assurance ("you will NOT die!"), that fruit was as good as in her belly....

    The Bible thus contains a subtle buried warning of the dangers of confirmation biases, even hiding it's message RIGHT IN PLAIN VIEW! It's an old and clever story (although not exactly original or unique to the Hebrew author, the Yahwist: it's likely based on the same parable found in Pandora's Box, except with slight reworking (Pandora being the same archetypical character as Eve, the women who brought trouble to the World, since Pandora opened the box and all Hell broke loose, with only 'hope' remaining in the box).

    Believers who offer theodicies to others are actually trying to comfort and convince NOT just the listener, but also themselves, since that's rationalization which is forefront in THEIR minds (AKA availability heuristic). The fellow believer's criteria for acceptance of any particular theodicy is incredibly-low, since they are in pain and emotionally grasping for ANY answers, and any that makes the least bit of sense will do.

    That's the answer to the question I posed above, when I asked 'what changed'?

    YOU changed, WE changed, and our values and beliefs shifted not unlike those shifting tectonic plates, where one's Worldview and landscape is irreversibly and premanently changed; we see what should have been blatently obvious to us before, but of which we were blind.

    And despite what has been claimed, many theodicies ARE rational (i.e. both valid AND sound), if removed from theology; many make PERFECT sense within their environment (i.e. if you accept the God belief). However, they only operate IF you accept the presuppositions on which they rely, and once you lose your faith, "your eyes are opened" and find out that safety net you had only imagined was underneath you was all in your mind.

    That's why religion places utmost value in a certain personality trait, sung about by Reverend Michaels:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu3VTngm1F0

  • Apognophos
    Apognophos

    So actually, everyone is ok except people who 'reject the message'. Therefore, aren't Christians who preach the message really bastards who prevent people having a fair crack at life?

    I've learned from reading this forum that a lot of JWs thought that non-Witnesses would all die at Armageddon. That led them to wonder what the Chinese did wrong, as well as all the others who never got the chance to hear the message from Jesus' time until now, as well as all those who happened to be too busy to listen at the door the couple of times a JW tried to preach to them.

    My understanding was that these people hadn't actually gotten a fair shake and so would not be destroyed. It's possible that I imagined this was the explanation. Otherwise you have to wonder why it is that all non-Witnesses would be killed at Armageddon, even if they ran a soup kitchen and an animal shelter, but if they died of a heart attack five minutes before Armageddon, they would be brought back to life in the new system (possibly 50 seconds after D-Day!) because they were among the "unrighteous", not the "wicked".

    Now it seems that I was just trying to smooth over this discrepancy in my head. Certainly when I hear talks about Armageddon by the higher-ups, they sound like they think everyone that's not a Witness will be a, well, a human hot dog at Armageddon. Not sure where this creepy fixation comes from, that everyone has to die but the folks who wake up early on weekends to peddle the literature. I certainly didn't buy into it when I was a believing Witness.

    Edit: Haha, adamah, didn't see that coming; I haven't heard that song since I was a kid.

  • adamah
    adamah

    Simon said- So actually, everyone is ok except people who 'reject the message'. Therefore, aren't Christians who preach the message really bastards who prevent people having a fair crack at life? Is that showing love or malice?

    • Died in a disaster but got resurrected and asked if you now believe in god? Hell yes, of course you do!
    • Had some eedjit knock on your door, parrot off some intelligible nonsense and left? Too bad, you die forever.

    I've pointed out the illogic of Xian theology, since why should they oppose abortion, since it would actually be an act of loving-kindness for the fetus to abort it and give it a short-cut to Heaven, right? Bypassing the Earth's proving grounds, and making it to the goal (esp when they might grow up to be an atheist, and blaspheme the Holy Spirit)?

    JWs rationalize the Worldly people who die as DESERVING of death: it's classic in-group vs out-group thinking. They gain plausible deniability by claiming how it's an act of LOVE for them to give them an opportunity at eternal life: I had a brain-washed JW tell me recently how they preach to the Worldlies becuase of how much they love them.

    There's also a MAJOR element of fear at work, too: JWs imagine a vengeful God, and they don't want to be the ones who gets their eyes poked out by birds. There's definitely an element of "I'd rather that not be me" at work (and even a bit of shaudenfreude/narcissism, secretly telling themselves they're the smart ones who've got it figgered it all out, and are successfully playing the game, the ones who are going to beat the odds, i.e. the 'Lake Wobegon effect').

    Simon said- See - it still makes no sense. Theist inventions never do.

    Well, then, you only have to reflect back on your own experience in the JWs: did you actually even BELIEVE in God, and in the promise of the New System?

    (You don't have to answer publicly of course, but something to reflect upon...)

  • Viviane
    Viviane

    Even though we know it's only a pipe-dream, it actually offers the most-sophisticated and loving approach to the problem of evil ('natural' or otherwise), claiming EVERYONE who dies before Armageddon (from Hitler to the most-innocent child, overlooking the WT's flip-flops on Sodomites, etc), will be given a second-chance, resurrected into a paradise Earth and given another opportunity to prove their loyalty to a loving God, under conditions where Satan (always the scapegoat) is confined for 1,000 years.

    Except that's not what the JW eschtatology teaches.

    The JW's answer seems to be the most-suitable to fulfill his criteria, but only he can explain why it failed for him.

    You clearly don't know JW eschtatology.

    That's the answer to the question I posed above, when I asked 'what changed'?

    Perhaps you should start a topic of your own rather than drag this one off topic with your own musings.

    Well, then, you only have to reflect back on your own experience: did you actually even BELIEVE in God, and in the promise of the New System?

    Once again, OT. Start your own topic if there is something you need help grasping.

  • Viviane
    Viviane

    I suppose cofty will say, though, that this is outside the scope of the discussion because he's only interested in why God (Jehovah, etc.) would design a planet that has natural disasters occur on it.

    If you have an answer that harmonizes with the qualities JWs assign to God, please present it.

  • adamah
    adamah

    Apo said-

    My understanding was that these people hadn't actually gotten a fair shake and so would not be destroyed. It's possible that I imagined this was the explanation. Otherwise you have to wonder why it is that all non-Witnesses would be killed at Armageddon, even if they ran a soup kitchen and an animal shelter, but if they died of a heart attack five minutes before Armageddon, they would be brought back to life in the new system (possibly 50 seconds after D-Day!) because they were among the "unrighteous", not the "wicked".

    Yeah, here's a thread documenting the WTBTS long history of flip-flops on the question of whether the people of Sodom and Gomorrah would be resurrected, or those wiped out in the Flood, etc. The exact details of the eschatology seemingly changes by the minute, so only a pedant would care where it currently is...

  • Viviane
    Viviane

    The exact details of the eschatology seemingly changes by the minute, so only a pedant would care where it currently is...

    Says the person than just wrote a long post talking about it.

  • jgnat
    jgnat

    adamah, I think it is more likely that he shook the sand off his sandals. A cheek-turner would be coming back for more.

  • adamah
    adamah

    jgnat said- I think it is more likely that he shook the sand off his sandals. A cheek-turner would be coming back for more.

    His last post seemed to be gaining insight that horsies can only be led to water, but time will tell....

    Since you brought it up (by the religious-themed references): how do you identify your beliefs, these days? Do I detect some shifting movements?

    (Again, belief is a private matter; no answer demanded, of course)

  • Apognophos
    Apognophos

    Perhaps you should start a topic of your own rather than drag this one off topic with your own musings.

    This isn't really off-topic, as adamah explained a few posts back. I think this thread has focused on mainstream Christian theodicies and the JW one has maybe been overlooked. Do you disagree?

    If you have an answer that harmonizes with the qualities JWs assign to God, please present it.

    I pretty well hinted at it before, didn't I? But okay, for formality's sake, here it is: the Earth used to have a different, temperate climate due to the water canopy. After the canopy was used as the water source of the Flood, the Earth's seasons became more extreme, leading to today's weather patterns. As for earthquakes/tsunamis, well, who knows, maybe all that additional water displacement is causing the plates to move differently.

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