by Poppy520 63 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Poppy - Listen to yourself.
You are a cheerleader for the most evil, sadistic, fiendish, bestial monster ever invented by the sick minds of perverts.
Christianity turns otherwise good people into moral imbeciles. Your views are literally disgusting and beneath the contempt of every decent person.
All I have are the scriptures
The Goat Herders Guide to Life.
A manual for infanticide, rape, kidnap and slavery. Good is good!
Then where do you get your perception of good and evil, cofty? Is it just up to what you believe or up to what society has determined? Is there any absolute good or evil? Because if not, you have no place to really call God evil because you have nothing solid to base that opinion on. Your morals are literally made up so who are you to say that anything is bad? What if a serial killer believes that killing is a good thing - who are you to say otherwise? There are real rape cultures which believe child prostitution is a good thing - who are you to say otherwise? Because to reject, not just God, but any higher power, you have nothing left to base your morals on except personal opinion. so are you ready to tell the little girl sold into sex slavery that her rapist isn't really wrong or right? Are you ready to tell the young woman raped by a man that he, "wasn't really wrong" and justify it by saying, "well he wasn't right either". Are you ready to be philosophically consistent? I don't think so. You're just another person angry at a God you don't believe
...God to allow people to go to Hell.
What honest hearted person could love such a sadistict god? And what sort of god could hear souls begging to die and cursing life and cursing god either to turn a deaf ear or torture souls even more. --The horror!
The same sort of person who could love the genocidal god of the bible. He killed every first born in egypt. He killed thousands of canaanites. He stood by and watched the first borns of his people killed by herod. He killed every man woman child and living thing in the flood of noahs day. But hell is worse?
Lol are you serious? Got what was coming to them?? What did the canaanites do... live???? What did the entire world of noahs day do to god???? Are you seriously suggesting that somehow simple harassment among humans is analogous to how almighty god could choose to handle a situation? And death being instant... you mean like the drownings of noahs day? Or when the isrealites slew the canaanites in traditional warfare at the direction of their blood thirsty god?
Do you think these things through or are you so programed to see it one way that you simply cannot look objectively at things?
The God of the Bible is loyal to his friends and loves them and avenges them.
He avenges them - that's how God shows his love and loyalty to his friends? If he can step in and avenge them, why can't he step in a little sooner to prevent the suffering in the first place - if he really loves them?
Hey Poppy520 : we're here in paradise ex-JW land... how could you ever are trying to convince us about the existence of hell....you don't sell ice to the Innuits
Are you ready to be philosophically consistent? I don't think so. You're just another person angry at a God you don't believe - Poppy
How bloody ridiculous to tell somebody who does not believe god exists that they are angry at god!
I am repulsed by the fact that you worship and adore the concept of a moral monster. I'm angry at the way religious fear and superstition turns people into moral imbeciles.
where do you get your perception of good and evil, cofty?
I have discussed this misconception many times but here we go again..
One of the most persistent arguments for belief in god centres on the necessity of an ultimate law-giver and epitome of goodness.
A softer version is seen in the genuine concern that a loss of faith will result in a corresponding loss of a moral compass - a more strident argument links the existence of good and evil with proof of the reality of god. It is often asserted that without god, moral decisions degenerate to nothing more than personal preferences and the victory of "might is right".
It is helpful to distinguish between absolute morality, objective morality and subjective morality. Christian apologists frequently conflate the first two, and secular debaters often fail to point out the difference.
Theists who disagree on everything else, are unanimous that god is perfectly good. As long as the conversation stops there, in the realm of a thought experiment, then it sounds like an attractive position. However when we try to apply that bald assertion in the real world it is found to be useless at best. In practical terms there is no reliable way to translate the claim that god is perfectly good into actual moral decisions. What we actually see is theists sanctifying ethical positions they arrived at by other means, claiming that their opinions reflect the goodness of god. For every issue there are sincere christians on both sides - equally convinced about their piety.
Given the hiddenness of god - two millennia and counting - the content of his perfect goodness could only be grasped by examining his revelation in the world, in his written word and from our inner moral sense or conscience. However when we look carefully at each of these sources of moral knowledge they are found wanting.
If the created world is assumed to be a reflection of the goodness of god then we are forced to face up to the carnage of "nature red in tooth and claw". Every creature in the history of life has perished by predation, exposure, starvation, parasitic attacks, viruses and injuries. Defender of Truth has recently spelled out the facts in an excellent OP...
At least five times in the history of the world mass extinctions have violently wiped out more than 90% of living things - difficult to reconcile with Jesus' promise that god cares for every sparrow.
We would also have to conclude that the random destruction of millions of men, women and children in natural disasters is a perfect act of love. This despite Jesus' command that we should care for the physical needs of our enemies so as to prove ourselves to be perfect just as god is perfect. If god is the epitome of morality why are his actions so immoral?
What then if we look for moral guidance not in what god does but in what he says? Here again we find an absence of support for belief in absolute goodness. If the bible was the work of a perfect god then we have to accept that - under certain circumstances - slavery infanticide, kidnap, forced marriage, brutal executions and genocide are expressions of perfect morality.
It's at this point that apologists typically change the topic to a defense of god's right to act as he chooses. Ironically the case for god being the absolute standard of goodness gets abandoned in favour of "might is right". What we are left with is not a consistent source of goodness - the same yesterday and today and tomorrow - but a capricious world of ethics by divine fiat.
The problem - sometimes referred to as the Euthyphro dilemma - was identified by Plato when he posed the question of "whether the gods love the pious because it is the pious, or whether the pious is pious only because it is loved by the gods". If god commands good things because they are intrinsically good then goodness exists independent of god and we can discover moral truth without him. If on the other hand things are good because god commands them then morality is not based on anything other than god's unpredictable whims.
What then of our inner moral sense or conscience, does it provide any basis for belief in a divine law-giver?
There are two obvious objections to this assertion. One is a practical one. As we noted earlier, christians who take opposite positions on all manner of ethical questions each claim to be humbly led by their god-given conscience. If the conscience is a result of god's nature in humans then it is a very blunt tool. The other objection to a supernatural origin of a moral compass is the conflict between the conscience and the written demands of the creator. We rightly baulk at the atrocities ordered by Yahweh. Why should our conscience be outraged by infanticide and slavery if it comes from the same god who commanded these things in his word?
The reality is that theists cherry-pick ethical statements from the bible and use then to justify their moral positions post hoc.
We could safely dispose of the words ethics and morality in these sort of conversations without losing anything useful. It all amounts to nothing more than the what we call our concerns about the way our actions affect the well-being of conscious creatures. An interesting challenge for theists is to name an example that does not fit that description - one for which Sam Harris deserves all the credit.
There are moral facts about the world. There are right ways and wrong ways to behave if our concern is to maximise well-being. This is "objective morality". This is the alternative to an imaginary absolute morality and is not a matter of mere personal preference. It provides a way to address moral questions that depends on neither the whims of a deity nor the personal preferences of the majority.
Is the harvesting of embryonic stem-cells morally wrong?
An answer from a position of absolute morality might say yes or no depending on which principles about god the theist considers most compelling. In either case the answer would likely be delivered with the certainty of being on the side of the angels. In reality the answer will be one of personal preference sanctified post hoc by an appeal to selected bible principles. An answer from a position of objective morality would begin by wrestling with the possible consequences of the decision, including the potential benefits of stem-cell research and a consideration any negative effects of destroying early-stage embryos. The answer would be provisional pending further information.
It is this need to accept uncertainty that seems to worry theists. It opposes the frequent appeals in scripture to trust and obey like little children. Morality is difficult and messy. Sometimes there is no clear answer. The solution is not to be found in taking refuge in false, infantalising certainties.
the title was total clickbait
I am by no means a Jehovah's Witness or a part of their cult
So you are here because........?
Many of us here have read more Bible translations, books discussing the Bible, religious history and religious comment than you will ever look at. Thanks but no thanks.
