my two oldest brothers, jim and ron, were coerced into baptism when they were but 10 and 11 years old.. .
they were indoctrinated heavily, of course, and they tried to toe the line and be good little jw boys as best two unruly fatherless boys could.
the nature of a boy won out and they both got into some mischief about a year later.
What can one possibly say to something as terrible as this? That was extremely hard to read.
The feeling of deep heartache and pure rage at the same time is sickening.
So sorry for the pain this cult has caused you and your loved ones PC.
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
-by Pascal, Blaise
How fast do you think this picture will be floating around in Dub land to show the ark was real?
3-2-1 hits send to all the brothers in his contact list.
prayer topics seem to be the bandwagon of the moment so i'm jumping on!
seriously, has anyone here asked for something specific in prayer and actually gotten what they asked for?
what convinces you that you wouldn't have got it in any case?
Well and there's nothing wrong with that. In the words of William James "An idea is 'true' so long as to believe it is profitable to our lives." If people can't think or calm down to escape anxiety or escape trauma or despair without having God to pray to, then God is real because he needs to be.
Would you say that to the alcoholic, that drinks to escape his problems? Would you say that to someone suffering any addiction to "help" ease the pain or give them comfort? Or would you think it better to help them see the real problem?
Would you insist on your child believing in Santa, fairy tails, talking to teddy to find real comfort in life?
But at the same time I understand what your're saying. And to some extent I agree that people have the need to convince themselves of things that make then feel better. I guess if that's what gets you through the day so be it.
Here are some other quotes you might like:
"Pray, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy."
-by Bierce, Ambrose
"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist."
-by Camara, Dom Helder
"A lie is a lie even if everyone believes it. The truth is the truth even if nobody believes it."
-by Stevens, David
"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime; give a man religion and he will die praying for a fish."
-by Anonymous
"What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof."
-by Hitchens, Christopher
"There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death."
-by Asimov, Isaac
"If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them."
-by Asimov, Isaac
"Faith does not give you the answers, it just stops you asking the questions."
-by Ravus, Frater
"Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the unknowable, the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains."
-by Ingersoll, Robert Green
"He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; he that dares not reason is a slave."
-by Drummond, William
"To really be free, You need to be free in the mind."
-by Loutsis, Alexander
prayer topics seem to be the bandwagon of the moment so i'm jumping on!
seriously, has anyone here asked for something specific in prayer and actually gotten what they asked for?
what convinces you that you wouldn't have got it in any case?
whereami I totally understand your point. I am aware of the many injustices being done, poverty, sickness and death. Why does God allow suffering? I always wondered about that.
That doesn't make me lose faith and have hope that God will set things right. An atheist could probably hypothesize I've got the "God gene"
I wish I and everyone had all the answers.
Thanks for responding NH. I don't expect you or I or anyone for that matter to have all the answers. But what we should expect is being rational and honest when discussing these matters.
To say "God will set things right" is, in my opinion a very weak and easy way of not facing reality. So you're saying that while god has intervened in your life by answering your prayers he'll get around to the "other" less important stuff eventually because you're more important at the moment? And if he never gets around to those other prayers well that just because he doesn't see fit to do it. The old "god works in mysterious ways" excuse. Isn't it convieniant that it's "mysterious" when it doesn't happen to us. Come on NH, we both know you don't believe that. That's not very noble is it?
It reminds me of when I was still a JW listening to "experiences" of faithful brothers saying how god answered their prayers and bla bla bla (insert your miracle) while us poor "regular" publishers going through the same or similar experience never heard a peep from the same god they were praying to. Tell me something, when you started to realize that your JW religion was a farce and that those experiences of answered prayers was not god answering them, why were you able to rationalize them away then, but not now? Be honest with yourself.
prayer topics seem to be the bandwagon of the moment so i'm jumping on!
seriously, has anyone here asked for something specific in prayer and actually gotten what they asked for?
what convinces you that you wouldn't have got it in any case?
I really mean this in the most sincere way Nobleheart. I'm sure you're a wonderful person. Especially from the name you choose to describe yourself here and your avatar picture.
But one has to question your experience sincerely. Listen to what you're saying that your god did. You're really not helping him look good in your example.
You're saying that god listened to your wishes of finding a job, a job. Really? My neighbor, a very devote christian has been unemployed for that past 2 years!!!! Do you think she hasn't been praying? Maybe not hard enough? She and her three children have been living off of food stamps for the last year 1/2. Her house is in foreclosure proceedings as we speak. Is this gods will? Is he/she testing her failth? Please, please, lets be honest here.
Let's be honest a claim to having your prayers answered is a miracle. It's very difficult for me at least, to listen to some of these so called "miracles" here, because to be convinced that while some petty prayers get answered much more serious life saving ones don't.
So god finds you a job, helps another get over a cold and so on, but decides it's better to not listen to about a billion people's prayers that don't have acsess to clean water and food to feed their dying children. Please take some time to really ponder on that. How about these small facts:
How many children are abused and neglected in the United States?
Although the incidence of child abuse and neglect has been decreasing in recent years, more than 1.25 million, or 1 in every 58 children in the United States, were abused in 2006.
More than half (61 percent) of the children (771,700 children) were victims of neglect, meaning a parent or guardian failed to provide for the child's basic needs. Forms of neglect include educational neglect (360,500 children), physical neglect (295,300 children), and emotional neglect (193,400).
Another 44 percent were victims of abuse (553,300 children), including physical abuse (325,000 children), sexual abuse (135,000 children), and emotional abuse (148,500 children).
An average of nearly four children die every day as a result of child abuse or neglect (1,760 in 2007).
And this:http://library.thinkquest.org/C002291/high/present/stats.htm
In the Asian, African and Latin American countries, well over 500 million people are living in what the World Bank has called "absolute poverty"
Every year 15 million children die of hunger
For the price of one missile, a school full of hungry children could eat lunch every day for 5 years
Throughout the 1990's more than 100 million children will die from illness and starvation. Those 100 million deaths could be prevented for the price of ten Stealth bombers, or what the world spends on its military in two days!
The World Health Organization estimates that one-third of the world is well-fed, one-third is under-fed one-third is starving- Since you've entered this site at least 200 people have died of starvation. Over 4 million will die this year.
One in twelve people worldwide is malnourished, including 160 million children under the age of 5. United Nations Food and Agriculture
The Indian subcontinent has nearly half the world's hungry people. Africa and the rest of Asia together have approximately 40%, and the remaining hungry people are found in Latin America and other parts of the world. Hunger in Global Economy
Nearly one in four people, 1.3 billion - a majority of humanity - live on less than $1 per day, while the world's 358 billionaires have assets exceeding the combined annual incomes of countries with 45 percent of the world's people. UNICEF
3 billion people in the world today struggle to survive on US$2/day.
In 1994 the Urban Institute in Washington DC estimated that one out of 6 elderly people in the U.S. has an inadequate diet.
In the U.S. hunger and race are related. In 1991 46% of African-American children were chronically hungry, and 40% of Latino children were chronically hungry compared to 16% of white children.
The infant mortality rate is closely linked to inadequate nutrition among pregnant women. The U.S. ranks 23rd among industrial nations in infant mortality. African-American infants die at nearly twice the rate of white infants.
One out of every eight children under the age of twelve in the U.S. goes to bed hungry every night.
Half of all children under five years of age in South Asia and one third of those in sub-Saharan Africa are malnourished.
In 1997 alone, the lives of at least 300,000 young children were saved by vitamin A supplementation programmes in developing countries.
Malnutrition is implicated in more than half of all child deaths worldwide - a proportion unmatched by any infectious disease since the Black Death
About 183 million children weigh less than they should for their age
To satisfy the world's sanitation and food requirements would cost only US$13 billion- what the people of the United States and the European Union spend on perfume each year.
The assets of the world's three richest men are more than the combined GNP of all the least developed countries on the planet.
Every 3.6 seconds someone dies of hunger
It is estimated that some 800 million people in the world suffer from hunger and malnutrition, about 100 times as many as those who actually die from it each year
You need to ask yourself was it more important for you to get a "job" then these real problems I just listed? Are you really saying that children being molested, dying of hunger ect. are not being sincere enough in prayer? Come on people, where are your hearts? Can you possibly even fathom what it must be like being a parent in Africa holding your withering child in your arms after praying and praying and praying until you can't pray no more for just one grain of rice to feed your dying child only for your cries to fall on deaf ears? But you miraculously get a job or any other silly request? Do you feel that your more important, more deserving than these poor souls?
All I ask is that you step back for a moment and think about these things.
Sometimes seeing the realities of life help us put into perspective how thing REALLY are:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9w52wy9Ebk&feature=player_embedded
End of rant.
prayer topics seem to be the bandwagon of the moment so i'm jumping on!
seriously, has anyone here asked for something specific in prayer and actually gotten what they asked for?
what convinces you that you wouldn't have got it in any case?
But these are solutions we have found for ourselves, they don't have a divine source.
And there it is. That is the reality of this subject. But for some it's just to painful to except otherwise. When we believe there's a daddy up in the sky watching our every move, thought, ect, we "feel" safe, protected.
When we think that he's listening to us, guiding our every move through prayer we feel special. And who doesn't want to feel special. God is the teddy bear we went to sleep with as a child to feel safe. Except now we think that teddy bear speaks back to us when he sees fit. I ask you, who's more delusional, the child or the adult?
He sees you when you're sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake!
Nothing really changes, does it?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1ah2-mheko.
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3mozzies.
lol....WTF????
district attorney r. seth williams - the first prosecutor in the country to charge a church official for abusing of children they were supposed to protect.. what a great god/father that we have.
sits back and watches this go on and on.
what a sorry excuss for a loving god.. .
^Truly appalling.
this was posted on alt.religion.jehovahs-witn, just thought i'd share it with you:.
the following figures from an article in newsweek represent the number of college graduates within each religious group in america.
can this be used to relate the intelligence of the membership of each religion?
*marked*
Great info. Thanks Scully.
district attorney r. seth williams - the first prosecutor in the country to charge a church official for abusing of children they were supposed to protect.. what a great god/father that we have.
sits back and watches this go on and on.
what a sorry excuss for a loving god.. .
That video just made me sick. I have never understood how anyone could do something so disgusting to an innocent child. I disagree with beksbks' method of punishment though, as shooting is too good for scum like this. I say: give them a taste of their own medicine and stick a red hot poker up their asses and let them die that way.
I'm with you Mary. Just killing them would actually be doing them a favor. Lock these pigs up and let them get gang raped for the rest of their miserable lives.
