"faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence.
faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.".
"my last vestige of "hands off religion" respect disappeared in the smoke and choking dust of september 11th 2001, followed by the "national day of prayer," when prelates and pastors did their tremulous martin luther king impersonations and urged people of mutually incompatible faiths to hold hands, united in homage to the very force that caused the problem in the first place.".
What is interesting is the absolute certainty with which people in this thread end the assertion "God is ____". How does one know these things?
It's been a lively, for the most part intelligent, discussion, but the thread after 11 pages could be subtitled "Practical examples of cognitive dissonance." Of course, we think its the other guy who's refusing to see the light, not us.
i am an atheist.
i arrived at this juncture in my life despite not wanting to.
when i first met the witnesses at 22 i was a seeker looking for answers to the question of life - in other words, prime cult target material.
Did I say I wasn't sure? (Tammy)
This was the thread, Tammy. Yours was the second post.
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/208508/1/Belief-does-not-define-character
my son who is 26 yrs.
old recently confided in my wife and myself that he is having a rough time moving on past the jw mindset.. he was associated with the witnesses for the first 24 years of his life, and he really tried to do the whole witness thing correctly, yet he was and still is a shy person.
now that he has been out for two years, he is having a lot of anger toward people who believe in god.
I started a thread yesterday positing that the Watchtower creates atheists, MIB. Some of the comments made are interesting, consistent with what your son is going through. While some folks agree with my contention, others do not, and their perspectives are valid. I became an atheist at least to some extent because of my aborted association with the WTBTS, but there are many others who saw the lies, endured the pain of leaving and still managed to keep their faith. Your son has an option. Not everyone is disposed to being atheist and happy with life. Therapy may help but in the end he needs to find himself again. I suggest you acquire a copy of Raymond Franz' book "Crisis of Conscience", copies of which are still available on Amazon.com and through freeminds and by all means read it yourself, but it may be something your son would benefit from too. It provides remarkable insights into the Society by one of its former inner circle who, despite the pain of having had his eyes opened about the Society, managed not to lose his faith. If your son has already closed that door for good, he might want to focus instead on expanding his mind by seeking greater understanding of the world. He is still very young, and the time he spent in the Watchtower was not wasted now that he has escaped it. He sees clearly now because at one time he did not, and that is a lesson he will never forget.
i am an atheist.
i arrived at this juncture in my life despite not wanting to.
when i first met the witnesses at 22 i was a seeker looking for answers to the question of life - in other words, prime cult target material.
Our conscience is based on our own values, mind you, so we can still screw up if we listen to it and our values are wrong, even if our consciences are clear.
We have discussed this before, Tammy. I might relocate the thread if I dedicated a little time and effort. My contention has been that one does not need to believe in God or the Holy Bible to be a person of high moral values. Your reply was that you were not so sure. What determines whether or not our values are wrong? Certainly some of the moral lessons in the Bible are outmoded in today's context - slavery, capital punishment for minor offences, polygamy, genocide, etc - so does one need to pick and choose which values are right and which are wrong? If so, does it not follow that if our values are based on a simple pretext that we will carry one another and never do another harm (as what Jesus taught) then they cannot be wrong?
My BIL was an openly immoral man before he found the Watchtower. He philandered, he lied, he stole, he abused all manner of illicit drug. The change in him to a loving, law-abiding husband and father is what caused me to listen to him about the Watchtower. He remarked to me recently, within the context of the anger his mother has expressed toward him for shunning his DF'ed son, that he is still the man he always was, despite what his faith causes him to do. I disagreed with him, saying if he was the man I knew before his association with the Watchtower he would not be welcome in my house. But extrapolate that further. If it is faith (in this case faith in the Watchtower, but it applies generally to people of faith) that causes people to be good, then is it real or affected? I'm not sure what my BIL would do, how he would behave, if he suddenly lost the moral compass he acquired when he found "The Truth". For myself, it did not change when I lost my faith. If anything, I may have even become more sensitive to the needs of others, acknowledging that I am still vulnerable to being insensitive when I am not paying attention to my words and behaviours. But if someone needs faith in order to be a good and moral person, it stands to reason that that person is best avoided because he is not a good and moral person at his core, does it not?
just read don cameron's book...which was very en-light-ening (sorry for the "new light" pun)....and i agree with many of cameron's points about how to reason with a jw but i am curious..... have any of you out there in jwn land ever tried to have a witness come to your door, pretend to have a bible study & get the jw in a "teacher" setting where they have to research for you the history of jw's in the time of 1919????.
were you successful?
did it not work out?.
I have not managed to free one family member, apart from my wife, but she already was 95% out before I started to fade.
My wife's mind has been unpenatrable. She is in many ways my intellectual superior, but there seems nothing I can say that will weaken her faith in the Watchtower. Good on you, wobble.
It seems everyone's observations and experiences are consistent with my own. These horses just refuse to drink because they fear the water is poisoned.
i am an atheist.
i arrived at this juncture in my life despite not wanting to.
when i first met the witnesses at 22 i was a seeker looking for answers to the question of life - in other words, prime cult target material.
I disagree...I feel that Nick can be condescending and patronizing.
While recognising that text communication suffers from its lack of vocal intonation, facial expression and body language and as a consequence lends itself to misunderstanding, I acknowledge that my diplomacy when I disagree with someone is sometimes terrible. I have also been accused of arrogance, probably not without good reason. Given my insignificance I really should aspire to be more humble. My apologies. It's just the way I am. But if I pay you a compliment it is heartfelt.
I can't be sure what the reference to believing in magic is based on.
The reference within the context of this thread was wrt at least some religious belief. The topic of intelligent design/creation vs evolution comes up on this board frequently. If God created the universe and all that is in it, how did he go about doing it? From my perspective, a theist who believes that God caused the Big Bang and set things on a course that resulted in the formation of galaxies, stars, planets and eventually life is more rational than a theist who believes that God just caused things to suddenly appear a la Genesis, like a magician waving his wand and pulling a rabbit out of a hat.
Thanks for the link, NomadSoul. Very interesting site.
i am an atheist.
i arrived at this juncture in my life despite not wanting to.
when i first met the witnesses at 22 i was a seeker looking for answers to the question of life - in other words, prime cult target material.
well said tec...you do have a knack for that
Can't do a thing but agree. A first class mind to be sure.
Good night, all.
i am an atheist.
i arrived at this juncture in my life despite not wanting to.
when i first met the witnesses at 22 i was a seeker looking for answers to the question of life - in other words, prime cult target material.
Heh. I stand corrected, zid. Still, I don't know anyone from those areas. It only goes to how primitive we still are on average.
i am an atheist.
i arrived at this juncture in my life despite not wanting to.
when i first met the witnesses at 22 i was a seeker looking for answers to the question of life - in other words, prime cult target material.
Ah... How the heck does recognizing a primitive, superstitious account of a volcanic eruption in the biblical account at Exodus 19: 16-19, constitute a "sentiment"??????
actually, I was referring to your sentiment that the Watchtower hadn't influenced you becoming atheist, zid. My take is that it influenced me.
It's fascinating. Life is an interesting journey.
Indeed it is, Oracle.
i am an atheist.
i arrived at this juncture in my life despite not wanting to.
when i first met the witnesses at 22 i was a seeker looking for answers to the question of life - in other words, prime cult target material.
Human progress is slow, Tammy, in spite of how quickly it has advanced over the past 50 years (which, if you've been around to see it personally seems remarkable). As much as we are pushing ourselves toward the razor's edge of sustaining ourselves as a species we've advanced a great deal in all areas, including science and philosophy. A hundred years ago life was tougher. A hundred years before that it was tougher still. I can't imagine life back in the times the Bible was written, but if you consider the words in the Bible itself you already know that they were very difficult. But it is just where we were as a species, undoubtedly the very best place we could have been considering the times, but realities have nevertheless changed. The deeper down we go in our ancestry the darker our reality was. We created God because we could not understand life and reality. As we have progressively come to understand life and reality we have progressively come to deconstruct God. Not too long ago in our history we worshipped hundreds of different gods. In 2011, how many active gods are left? There's Yahweh, for sure. Brahma, Allah (who many think is really Yahweh in disguise), Vishnu ... I don't know how many, but there are still a few around. More than one. Atheists see a much different future from what theists see. Atheists see what's happening in places like Norway (where more than 3/4 of the population now professes agnosticism or atheism) happening throughout the world. Belief in god is very slowly becoming synonymous with belief in magic, and I do not know any adult who will profess to believe in magic.
