Posts by dorayakii

145

--- A Question for ALL Atheistic ex-Dubs----

by gordon d in

jw
friends

which child is wiser?

while starting a hunt for easter eggs one child runs to a big tree and finds nothing then that childs brother says, go look under that rock i promise youll find one there!

the child throws down their basket and says, i give up!

dorayakii

A litmnus test for these may very well be an ingrained sensibilty to some people... but it also may require being "plugged-in" to spiritual matters.... either way, self examination can help to develop a discerning eye towards these abilities, in believer and even non-beleivers.

I think your choice of words was very apt here: "plugged in to spiritual matters". Although i respect the right for anyone to believe what they want, i liken belief in God/gods to belief in the material reality of "the Matrix". You have to be plugged-in to fully appreciate that it "IS" reality. In fact, it looks so much like reality, that people are willing to spend their whole lives in it, and argue that it is in fact real. Like the character Cypher, they find life outside the Matrix so meaningless and empty that they have to be given an illusion to make their lives worth living.

The other main characters though, even though they don't have the comforts of the Matrix, are more interested in the real world and how to make it a better place, instead of putting their hopes on a utopian fantasy world...

The key question which defines the difference between materialistn {a more positive and unladen term for "atheist"} and theist beliefs is: "Are you interested more in truth, or comfort?" Whichever one an individual choses is up to them, and doesn't necessarily make them a bad person, people have different goals in life. Theists search for beliefs which offer hope and comfort in a heavenly father-figure, materialists search for beliefs which conform to the material world which they experience.

No one has anwered my question: (first define hope-less-ness)... the claim again was: If you are an atheist... what is your hope? If there is one, then I was mistaken in implying that there was not.

~~Theists often make a fundamental error in their thinking~~. {sorry my emotions got in the way there. Lets start that again}... Theists often view the world in a different way. Because its good, it must be true. Because it offers "hope" it must be true... so, because the paradise will eliminate wickedness off the earth forever, it MUST be true... and because we will go to heaven and drink milk and honey forever, it MUST be true... and because materialism has no HOPES for the afterlife, it must be false.

However, you cannot base the veracity of a belief system merely on what hopes it offers you.

"Hope-less-ness" means the state of having a lack of hope. Hope is "the general feeling that some desire will be fulfilled". First of all then, hope is a *feeling* and is not always necessarily based in reality. Feelings alone do not necessarily make wishes/hopes come true {although i do esteem the value of positive-thinking}.

The question is, how high do we value reality. Or is a sence of unreality actually what human existance is all about. What is real?

On the other hand, although not always based in reality, hope is not necessarily a bad thing. Materialists are able to have hope in things that occur in THIS LIFE {or even *after* they are dead: eg. hope that their children will live in a better world}, therefore their beliefs are not "hope-less". They may not share the same mass-hopes and mass-dreams as theists do, but as individuals, their "atheist" beliefs do not make them hopeless. In addition, they can have the "hope", that when they die, they will not be tormented nor rewarded eternally, but will simply enter into a peaceful state of non-existance, deeper than sleep {"nirvana" / "moksha" but without having to work for it}.

Book Study Dates...

by dorayakii in

jw
friends

i was looking at my old "life - how did it get here?

by evolution or by creation" book, and had a few flash backs.

little infantile drawings of evolving animals that i'd done in the book... endless scrawlings of my own name and "jehovah-jehovah-jehovah"... answers that my father had written in for me (includung a very disturbing answer to: "what are the results of independance from god?

dorayakii

I was looking at my old "Life - How did it get here? By evolution or by creation" book, and had a few flash backs. Little infantile drawings of evolving animals that I'd done in the book... endless scrawlings of my own name and "Jehovah-Jehovah-Jehovah"... answers that my father had written in for me (includung a very disturbing answer to: "What are the results of independance from God?" to which the answer in red capital letters is "DEATH"). So i was trying to find out how old i was when we studied this book, and there was a start date of 16/03/89 that my father had written in chapter 18, so i would have been 5 years old.

This got me wondering, does anybody have a list of dates when we studied certain publications? If not I'll just have to painstakingly look in the WT Library archives of Our Kingdom Ministry.

Ta,

Dorayakii

4

Radical Islam finds US 'sterile ground'

by daystar in

"people come to this country and they like it.

they don't view it as the belly of the beast.

with very few exceptions, you don't see the bitter enclaves that you have in europe.".

dorayakii

Excellent. The moderating influence of freedom is a wonderful thing.

The arguement is not so easy as "America has more freedom, so we have less home-grown terrorism"...

For one, i'm not sure that your "moderating influence of freedom" is any greater than ours here in Europe, there are freedoms here which are greater than that in the US, and freedoms in the US which are greater than in individual EU countries. Here in the UK and over in Spain (the capitals of which are obviously London and Madrid), Muslim women are free to wear the hijab, yet we have suffered home-grown terrorist action. In France however, where the hajib is prohibited by the laicité law on seperation of Religion and State (the State including state schools), they have not suffered a terrorist attack, and from personal experience teaching for a year in a French college, the Muslims seem to view the law as quite reasonable.

A good paragraph in the article talked about how US Muslims are from richer and more comfortable backgrounds... whereas Uk Muslims are often from poorer and more disenfranchised backgrounds. This is a key paragraph.

I think that another key phrase in the article, and a reason for general unrest in Europe is that " unsophisticated planning and tiny numbers have led some [..] to conclude that America, [..] is not fertile ground for producing jihadist terrorists. "

The US has a population of around 300,000,000 and a Muslim population of around 3,000,000. (Where 42% of the Muslim population is African-American)

The UK has a population of around 60,000,000 and a Muslim population of 1,600,000.

Lack of a long-term community and organisation is also a key factor in America. Spain has had a thriving Muslim community for close to a millenium, so it's little wonder they are more organised and wanting more recognition form their government. In Britian, the Muslim population is mostly made of immigrants from the former imperial colonies.

Our geographical proximity to the Arab world and the proposition of Turkey (an entire 99.8% Muslim country according to the CIA Wold Factbook) actually joining our "federation of nations" at some point in the furture is another factor... and when you consider that the issues surrounding Turkey's admission into the EU are based on the conditions of Turkey opening its airports to Cyprus, giving rights to its Kurdish nationals and allowing increased freedom of expression for journalists and writers, you begin to realise that Europe's priorities are different from that of the US regarding its Muslim population.

There are a plethora of other factors and reasons...

49

Historical Linguistics

by dorayakii in

jw
friends

i just thought it would be interesting to give a bit of background on philology (the study of ancient linguistic texts) historico-linguistics (the study of the history and development of languages) and etymology (the history of individual words).

by analysing different languages, linguists were able to work out that many languages had a common root.

for instance, it was obvious that english, dutch, german, danish and swedish for example, are from a common root, because certain words closely resemble each other.. english drink.

dorayakii

After 7 months, i think we need a resurrection…

It has been suggested that Japanese is a kind of Creole, with an Altaic grammatical substructure, and core Austronesian vocabulary. Evidence for this theory lies in the fact that like Turkish and Korean, Japanese is an agglutinative language.

Additionally, there are a suggestive number of apparently regular correspondences in basic vocabulary, such as Japanese “ishi” (stone) to Turkic “das”, Japanese “yo” (four) to Turkic "dört"… they may not look much alike to you but, they display regular correspondences to each other as as does the English “four” to Old English “feower”, Old German “*fetuor”, Latin “quattuor” Lithuanian “keturi”, Old Irish “cethir”, Welsh “pedwar” and Sanskrit “catvarah” which categorically put these languages in the same Indo-European Language Family. Lets have a look at some evidence which i hope is more compelling for putting Japanese in the same Altaic lanuage family as Turkish...

alt

Lets consider just one pair of the supposedly related words. Japanese “hashimasu” and Turkish “kosmak” both meaning “to run”. (prononced "hashimas" "koshmak" respectively).

How can these two words be related to each other? How can the “k” of Turkish relate to both the “h” and “s” of Japanese?

Well if we look at three primitive language family trees for the Indo European words which give us modern English words, “heart”, “core”, “horn” and “hound”, even if we don’t enumerate the reasons for or the processes involved in such a phonetic shift, we may be able to accept the possibility of such a change.

alt

If we pay close attention to the Germanic words, we notice that at some point in history, the Indo-European velar plosive “k” weakened into a Proto-Germanic velar fricative “kh” then further into the modern English glottal fricative “h”.

Similarly, looking at the Sanskrit and Slavic words, although the process is not as clearly defined, the Indo-European velar plosive “k” would probably have gone through a similar phase as a velar fricative before moving to the front of the mouth as the alveolar fricative “s”.
However (assuming that “k” was the original sound), how can the same letter in the mother language (“k”) change to two different letters, and do that in the same daughter language (e.g. “s” and “h”)?

Well phonemes (sounds) undergo changes at different stages of a languages development. One particular change might occur at one point in its history (k à s) then another at another stage of its development (k to h… or perhaps s to h )…

To illustrate the complexity of phonemic shifts (sound changes), in Old English the word “scyrte” meant a short garment and was pronounced somewhat like //skeerta//. A nationwide phonetic change then occurred perhaps through imitation and transmission that caused the word to be pronounced //sheerta//. Perhaps it was the latest fashion among Anglo-Saxon youths or maybe it was the newest in-thing to pronounce the word like this. In fact all existing words in Old English beginning with “sk” were softened to “sh”. At that time there was not one word in English with the consonant cluster “sk”… That is, until the Vikings and Danes began to invade. As they integrated into Anglo-Saxon culture, they introduced a plethora of Old Norse words into Old English vocabulary including “sky”, “skin”, “skip”, “skull”, “skill” “scatter”… and …“skyrta”, which did not replace, but peacefully coexisted with the Anglo-Saxon words “heaven”, “hide”, “ship”, “shell”, “craft”, “shatter” and “scyrte” respectively… The word “scyrte” evolved into “shirt” and the word “skyrta” into “skirt”, two different words, and two different short garments, but one common origin.

So here we see, that the same phoneme cluster “sk” in Old English became two different phoneme clusters in the same language (sk to sk) and (sk to sh)…

So coming back to the point, (across a slight diversion) perhaps this is the sort of thing that happened to the Proto-Altaic sound “k” which perhaps remained the same in Turkish but changed at two or more different points in Japanese.

Frankly, we don’t know enough about the early developments, invasions and borrowings of early Japanese to be able to formulate a solid theory about the suggested phneme changes (k to s) and (k to h), but this is enough to speculate that both the “s” and “h” of “hashimasu” could have come from Proto-Altaic “k” under different conditions and at different points in history.

Hmmmmm… hashimasu… kosmak… hashimas… koshmak… hashmak… koshmas… khashmask…… am I stretching it a bit here???

If anyone had some thoughts regarding this theory or relating to any of the other words in the list, feel free to reply.

Dorayakii... of the “Association for the Common Origin of the World’s Language Super-Families” aka “ACOWLSF”…… (which is in no way affiliated with the “Genesis Foundation for the Vindication of the Post-Deluvian, Tower of Babel Story” aka “GFVPDTBS”)

67

Born Gay?

by Sam87 in

jw
friends

hi everyone, just wondering what your thoughts are on people that say they are born gay?

ive heard that this isnt actually possible, and that there is no scientific backing to it, im personaly not gay but i was just wondering what some of you think on this matter, and if you have anything to back it up with, thanks,.

.

dorayakii

Qcmbr: Now to confront the idea that people say they 'knew' they were gay at a very early age - I say bull - I would suggest that having found themselves having made a gay lifestyle choice they then retrospectively find proof in their past.

I say bull to your ridiculous theory. The fundamental error in your reasoning is that you confuse the "gay lifestyle" with "homosexual orientation". A gay lifestyle choice is different from sexual orientation. Sexual orientation occurs first, a certain lifestyle then may or may not follow to fit in with your orientation. Imagine the 11 year old me, being brought up in a strict JW household, yet somehow chosing to lead a gay lifestyle when i hadn't even heard of the existence of such a choice... and chosing to have a warm fuzzy feeling in the groin when being with a particular boy of my own age.

It is perfectly possible to close off your feelings or desires -

Yes, i agree, it is possible (but not easy) to close off feelings or desires, we can merely ignore them by an act of will. However, even if we close off desires the underlying urge is often still there (where does adultary come from?) ... also it may be easier to close off feelings and desires, but is not such an easy task to open up desires and feelings at will, in fact its close to impossible.

it is a permission of the will however, we live in a society that is all about gratification of every thought, whim or desire that wanders across our minds.

I whole-heartedly agree with you and deplore this cheap, media-controlled thrill-seeking attitude of modern society. However, i would not reduce my trusting and monogamous gay relationship to the "gratification of [my] every thought, whim or desire" any more so than i should label your monogamous straight relationship as such.

We all know that sexual feelings can be learnt just as any appetite of the body (sheep eyeballs are a delicacy to some)

If you can help me to force myself to actually enjoy mushrooms and Brussels sprouts i would be extremely grateful.

Hell if I wanted to be gay I could look back on my childhood and find times when I didn't find women attractive but definately chose to hang out with other boys and could then make the leap that I must have known even then how I'd be now - tosh - children don't decide who they will find attractive or 'know' anything is right or wrong at that age.

First of all its completely different from wanting to "hang out with other boys"... secondly you've just contradicted yourself. You said "the bizarre argument about not being able to choose who you are attracted to is a lie" then you said "children don't decide who they will find attractive or 'know' anything is right or wrong at that age" which i agree wholely with, because i didnt decide who to find attractive, it just crept up on me, and i felt no guilt about it, i didn't know it was somethng "wrong".

Hell just as a test, if its so easy, i challenge you to try and turn yourself to being gay by "looking back on your childhood" as you say... You don't have to stay that way, you can change back whenever you want... If you can accomplish that i'll want to know how (although maybe about two years ago i would have jumped on the opportunity, now, im more comfortable with being gay, and i'm in love with my partner, so it would be very emotionally disrupting to both of us for me to change at such a late stage... but i'd still be curious).

I would have more respect if people who chose to be gay just said so rather than pretending that somewhere there is a part of the brain that is sending messages saying - I gave you boy body parts but I'm gonna make your consciousness female.

Its a bit arrogant of you to assume that people are just pretending not to have made a choice, and use it as a basis for not respecting them. If i had made a decision to be gay i would gladly admit it, its really not a big deal. However, the case is that i did not make such a decision. In fact, if anything, my body and mind were doing things that were completely against my will... and completely against my nurture. Kind of turns the old "nature v. nurture" debate on its head doesn't it?

Of course no one is born gay, but neither is it a choice.

It is perhaps something that is decided by genes or environment at the onset of puberty. Or perhaps it is predetermined by hormone levels during pregnancy, or maybe even imbalanced hormone levels at the onset of puberty... or perhaps it could be caused by a host of other social factors, or a mixture of the above reasons... those explanations i can accept, even if it means that there is no gene responsible... (which i would like there to be, simply because it would silence fundamentalists and people like yourself who say "just snap out of it will you? you can just choose to be straight")... but even if no such gene is found, one thing i will not accept is that sexual orientation is a conscious decision by the individual...

67

Born Gay?

by Sam87 in

jw
friends

hi everyone, just wondering what your thoughts are on people that say they are born gay?

ive heard that this isnt actually possible, and that there is no scientific backing to it, im personaly not gay but i was just wondering what some of you think on this matter, and if you have anything to back it up with, thanks,.

.

dorayakii

In the same way as gay relationships provoke a strong negative feeling in hetero people, thinking of hetero relationship provokes a strong negative reaction in me. (However, being distinctly in the minority, it would be foolhardy for me to engage in heterophobicrhetoric. Besides, fortunately i'm openminded to these wayward sexual deviants who unnecessarily increase the population of the planet... I jest, i jest...)

FlyingHighNow:Mother Val, the priest in our church is gay. She didn't know she was gay until she was thirty. She says she always knew something wasn't quite right about her relationships with men.When she fell in love with another woman, she finally understood. She is still friends with her ex husband and his family: they all think the world of her.

This is quite a common experience, and in this case, it seems that the person has made a conscious choice, being an adult and all. However, many people, (myself included) recognised this at a much earlier age, and didn't even attempt to form sexual relationships with females, it seemed the most unnatural thing to me. Even though i knew a heterosexual relationship was "right" and perfectly natural according to, like, everyone, all my intuition and instinct said "no, that's wrong, its against nature"...

Unfortunately, even into advanced adulthood, some people just obliviously start heterosexual relationships, thinking its normal, but always having niggling doubts about their relationships. Many even wonder why sex to them doesn't feel like the strong feeling they hear everyone else talking about, and shrug it off thinking that there must be something wrong with them either physically or emotionally due to their upbringing. Many dont even get that far to analysing it all, thinking that what they feel (or don't feel) is normal, and that love, relationships and sex are all just media hype... Being gay doesnt even cross their mind. Until they fall in love.... THEN all the questions are answered...

Sam87: personaly i think we are all born straight and everyone makes their own choice on where they go after that.
oldflame: Ditto :

Ok, prove it. I've just given my own experience of not having chosen being gay. It having been imposed on me before i even knew about the existence of sexual relationships. Yet, you've agreed with the statement above. Please provide some proof for your theory.

These kind of statements really agravate me, because how can neo-pubescent, pre-adolescents "choose" who they're attracted to?? Indeed, WHO would want to choose to be attracted to the same sex when the whole of society and religion is mostly against the orientation?? Indeed, many gay people spend a great deal of their child and even adult lives trying to change to being straight. How is it possible to chose something and not want it? Yes its true that you do choose who you sleep with, but you cannot choose whom you are sexually attracted to (or whom you are sexually repulsed by). Some people who are gay by orientation may choose to marry and even have children with a woman, but that does not make them straight, any more than the mere act of sleeping with the same sex makes you gay. Its much more profound and complex than that... For example saying that being gay is a choice is like saying that my ancestors "chose" to be born black and into slavery. Try this one: "I think we are all born free and everyone makes a choice as to whether to be a freeman or a slave"... Ridiculous i think you would agree?... Goes right alongside:

"Though once as black as charcoal, the Rev. Mr. Draper is now white. His people say that his color was changed in answer to prayer." (Can Restitution change the Ethiopian's Skin? - Zions Watchtower 1900 October 1st p.296-297 - WT Reprints p.2706)...

I certainly prayed fervently to be straight, but Jehovah didn't see fit to answer me...

Dorayakii (of the "Society for the Elimination of Grammatical Gender as a Noun-Class System in European Languages" aka " SEGGNCSEL ")

67

Born Gay?

by Sam87 in

jw
friends

hi everyone, just wondering what your thoughts are on people that say they are born gay?

ive heard that this isnt actually possible, and that there is no scientific backing to it, im personaly not gay but i was just wondering what some of you think on this matter, and if you have anything to back it up with, thanks,.

.

dorayakii

personaly i think we are all born straight and everyone makes their own choice on where they go after that.
Sam87.

Well i know you weren't being critical, but i don't agree that i was "born straight" and then somehow made a conscious (or even unconscious) decision to be gay. It's just something that happens. Just like at a certain age a straight person starts having feelings for the opposite sex, at the age of about 9 i started having feelings for someone of the same sex. (At even the age of 7 in retropect i noticed i had a special... shall we say "affinity" for the same sex - i used to enjoy sniffing boy's hair in the dinner queue )... No one around me was gay, in fact i hadn't even heard of the word. I grew up in a very sheltered JW houosehold, and everybody i knew was a Witness. The subject wouldn't even come up to a 9 year old. Of course i'd heard the word "homosexual" at a meeting or two, but this word meant as much to me as did the other long words: "adultry", "coveteousness", "fornication" and "idolatry". I obviously certainly never applied the word to my innocent neo-pubescent feelings... i didn't feel guilty about it, in fact i didnt even think of it as a big deal, it just felt extremely natural to me, and i never occured to me that anyone else felt any differently... i assumed it was the way all guys felt about their close friend UNTIL...

...at the age of 11 i heard the word "gay" mentionned in the classroom at the end of a sex-education video. it was something along the lines of: "...so this is how babies are made [...] STDs are dangerous, so always use a condom [...] many young people stroke their sexual organs, this is called "masturbation" and is perfectly healthy [...] people who are attracted to the member of the same sex are called 'gay', if you are gay it is perfectly natural and healthy"...

Well when i heard this one-and-one came together in my head on that day and i realised in retrospect, that all my friends had been boasting about girlfriends (up until then i thought i was just a really extra-pure J-dub kid doing all the right things and immune to impure thoughts).. at that point i realised that i shouldhave at least had a slight interest in girls... but it still didnt *click* until my brain had worked it out a little more... then at the age of 11, at a meeting i heard the word "gay"... thought about it for a bit, then started to panic a little bit. I realised that the feelings a man was supposed to have for a woman, were manifesting themselves in my feelings toward another boy (although i didn't indeed couldn't put it so eloquently). Now, that shocked the life out of me and i began to realise that what i felt was "wrong"... Whereas before i used to feel 2 inches tall when the scripture about "being obedient to your parents in union with the Lord" was mentionned, now i began to wince at the scripture about "men who lie with men not inheriting God's Kingdom"...

...but even then i didn't apply the term "gay" to myself, it still felt innocent, even though at the meetings i heard it was wrong. I prayed to Jehovah each night to stop these thoughts from coming into my head, but of course, as puberty raged on, the feelings got STRONGER... in the next 7 years i had crushes on 4 different guys of the same age who attended my school, all of which lasted more than a year each. I never even tried dating a girl coz it didn't feel... natural... It was on my third crush at the age of 15 that i finally accepted that the term "gay" as applied to myself, even though i had not slept with or even kissed another male... but i still felt tremendous guilt and even toyed with the idea of taking my own life before i commited any "wrongdoing". This continued throughout my fourth and final of what i call my "teenage crushes"...

...then at 18 still believing in the veracity of the WTS's teachings and the sinful nature of my own self, i got baptised hoping that at last i'd have mental protection from sin... Obviously it didnt work because a month after my baptism, i discovered... THE INTERNET... Strangely enough, i thought that if i only glanced *momentarily* at apostate websites, then i wouldn't be comming any "thought-crime". Well, a year of *momentarily glancing* at apostate sites gave me enough courage to break away from ridgid JW thinking... and almost exactly a year after i got baptised, i decided to lose my virginity......... and felt like a piece of horse manure. I prayed to Jehovah immediately after the act and cried uncontrollably... i knew there was somthing wrong with the Watchtowers view of God, but still believed it in a vague kind of way, grasping onto straws for it all to be true, yet desperately hoping that the apostates were right, my mind was a right mess, i didn't know what was right and what was wrong, i thought: the WTS must be right because they predicted 1914 and if Armageddon came while i was in this state, surely i'd be swept away... but they're wrong about so many other things... During those years, doublethink was a thought process i became very familiar with... i bottled everything up and used cognitive dissonance to block out anything that caused me pain. I wanted to have my cake and eat it, i wanted (1) the securityof the comforting WT beliefs about resurrection and paradise, but i also wanted (2) freedom of thought and action...

...but then after that my healing process began. I made my decision between the two, i chose freedom of thought and action. Having just turned 19 i decided that the New Year (2002) would be a new starting point... i decided that i would not feel guilty about going on apostate sites, afterall, if the Truth is the Truth, i will be able to prove it with evidence. That same year i would also be starting university and would have a better access to reasearch materials, and a new set of friends to try my new identity out on...

...unfortunately i still didnt have the courage to "come out" to ANY of my new friends, for fear of being judged, but i did make great use of internet research materials... (as well as online dating sites)... and gradually cleared my mind of all doubts as to the flasehood of the WTS. In June 2004 i made my first post here on JWD, still believing in the Bible tentatively, but retrospectively a "just-in-case" agnostic... and sometime between June 2004 and June 2005 (whilst i was living in Paris, away from the numbing effects of weekly congregation meetings) i stopped thinking "what if it was all true" and turned into an atheist... and my last feelings of guilt for being gay dissolved in the emancipating parisian air...

I believe that you can only be proud of what you chose to do or be:

I did not chose to be black, therfore i cannot be "proud" or "ashamed" of it...

I did not chose to be gay, therfore i cannot be "proud" or "ashamed" of it...

I chose to be an atheist, therefore i can be proud of my decision...

Te reason why being an atheist is different is because its been one of the few choices i've made in my life, and its been a long arduous journey trying to find who i really am... and i feel that at the age of 23 i've finally begun to trace the first few pencil-drawings of that "me"... and one of those pencil strokes is knowing that i was not born straight then "make my own choice on where i go after that"...

(sorry about the long post, i just felt a sudden urge to answer the question with a life story, lol)

Dorayakii(of the "Society for the Re-introduction of a First-person, Lower-case "i" into the English Language" aka "SRFLIEL")

26

The Atheist's Book of Bible Stories - new - The Demon of Saskatchewan

by RunningMan in

well, i have once again put finger to keyboard and produced another article.

i have to say that i have never had as much fun with a subject as with this one.

you can really see the goofyness of religion under the demon microscope.

dorayakii

But, for your everyday usage, there is a quick way to ward off household demons, if they come knocking. Based on the belief that the demons are deathly afraid of God and will flee when presented with true holy power, all you have to do is say his name – Jehovah. If you’re not in a position to say it out loud (such as a demon attack at the library or in a business meeting), you can get away with just thinking it forcefully.

BWAHAHAHAHA *snort* HAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!... RunningMan's chapters have me cracking up and snorting with laughter everytime... I just love its ironic tone... I don't know how I missed this chapter back in March... Keep up the good work RM.

15

The Creator's Creator...

by dorayakii in

i have several ways of stating and demonstrating what is essentially the same point.... 1. jws often deflected the question, "what is the purpose of life?

", by stating that our purpose it is to serve the creator... but, what is the purpose of the creator himself?

must we not apply the same criteria to the creator as we do to ourselves?

dorayakii

Dorayakii, Have you read about the Kalam cosmological argument?

No i havent read about it under that name stevenyc... but i've seen that line of reasoning before... on page 78 of the WTS'sCreator book...

One question i'd like to ask is, can it be extended to the Creator himself?

1) Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2) The Creator began to exist.
3) Therefore, the Creator had a cause.

...of course, creationists would argue that God did not begin to exist, he merely... exists. Therefore, if we can say something like that about God, why can we not say that Life itself... just exists? Why do special rules apply to the Creator, and why does he get out of the logical equation? (and don't just say "because he's the Creator d'uh" coz that doesnt hold water)

That's where I'm coming from. I don't believe life needs a designer. I believe we are a product of Evolution and if life can evolve here it can elswhere. I might suggest this book: "Rare Earth" by Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee.

Thanks for the clarification zeroday. From your post, i wasnt quite sure where you stood.

15

The Creator's Creator...

by dorayakii in

i have several ways of stating and demonstrating what is essentially the same point.... 1. jws often deflected the question, "what is the purpose of life?

", by stating that our purpose it is to serve the creator... but, what is the purpose of the creator himself?

must we not apply the same criteria to the creator as we do to ourselves?

dorayakii

Do my questions make sense? or are they illogical?...

If there is no God that created us and evolution is why we are consider the odds. IF each galaxy could produce one earth like planet, solar system capable of life thru evolution. That would produce 100 BILLION galaxies with at least ONE life system each.

I'm not sure i understand your arguement ZeroDay... Are you saying that the chances of life on Earth evolving over billions years, and billions of subtle changes and adaptations are less likely than an already-complex Creator just popping into existence and somehow being able to create cool stuff... with his voice?

What exactly are the odds of a Creator just popping into existence? How can we even *begin* to calculate these odds? ...or did God himself evolve?... or was He created by Someone Else?