Posts by WontLeave

209

The trouble with Christianity. TRINITY.

by whereami in

gotta love pat.. "ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.

ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity.

it is the mere abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of jesus.

WontLeave

@godrulz

And, you've officially lost any credibility. Your idea of Holy Spirit bestows upon you unintelligible doctrine and unintelligible speech. You believe infinite torment is just reward for finite sin and then accuse God of sharing your disgusting, warped view. You are an offensive odor to any rational person, any Christian, anyone capable of human thought or emotion. I can only imagine how God feels about your blasphemous canard. You might want to do some reasearch on speaking in tongues, too. What languages have you spoken and to what foreigner?

209

The trouble with Christianity. TRINITY.

by whereami in

gotta love pat.. "ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.

ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity.

it is the mere abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of jesus.

WontLeave

we are a trinity

We are? Speak for yourself, Sybil. We've all heard the anecdotal "evidence" for the Trinity: Egg=shell, white, yolk, etc. Problem is, according to the Trinity, each part is completely God. The mind isn't a person without the body and vice-versa. Neither is the shell fully an egg; it's compost.

Anyone who believes the Trinity is simple and obvious is totally delusional. Read the Athenasian Creed for the definition of Trinity. If you don't believe that, then you don't believe the Trinity and you're just making up your own doctrine as you go (which is pretty much what most Trinitarians do, because the doctrine is ridiculous and insane).

209

The trouble with Christianity. TRINITY.

by whereami in

gotta love pat.. "ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.

ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity.

it is the mere abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of jesus.

WontLeave

@godrulz

Ahh... A fire-and-brimstone Trinitarian. You speak in tongues and handle snakes, too? So not only did your god die, but he's evil too. Now, you want a religious book that teaches Hell, read the Qur'an, but the Bible most certainly does not.

I realize you perceive yourself as a "teacher" here, so it's probably a total waste of time to talk to you, since someone in that frame of mind refuses to hear anything. It's kind of like trying to talk to a JW who comes to your door. I don't live in the territory of my congregation, so Witnesses knock on my door who don't know me. I am a Witness and can't reason with these people from the Bible, even having calm, rational Bible discussions with them. You come here with preconceived ideas that everyone who's ever been a JW is a brainwashed dolt who can't read, since obviously we don't understand what the Bible clearly says.

In reality, I submit anyone who believes in a burning Hell has never read the Bible. And if they have read the Bible, they weren't paying attention and have the worst reading comprehension imaginable, because you learn about Hell in church, not in the Bible. You have overlaid the Bible with church doctrine and rather than seeing what it actually says, you're regurgitating the same unscriptural vomit your church has fed you. These are the two main reasons people decide to become Jehovah's Witnesses and the two main reasons people who become frustrated with Jehovah's Witnesses can't find another church to go to. Not only does the Trinity reduce Almighty God to the level of his son, but the Hellfire doctrine maligns him as an evil tyrant who created an entire species of humans just to torture the vast majority for eternity.

I don't worship your evil man-god, so we're not even close to being on the same page. I worship the God of the Bible, in spirit and truth. So many times, you call Jesus a liar with both of these heretical doctrines, yet you still call yourself a Christian. Your claim of Christianity while holding those ideas (one ridiculous and the other horrible) is known as a false-flag attack. You are exactly the type of person who alienate people from God entirely with man-made doctrine. You seriously need to sit down with a Bible and empty your mind of all the garbage that has been shoveled into it by your church and discover the true God, because with the understanding you have of him, you're not even in the ballpark.

209

The trouble with Christianity. TRINITY.

by whereami in

gotta love pat.. "ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.

ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity.

it is the mere abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of jesus.

WontLeave

@godrulz

You're a broken record, regurgitating what your church has told you. You honestly believe you have access to information nobody else here does? Do you really believe the people here have never heard the arguments you make, often made better and with more solid scriptural support? We've done the research, read the scriptures, weighed the evidence. Most JWs and ex-JWs - and people left alone to read the Bible without a church twisting what they read - come to the conclusion that the Trinity doctrine is false and insults the Creator by equating him to his subservient son. If something as simple as a father/son relationship eludes your understanding, I find it difficult to believe you're going to mentally overpower anybody here by saying the same crap over and over.

JWs aren't the only ones who realize the Trinity is a false doctrine, just like Hellfire. Both of those teachings began to fall by the wayside after the Reformation until the "fundamentalist" surge started and Southern ignoramuses who have never read the Bible except for the Trinity and Hell "proof texts" were beaten into them via repetition (kind of like what you're doing). The fact that you're lurking here, repeating the same thing implies you believe we're so weak-minded that your repetition is all it will require for us to change a fundamental doctrinal belief. You just state this garbage, as if we all secretly know it to be true, but probably most people here know from personal research (gasp! independently from the Watchtower) that the Trinity is a lie invented by some nuts in the Catholic Church who made the most noise and got a belief held by a tiny minority made into Church orthodoxy.

209

The trouble with Christianity. TRINITY.

by whereami in

gotta love pat.. "ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.

ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity.

it is the mere abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of jesus.

WontLeave

@LV101

There are a few localized groups scattered around. The Unitarian doctrine is, well, unitarian. In 1961 they merged with the Universalists and their doctrine became completely watered down (if they even have one, anymore) and is totally optional. They gather their beliefs from any and all "holy" books, regardless of the source or content. If you want a group that isn't authoritarian, the UUs definitely fit that bill, but why bother attending a church that is doctrinal anarchy? If you want to hang around with people who don't believe the same as you, you can do that anywhere.

I quickly became frustrated looking for a church that had their doctrine correct. JWs are still the closest that I've found, but they're drifting rapidly into idolatry for the organization and the Governing Body. The Watchtower has replaced the Bible and the "faithful and discreet slave" has replaced Jesus. Those are pretty major doctrinal failings, in my estimation.

@godrulz

Do you have to derail every single thread with this? For someone who slaps Christ across the face with his heretical doctrine, you sure call people "pseudo-Christian" a lot. You keep accusing people of not comprehending, mistranslating, and being spoon-fed a unitarian God. Many here discovered the Bible teaches a singular (in all respects) God and joined the Jehovah's Witnesses, because they are about the only ones who get that major piece of the puzzle correct. Granted, JWs are authoritarian with their hokey doctrines, but Trinitarians tortured people and denied them access to the Bible to get that ridiculous dogma into wide-spread use.

43

Does your personal NEED or WEAKNESS give you the right to demand?

by Terry in

let's start at the old desert island, shall we?.

a group of survivors (just like the tv show!

) are marooned on an island with no way off.they are all sorts of people with various strengths and weaknesses.. the strongest among them do the hardest work.

WontLeave

Socialism is like Wile E. Coyote's ideas. They all work great on paper, but fail in the real world. Rabid socialists are all still in the planning stages and can't see past their idealized outcome, to reality. However, they are painfully aware of every misstep perpetrated under the guise of "free enterprise". Socialism has a long history of using propaganda and this is why they love to spin examples of "capitalism" failures. They point to bailouts, embezzlement, lobbying, corporate welfare, and all sorts of illegal activity which are anything but capitalism.

Recently, I watched Michael Moore's Capitalism - A Love Story. He actually uses Enron and bank improprieties, where people went to prison as examples of "capitalism". So, in his mind, illegal activity is capitalism. So, if I break into my neighbor's house and steal his TV, Michael Moore would use that as an example of capitalism. This is how determined socialists are to reject capitalism, so why even talk to them? It's a waste of time and it's all academic, because the vast majority of people who want socialism are people who can't compete or are self-loathing because they feel like they were "lucky". You're trying to intellectualize an emotional argument and those kind of arguments can't be won.

Over and over, unions refuse to admit the company they're picketing can't afford their demands, and they'll end up putting the place out of business rather than lose the argument. Then, everybody is out of work and there are fewer jobs to go around. But, hey... They won, right? They're determined to prove you wrong and facts will not get in their way. Just pray they live in another country or don't vote, so their views will have a lesser effect on you.

38

Is this normal witness behavior?

by confusedstudent in

jw
friends

i quit my bible study a couple days ago after taking a month or two to work up the guts.

have been getting harassing emails/phone calls blah blah blah.

but i got an email today telling me that an unbelieving spouse can be "sanctified" by his believing mate.

WontLeave

I don't understand this. I've given bible studies to people because I had too many or they were with women and every time, they don't follow through. Who are these Witnesses, that they are pulling out all the stops to hold a Bible study, when I've never been able to even give one away?

209

The trouble with Christianity. TRINITY.

by whereami in

gotta love pat.. "ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.

ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity.

it is the mere abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of jesus.

WontLeave

@saltyoldlady

godrulz can't grasp the idea of a non-Trinitarian God, because (and he really seems to believe this) he found the idea in the Bible, free of outside influence. He can't fathom a unitarian God and a created son coming anywhere but from JWs, because his religious experience is only with other Trinitarians. Just like Hollywood liberals believe everybody is a liberal, except for stupid, evil, ignorant people, all of his "Christian" friends are Trinitarians, so he believes only a stupid, evil, ignorant false-Christian would believe in a unitarian God. He's completely oblivious to the fact that God's people saw him that way for thousands of years and the Trinity is a man-made (or "revealed") doctrine. Interestingly, none of the prophets who would have seen God as a strictly singular entity and personage don't seem to be damned to Hell.

Trinitarians see belief in the Trinity some kind of rite of passage into "true Christianity". Just like JWs have to force ridiculous and fantastical beliefs on themselves that blatantly violate Scripture (Governing Body, for instance) to be a "true Christian", Trinitarians' hackles come up when you talk about their Trinity doctrine, because they worked hard to "achieve enlightenment" and they equate the self-induced brainwashing with revelation from the Holy Spirit. When you try to reason with them about the Trinity, they see you as trying to take the Holy Spirit away from them and that makes you an evil apostate, trying to lead them away from God. Similarly, if you try to talk to a JW about how man-made institutions and rules have no place in Christianity, you're attacking their 'faithful slave' and they've been brainwashed into believing that means you hate God. Once they convince themselves of a triune God, they see it everywhere in the Bible.

Once a man forms a theory, he sees evidence for it everywhere he looks. - Abraham Lincoln

A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. - Simon and Garfunkel

43

Does your personal NEED or WEAKNESS give you the right to demand?

by Terry in

let's start at the old desert island, shall we?.

a group of survivors (just like the tv show!

) are marooned on an island with no way off.they are all sorts of people with various strengths and weaknesses.. the strongest among them do the hardest work.

WontLeave

the world would shut down without the retail workers, blue collar guys, factory workers, just as much as it would shut down without the engineers, scientists and entrepreneur

Someone already tried your theory. Under Chairman Mao, millions starved. Whether you're a "joe six-pack" and jealous or feel you were born with a silver ATM card in your mouth and ashamed, your uber-leftist theory doesn't wash. There are many more unskilled laborers than the world needs. This was demonstrated at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and during/after the World Wars, when there wasn't enough unskilled manual labor in industrialized countries. Wages skyrocketed and for the first (and last) time in human history, a man only qualified to sweep floors and his family could live quite nicely.

This is why people in China are willing to work for cents a day and even people in wealthier countries will break a picket line for a portion of what the strikers were making. Manual labor is plentiful, whereas educated, skilled, talented people are much more rare. There is a reason a surgeon makes more than a shoe salesman. People don't want to expend the effort or the time to learn a skill or get proficient at it, so when someone is willing to do what it takes to achieve more, he should be rewarded for it.

when capitalism fell and the bailouts began

You don't notice a problem with that statement? "Capitalism" and "bailout" are diametrically opposed. Companies skirted and broke the law to steal money and distribute it among the good-old-boys at the top and the government gave them money for doing it. If that sounds like capitalism to you, you need to check a dictionary. The companies that got bailed out had lobbyists greasing palms in Washington and used their government ties to get away with outright theft. Stop using Michael Moore's definition of "capitalism". He's a liar, just trying to make a point, by using straw men. Believe me, nobody's more upset at the way the US is allowing corporations to get away with murder by refusing to prosecute and giving legal loopholes to the ones making huge campaign donations. That's not capitalism; that's corruption. Remove corruption and just about any system will work to some extent. But don't point to something that is blatantly not capitalism and present it as an example of why capitalism can't work. You want to make the point that corruption doesn't work? Amen!

43

Does your personal NEED or WEAKNESS give you the right to demand?

by Terry in

let's start at the old desert island, shall we?.

a group of survivors (just like the tv show!

) are marooned on an island with no way off.they are all sorts of people with various strengths and weaknesses.. the strongest among them do the hardest work.

WontLeave

There's always something to do that doesn't require great skill or natural ability. Something always needs washed, cooked, etc. I believe the movie Swept Away is a fair assessment of how things would go down. The best hunters would be the local rock stars and the least productive would pretty much become their servants. The larger the community became, the more diverse the needed and desired skills would become. If there's only 5 people and they're wondering where their next meal is coming from, artists are probably not in high demand, for example.

If someone lives in a thriving city and can't find some skill to hone into a productive living, they are probably not going to rise much above servant. These people, in our society, work in retail, service-oriented industries, blue-collar labor, etc. There are only 2 ways to be perceived as valuable: Do something someone else can't or do something someone else doesn't want to; or some combination of the two. The less of those you offer, the less valuable you become.