Posts by Liberty93

37

Logical Questions to Make Them Think?

by sweet pea in

this has no doubt been covered before and if anyone has any favourite threads on this subject perhaps they could post them here .

what are your best one liners/questions to make jw's think?.

i had a heated conversation with my mum this weekend and apart from mainly going round in circles (as is often the case with brainwashed cult members) one thing made her stop and i could see that she was having major trouble processing the logic.

Liberty93

The best thing about Christian groups is that they all prove that all of the other ones are wrong.

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The JW's dependence on WT literature.

by Knowsnothing in

Liberty93

I never contested that Jesus existed. I'm claiming that you are making some gigantic assumptions with a tiny amount of evidence. The fundamental thing is this - you can't prove what you say, so there's no reason to believe it.

Consider this - I claim that a person named Plato existed, and that he taught and wrote books. This is in accord with many of our experiences. We all know of people who exist. Further, we know of people who exist and who write books and/or teach.

Consider your claims on the other hand - that God incarnated himself by causing a virgin to become pregnant, that this man lived, died on the cross, and was resurrected after three days. None of these claims, other than that the man existed have even the slightest resemblance to anything that a sane person has ever claimed to experience, and therefore, there is no belief in these events as literal events other than in words - there can be no true belief that these things happened because, as literal events, they are simply nonsensical.

As events symbolic of greater spiritual realities, they make quite a bit of sense, but Christians, and Protestants in particular, are, as a rule, totally unable to concieve of any divinity that transcends their own quotidian lives. They do not ask how the divine transcends time and space. Rather, they ask what God's "plan" is for you. Maybe you've been "called" to go take a dump, or go outside and get the paper.

That's the problem with bible-whackers - they cannot concieve of transcendent majesty and so, instead of raising themselves up to view it, they drag it kicking and screaming down to their own mundane level. More often than not, the obsession with a personal conversion experience and a "personal relationship with Christ" is a subtle (or not so subtle) form of self-worship.

And that feeling so many of you get when you feel or imagine that Christ enters your life? It's pretty darn similiar to some of the lower jhanas, meditative states, that even novice meditators can place themselves in at will. And the thing is, there are even "better," or more peaceful or what-have-you, jhanas beyond those first four. The rub is that reading a book and thinking you know everything isn't how you attain them.

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The JW's dependence on WT literature.

by Knowsnothing in

Liberty93

Prove that Jesus rose from the dead.

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The JW's dependence on WT literature.

by Knowsnothing in

Liberty93

Very briefly, it doesn't bother me. What makes the teachings authentic is not that they are the utterance of some god-like figure, but that they are in accord with the four seals of buddhism, and are teachings which bring about freedom when they are heard, thought about, meditated upon, and practiced.

It has been said that there are 84,000 doors to the dharma. This does not mean that there are 84,000 actual traditions, but that the buddhas teach in whatever way is needed to reach easch and every being. (Buddhists, as you may know, are not generally fans of extreme literalism.) All religions were taught by Buddhas. All of them. Reconciling this with the fact that religions often seem better at producing walking sermons and/or people who think that having memorizing more verses and being Doctrinally Correct has anything at all to do with a pure heart is what we buddhists call "pure view" - keeping in mind constantly that reality is actually free of faults, flaws, or stains of any sort.

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The JW's dependence on WT literature.

by Knowsnothing in

Liberty93

LOL

Isn't that a bit like chiding me for believing in fairytales, and immediately proceeding to tell me how you were visited by the tooth fairy last night, who happened to be riding an invisible pink unicorn?

Like Thomas Paine said, y'all can't prove nothing without reference to "books of pretended revelation."

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The JW's dependence on WT literature.

by Knowsnothing in

Liberty93

I wasn't belittling. I was showing how silly it is to quote something ostensibly written/said by a major religious figure which not only contradicts everything he said, but which also just doesn't sound like him. Not to mention other inaccuracies, such as the redundancy of "brahman priest," or the sheer unlikelihood that even if this text did exist, that any evangelical christian would a) have been in Thailand in 1958, b) would know Pali even know, or c) would have known Pali (an extinct language) in 1958 and have been in Thailand. Even if this person had existed, he was certainly either dishonest or incompetent in, among many other things, translating any word from Pali as "sin." And that's dropping the assumption that the quote wasn't a total forgery.

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The JW's dependence on WT literature.

by Knowsnothing in

Liberty93

I found a scripture just now.

"This is the letter of the Apostle Paul, to the Church of the Jamaicans.

Greetings brothers,

I was wrong about everything. No God can save you. You must do the work yourself. We only show the way.

May the Buddha bless you!"

Now, see how easy that was?

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