Posts by SweetBabyCheezits

26

What's your agnostic number? (Atheists and Christians are Agnostics rounded to the nearest integer)

by pirata in

jw
friends

a christian believes that there's 100% (1) possibility that there is a god.. an atheist believes that there's 0% (0) possibility that there is a god.. the perfectly balanced agnostic feel's that there's a 50% (0.5) possibility that god exists.

various environmental factors cause agnostics to to lean to one side or the other, and possibly round to the nearest integer.. what's your current number?.

i think i'm currently a 0.3..

SweetBabyCheezits

I'd like to buy a vowel, Pat.

64

Ok Hearing Voices..... Terry I might need your help LOL

by Darth plaugeis in

ok. so your a christian.... you love the bible.. damn you live your life by this book right?

serpent or satan????.

the serpent was cursed and many believe the snake had legs at the garden of eden.... and part of the curse was to crawl on it's belly.. so again .....what did the snake do wrong???.

SweetBabyCheezits

^ Just n from bethel, I'm starting a slow clap for your post.

I cannot understand how anyone, after realizing they were bamboozled by the Society, fails to retrace their steps all the way back to a critical analysis of the Bible. Or, worse, that they just blindly accept what the next peace-bestowing charlatan slides across the table. Did we not learn from our experience?

15

Typical JW question: "Well, what ELSE is there?"

by SweetBabyCheezits in

jw
friends

this has been posed to me a number of times since i've defected and expressed doubt in the bible.

(well, started defecting.

er, that just sounds nasty.

SweetBabyCheezits

This has been posed to me a number of times since I've defected and expressed doubt in the bible. (Well, started defecting. Er, that just sounds nasty.)

Their question isn't the more common, "Whom shall we go away to?", though. It's more of a, "If you don't have a paradise hope and you question the bible, what hope DO you have? How can you live your life thinking this is all there is?"

I try to explain that I'm comfortable with not having all the answers, considering nobody else knows the real answers to the biggest questions, that "I don't know" is acceptable and that it's impossible for me to re-delude myself with old ideas at this point. So why would I try to fake it in my head?

But the thought of no paradise hope seems completely dismal to them. (And maybe it's been so long that I've forgotten how it would've seemed to me.)

I like to imagine that I was given a piece of paper as a child showing I've been given a herd (?) of unicorns, which I will receive on my 21st birthday. At some point, if (when) I come to realize unicorns are imaginary, I may be a little disappointed but I should quickly grasp that I can’t lose anything I never had to begin with. In fact, it’s a bit comforting to know I’m not alone, since billions of other people have a similar slip of paper and yet they are still deluded into thinking unicorns are real, too. (Just my perspective. Maybe I'm deluded still, eh?)

Plus, while it would be cool to have some unis in my backyard, I can now focus my efforts on a real future instead of trying to secure property and a barn for my imaginary flying friends.

How would you respond? Agnostics/athiests, that is.

213

My Lord spoke and told me to post

by watersprout in

jw
friends

my lord spoke to me for the first time yesterday and this morning he told me to post my experience.. i know there are going to be ones who will call me names and thats ok. i will accept whatever you feel you need to say.. here goes.

i heard a voice calling ''my child'', this happened while at the zoo so i was taken off guard!

i replied ''who is this?

SweetBabyCheezits

TH68: I don't know how you put up with this, watersprout. Why don't you go ninja on these people & tell them where to get off?

TH, who are you, Chazz from Wedding Crashers? "I almost nunchucked you! You don't even realize!" You missed the part where god told her to show love and kindness to people, not "go ninja" on them. I just hope she doesn't mistake your voice for his.

213

My Lord spoke and told me to post

by watersprout in

jw
friends

my lord spoke to me for the first time yesterday and this morning he told me to post my experience.. i know there are going to be ones who will call me names and thats ok. i will accept whatever you feel you need to say.. here goes.

i heard a voice calling ''my child'', this happened while at the zoo so i was taken off guard!

i replied ''who is this?

SweetBabyCheezits

SBC: Do you accept every claim others might make of hearing the voice of God, so long as they seem like a good, spiritual human?

WS: Who am I to judge?

SBC: Okay, I'll take that as a yes.

WS: I take it as no. I do not judge!

Easy there, Sprout. I think you misunderstood my comment. Please take another look: I was saying in response to your answer, "Okay, I'll take that as a yes" that you DO accept every claim others might make of hearing the voice of God.... not that you "judge" anyone. Okay?

We are not talking about judging someone to be evil or good here. It's simply a question of whether you suspend belief when an extraordinary claim is made until you have extraordinary evidence to support the claim. That's all I'm asking. But I think I'm putting too much pressure on you and I don't get the impression that logic is going to help anything, so I'll just let myself out the back door.

Best regards,

SBC

213

My Lord spoke and told me to post

by watersprout in

jw
friends

my lord spoke to me for the first time yesterday and this morning he told me to post my experience.. i know there are going to be ones who will call me names and thats ok. i will accept whatever you feel you need to say.. here goes.

i heard a voice calling ''my child'', this happened while at the zoo so i was taken off guard!

i replied ''who is this?

SweetBabyCheezits

Inkie, I appreciate your comments in your last reply. I'd like to continue some reasoning through this without getting personal or or too offensive, if I may?

According to what is written, God spoke to Abraham and Abraham “heard” God speaking to him. The Bible states that God put “Abrahamto the test.” Abraham obeyed all that God said. At the point of plunging the knife into his son, Abraham was stopped, prevented from doing so, BY AN ANGEL OF GOD. (Genesis 22:12) So then, AT THE MOMENT when the knife was to be plunged in his son God prevented it from happening. This ‘test of Abraham’ is and was quite different from the many slayings that go on in the name of God today. For according to the biblical pattern as set forth in Genesis 22, everyone today who claims to hear a voice from God and that voice says to slay someone or many people—that person at the moment of the slaying would be prevented from doing so had the voice actually been that of God. Do you not see that? According to the pattern set? The fact that today no one stops the slayings says means that the voice heard was NOT from God.

Please bear with me on this.... I think a "pattern", by definition, means recurring events or objects that repeat. If there were 20 accounts of god asking people in the bible to kill, and in all 20 accounts he used an angel to prevent it at the last second, that would be a pattern.

(But then if god is testing your faith, the test would be pointless if you have such a pattern. You'd know what to expect. "Oh, okay, c'mere son. God wants me to act like I'm going to kill you with this knife. But it's okay. He'll stop me before I do it." This repetition would make the test self-defeating. Why would god do that? That alone should tell you god isn't asking anyone to pretend they're going to murder another.)

Even those who take the bible literally have no reason to assume that the god of Abraham would ever again prevent the completion of a murder he himself ordered. If anything, considering god's history in the Old Testament, the account of Abraham and Isaac was the anomaly. The norm would be for the subject to execute god's will as directed (kill?) and show faith by not hesitating.

With that in mind, do you not see the danger of encouraging a hearer of voices to go on with life without seeking help?

213

My Lord spoke and told me to post

by watersprout in

jw
friends

my lord spoke to me for the first time yesterday and this morning he told me to post my experience.. i know there are going to be ones who will call me names and thats ok. i will accept whatever you feel you need to say.. here goes.

i heard a voice calling ''my child'', this happened while at the zoo so i was taken off guard!

i replied ''who is this?

SweetBabyCheezits

SBC: Do you accept every claim others might make of hearing the voice of God, so long as they seem like a good, spiritual human?

WS: Who am I to judge?

Okay, I'll take that as a yes.

SBC: How do you determine which ones to believe and which ones to write off as being in a state of psychosis?

WS: Like i said above, who am I to judge.

So instead of employing a little critical thinking, you simply accept each claim, since you can't know for sure? At worst, why not suspend belief until more information and evidence presents itself?

SBC: Should a person not question himself when he hears such a voice?

WS: Of course.

Does this mean you questioned yourself? If so, may I ask what questions you posed? And what were your answers?

SBC: Would a person who is in a state of psychosis realize it?

WS: No, probably not.

So it's fair to say that you could be in such a state and not know it? I mean, heck, I could be too, right? How would I know? The difference here, as a number of people have commented on, is that you're exhibiting a symptom that is at least worth investigating with a professional.

SBC: What steps have you taken to eliminate the possibility that your mind was the source of the voice?

WS: Inkie explained it perfectly. Yes i would also like to know what steps need to be taken?

Please refer back to my last reply to Inkie. My suggestion, like HC and others have already said, would be to consult a therapist who has experience in this realm. They would know best how to handle things beyond that first step.

64

Ok Hearing Voices..... Terry I might need your help LOL

by Darth plaugeis in

ok. so your a christian.... you love the bible.. damn you live your life by this book right?

serpent or satan????.

the serpent was cursed and many believe the snake had legs at the garden of eden.... and part of the curse was to crawl on it's belly.. so again .....what did the snake do wrong???.

SweetBabyCheezits

So it was a metaphorical death? Could it have also been a metaphorical snake in a metaphorical garden?

Isn't it odd that God would intentionally be inconsistent and fickle with such an important message he wants to convey? (God must be a woman. :-D jk, honey, if you read this!) Which parts are literal and which parts are figurative? Is there a formula, such as it's only literal until it sounds absurd or contradicting... at which point it must be figurative?

I'm gonna start taking random things figuratively in my daily life: "But, officer, I thought it the stop sign was metaphorical... that I should consider my course of life before making any hasty decisions. That's what I was doing when I rolled through that intersection."

64

Ok Hearing Voices..... Terry I might need your help LOL

by Darth plaugeis in

ok. so your a christian.... you love the bible.. damn you live your life by this book right?

serpent or satan????.

the serpent was cursed and many believe the snake had legs at the garden of eden.... and part of the curse was to crawl on it's belly.. so again .....what did the snake do wrong???.

SweetBabyCheezits

Thanks, hotchoco! That's really my birth name, bestowed upon me by my cracker Father.

WMF & DP, those are all excellent points. I remember hearing about vegetarian carnivores being in the new world like they supposedly were in the GoE. I, for one, would like to have an herbivore T-Rex to ride around in the new system.

284

To new Christians on JWN

by brotherdan in

i wanted to make a few comments to those of you that have recently begun to question or have already left the wt and made their way onto this site.

this site is a great resource to learn how others are coping with leaving the organization and moving on into a fulfilling life.. i wanted to write this post because i think reading something like this would've been helpful to me to understand where a lot of people that comment on this site are coming from.

you are going to hear from a wide range of people that have moved on to a diverse range of beliefs.

SweetBabyCheezits

Before you retire this one, BD, you didn't address my post from several pages back so I'm just going to write a new one and hope you see it...

I'll use myself as an example so as to, hopefully, prevent the auto-defense mechanism from kicking in, which always prevented me from getting to the root of my beliefs.

I believed in god because, at least initially, I had faith in people: the bible writers, scribes, translators, my parents, WTBTS, and the Christians in my environment, all of whom helped inculcate that belief in me at my most naive point in life - as a child. Was that not similar for you? I mean you can't really "know" god and have faith in him personally without reading about him, right? And you have to trust the men who wrote about him before you can start developing a "relationship" with him.

Now one of the things that helped me fully wake up to the WT sham was that I couldn't help but notice how sincere and devout some people in other religions were. And yet they were going to die at armageddon, blinded from "the truth". But what if that was all they ever knew, I asked. If legitmately deceived, that would hardly be just and loving. How would a Mormon, for example, ever question his beliefs if he was raised as such? His judgment was based on flawed foundation, built for him as a child, with a wall of deception blocking him from reality! (At the time, I only considered Mormon doctrine to be the flawed foundation.)

Only after backing away from the organization and setting out to find truth did I realize that my judgment was still clouded by bias that remained from my childhood. If I was being honest with myself I couldn't continue forward without removing presuppositions about the bible and god. The point is that bias can lead to self-deception and unreliable judgment.

So how does one eliminate bias? By analyzing his own cherished beliefs/feelings honestly under the same scrutiny as the beliefs or holy book of another religion.

You're a thinking individual. Help me answer some questions and if the logic is sound, I will try to find my faith in god again.

When would a shrewd, critical-thinking person accept any holy book, but specifically the bible, if he had never heard of religion or god at all (neutral - zero bias)?

If you'd never heard of such things, but had your logic and intellect otherwise in tact, would you accept the story of Adam and Eve and a talking snake at face value? Jonah and the big fish? A talking donkey? The flood? The rainbow explanation?

Would you be quick to stretch things to explain away contradictions if you hadn't already concluded it was god's unfailing word?

Would a loving god really expect us to live our lives through a book that we couldn't possibly believe if it weren't for someone else 'inculcating' it in us at our most weak, impressionable time in life?

As for critical-thinking individuals who accept a holy book as literal later in life, not having been exposed to that bias earlier in life, if you find one, let me know. I'm not saying they don't exist, just that I would like to learn more about their experience.

Oh, one other thing: you made passing reference - more or less - to Pascal's Wager, which has serious holes in the logic. Check YouTube for "Betting on Infinity". Really interesting short video.