Tec - also if we could go back in time life would certainly evolve very different species (though it is likely we'd see many common forms such as body symmetry , eyes and wings) but it is very uncertain that you'd get consciousness as exhibited in humans - we are quite a very special case on this earth.
Posts by Qcmbr
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148Who designed cancer?
by snare&racket inone thing i regret, is not listening to the questions in my head whilst a jw.
one i didn't ask until years after leaving was....who designed disease?
of course the first thing to realise is the complexity of disease, the histology, pathology and aetiology.
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148
Who designed cancer?
by snare&racket inone thing i regret, is not listening to the questions in my head whilst a jw.
one i didn't ask until years after leaving was....who designed disease?
of course the first thing to realise is the complexity of disease, the histology, pathology and aetiology.
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Qcmbr
Vidqun - what would it look like if it wasn't designed?
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Christmas traditions
by tec ini thought it would be nice to start a thread with some of your favorite christmas traditions... especially for those who are just beginning to celebrate christmas.
we open a gift on christmas eve.
when i was a kid, it was always a new pair of pajamas.
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Qcmbr
I have a christmas dream of staying in bed past 6 but what will happen is I'll be putting out presents, building stuff, filling stockings and chatting with my boss till midnight , I'll fall asleep pooped amd be woken by screams of excitement and bed bouncing (not from the wife sadly) but from a horde of kids who have discovered their stockings at about 4. The lights will go on and I will enter the twilight world of punch drunk parent and we'll head downstairs for presents. At about 5 I'll fall asleep in a mountain of paper , last vestiges of strength spent on undoing cable ties and inserting a bazillion batteries. Someone will wake me at 5 past 5 to play Buckaroo. That's my Christmas tradition.
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148
Who designed cancer?
by snare&racket inone thing i regret, is not listening to the questions in my head whilst a jw.
one i didn't ask until years after leaving was....who designed disease?
of course the first thing to realise is the complexity of disease, the histology, pathology and aetiology.
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Qcmbr
I love these threads - now I'm on the side of Cofty!
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Woody Allen Jesus
by Qcmbr inplease don't watch if you don't like tim minchin or you really like j. but really its not that bad and oddly insightful but it is irreverant.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sfdujlebzu.
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Qcmbr
Please don't watch if you don't like Tim Minchin or you really like J. but really its not that bad and oddly insightful but it is irreverant.
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ok jw teaching aside, can you see a time coming when religon will cease to exist?
by highdose inpossibly this could happen in a dramatic sudden way or a slow burn but can you see the human race progressing to the point were they no longer need to belive in these myths and legends?.
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Qcmbr
I can see a time when religion ceases to be about magic and is replaced by a humanist philosophy. The rising generation in general are bored with traditional religion which cannot compete with Hollywood or Potter. As the religious position is logically deconstructed in public (something that last really happened with Darwin - and look what a revolution that brought) then fewer and fewer intelligent people will hold to faith and it will become, as it should, even more a preserve of the uneducated and credulous.
Legislation will eventually be demanded that will neuter the evil within religion (shunning, hate speech, tax evasion / theft from society, gender discrimination and anti-gay rules) and turn it into humanism.
Science will remove any reliance on fake healings or prayer and will prove to be much mightier than all the people's gods and gradually society will just leave it behind as a cultural oddity like Thor and the zx-spectrum.
Unless we have an event like nuclear war that returns us to the dark ages. Then all bets are off and religion will rule again and the human burnings will start again.
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News Reports of Distraught North Koreans
by Band on the Run inthis morning on gma they showed film reports from north korea.
the people were beyond grief.
when the anchor queried the expert as to whether this was pure propoganda, the expert said no.
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Qcmbr
When they one day, as a nation, discover the truth can you imagine the rage...scary.
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50
Ding dong with 4 JWs this morning
by Qcmbr inthe jws were out in our area this morning and i bolted downstairs before my wife could waive them away as she normally does.. two ladies (mum and 24 year old daughter i later found out) initially stopped as i opened with a comment about how i couldn't trust a thing they say because they are taught to practice theocratic warfare.. the mother blinked and asked me what that was ( so it began ) i informed them both that they are allowed to lie or at least be evasive with the truth with worldy people.
she countered that they are taught not to lie so i again asked her if she knew what theocratic warfare meant and she again said no (first of my many - 'please go look that up' statements .).
i then moved onto the idea that they couldn't think independently outside the organisation due to fear of being disfellowshipped and shunned.
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Qcmbr
Apologies I took so long to get back - work!
torn - chuffed that my post pushed you to post :)
I think you have a very valid point, my wife pretty much said the same thing - that I should have been the bigger man and just walked away from the situation and I should have shown respect for their beliefs. I disagree and this is a small part of why.
I have wracked my brains as to why I was so fooled by my religion and so inculcated in its myth that I literally couldn't see the lies and logical errors. How could I not see the totally bogus nature of my faith? I'd spent two years as a missionary arguing with plenty of christians, atheists and agnostics (and the odd pagan and muslim) and no one had caused me to truly question my faith. While the majority of the blame for my lack of self critique must lie at my feet (fear, mental laziness and pride) there is a significant other cause. In all my debates and discussions I was never directly challenged on the core weaknesses of mormonism. When it comes to pure theological ideas mormonism is pretty solid (it caters for everyone and explains the whys and hows pretty thoroughly) so it can go toe to toe with any religion and not get beaten however, no one ever pressed me on the real mormon weak points - weak points I only realised were there when I did my own deconstruction - I list a few below:
1 - Joseph Smith's polyandry (NOT simple polygamy) and sex with (in our culture) minors - plus his use of 'revelations' to put them under pressure to aquiese.
2 - Exactly how he 'translated' the plates ( head in a hat using a seer stone NOT using the 'official' urim and thummin)
3 - Immorality - old testament God condones genocide, child murder, sexual slavery etc. new testament god allows criminals to escape justice while leaving victims without recompense and disempowers the victim from exacting punishment by simply forgiving sins.
4 - Top church leaders get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars (while the sheeple are taught to do everything as a free lay clergy)
5 - What treasure digging really was and why the 'gold plates' is therefore utterly dubious - JS's role in defrauding people from the age of ten onwards.
6 - Masonry and its history (i.e. relatively modern) and the parallels with mormon temple rights.
7 - Anachronisms and impossibilities in Book of Mormon (silk, wheeled chariots, horses, steel, hebrew bloodlines, swords and breastplates, 'reformed' Egyptian writing, reliance on a real biblical global flood etc.)
I realised that in order to challenge me on those real issues someone would need to be very clued up on mormon history and would have to get their facts spot on. I wish someone had. I couldn't miss the opportunity to do something similar with those JWs. This may have been the first time they ever had a worldy person who knew so much of the weak points in their statements.
Plus you're right I did bl**dy enjoy it - sorry :)
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Ding dong with 4 JWs this morning
by Qcmbr inthe jws were out in our area this morning and i bolted downstairs before my wife could waive them away as she normally does.. two ladies (mum and 24 year old daughter i later found out) initially stopped as i opened with a comment about how i couldn't trust a thing they say because they are taught to practice theocratic warfare.. the mother blinked and asked me what that was ( so it began ) i informed them both that they are allowed to lie or at least be evasive with the truth with worldy people.
she countered that they are taught not to lie so i again asked her if she knew what theocratic warfare meant and she again said no (first of my many - 'please go look that up' statements .).
i then moved onto the idea that they couldn't think independently outside the organisation due to fear of being disfellowshipped and shunned.
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Qcmbr
Thanks all, it wasn't actually nerve wracking - which was surprising - I think that thanks to you all here I know the material so well that I felt like it was all a pre-rehearsed speech, I almost didn't have to think about what to say next. If I get this opportunity again I'll just try and focus on one thing and take it a bit slower.
Mickey - it's odd you should ask that. I told them I was an atheist ( that it was my wife who is the mormon ) , I didn't even bat a mental eyelid and it's the first time I've not said I'm a mormon first and then qualified it. I'm breaking free.
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Ding dong with 4 JWs this morning
by Qcmbr inthe jws were out in our area this morning and i bolted downstairs before my wife could waive them away as she normally does.. two ladies (mum and 24 year old daughter i later found out) initially stopped as i opened with a comment about how i couldn't trust a thing they say because they are taught to practice theocratic warfare.. the mother blinked and asked me what that was ( so it began ) i informed them both that they are allowed to lie or at least be evasive with the truth with worldy people.
she countered that they are taught not to lie so i again asked her if she knew what theocratic warfare meant and she again said no (first of my many - 'please go look that up' statements .).
i then moved onto the idea that they couldn't think independently outside the organisation due to fear of being disfellowshipped and shunned.
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Qcmbr
Apologies for a lot of garbled syntax, spelling and ideas - I was writing fast everything I could remember before heading out to a panto planning meeting.
Wife just had another chat about it and told me off again (eek) - I said that I wanted her to understand that this was one of the few things in my life that I'm passionate about (defending my family from something truly evil) and that I just happened to have a lot of info from my time here. She agreed that it was good to defend the family but that the kids had been a bit surprised to see their mild mannered dad suddenly get animated and arm wavey in public.
I agreed that it probably wouldn't happen again but I wanted her and the kids to know that behind their JW smiles and magazines with skipping children was the real potential for death, family splits, mental slavery and a life wasted in fear of reality and a yearning for a daydream that never comes. I wanted her to know that for them I'd risk the embarrassment and awkwardness that comes from public debate when it mattered - if only so that they would know that mental freedom is worth fighting and shouting about - always.
I do hope something got through to them but I obviously wasn't being diplomatic - making them doubt was really a secondary aim.