Posts by A.Fenderson

14

How long did it take until you had that 'light bulb' moment?

by Crash Override in

how long did it take for you to realize that something was very wrong with the 'truth'?.

for me, it was about 2 1/2 years into studying.

i'm a guy and i'm attracted to both guys and girls.

I need a show of hands: who believes the Bible and to what extent?

by Terry in

i'll start off.. i don't believe anything is divine about bible writings.

i believe there may be some marginal history although not much.

i think alot of folk tales and regional myths are contained in the old testament.

A.Fenderson

Why does the fact that he refuses to impose himself where he is not wanted make him/it/her petty? Couldnt this also be a result of respect instead of pettiness? Even if it is seen as pettiness, this now puts us into the realm of interpreting God's nature rather than whether God exists or not.

Your words that promtped my comments about pettiness were: " You have acquaintances and friends. Who are you more likely to help out when they call you late at night? Would God respond any differently?"

So you're correct that we're now discussing/interpreting the discussed God's nature, but the scenario in question, which you raised, was one in which the non-believer is calling out to God, asking for help. Prior to that, I did ask why God chooses to ignore the vast majority of us, and by that I meant essentially: why do some non-believers, such as yourself, have religious experiences that they are quite sure are instances of God contacting them, while the majority of us don't? That seems, for lack of a better term, unfair on God's part.

Besides, perhaps God's enigmatic nature is for his amusment and not ours.

That sounds like a parent who has two small children and acts very lovingly and caring towards one of them, while acting inconsistently towards the other, for no other reason than to amuse himself. Beyond petty.

I have been recently musing over the thought that just because we have been taught that God is pure love doesnt' mean that it's true, does it?

It certainly doesn't sound like your version of God is. You seem to have a very unique take on him/her/it, at least in contrast to the general understanding of the universally-accepted qualities of the God of Christianity. Yours sounds far more like the YHWH of old--he was all about helping the chosen ones, at the expense of their neighbors.

4

Watchtower teaching - short summary

by kurtbethel in

i happened upon a page the described:.

7 really weird religions you havent heard ofso i made the following comment.. when you look into it, the jehovah's witness religion is a bit odd.

their early teaching was that jesus showed up invisibly in 1874 and was going to come back in 1914 and destroy all the governments and churches.

A.Fenderson

However, anything they currently believe can be suddenly reversed by a notice in their publications and they will all instantly believe the new teaching. They call this "new light".

Nice summary, but in the above sentence, you failed to mention the critical point that they can simultaneously believe both that the new light is now and forever truth, and that the prior belief, though it may be in direct contradiction to the "new light," is not considered to have been false. The GB have double-think inducement down to an art.

206

I need a show of hands: who believes the Bible and to what extent?

by Terry in

i'll start off.. i don't believe anything is divine about bible writings.

i believe there may be some marginal history although not much.

i think alot of folk tales and regional myths are contained in the old testament.

A.Fenderson

I am a newly wed and rather shagged out at this time.

Congrats! Don't have too much fun. I'll give a reply to your post tomorrow, have a good night.

206

I need a show of hands: who believes the Bible and to what extent?

by Terry in

i'll start off.. i don't believe anything is divine about bible writings.

i believe there may be some marginal history although not much.

i think alot of folk tales and regional myths are contained in the old testament.

A.Fenderson

If other people are having these experiences then it indicates that they could be universal.

I haven't had one. Admittedly, I'm not dead yet, so anything is possible. But if they were universal, and as powerful as you go on to describe, do you think that this many people would have the power within themselves to utterly ignore or deny them, and go on about their lives as though they never happened? Or do the vast majority of these experiences happen only to people on their death-beds, when it's all but too late for it to have any real impact on the rest of the world via their changed lives and actions?

Just because the interpretation of it differs and is subjective to each individual does not make the experience subjective because it is a reference to our understanding of the experience and not the experience itself.

Not sure I parsed that entire sentence, but all experience is categorically subjective. There may well be an objective reality, but any experience thereof is inherently subjective--this is one thing we cannot escape and must realize and keep in mind at all times.

my question becomes, why do the vast majority of us choose to ignore, for a lack of a better term, God? You have acquaintances and friends. Who are you more likely to help out when they call you late at night? Would God respond any differently?

1. For the same reason I choose to ignore Huitzilopochtli.

2. I would think that a God of pure love would be above petty in-group biases, unlike his mortal children here on Earth. Otherwise, he's not so very divine, IMO.

206

I need a show of hands: who believes the Bible and to what extent?

by Terry in

i'll start off.. i don't believe anything is divine about bible writings.

i believe there may be some marginal history although not much.

i think alot of folk tales and regional myths are contained in the old testament.

A.Fenderson

I have often felt a connection with something other than myself that I can only describe as God.

Your wording couldn't be more accurate or to the point: you can only describe it as God. Buddhists may feel something very similar if not nearly identical to you, and yet they possibly can only describe it as their inner Buddah nature, or a glimpse of Nirvana, or whatever terms they choose to apply to it, based on their understanding of their faith's concepts together with a limited experience or learning with the terminology and concepts of other religions, human psychology/physiology, etc. Feelings of this nature are 100% subjective, non-universal in the human experience, and demonstrably subject to interpretation through a necessarily limited reference frame. All of this is a given, though, so the question becomes--if it is God, why does he choose to ignore the vast majority of us?

17

Would the world be a better place with more tea

by nugget in

jw
friends

A.Fenderson

Bigelow's Earl Grey Green--good times.

10

Excellent Jw Humor.Check it out..Splendid!

by aquagirl in

jw
friends

http://www.youtube.com/user/kingdomhallofjws.

A.Fenderson

That was funny, without even having to resort to parody, because nothing was exaggerated in the least. Nice find.

41

"Top 10 Grievances Against the Bible"

by leavingwt in

lady atheist.

my top ten grievances against the bible .

1. authority -- not -- it was compiled, copied, edited, codified and translated by men.

A.Fenderson

@PSacramento: I've noticed in this and other threads, you seem to believe that merely reading the bible (in the normal sense of the word "reading") isn't anywhere near enough to actually come to an understanding of what it potentially contains or the message(s) that the authors were attempting to convey. Considering, then, that a huge percentage of people today (and throughout history) are functionally illiterate and don't have years of their life to dedicate to the study of a single book, etc, if it were divinely inspired, how do you reconcile this burdensome requirement with the (generally accepted view(?)) that the God spoken of therein actually wants people to know and understand his message? If someone told you that your disbelief in Buddhism (only as an example) was due to it requiring years of intense research and meditation on your part to fully understand and thereby believe in it, wouldn't you find that rather...."convenient"?

20

Help! I've fallen and I can get up on my own but I'm going to sue because I'm embarrassed.

by sooner7nc in

http://news.yahoo.com/video/us-15749625/fountain-lady-nobody-went-to-my-aid-23909987 .

A.Fenderson

I'm not saying no one should have tried to see if she was OK, but at the same time, no one should be held responsible for not doing so when it was obvious she was OK and was trying to act like it didn't happen (as she herself even said).

She could have had a seizure, been dizzy, who knows what could have caused her to fall.

True, but we know exactly what caused her to fall: texting so intently that she was completely oblivious to the concrete reality right in front of her face. We're all lucky she wasn't behind the wheel texting--she easily could have killed any number of people.