wow :O
Posts by Qcmbr
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Qcmbr
How are atheists better than believers?
Sexier bums apparently.
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13
Can we come up with some tips for newbies and the huge silent audience on JWN to make it easier and more fun for them to post?
by Fernando injwn was the first forum i posted on.
at the moment it is still largely the only forum i post on.. in the begining i was totally green, but just jumped right in.
for me that was not too hard since i can be outspoken by nature.
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Qcmbr
I'd like it if there was a stricter section of the forum for newbies where mods looked after them before they migrated to the main forum - purely to protect them from getting flamed early on. I am conscious that it gets a bit rough especially if the newbie is religious and vocal.
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Qcmbr
NDrew - keep your posts together. There isn't a reward scheme operating for numbers of posts. (there isn't is there Simon?! )
Must refrain from hitting submit button too soon!!
Edit (NDrew - a little trick for you if you remember something you forgot.)
NC - NDrew is trolling. I can understand a small fraction of what she says the rest is stream of consciousness whine. Suggest you save your powder for someone who is more considerate of posting etiquette. Excellent battle btw. I couldn't help as much as I wanted because this forum software is not compatible with my android phone :(
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Qcmbr
NC - well debated and very pertinent personal experiences. Thank you.
I totally concur that - as an atheist - when discussing / arguing with believers about their worldview no matter how many times they want to get personal and rude the overriding emotion I get is not personal hurt or a bruised ego; it is normally frustration and pity that someone is left so bereft of valid material argument that they have can concede the lack of evidence and still think that they are right and then wonder why their precious worldview just got so mauled. The one recent exception to this was when one obnoxiously rude, self-styled, prophetess - who has thankful gone and got a proper job - decided to bad mouth my wife. That hurt.
I used to get hurt badly in forums (including this one - those who see a change in tone maybe need to go back and see some of the rumpuses Abaddon and Teropod Sapien got involved in) when deep down I knew I didn't have a valid argument, the hurt was not what people said but in my inability to articulate anything approaching an acceptable answer. That inner realisation hurt like hell and was manifest as whinging for respect on this forum. As a xian I used to go away and pray for help to defend God and to be inspired by the spirit as to what to say that would open the door to people's understanding of Jesus and faith especially after bruising encounters here. At the time I didn't understand why I received no answers. Sigh.
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Qcmbr
If an adult posits a childlike worldview at odds with reality and wishes to hide behind respect rather than accept the plain truth presented by a cold ammoral but real world so be it. But never ask me to dignify the nidiot by coughing politely and looking away while they dance on the coffee table and tell me that a talking snake and an invisible magician are fighting a soul war and that scientists are wrong about fact based reality such as evolutionary theory and geological processes.
Knowledge must never bow the knee ever again to the superstitious and myths from the nightmares of human history.
Believers are people of value as much as anyone but it doesnt stop their worldview from being worthless at best and debilitating at worst when they apply it to others problems. All a believer ever brings is argument and endless circular debate because they have no reality to offer and no , non magical woo, answers to how, why or what this universe is.
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47
LDS (Mormon) wheelers and dealers coming over tonight at 7 PST. What would you ask them?
by sabastious inhey jwn.
a couple of mormon missionaries came to my house last week and i invited them in.
what can i say, curiosity killed the cat.
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Qcmbr
Strong drinks refers to alcohol - hot drinks refers to coffee and tea and hence by extension where the zealous get the caffeine ban. The actual Word of Wisdom indicates that they should drink beer (mild drinks made from barley as opposed to hard drinks meaning spirits.) They won't know that.
If you really want to ask them something to make them think as them how they know that the burning in their bosom / whatever they experience when they 'feel' the spirit is actually a divine manifestation? Ask them what else they think it could be.
Ask them what would make Mormonism false - for them. Ask them what they would really do if they found out it was false. Ask them what they have done to check that they aren't being deceived. Stay on this topic.
Doctrine isn't a very productive area. imo.
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778
IS GOD REAL? HOW DO YOU KNOW?
by still thinking inthis is an honest question on my part.
someone on this board asked me 'how do you know' a while ago and i really struggled with it.
in fact, it was a turning point for me.
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Qcmbr
Tec - there were lots of things in the end but here are a few major ones I remember:
Mormonism relies heavily upon the concept of a testimony, a personal experience with the divine normally expressed as a 'burning in the bosom' in the presence of 'truth'. Basically the slightly choked up feeling we get when we experience something very moving. I had a very exceptional experience has a young boy where after several nights of prayer about the Book of Mormons truthfulness I had a very strong emotional experience that seemed to fill me with love and - for want of a better word - bliss. This was a bedrock of my testimony. On my personal examination of my rationale for faith as an adult I decided to see if there were any circumstances where such feelings could be auto generated ( I had experienced similar feelings several times since while giving talks in church, bearing testimony as a missionary etc.) I read several books on how the mind works and on psychology and lo and behold I found descriptions of exactly what happens. The brain is a trainable and easily tricked organ that will engineer the reality you tell it to ( roughly!) and will throw in some surprise freebies ( a good example is color based optical illusions .) Continually seeking for an affirmative physiological response to a thought pattern ( prayer to confirm book of mormon true and by extension Mormon gods existence ) plus subjecting my body to unusual input stress stimuli that stimulate adrenaline amongst other chemicals (for example kneeling in a dark room / standing at a pulpit in front of people) and adding in an altered trancelike mind state ( hymns, prayer, language change - using thee and thou in prayer/ scripture etc.) all combine to be the perfect storm to engender and train the brain to produce otherworldy ecstatic feelings. Add this to a social environment where all respected authority figures and peers are coaching you and giving you an expectation of what you will feel it is absolutely feasible that you will have experiences over a lifetime which are mistakenly categorised as emanating from an external divine source. Young teenage me accepted those feelings as divine and thereafter every time I felt that sort of feeling whether it be at a good movie, at someone accepting baptism or an athlete overcoming challenges to win a race I re-ran the reinforcing meme in my head, ' wow I can feel the spirit of god, thank you for showing me truth .'
A huge one was evolution and the obvious falsity of a global flood ( Mormonism, unlike sophisticated modern Christianity of the last hundred years, absolutely requires a global flood as it is confirmed as such in the book of Mormon.)
Bible criticism ( Bart Ehrman's works amongst others) shattered both the old and new testaments. Coupled with Mormon prophets' fails ( I won't bother to list but there are some whoppers - see Hoffman and Kimball) allowed me to see every single prophet and their utterances as regularly incorrect / lies. This broke the idea that anyone - however lovely - was receiving divine information on my behalf.
Answers to prayer to which I could allude several allegorical personal and family examples could not withstand the confirmation bias test and more importantly moral test. On reflection very infrequently answered prayers were no different to fortuitous luck / self fulfilling prophecy ( please help me to control my anger leads to greater anger awareness ergo less outburst - damn it :) and importantly showed a petty god who answered my requests to get a job , find peace in my soul , have a good day etc while allowing my next door kid neighbour to be buggered every night by his violent paedophile father - note this is illustrative, my real next door neighbours were girls and both were raped by their father but not every night.)
In short my internal construction of Christ, heaven, angels, prayer, faith were all falsifiable and explainable once I accepted that my brain was a foolable organ that generated reality for me and then I allowed myself to really read evolution, biblical criticism, Mormon unvarnished history - all of which dismantled , with a wrecking ball, my faith. Brutally slaughtering my internal holy cows was painful but liberating. I held onto my imaginary but powerful world , despite all the very obvious contradictory evidence, way too long. My belief wasn't very strong when I finally really put it to the test.
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778
IS GOD REAL? HOW DO YOU KNOW?
by still thinking inthis is an honest question on my part.
someone on this board asked me 'how do you know' a while ago and i really struggled with it.
in fact, it was a turning point for me.
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Qcmbr
FHN - you may or may not be trying to convince me. My whole point is about convincing yourself. You see I once believed as much as you ( within rough guides of strength of belief ) and yet it wasn't until I looked for ways to falsify that belief that I was able to actually test the strength of that belief. Until that moment of clarity I was able to assert strongly that I believed and to make seemingly cogent explanations for my belief ( I spent two years as a full time missionary on that basis ) and yet I hadn't actually made the leap into questioning myself, my own ability and until I could do that I couldn't see the weakness in my position. Once I decided to accept the truth as described by the evidence ( rather than as described by my deluded and biased perception filters ) I came to a different, rather painful conclusion. Until I could see what would falsify my belief and use it to examine my belief my faith , though strongly asserted, was empty.
Can you describe what would falsify your belief for you?
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778
IS GOD REAL? HOW DO YOU KNOW?
by still thinking inthis is an honest question on my part.
someone on this board asked me 'how do you know' a while ago and i really struggled with it.
in fact, it was a turning point for me.
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Qcmbr
The strength of your belief rests upon the ability to falsify it. Flying High and Tec and all other believers cannot articulate anything that would falsify their beliefs, for themselves, therefore their belief has little validity. Anyone who is a believer should try the test and ask themselves what obtainable information could invalidate their 'truth' sufficiently for them to cast it aside and alter all parts of their life predicated upon such perceptions. Only when the belief negating information is known can a believer every truly test their belief otherwise they can claim nothing more than confirmation bias results since they have no standard to test their truth against.
The strength of your evidence / belief in God is proportional to your ability to falsify that belief.
For example - one way to disprove current evolutionary theory currently supported by fossils would be to find fossils deposited (not intruded) totally out of sync (famoulsy bunnies in the precambrian - see Haldane). One way to increase my belief in a supernatural God would be for such a being to appear to me etc.