Throwing the baby out with the bath water? (page 3)

SixofNine

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

Just like Jehovahs Witnesses, Muslims, Mormons, and everyone else who believes in god. I guess I miss the point.

Assuming that there is a baby (God) in the bath water, then I agree that throwing it out would be a mistake. What many have done, me included, it go all the way back to square one, before the water was turned on or any babies were added, and decide what in the hell is wrong with the picture we see before the eyes of our lives ... we need to ask all over again, is there a god? If so, who is he/she/it? What are his/her/its expectations? Is the judeo-Christian Bible the word of God, partly the word of God, or a collection of various human stuff?

I don't believe that people in general, nor ex-JWs, really want to kill off God ... but let's say we are far more sensitive to what and who we devote the rest of our lives to ... we don't ever again want to wake up 25 years in the future only to discover we have been duped again. So, it is not a matter of tossing out babies, but a matter of taking a long hard look at reality, facts, history, turth, experience, and then taking steps one day at a time with extreme caution. - Jim W.

Simon

funkyderek: I thought it was a very good analogy and should make people think. Sometimes looking at things from a different angle works wonders. For many, they start with the assumption that god exists and of course you can claim anything as proof within the parameters of there having to be a god.

You should start with a neutral hypothesis - that there may or may not be a god and see what makes sense.

LittleToe

Gopher:

why we have to wait any longer for these issues to be settled. How many more people have to suffer to prove God right?

So are you saying that the basic JW premise, of why things are taking so long, would be suspect?
That still doesn't prove or disprove the existance of anything. It just adds another nail in the coffin of the WTS's flawed doctrinal efforts.

FunkyDerek:
Your analogy was just fine, but you didn't allow for God being an incorporeal, omnipresent being.
Your strainer wasn't fine enough to sift God out of the water, air, bath,etc., etc...

Talking about babies. My latest little nephew is really cute, when he takes a bath. He just loves splashing the water all over the place, and gets so excited

(LT - of the "proud uncle" class)

funkyderek

Your analogy was just fine, but you didn't allow for God being an incorporeal, omnipresent being.
Your strainer wasn't fine enough to sift God out of the water, air, bath,etc., etc...

Of course, the untestable premise of an undetectable god is very difficult to refute. But as your god is not in any significant way different from all the other imaginary beings contained in the "bathwater" I'm happy to let him swirl down the plughole.

waiting

My psychology professor last semester was speaking about evolution. One outspoken, irritating, student (not me for a change) bluntly asked him if he believed in God. He answered - yes.

She then asked how he could believe in God and believe in evolution?

Not wanting to get swayed from the subject matter of the class, he simply answered: "My personal schema allows it."

I thought that was so cool. In other words, you're personal schema might not allow it. Okay. My personal schema allows it. Okay.

Personally, I'm an agnostic - and not changing anytime soon. There isn't a prize waiting on either side of the fence, imho.

waiting

Pistoff

I am six years into a questioning of my beliefs, and 18 months into realizing that the WT is a sham.

I believe in a higher power; I am many years clean/sober.

I allow my mind to question, but I still come back to the question of original cause, and that leads me to a higher being or intelligence.

I believe that we have brains for a reason, and I cannot any longer turn my brain off for the sake of keeping the GB happy, or anyone else who claims to speak for God, oops, Jehovah.

The factual, physical only analysis that many have done in this thread only looks at the issue from one side: factual, physical, material. I feel that there might be more to the issue than that. We only know the material world, and so our conclusions are limited to what is physical and material.

LittleToe

FunkyDerek:

Of course, the untestable premise of an undetectable god is very difficult to refute.

For a while the presence of carbon-monoxide was difficult to detect, being an odourless, colourless gas.
Eventually they worked that one out...

Btw, if my hypothesis is correct, He's also in the plughole, the plug, the chain attached to the plug (you know, the one that keeps on breaking) .........

rem

Btw, if my hypothesis is correct, He's also in the plughole, the plug, the chain attached to the plug (you know, the one that keeps on breaking) .......

You mean your non-falsifiable hypothesis?

rem

Special K

For me.. the J.W.'s just screwed up God for me.

After 10 years, I still feel a loss of God or something higher than the top of my fridge.

I look toward transcendence of life or self but.... I just can't bring myself to believe it comes from the bible after being whacked by J.W.'s with it.

I think that believing is something higher than the top of ones fridge is healthy. It gives comfort when considering what ones believes to be unfathomunable (is that a word?).

My emptiness in this area of my life remains. A sadness about this, lives there.

I don't know what to tell my children to believe as pertains to God.. so I just try to teach them openess to allow others to believe what they want to believe and to enjoy others like different flavours of ice cream.(unless it is a cultish type religion ..such a J.W.'s , mormons, moonies, etc.)

sincerely

special k

Throwing the baby out with the bath water?

SixofNine

Amazing

Simon

LittleToe

funkyderek

waiting

Pistoff

LittleToe

rem

Special K

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