Debator said:
Word trickery is not going to work with me! "Evolution doesn't change it evolves" I lolled at that one!
Had he labeled it as "increasing light" and put a WT logo over the top, would it have been more palatable?
SweetBabyCheezits
JoinedPosts by SweetBabyCheezits
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100
These are good people
by Retrovirus inin my introductory post i told about the jws that have been visiting me at my sil's request.
at first i spoke with them for her sake, then found i liked them anyway.
what i didn't like was the literature, especially the stuff trying to disprove evolution.
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SweetBabyCheezits
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"Are you In the Truth?"
by Nickolas ini can't remember the last time i was asked that question because it has been many years.
nor do i remember my response to the questioner but it no doubt contributed to not being asked the question since.
are you in the truth?
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SweetBabyCheezits
Gladiator gets my vote for most rational, eloquent, and diplomatic reply of the day.
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Favorite Xmas Tunes?
by undercover insomeone started a thread asking everyone's favorite xmas movies.. how about favorite xmas music/songs?
even when i was an active jw i had a soft spot for certain xmas music.
the standards, the jazzy ones, the rocknroll ones.. while i like a lot of different ones...i even collected my favs onto a playlist that i keep for this time of year...there are a few that really stand out as my favs.
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SweetBabyCheezits
You betcha, Berengaria.
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Favorite Xmas Tunes?
by undercover insomeone started a thread asking everyone's favorite xmas movies.. how about favorite xmas music/songs?
even when i was an active jw i had a soft spot for certain xmas music.
the standards, the jazzy ones, the rocknroll ones.. while i like a lot of different ones...i even collected my favs onto a playlist that i keep for this time of year...there are a few that really stand out as my favs.
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SweetBabyCheezits
Loosie: Carol of the Bells... almost any version. Right now I'm diggin George Winston's solo cover.
I wore out that Home Alone video growing up and loved the church choir scene if only for John William's rendention of it. Plus it kinda marked the start of the 'funnest' part of the movie.
Semi-related: Do you folks use Grooveshark.com to fulfill your music needs? If not I highly suggest you look into it. It's the best thing since torn bread.
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Hey, where is SBC?
by tec ini keep noticing missing people, and a handful have been banned recently.
am i just blind?.
tammy.
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SweetBabyCheezits
Now that I'm on here, how was your Thanksgiving, Tammy (and other posters)?
We really enjoyed our first. The motherly Engineering Assistant up at my office invited our family and two other couples to join them. Eleven of us (counting 3 kids) stuffed ourselves all afternoon in their uber Christmas-decorated home. It was a great experience. The rest of the weekend consisted of BF shopping and veggin' out... watching movies, playing games with the fam, grilling, etc.
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Hey, where is SBC?
by tec ini keep noticing missing people, and a handful have been banned recently.
am i just blind?.
tammy.
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SweetBabyCheezits
I don't know Tammy, I don't think SBC is cool enough to have a "Where have you gone" thread.
True. But your mom thinks I'm pretty cool, Sab.
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Hey, where is SBC?
by tec ini keep noticing missing people, and a handful have been banned recently.
am i just blind?.
tammy.
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SweetBabyCheezits
Wait, someone noticed I was missing from an online forum? Holy mother of pearl! I once faked being dead at my desk for 13 days before anyone noticed and my office is right next door to the Xerox. Eh, not really, but my productivity was as if I'd been dead for 13 days.
Thank you, Tammy. A for you... since you're so observant, considerate, and - most importantly - not a big fan of or .
Honestly I've been trying to stay away the last week or so to get some things done and, uh, relax over the holidays. This forum is great but I needed to back off for a coupla reasons:
- It reminds me of Lay's potato chips. I can't seem to stop with one post. Productivity comes to a halt.
- I sometimes get worked up over posts from people I don't even know and that mood spills over into relationships with people I do know. The debates on here never end, which is not necessarily a "con" but it is reality. Sometimes I'll spout off in a post and then reread my words and feel like I need to just shut up. So a break for me and then hopefully I'll show more self control.
Jadeen and Soldier are right, too. As a moderate technophile (aka nerd), I snagged some electronic goodness on Black Friday so I've been configuring and tweaking in search of HD media bliss in multiple rooms. :-D
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Loftus: Are We Angry Atheists?
by leavingwt injohn w. loftus responds to the "angry atheist" assertion.
are we angry atheists?.
.. if we are angry, christians will see this as a sign we are god haters.
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SweetBabyCheezits
I agree - if I understand what you mean by "consistent scrutiny". The truth of the matter is that we all start from presuppositions. If we didn't have axioms, we wouldn't able to draw conclusions.
MadDawg, the presupposition that a particular holy book is from the creator of everything is NOT an axiom. A presupposition is a supposition made prior to having knowledge. That doesn't automatically make it an axiom. People hold innumerable presuppositions that are not universally accepted.
Belief in the Bible or Koran as being of divine origin - those are not axioms, they're presuppositions. When children adopt such a belief from their parents before they've thoroughly researched it (from a neutral perspective), you can be sure it's a presupposition. Same goes for children of atheists, though. Like Nick said, they'd be just as foolish as those who blindly accept the existence of God just because they have been told He exists.
The point is, if we know that 1.5 or so billion people on the other side of the world have a parallel presupposition (which contradicts our own) and they base their lives on it (just as we do our own), perhaps all of us would do best to release our childhood presuppositions and perform an unbiased (or suppressed bias) search for truth as adults.
If I leave one group because of an attitude, I am not about to join another with the same attitude. BTW, those same GARBC Baptists basically shun me and consider me to be an apostate bound for Hell.
What I find strange is how quickly some folks generalize all non-believers. We don't all have the same beliefs, neither do we all have the same attitude. I for one have deistic leanings but don't believe I have evidence for a god-being in the popular sense of the word. So I suppose I'm an atheist in the sense that I'm without theism. Now some atheists might say "THERE IS NO GOD". I can only say I personally don't see evidence enough to believe in God. Those are two different statements. If you don't understand that, well, too bad for you.
What I find strange is that while claiming that there is no Truth, they believe that they alone have the Truth.
I don't think any group alone has a monopoly on "the truth". We're all ignorant. Some just practice it... as faith.
Here is a truth that is shared by atheists: Self-refuting entities cannot exist. On the other hand, many religious people believe in self-refuting beings (based on their god's description in his holy book). When a god such as Yahweh is found to be self-refuting in the way he is described by his followers, I can eliminate him as being a real entity, at least in that description of him. In fact, you and I are probably very similar in the number of gods we can eliminate as being real - Zeus, Allah, Thor, Molech, Ra, etc.... I just go one single step further. (... to paraphrase Stephen Roberts.)
In other words, if a person has any ability to think, the only conclusion they can come to is to agree with atheists. If one concludes that there is a God, weeeellllll... that is evidence in itself that they are incapable of rational thought.
If you choose to be offended when someone points out there's no evidence for your god, that's your prerogative, but don't put words in my mouth. Your line is similar to one JW friend who was listening to my reasons for no longer accepting WT doctrine: "Oh, so all JWs are incapable of rational thought??" No, not incapable. That's strawman reasoning. Most rationalists I know previously had belief in Yahweh and were JWs.
Just because some people can't turn a cartwheel doesn't mean they're incapable of it. They just have to learn, most of them. The same goes for critical thinking. Many who are raised in religious households are not trained with critical thinking skills as children and end up deficient in that area as adults. That was true of me. The difference is I recognized that fact and took steps to educate myself and build those skills. Still working on it but it's much easier to see a lack of it now.
Do Baptists have the same line of thinking? Yep. If you are going to climb into that boat with them, that is your problem.
Ah, yes, all atheists and Baptists in the same boat. That'd be an interesting party. Is that another axiom?
Look, I certainly don't condemn anyone. But if I expose someone's flawed logic when they try to assert that I should worship their invisible god, I'm like a Baptist?
I am no more interested in hearing Fundy Atheists preach and lecture at me than I am some preacher from the God Almighty Righteous Baptist Church.
Then don't listen to them. And if you perceive a "Fundy Atheist" is preaching at you on a thread, feel free to close and move on to a "Fundy Prejudice" thread where I'm sure you'll find people who think like you.
I am more than willing to exchange ideas with anyone. The whole reason I am on this board is to share ideas with others and to get a broader idea what others are thinking.
Cool. So what did you think of the open-mindedness video? Would you classify that guy a "fundy atheist"? I thought he was very logical in his reasoning. And I believe the open mind he describes is one of the keys to our progress as a human race.
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Loftus: Are We Angry Atheists?
by leavingwt injohn w. loftus responds to the "angry atheist" assertion.
are we angry atheists?.
.. if we are angry, christians will see this as a sign we are god haters.
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SweetBabyCheezits
MadDawg, do you think the author of the video was fair in his description of open-mindedness?
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Loftus: Are We Angry Atheists?
by leavingwt injohn w. loftus responds to the "angry atheist" assertion.
are we angry atheists?.
.. if we are angry, christians will see this as a sign we are god haters.
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SweetBabyCheezits
What you did was cute, Mad Dawg, and would certainly be applicable for those who were raised in an atheist environment. A consistent scrutiny should be applied, regardless of a person's belief or disbelief. And that is my point. NOBODY should start judging from a presupposition. Same goes for an atheist as for a Christian.
In my case, though, I started life with the standard JW presupposition package:
- the Bible is from an omni-everything supernatural spirit being who created everything and has always existed.
- this god's name is Jehovah and his son found the Bible Students to be the only group doing his will when he returned invisibly in 1914
- Jehovah's Witnesses are God's only spirit-directed channel of communication on earth today
And so on... but I consider those the fundamental three presupps.
I at some point questioned two of those presuppositions, and ultimately drop them completely, which led to my conclusion that the WT was baloney. But I held onto the first one. Why? Why hold onto any presupposition instead of starting with a clean slate? After all, if that presupp is true, then we should be able to arrive at that the same conclusion based on a clean slate and critical thinking.