Then let us all tread carefully, there are legal ramifications when engaging minors on the Internet.
Posts by Qcmbr
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19So Frightened.. Extremely Afraid
by Caupon inas some of you may know, i'm a pretty troubled lad who was on the verge of getting baptised but stopped when i learned the shocking truth about the organization.
following that my own mother let me have it in anger to my decision.
since then, my life has been true hell.. .
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19
So Frightened.. Extremely Afraid
by Caupon inas some of you may know, i'm a pretty troubled lad who was on the verge of getting baptised but stopped when i learned the shocking truth about the organization.
following that my own mother let me have it in anger to my decision.
since then, my life has been true hell.. .
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Qcmbr
Forgive me if I'm wrong - this reads like a troll post. Minors do not refer to themselves as minors nor would they mention Russelites. This situation seems contrived and the response out of place ( terrified simply because some one acted like a dick?) I think this is an adult.
If I have made a gross error and you are a young person who writes like an adult but who is emotionally on the edge ( the situation described is nothing to do with JWs , it's just life and everywhere is the same) then Iwould strongly suggest you don't use Internet forums for advice and comfort unless you can first of all resolve why you are emotionally so fragile. You will experience far worse on public forums than people simply getting short with you. If your situation is real then you will get battered roving the Internet. Respect your family, honour the efforts they make to feed, clothe , protect and love you and know that as you get older you will be able to make difficult choices about relationships and beliefs much better when you have emotionally and mentally matured.
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A Manual for Creating Atheists by Peter Boghossian
by cofty ina manual for creating atheists offers the first-ever guide not for talking people into faith--but for talking them out of it.
peter boghossian draws on the tools he has developed and used for more than twenty years as a philosopher and educator to teach how to engage the faithful in conversations that will help them value reason and rationality, cast doubt on their religious beliefs, mistrust their faith, abandon superstition and irrationality, and ultimately embrace reason.
- amazon.... "boghossian has provided an indispensible chart book for all of us who must navigate the rising sea of magical thinking that is inundating america today.
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Qcmbr
Tec- it is your standard response just as it is with most who have faith. It matters not when you do it, before or after a statement, it is enough that you fit the pattern. As a missionary at the door people would make a statement about god to explain an aspect of this being they disliked and I would expend all kinds of sophistry to explain just why Mormon god was not what they disliked but was in some way different but was just perfect for them and if they had a few minutes I'd like to explain it to them.
Sometimes Tec you have to accept you cannot avoid the point by constantly rephrasing so it isn't applicable to you or your god or pretending you dont understand what has been said as a way to dismiss it. The confident thing is to square up to a criticism or an observation and embrace it and try and see if the evidence fits but faith is rarely about solid confidence ( after all it has nothing to show, no faith believer in all the years of this forum has ever managed to provide any substantial evidence or new / novel information or provide a divine sourced theory with any predictive or explanatory power ) and becomes instead a series of ill defined mantras ( god is x, y , z ) and always invisible events occurring solely within individuals cranial space which traduce to no more than the intellectual worth and effect of endless Facebook pictorial memes.
Invisible friends / guides / masters can give great comfort, I had mine for 35 years so I get it but, being internal constructs they never exceed the mental and intellectual capacity of the one experiencing them no matter how our mind paints them ( as you know we've had examples of dragons, disembodied voices, leprous Christ, light , impression giver, telepathic god, filler of body with energy christ, helped me with depression god, feels like love being, pushed me out of way invisible angel, made me feel bad about dark alleyway guide and so on) This pattern is repeated across all religions with invisible supernatural entities and is ascribed to all manner of religious beings, ancestors, guiding spirits or aliens. The net result is never an increase of real knowledge but lots of interesting stories and , when a religion gets involved, architecture.
The desire for people to put aside childish notions and to understand that when they thought that some being was helping them through a tough time that it was their own fragile but magnificent , very physical but beautifully complex mind all along is born of human morality not arrogance. A person devoted to a made up god like mormon elohim is constantly acting a role on a mental stage and when they allow themselves to be coaxed from the play, take of the pious make up and look at themselves in the mirror then they can begin to act in a more authentic and self empowered way. I would love to see my mother reach a decision based upon her own experiences and inner wisdom rather than retreating to prayer, scripture reading and fasting - while visiting a temple to take part in cult rituals - before she hesitatingly reaches conclusions. It breaks my heart to see her so insecure in her abilities and desperate to have a divine confirmation of each choice she must make. I get saddened when Allah is praised when a bomb blows up people or Jehovah is credited with healing the car crash victim or the Holy Spirit is accredited with someone overcoming an addiction. In another time and place it is Wotan, Zeus and Ra being invoked and it was wrong then and it's wrong now.
We need atheism to free people from wasting time and resources worshipping Krishna, Allah, Elohim, Jehovah, Christ, Xenu, Brahma, Ganesh and all the other flavours of divinity and to be free to learn about how the universe really works by experience, awe and discovery. Atheism alone is not enough, nor does it destroy spirituality ( heck there are atheist religions ) but it is a first step is making a community more culturally open, where children are not taught that their sex determines their role in a divine plan, where genital mutilation is not a spiritual directive, avoiding blood is a divine mandate, prayer is not an effective substitute for action, where a persons sexual behaviour is not criticised because of bronze age superstitions , where science can be taught without fighting absurd mythical stories long proven false , a community where central places of exclusivity and division ( churches) are replaced with public schools, community centres and restaurants. If this dream is arrogance then so be it, call me arrogant. It's wrong but if this is not also your hope and you'd rather cling to teaching children fear and superstition and privileging mythical fairytales then I realise how important it is to reach the rising generation, to give them the tools of self actualisation denied to you their parents. Give them the choice for goodness sake.
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What Would a Country Run by Evangelical Christianity Look Like?
by cofty inon an earlier thread i made the statement that, "an evangelical christian government would look a lot like the taliban".. laika asked me incredulously, "do you really think your friends from your old church would govern like the taliban!?".
i thought it was a really interesting question and might work as a separate thread.. the people i worshipped with were mostly a nice bunch of people, but the thought of them having secular power would make me shudder.. christianity is mostly harmless because it lacks power.
christian politicians are restrained by secular laws and constitutions.
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Qcmbr
The Mormon one was tried in Utah. Result polyandry, polygamy ( young wives demaneed by old men , former husbands exiled), blood sacrifice ( death for those who were deemed too wicked to repent and be covered by Christ's atonement),Business monopoly, financial theft , fraud ( Kirtland Bank) , military posturing ( Mormon battalion plus prophecy of violent conquest of Missouri ), hatred of Gentiles ( Utah had oath to avenge death of JSmith against US for a long time), murder of others ( Mountain Meadows Massacre), repression of women, mandate on clothing, exclusion of non- believers, racism , religious taxation, education as religious tool,anti science ( where in conflict with dogma), prohibition of alcohol not owned by religious leaders, nepotism in government and business, vigilante militia ( Danities) , death penalty, censorship of the media , religious ownership of media, zero drug policy ( except to induce religious vision ! Ref LDS visionary stories, sacrament wine and JS usage of local plants) , mistrust of medical procedures, gay abuse ( modern day electro shock therapy), sexual control ( sex only for procreation through hole in sheet) and so on. Bloody madness.
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A Manual for Creating Atheists by Peter Boghossian
by cofty ina manual for creating atheists offers the first-ever guide not for talking people into faith--but for talking them out of it.
peter boghossian draws on the tools he has developed and used for more than twenty years as a philosopher and educator to teach how to engage the faithful in conversations that will help them value reason and rationality, cast doubt on their religious beliefs, mistrust their faith, abandon superstition and irrationality, and ultimately embrace reason.
- amazon.... "boghossian has provided an indispensible chart book for all of us who must navigate the rising sea of magical thinking that is inundating america today.
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Qcmbr
tec - I credit you with above average reading skills and excellent sophistication ( the ability to consciouslyand selectively corrupt meaning). I refuse to accept that you cannot understand what it means to be atheist with regards to everyone elses' god but your own. I do not accept that you needed to search for some definition to aid your understanding. Either you or admitting an out of character low level of comprehension or this is part of a strategy i have seen before which you were taught by another and simply involves repeating back a deliberately 'misunderstood' reading to show why you are utterly exempt from anything said.
Shrugs. That which I have posted is sufficiently concise and precise and Im happy it needs no further explanation.
PS Your summing up comment re your god not having a hell and not being responsible for spewing out those who are not hot or cold is an exclent example of you looking for some small point if difference to show why your god is superior to ' other gods' . Brilliant.
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A Manual for Creating Atheists by Peter Boghossian
by cofty ina manual for creating atheists offers the first-ever guide not for talking people into faith--but for talking them out of it.
peter boghossian draws on the tools he has developed and used for more than twenty years as a philosopher and educator to teach how to engage the faithful in conversations that will help them value reason and rationality, cast doubt on their religious beliefs, mistrust their faith, abandon superstition and irrationality, and ultimately embrace reason.
- amazon.... "boghossian has provided an indispensible chart book for all of us who must navigate the rising sea of magical thinking that is inundating america today.
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Qcmbr
Tec - everyone is an atheist in some form or another (most would have cogent and rational reasons for not being convinced of the reality of Zeus) however, when it comes to dismissing and disproving gods it is, in my limited experience, those who wish to posit another supernatural cause that spend most time and effort fighting specific gods and proving their targeted atheism (ref JW pages of literature disproving Catholics etc.) whereas atheists (the broad term I'm applying to those who acknowledge no deity due to lack of convincing evidence) tend not to care very much about god x or god y but rather see all forms of religious faith as stemming from equally understandable (and logically wrong) reasons and arguments against gods being broadly equal (that which proves Jehovah could be said of Zeus and that which disproves Zeus would tend to be a problem also with Jehovah.) I am no longer particularly bothered by mormon Elohim for example but I also absolutely understand a JW's committment to Jehovah.
Atheism itself is a rather healthy starting point being the natural state of children and alone is a laudable position imo. Once a person has decided to be an atheist with the exception of one deity or pantheon of grouped deities then they have very much narrowed the field and will begin to have a very active mindset in finding , often small, differences between their 'real' god and the pretend ones and explaining how important that is in proving the veracity of their god and the impossibility of everyone else's. If all people could believe in their various god's with a very healthy dose of skepticism and doubt it would be a brilliant start to gleaning truth and value from various creeds but sadly most gods are jealous and like to future punish non-believers while preparing a really awful place for those half in and half out the faith (some actually 'spew them out').
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A Manual for Creating Atheists by Peter Boghossian
by cofty ina manual for creating atheists offers the first-ever guide not for talking people into faith--but for talking them out of it.
peter boghossian draws on the tools he has developed and used for more than twenty years as a philosopher and educator to teach how to engage the faithful in conversations that will help them value reason and rationality, cast doubt on their religious beliefs, mistrust their faith, abandon superstition and irrationality, and ultimately embrace reason.
- amazon.... "boghossian has provided an indispensible chart book for all of us who must navigate the rising sea of magical thinking that is inundating america today.
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Qcmbr
Personal experience and real interaction prove that Islam is correct tec? I have at least one muslim friend who claims that reading the Quran in its original form is to experience physical proof of Allah's mind and His perfection, it is tangible proof of divinity that fills his soul with joy. Is his experience wrong, misinterpreted, or does your god have latitude to actually dictate the Quran to help out a certain segment of mankind who are most likely to respond to a poetic series of legalistic pronouncements?
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A Manual for Creating Atheists by Peter Boghossian
by cofty ina manual for creating atheists offers the first-ever guide not for talking people into faith--but for talking them out of it.
peter boghossian draws on the tools he has developed and used for more than twenty years as a philosopher and educator to teach how to engage the faithful in conversations that will help them value reason and rationality, cast doubt on their religious beliefs, mistrust their faith, abandon superstition and irrationality, and ultimately embrace reason.
- amazon.... "boghossian has provided an indispensible chart book for all of us who must navigate the rising sea of magical thinking that is inundating america today.
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Qcmbr
Stalin is a great example of what happens when faith obscures rationalism. Stalin was an atheist but primarily he was filled with faith in (his nasty version of) marxism such that even when it was demonstrably shown to be harmful to the people it was persisted with and preached. A true rational thinker , in a position of leadership and power, will be willing to alter their underlying assumptions and premises based upon evidence and feedback.
Intellectual honesty and rationalism is to perpetually doubt everything. Faith is to perpetually assume that the object of your faith is right no matter what. Faith can never equal intellectual honesty as it is unwilling to examine itself in a questioning or doubting state. Faith can never doubt itself lest it cease to be. Worldviews built on faith are difficult to dislodge no matter how wrong they are hence we have a plethora of competing religious ideas which are mutually incompatile but rely on exactly the same subjective evidences.
Faith is the problem imo. Atheism is not a recipe for removing faith ( as Stalin showed) but it is a darn good start for getting rid of one idol that relies on faith.
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A Manual for Creating Atheists by Peter Boghossian
by cofty ina manual for creating atheists offers the first-ever guide not for talking people into faith--but for talking them out of it.
peter boghossian draws on the tools he has developed and used for more than twenty years as a philosopher and educator to teach how to engage the faithful in conversations that will help them value reason and rationality, cast doubt on their religious beliefs, mistrust their faith, abandon superstition and irrationality, and ultimately embrace reason.
- amazon.... "boghossian has provided an indispensible chart book for all of us who must navigate the rising sea of magical thinking that is inundating america today.
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Qcmbr
apols phone.
I fear terribly the old granny who knits blankets for orphans but harbours belief in faith based concepts for if she ever gains authority she may at any stage start to claim divine mandate and communication and apply all kinds of madness. History is not on tbe side of the faithful, tbey have been shown as the most harmful to human thinking, knowledge and well being. I welcome this book abd the thinking that is driving it. we need to challenge faith with reason and rationality everywhere. nowhere should be too sacred or command too much respect to be challenged. We may not reach the convinced but we sure as hell can give their chdren the critical thinking skills to notice the difference between cherished fantasy worlds and reality.
We may end up with fewer pyramids but we will gain more space rockets.
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A Manual for Creating Atheists by Peter Boghossian
by cofty ina manual for creating atheists offers the first-ever guide not for talking people into faith--but for talking them out of it.
peter boghossian draws on the tools he has developed and used for more than twenty years as a philosopher and educator to teach how to engage the faithful in conversations that will help them value reason and rationality, cast doubt on their religious beliefs, mistrust their faith, abandon superstition and irrationality, and ultimately embrace reason.
- amazon.... "boghossian has provided an indispensible chart book for all of us who must navigate the rising sea of magical thinking that is inundating america today.
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Qcmbr
Great tip re book Cofty, will order when available on amazon. I am surrounded by sincere believers who apply their false ideas on a daily basis to the material world to tbeir and my detriment in both the short term and long term. Faith is not rational, it cannot be, its cpnclusions are absurd but those who have faith as their primary hueristic for determining reality are the most blind to their condition. The most immune to reason are the self made mystic as they can make up descriptions of reality to suit any situation and can intellectually dance away from failed memes; close behind them are the dogmaric religionists who have allowed a creed to replace their authebtic self, JWs, Mormons, Muslims etc. fall into this area and they believe partially because all around them believe and they seek positive reinforcement from their community. Should faith and personal belief be challenged or should it be respected , nay privileged? The rational mind ( NOT ATHEIST ) can easily explain why ideas, any ideas, should be challenged constantly and both parties , if they have intellectual honesty, will accept the new consequences of that challenge.Ideas closest to material truth will yield great predictive and .explanatory power while those that dont have little use beyond novelty and entertainment. Faith based knowledge leads to a mindset of reactive uncertainty, it cannot survive rigorous examination and so tries every manipulative and devious device it can to avoid the challenge. Tactics employed by faith range from constant redefinition of word meaning, appeals to respect, attempts to change the dialogue to questions of personal rights, outrage that someone could publically call them out ( all tactics of the unempowered) through to threats, name calling, social censure and isolation, improsnment , torture, murder and war ( tactics of empowered faith beliefs).Our board faithful are blind to their own anti social tendencies because they are not in power. A simple belief in 'love','light', 'truth', is only a few steps away from censoring the media, vigilante purity patrols, imprisoning vocal critics, enforced conversion and stonings