Well I'm flicking through this thread, and I didn't have anything to add, until I noticed my old friend Burn The Ships had used the faulty 'atrocious acts in the name of atheism' argument again. Sir, have I not already debunked that pile of rubbish to the point where you had no response? Why are you starting up the engine on that again? To try and trick people who don't know the counter argument? Please don't be so dishonest. Try and learn things from these conversations, don't stick to the same position you had before you joined the forums. You are allowed to change your mind, you know.
serotonin_wraith
JoinedPosts by serotonin_wraith
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60
The Problem with Atheism by Sam Harris
by nvrgnbk inthe problem with atheism(this is an edited transcript of a talk given at the atheist alliance conference in washington d.c. on september 28th, 2007).
to begin, id like to take a moment to acknowledge just how strange it is that a meeting like this is even necessary.
the year is 2007, and we have all taken time out of our busy lives, and many of us have traveled considerable distance, so that we can strategize about how best to live in a world in which most people believe in an imaginary god.
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55
What is your favorite word and why?
by Abandoned inmine is facetious.
i like it for a lot of reasons.
it rolls off the tongue.
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serotonin_wraith
Meliorism
[ meel-yuh-riz-uh
m, mee-lee-uh- ]the doctrine that the world tends to become better or may be made better by human effort.
The belief that improvement of society depends on human effort
the belief that the world can be made better by human effort
I like how it sounds and I like what it means.
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10
NOW THEY HAVE PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE............
by vitty inthats right, i think weve blown our fade.
we had our non witness family to stay over the holidays and my (reckless) husband took photos from my sisters new camera with our lovely , big xmas tree in the background.
she went home was showing my other jw sister (she didnt know it was there cant work the camera yet), and there it was.
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serotonin_wraith
Can you say it was at someone else's house, or are there things in the photo that prove it's yours?
(I hate that they can still hold the shunning card up their sleeve to control grown adults. It's an underhanded form of blackmail, spruced up by them to sound like something good that protects them from 'evil' (ooh!) even though most people leave because of doubts, not 'evil' - ugh!)
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105
What book are you reading right now?
by Wordly Andre ini am reading buried alive: the terrifying history of our most primal fear, it's really cool
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serotonin_wraith
The Force of Reason by Oriana Fallaci.
This is by an Italian woman, speaking about the spread of Islam in Europe and the danger it brings. I'm learning a lot about how easily Westerners are allowing Muslims the freedom to spread their religion or way of life, even though you will never find that level of acceptance for Christians or Jews in Muslim countries. She is angry though (justifiably perhaps) but that part makes for uneasy reading at times. I feel her thoughts could have been expressed just as well without the need to resort to swearing or multiple exclamation points. It doesn't damage the overall message, but I find myself smiling at it more than feeling as worked up about it as she is.
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66
The Gift of Speaking in Tongues?
by Maddie inwith the increase in evangelical churches there seems to be a lot more emphasis on the practise of "speaking in tongues".
i quite like the way these churches conduct services, with live music and great singing.
it is so different to the kh meetings and like fresh air.
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serotonin_wraith
seratonin,
Well, I have more than a clue, but, knowing your position, I'll say that this comes from what Ist Corinthians teaches, apparently based on what the practice was at the time, and leave it at that for you. Each can decide for him/herself what to do with it.
So you 'know' after reading the Bible, which has never been proven to be from any god. People of other religions honestly think they're in communion with their god, and seeing as you can't all be right, it stands to reason that even if one of these gods is true, as a matter of probability you shouldn't expect to be the one who is right about this. People instantly see through the deception and delusion of other faiths, yet rarely turn the mirror upon themselves.
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66
The Gift of Speaking in Tongues?
by Maddie inwith the increase in evangelical churches there seems to be a lot more emphasis on the practise of "speaking in tongues".
i quite like the way these churches conduct services, with live music and great singing.
it is so different to the kh meetings and like fresh air.
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serotonin_wraith
serotonin,
Tongues is communication from one's spirit to one's god in an audible form. If the spirit has been re-born of Yahweh, then the communication is to Yahweh. If one's spirit is under the influence of another, then the communication is directed elsewhere.
hmike,
This is basically saying 'my god is real and those other gods are not'. Even though you know people in other religions speak in tongues too, you're assuming communication can only go to Yahweh and not those other gods, because you assume they don't exist. You have no way of knowing where communication goes. What if it goes to some other god you're not worshipping? Can you give one good reason to show you're right about where communication goes, and millions of people in other faiths are wrong?
If you can, I'd love to see it.
If not, why do you say these things as if they are true, when you actually don't have a clue?
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75
The Biblical Flood Thoroughly Trashed
by Farkel inthere are many new ones on this board who may not have seen this.
my old friend alan feurerbacher who has done an unbelievable amount of scholarly research on many subjects must have spent about two or three thousand years researching virtually every aspect of the biblical flood story, and am providing the link to this subject (together with links to other excellent work by him).
it's long and detailed and definitely not for those who get bored with more than four sentences of information and sound bites.
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serotonin_wraith
As I pointed out, there are no "mountains" - as we now understand that word - now in southern Mesopotamia
and whatever high hills that are there now were most likelly not so high several thousand years ago. The Hebrew word which is often translated as "mountain" in the Genesis flood account is the same word that is translated as "hill" elsewhere and in the Old Testament. The Hebrews had one word for hill or mountain. It was used to refer to any raised mound of earth, from an ant hill to a Hymalayan peak. A proper rendering of the Hebrew would also be, "The waters rose twenty feet covering all the hills."
Are you suggesting that the flood was only 20 ft high? Maybe I misread you.
If you are, I'll go into that. If not, there's still the problem of the water overflowing, not rising another 20 ft over the hills. Whether it's hills or mountains, the water will still overflow or pour out of the gaps between them. The actual height of the mountains/hills won't matter.
Noah could have seen no further than the horizon. Even if he did understand just how much more there was to our earth than just his land, since he could see no further than the horizon, a large local flood which extended to the horizon in all directions may well have appeared to him to be much larger than it was.
Except that some words about the entire earth being flooded and every animal killed are quotes from God, who I assume would have known.
But he wrote about an event that he indicated took place about a thousand years earlier.
Yes, but the narration to the story still talks about it as if it's the whole earth under the entire heavens. The narration should have been modernised, even if the quotes couldn't be.
It certainly is. That's why anyone who seriously believes the Genesis flood account is based on actual historical events has to believe that the flood was a local flood and that there were no kangeroos on the ark.
Yet in a previous post this was said:
You wrote: So if it was a local flood, why save every kind of animal? Why not just ones indigenous to that area?
Maybe God wanted Noah's actions to represent a future judgment that will truly be "world wide" - as we now use that phrase.
So which is it? Did every kind of animal go into the Ark or not?
Maybe someday you will find reason to believe. I too was once an unbeliever.
I know this is way off topic, but what reason do you have to think your god is real? I'm open to reasons, I just don't see any good ones.
I believe God intended for the story of Adam and Eve in Eden to mirror His creation of the race of man (Hebrew = 'adam) He had previously created, as described in Gen. 1:26-30. I believe Adam and Eve were later created by God (Gen. 2) for the purpose of serving as a small scale picture of the human race He had much earlier created.
So if he created two brand new humans 6,000 years ago (on his 'resting day' apparently), he would have been aware that man needed company in the form of another human and not animals, so it makes no sense that God would bring every kind of animal to Adam to test for compatability and for naming too, seeing as I'm guessing animals were already named by that time. It's bad enough thinking we could be held accountable for people who weren't our ancestors, but now if you're right they were humans who didn't even evolve! They were made then and there, and God being God, he would have known they would fail his test, before he even made them! There could be millions of descendants on earth now who share the common ancestor of the clay man and rib woman, while the rest of us have human ancestors going back 100,000 years who evolved from ape like creatures. Mixing Genesis with science can lead to some amazing theories, but this is one of the most imaginative ones I've heard.
God created Adam from preexisting life, the dust of the ground, which when viewed under a microscope is seen to be filled with life, just as He had previously created the human race from preexisting life.
Evolution isn't creation. We evolved from preexisting life - we developed slowly and naturally over a long period of time. How was that process creation? We're still evolving - how is humans having children and grandchildren God creating? When we pick our partners that's God creating?
God gave Adam a wife who came from his own gene pool, small as it was, just as the wives He had given to the men He had earlier created had come from their own gene pools.
I'm not sure how new an idea marriage is, but the early humans were more likely to be raping women they wanted and having multiple partners. Family structures took time to develop. With every species (except ones like donkeys and horses, say) they can only reproduce within their own species. Evolving differently biologically and becoming a new species is just natural, it's happened with every animal. Is it God giving zebras wives when they evolved into the zebra species? I've heard an illustration that says if we see the history of the universe as a whole year, man only appeared on the scene at one second to midnight on the 31st of December. So to think the universe was made with us in mind is staggering, to say the least.
God arranged things so that Adam and Eve would acquire an intimate "knowledge of good AND evil," in order for them to gain a personal knowledge of why God's ways are best, a knowledge that would serve them well for all eternity.
Ah, but he didn't want them to. He told them NOT to eat from the tree of knowledge. In fact, wasn't that the original sin all humanity needs saving from? Are you now saying that he actually wanted them to eat from the tree, but that for doing something God wanted, a punishment was handed out and they were made to feel as if they'd done wrong and brought about the damnation of mankind?
the "trivial" commands they had to obey to receive eternal life were all those which came from their God-given consciences
Are these the ones that I have in my mind which go against the rules from God in the Bible - like being allowed to keep slaves or thinking of women as inferior to men or killing disobedient children or killing animals for their fur?
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39
~Hope for Satan & everyone?~
by FlyingHighNow inedited to change thread title: .
is god's love so wonderful that he will save everyone?
even satan and his dark angels?
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serotonin_wraith
Wow, this is a repackaging of the Bible if ever I saw one. I don't believe in any god, that's just from reading the Bible. There are many examples of God killing people, even for things their parents had done. While the idea is appealing (depending on what heaven is like) I don't see much grace in the Bible.
But words like saved/salvation would mean being saved from something. Avoiding something else. So if the plan was to just whisk everyone off to heaven after being born on earth, is there a hell that was built that's not being used? Is it like saying, you're in a car driving and at the end of the road there's a town where you'll stop. Your car may fall into the sea, except the sea is 1000 miles away and the road goes nowhere near it. Are you saved from drowning or is there no saving involved because you were never in any danger?
I don't see the point in worshipping this god either, I have better things to do. But that kind of attitude won't go against me, I'll still be saved. No point in having any religions really, they can cause suffering on earth and they're not needed to be saved.
I've said this before and I'll say it again - the Bible can say whatever you want it to say. Just ignore some verses and call them corrupt, point out the ones that back your claim and call them true, and voila, a new religion and belief system based on what appeals to you.
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The Gift of Speaking in Tongues?
by Maddie inwith the increase in evangelical churches there seems to be a lot more emphasis on the practise of "speaking in tongues".
i quite like the way these churches conduct services, with live music and great singing.
it is so different to the kh meetings and like fresh air.
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serotonin_wraith
http://www.christianchallenge.org/departingupc/DU008.html
I don't agree with much of what is written there, but I thought this point was interesting-
Speaking in tongues did not simply reappear with the Pentecostals in the early 1900s. The Mormons were practicing glossolalia and prophecy in the 1800s. They continue to do so to this day.
Did you know that speaking in 'unknown' tongues is a factor with just about every occult religion in the world. Fundamental Muslims also practice glossolalia, not to mention Hindus and the Haitian religions of the Caribbean.
See where it gets murky? Where do we make the distinction between what is practiced in Pentecostalism and what is practiced in Mormonism?
So if it's found in many religions, don't they cancel each other out? If Hindus speaking in tongues wouldn't get unbelievers to start believing in Krishna (well I hope no one here would be taken in by that!) then how can Christians doing it be convincing to anyone with the ability to think? Whatever's going on in Hinduism and other beliefs, it's not their god's spirit, is it? Their gods don't exist.
If it's your one true god getting involved with them, how do you know Krishna isn't getting involved when you think Yahweh's spirit is with you?
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Reaching Out
by cluless inas witnesses we were always encouraged to reach out for the privalige of doing this or that or a whole lot of other stuff that doesnt make any scence now .. but its important in life to have something to reach out to.with me i have my wife my little kid and financial security (the kid came aftter i left the witnesses) .
only i havnt found anything to replace the importance of reaching out.as a witness (however misguided that reaching out was).
what in your life has replaced your once sincere belives and given your life the purpose you once had?.
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serotonin_wraith
When we leave theres a void because life needs answers that cant be answerd.
I think this can turn into a purpose of life too- discovering answers. People who believed the gods controlled volcanoes had their own personal answer, except it wasn't real. People who accepted they didn't have all the answers, and who searched for them instead, are the ones we should give credit to. In the future, humans may give credit to those of us who accepted that we don't know all the answers today. Why should we know all the answers right now? We'll know more than our ancestors, yet not as much as our descendants, and I don't think there's anything wrong about being in that situation. It seems natural enough to me. We just happen to be born at this point in history.
m, mee-lee-uh- ]