Praying to god is a little bit like playing the lottery, except that amputees NEVER win.
superpunk
JoinedPosts by superpunk
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13
Did You Ever Wonder Why One Should Pray To God When God's Record Is Pretty Dismal?
by minimus ini never understood why jws were told to pray to jehovah in order to have someone change their course, open their heart, make the way---when in reality it is like asking for a miracle to happen.
witnesses say miracles have been done away with and god doesn't work this way any longer.. if you're going through a bad time, pray to god and he will help you if you have faith.
he'll "bless" you!
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392
If God Truly Cared About People Wouldn't He DO SOMETHING By Now?
by minimus ini know what the witness response is to this but what do you say now?.
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superpunk
It is possible to debate a topic while not holding the set of beliefs you are debating from. This discussion assumes God (in particular Bible-God) exists - and it continues on from there.
The problem Christians have is that they cannot RESIST making positive assertions about their Lord. He is love. He is justice. He is mercy. The second you make those statements, you must be able to defend them. And in light of the natural world, which Christians also insist was the invention and design of their Lord, these statements are indefensible!
The only way around it is to claim that we don't know why God allows these things, we can't know, it's simply a mystery. It's not very satisfying, but it is a legitimate answer.
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Jehovah does not live by his own rules
by sinis ini find it mind numbing that jw's and religios in particular never see this.
jehovah is the patron god of the jews.
yet he treats them like utter shit, worse than slaves.
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392
If God Truly Cared About People Wouldn't He DO SOMETHING By Now?
by minimus ini know what the witness response is to this but what do you say now?.
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superpunk
Certainly God COULD stop atrocities and evils, just like he's done before, as recorded in the Bible, but he clearly refuses to do so. Human creatures who are created in his image would not turn a blind eye to as the Almighty does.
Doug Mason had a brilliant (and what I consider 'correct') answer to this on the first page or so of this thread. The bible's miracles never really happened, but they served a valuable purpose to the nomadic Canaanite tribes who were reuniting themselves under the banner "Israel".
Outside of natural disaters and nature in general laying down the law, what exactly is NOT our fault and is "god's fault" ?
What is the value of a question like this? As an atheist, I believe the world simply is the way it is, a savage, brutal place, and we're doing our best individually to keep the world from killing us. And there are certain elements of our society who make things even worse than they would be naturally by doing harm to their fellowman. I don't need a "god" to explain why that happens, or to comfort myself with a hope that someday it won't be like this.
But that isn't what the thread is about, or presupposes. The thread begins with the premise of the biblical "loving God" who is concerned with the dealings of his creation and desires their worship. You can't just remove natural disasters from the equation - because if we suppose that Bible-God is real, those things are SOLELY within HIS control - we can do nothing to stop them or prevent them. This allegedly caring bible God has the power to make them stop, and they fall entirely within his realm of responsibility, yet he does nothing. And the believers need to stop conflating the issue by bringing up issues that can be blamed on man, acting like we are the problem while excusing the deplorable action/inaction of their heavenly sky-daddy.
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392
If God Truly Cared About People Wouldn't He DO SOMETHING By Now?
by minimus ini know what the witness response is to this but what do you say now?.
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superpunk
This is a good lecture that deals with the topic. Christians, when confronted with this topic, often like to retreat to their fortress of "It's our own fault". We're the ones who inflict suffering. This essay cuts through that baloney in some places.
If a good and infinitely powerful God governs this world, how can we account for cyclones, earthquakes, pestilence and famine?
How can we account for cancers, for microbes, for diphtheria and the thousand diseases that prey on infancy?
How can we account for the wild beasts that devour human beings, for the fanged serpents whose bite is death?
How can we account for a world where life feeds on life?
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If this God exists, how do we know that he is good? How can we prove that he is merciful, that he cares for the children of men? If this God exists, he has on many occasions seen millions of his poor children plowing the fields, sowing and planting the grain, and when he saw them he knew that they depended on the expected crop for life, and yet this good God, this merciful being, withheld the rain. He caused the sun to rise, to steal all moisture from the land, but gave no rain. He saw the seeds that man had planted wither and perish, but he sent no rain. He saw the people look with sad eyes upon the barren earth, and he sent no rain. He saw them slowly devour the little that they had, and saw them when the days of hunger came -- saw them slowly waste away, saw their hungry, sunken eyes, heard their prayers, saw them devour the miserable animals that they had, saw fathers and mothers, insane with hunger, kill and eat their shriveled babes, and yet the heaven above them was as brass and the earth beneath as iron, and he sent no rain. Can we say that in the heart of this God there blossomed the flower of pity? Can we say that he cared for the children of men? Can we say that his mercy endureth forever?
Mark Twain expressed some similarly profound thoughts, that outline the kind of suspended reason shown by believers on this subject.
The best minds will tell you that when a man has begotten a child he is morally bound to tenderly care for it, protect it from hurt, shielf it from disease, clothe it, feed it, bear with its waywardness, lay no hand upon it save in kindness and for its own good, and never in any case inflict upon it a wanton cruelty. God's treatment of his earthly children, every day and every night, is the exact opposite of all that, yet those best minds warmly justify these crimes, condone them, excuse them, and indignantly refuse to regard them as crimes at all, when he commits them. Your country and mine is an interesting one, but there is nothing there that is half so interesting as the human mind.
- Letters from the Earth -
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superpunk
If given the choice between having your DNA reprogrammed so that you will die and not being able to talk with God in the afternoons, what would you pick?
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"Autobiography of a Died-Again Christian"
by leavingwt ini enjoyed a number of the points in this essay.
dr. jaco gericke's deconversion story: "autobiography of a 'died-again' christian<snippets>.
it was a little late in the day, however, when i realised that studying theology can be a downright dangerous business for any believer.
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superpunk
I see you want to believe that, but do you think you can?
You didn't ask me, but I feel like I have an answer.
I "can" believe things which are true. I can't believe things that aren't true, no matter how much I may "want" to. We all have any number of things that we "want" to believe. We'd all like to believe that death isn't the end, that wish-granting fairies are waiting in enchanted forests and that Ryan Seacrest doesn't suck. But in the absence of any sort of empirical evidence, most of us dismiss all these things that we "want" to believe as fantasy. Others dismiss *most* things that fall into that category, but make special exceptions and allowances for things which they deem "holy".
There doesn't appear to be any point in believing in things that aren't true simply because we "want" to.
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letter of disassociation from a Christian
by reniaa inhttp://thetruthaboutthetruthaboutthetruth.blogspot.com/2005/08/i-have-decided-to-leave-this.html.
i have decided to leave this organization!--a letter from a first century christian.
hi, brothers and sisters.
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superpunk
I think this is a very nice parody, I agree. I think it can also illustrate that there is nothing special about the witnesses. We can toss stones at any man-made organization, and the stones are well deserved. The same can be done to the Witnesses. They aren't special, despite their claims to the contrary. So it doesn't matter if we are a part of them or not. Christians are Christians, from a Christian perspective.
The one caveat is where children are involved. Children shouldn't be subjected to the religious/imaginary belief system of their parents before they have developed the ability to comprehend such things. Honestly if we didn't have children having their lives stolen away, either by worthless JW activities or worse, by flawed JW doctrines that cost them their literal life, who would care about the Witnesses....
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"Apostates can only criticize , tear down and destroy "
by BluesBrother in"apostates can only criticize , tear down and destroy " say the active dubs, "where is their hope of something better?
what is their message to mankind ?
if they have nothing better to offer, how can they attack our faith, which at least offers a hope of a better world?".
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superpunk
The Watchtower does a nice job of "Poisoning the Well", eh?
Nice post.
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..."You Know It`s the Truth!!"...
by OUTLAW in...................."you know it`s the truth!!
"..........................how many times have you heard that?............jehovah`s witness you know..know you don`t go to meetings,assemblys or anything else wbt$ related......still they feel the need to tell you "you know it`s the truth!.........................you tell them,you don`t..they insist that you do!
!..you continue to tell them you don`t..............they get pissed and tell you:"deep inside you know it`s really the truth!!
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superpunk
It's a nice phrase, but what does it mean? Can the Witness who cries "YOU KNOW IT'S THE TRUTH" actually provide a rational explanation of what "The Truth" means? Or is it just a phrase that can be repeated over and over again, until it loses all meaning and just becomes some mantra that makes you feel cozy?
