Posts by onacruse

" new to the thought process of critical thinking, i have felt overwhelmed by the wealth of information now available to a mind opened up to society-banned material.

onacruse

CoCo:

Great learning has driven me mad.

A condition which will never afflict nvr.

Ok, ok, I've had enough fun tonight poking fun at Nate...

and I'm expecting a few paybacks.

42

Is all religion in some way abusive?

by nvrgnbk in

jw
friends

i wish to thank writetoknow for prompting this question from his thread "hating religion is it bigotry?".

what has been your personal experience?.

consider the impressionable mind of the infant.. is it fair to indoctrinate them with dogma?.

Wow! I hadn't thought of that idea! I bet I could get a lot of people to pay me really big money to stand on a stage and do some Einstein-channeling (with the help of a good number of well-hidden cue cards).

Craig (of the "I-wanna-be-a-John-Edwards" kind of guy)

62

The Steps Between JWism and Atheism

by compound complex in

jw
friends

greetings, friends:.

i recently put up a thread entitled "when can i comment?

" new to the thought process of critical thinking, i have felt overwhelmed by the wealth of information now available to a mind opened up to society-banned material.

onacruse

TD:

10. XJW Agnostic
11. XJW Atheist

See what happens? You slide down that slippery slope, barely maintaining a semblance of balance, and finally when you end up at the edge of the precipice (step 10), then like a lemming you jump off into the bottomless pit of utter disbelief (step 11).

42

Is all religion in some way abusive?

by nvrgnbk in

jw
friends

i wish to thank writetoknow for prompting this question from his thread "hating religion is it bigotry?".

what has been your personal experience?.

consider the impressionable mind of the infant.. is it fair to indoctrinate them with dogma?.

onacruse

nvr, I'm done with you. You're not listening to anything ~~onacruse~~ Einstein says. roflmao

btw, I should credit my sources...though I do have, and have read selected parts of, the book, my fat little fingers couldn't possibly type all that stuff in less than 3 weeks, so here goes:

http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/einsci.htm

http://www.einsteinandreligion.com/

And, to add insult to the injury I just inflicted on nvr:

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/24949.html

42

Is all religion in some way abusive?

by nvrgnbk in

jw
friends

i wish to thank writetoknow for prompting this question from his thread "hating religion is it bigotry?".

what has been your personal experience?.

consider the impressionable mind of the infant.. is it fair to indoctrinate them with dogma?.

onacruse

nvr:

He knew that spirituality and religion are not interchangeable.

I'm not exactly sure about that:

Science and Religion

This article appears in Einstein's Ideas and Opinions, pp.41 - 49. The first section is taken from an address at Princeton Theological Seminary, May 19, 1939. It was published in Out of My Later Years, New York: Philosophical Library, 1950. The second section is from Science, Philosophy and Religion, A Symposium, published by the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., New York, 1941.

If it is one of the goals of religion to liberate mankind as far as possible from the bondage of egocentric cravings, desires, and fears, scientific reasoning can aid religion in yet another sense. Although it is true that it is the goal of science to discover rules which permit the association and foretelling of facts, this is not its only aim. It also seeks to reduce the connections discovered to the smallest possible number of mutually independent conceptual elements. It is in this striving after the rational unification of the manifold that it encounters its greatest successes, even though it is precisely this attempt which causes it to run the greatest risk of falling a prey to illusions. But whoever has undergone the intense experience of successful advances made in this domain is moved by profound reverence for the rationality made manifest in existence. By way of the understanding he achieves a far-reaching emancipation from the shackles of personal hopes and desires, and thereby attains that humble attitude of mind toward the grandeur of reason incarnate in existence, and which, in its profoundest depths, is inaccessible to man. This attitude, however, appears to me to be religious, in the highest sense of the word. And so it seems to me that science not only purifies the religious impulse of the dross of its anthropomorphism but also contributes to a religious spiritualization of our understanding of life.

The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge. In this sense I believe that the priest must become a teacher if he wishes to do justice to his lofty educational mission.

42

Is all religion in some way abusive?

by nvrgnbk in

jw
friends

i wish to thank writetoknow for prompting this question from his thread "hating religion is it bigotry?".

what has been your personal experience?.

consider the impressionable mind of the infant.. is it fair to indoctrinate them with dogma?.

onacruse

Yes, a very interesting passage and one that very much melds with the post Leo made on the self-deception thread.

I hope I didn't just replicate what Leo said...these threads are getting so intertwined! LOL

12

Why is door to door the only preaching the "good news"?

by bluesapphire in

i am sick and tired of this argument with witnesses.

every time i try to talk to anyone about anything jw related, this is the response, "but no one else is preaching the good news door to door...".

the jw version of the good news is nothing but amway or electrolux or kirby!.

onacruse

fwiw, for the first 5 decades of the WTS, the vast majority of JWs (of course, Bible Students as they were then known), did not go door-to-door. It was Rutherford who "expanded the call to arms," as it were.