Throwing the baby out with the bath water?

by Steve Lowry 34 Replies latest jw friends

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  Steve Lowry

  Sometimes I think that because we JW’s were so deceived, tricked and flat out lied to by an organization that claims to be the sole representative of God, when we take the step to leave the group we (may) have a tendency to discard God as well, in the process. I realize also there are those who by their nature (perhaps) and their point of view and ideology, that it’s just a natural personal kind of evolution that brings them to the point that God doesn’t exist. Or, that if He does, it doesn’t really play any kind of a roll in their lives.

  But for those who wanted to believe there is a God, has the Watchtower corrupted this ideal to the point that the some former JW’s simply ‘can’t’ believe anymore?

  (I know that for me, I have become very analytical. (And hey, I like that.) I do still believe in God, but nobody and I mean nobody is gonna pull the ‘wool over my eyes’ again. Sometimes, I think the Bible was created to keep the masses ‘in line’. Maybe we needed a ‘Bible’ with rules and regulations to help us learn to be socially responsible to our fellow man as we evolved as a people. In that way, there is an abundance of wisdom and direction in the Bible. But is it really the hand of God who wrote it? I dunno.)

  My belief in God is real, and I can’t deny that fact.

  Steve . . .
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  Undecided

  There are days when I do beleive in a creator and days when I don't. The universe is so beyond understanding by our little minds that it has become frustrating to try and understand any purpose for it all. It just seems that a creator with enough wisdom to make all the vast universe would have done a better job in explaining it to us humans in an understandable way, if he really cares at all what we think and feel about him.

  Ken P.
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  Gopher

  I think you're right, it's an "evolution". Where we "land" in our beliefs can vary dramatically, for some people including a God and for some people not.

  Now that we're thinking outside the Watchtower "box", freedom of thought means freedom to question everything, and I mean everything we had heard before. It does NOT mean we will throw out everything mindlessly. "Throwing the baby out" implies a reckless abandonment of former beliefs with no rational thought, and I don't think that's what really happens. (I know you phrased it with a question mark!!)

  I too still believe that there is an original Creator. I do not believe that he picked one religion or one book to reveal himself through. I believe he picked ZERO religions and books. All religions are an attempt to define and explain life's mysteries. They are the attempts of men, filtered through their cultural and living experiences. Only when those attempts become dogmatic or demeaning of others do they start to become harmful.

  I also think that God has not given us any answers as to why we're here and what, if anything, he will do to put an end to the needless suffering and hurt that is going on daily on this planet. Perhaps he (He?) has more important things to take care of, or he's leaving it up to us.

  The way JW's framed the issue (we have to be patient -- wait for God to act and vindicate his universal sovereignty) begs the question of why we have to wait any longer for these issues to be settled. How many more people have to suffer to prove God right? Hasn't Satan already been proved wrong (according to the way the JW's frame the issue)?
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  berylblue

  I believe in God. I sincerely hope it's not the God of the OT. He was odious.
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  greven

  Yeah, Gopher hit the nail on the head.

  I did not discard God right away after finding out the truth about The Truth(tm). I just started to apply the same logic and reasoning to the bible and the concept of God which I apply to any extraordinary claim. They failed the test in my case.

  Greven
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  onacruse

  Yeah, what Gopher said.

  Craig
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  SixofNine

  As god is my ex-Jehovah's witness, I'll never understand the mindset that allows people to think that what they want to believe has the slightest importance or relevance to the truth.

  It's biting on the stupid stick. Please stop, for the children.
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  Abaddon

  I agree; that metaphor makes me puke. It's as insulting and inaccurate as saying that people who retain belief in god after leaving the Borg are weak minded and incacpable of accepting reality, prefering a pleasent delusion instead.

  I walked away from the Borg as I couldn't take the essential wrongness of how it felt.

  I developed thinking skills and got education that allowed me to see what I had been so disturbed by.

  That same skill set that allowed me to eviscerate the empty philosphy behind the Borg meant that I became acutely aware of the inadequacy of religious belief when analysed criticaly.

  At the end of the day, I was equally prepared to believe in god as to not believe in god. It was the facts that I saw them that determined the outcome. In the six years or so I have 'not believed', I have not been presented with any facts that would make me revise my opinion.

  I conceed there may be a god, but find that most people's ideas of god in the West are inextricably tied up in either the primative and childish belief structures of the predominant Judaeo/Christo/Islamic tradition, or are home-spun little pseudo-beliefs that whilst effective for the person in question really don't bear consideration as an explanation for reality as we perceive it. Other, Eastern and indigenous faith-ways are equally silly. God is always obviously a creation of the human mind. If he really IS like people have said he is, then I don't particulary want anything to do with him, but as this is rather unlikely, I assume either there is no such thing, or if there is, we haven't got a clue about the whys or wherefores.

  Obviously many people have developed some sort of symbiotic relationship with their belief structures, and cannot exist without them; fine, good luck to you if it makes your life happy, just don't expect your internal reality to mean diddly to me.
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  Frannie Banannie

  What Gopher said...

  Frannie B
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  funkyderek

  As a non-believer I am always amazed by how many people, after rejecting the Watchtower, continue to hold on to some of their irrational beliefs or even replace faith in the Watchtower with faith in another equally unlikely belief system.

  Why not strain the "bathwater", then look at what's left? If you examine it closely enough, there's no way you can miss a "baby". If there's no baby, then all you're left with is a bathful of dirty water.