Posts by Nickolas

191

What is your religious belief now?

by jwfacts in

i have a new poll at jwfacts.mobi/pollsarchive/ as i am very interested to see what people have moved on to believe.

as this is considered sensitive by some, you can answer anonymously at the jwfacts.mobi/pollsarchive/, or answer on this thread.

this is what i have created in the list, but feel free to add comments, corrections, or options i have missed.. .

Nickolas

Perhaps you need only to see through your personal prejudice, still thinking. That's not a put down, my dear, please believe that. We are all prejudiced to some extent though we are loathe to admit it to anyone, let alone ourselves. From your response I'm not sure you understood what I posted. It was about happiness and harm. If a child and his parents are happy believing in nonsense and hurt no-one, what's the obvious harm? Are you going to force the Amish into state-sponsored compulsory reprogramming? Make them drive Buicks instead of buggies? What about the Mormons? Jehovah's Witnesses? Jews? Roman Catholics? Scientologists? Of course not, even if every one of those groups is clearly and unequivocally delusional. Happiness for most of mankind is dependent on maintaining a delusional reality. Several of the respondents in this thread are clearly happy in their delusions. If I believed in Him I'd say God bless them all. Surely you're not saying you'd make them into atheists if you could? To accept intellectually a completely new, and by comparison cold and stark, reality would be unlikely to make them happier. I'm also sure you're not proposing that society dictate what people should be allowed to teach their children to believe. Precisely the thing we do not want. Yes, creationism and other fantasies in the Bible are not in touch with reality but who sets the minimum standard of what kind of belief causes demonstrable harm? Some legislator? What you and they and I believe isn't accurate either. It is only what someone believes. If he had the power to tell me how to think next he'd be telling me what to watch on TV, or what books I should read, or what internet sites I should visit. I don't think that's what you want, but once you get to the point of dictating truth you become part of the problem.

Not back, alas. Just was thinking about this place and thought I'd stop in. Cheers.

191

What is your religious belief now?

by jwfacts in

i have a new poll at jwfacts.mobi/pollsarchive/ as i am very interested to see what people have moved on to believe.

as this is considered sensitive by some, you can answer anonymously at the jwfacts.mobi/pollsarchive/, or answer on this thread.

this is what i have created in the list, but feel free to add comments, corrections, or options i have missed.. .

Nickolas

If you accept that this is all there is and you get to experience it but for a brief lifetime, it then comes down to enjoying your life and allowing others to enjoy theirs. So long as the beliefs of others don't negatively affect your life, and vice versa, does it really matter what you or anyone believes? My belief system is based on evidence but evidence changes with understanding. Ergo what I believe is at best incomplete, and so is what everyone else believes. I have no problem with anyone being a fundamentalist Christian or Muslim or Mormon or whatever so long as they leave me alone. If they're prepared to respect my atheism reciprocally, so much the better. You're happy, I'm happy. Let's have a beer and a few laughs together. You want to fly passenger jets into buildings or allow your children to bleed to death, we are not going to get along.

I'm a 6 on the Dawkins' scale, where he puts himself.

34

Can one have their JW baptism annulled?? Seriously?

by mind blown in

would it be possible??

seriously.. i feel i was baptized under false pretense.

.

Nickolas

hey, BotR, ltns. Can one's mind ever be the same after it has been raped by the WTBTS?

34

Can one have their JW baptism annulled?? Seriously?

by mind blown in

would it be possible??

seriously.. i feel i was baptized under false pretense.

.

Nickolas

The Watchtower is a house of cards, Bobcat. Dig even superficially and it starts to tremble. Who do you want to convince the WT is not what it says it is? Is it yourself?

24

Its been great....

by stuckinamovement in

jw
friends

it is funny how this site works.

people lurk, they join, they post, and then they fade away because they have healed enough to focus on other positive things.

that is pretty much where i am at.

Nickolas

Cool. Seems to me you have arrived at a new plateau. More ahead of you, SIAM. Ciao.

34

Can one have their JW baptism annulled?? Seriously?

by mind blown in

would it be possible??

seriously.. i feel i was baptized under false pretense.

.

Nickolas

What becomes more amazing to me, the longer I lurk in here reading interchanges such as this one, is how much awful power most people bestow upon the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. Such fear. My 2p. It's a matter of choice. The courageous thing for the OP to do is pack up his most valued belongings and leave, and somehow find a way to start a new life. Some considerable advanced planning might be in order. The less courageous thing to do is seek a technicality that only allows him to stay trapped within the Watchtower delusion while his life is frittered away being treated as a lesser mortal by his family and peers. That doesn't sound like winning to me. What is lost? If it's loss of family relationships, then maybe you need to lose them if it finally means being honest with yourself. There is a world of opportunity out there if you have courage enough to seek it and pay the price of some hardship. It is sad the Watchtower has enslaved the minds of people who are dear to you, but you are not first place in their hearts and they should not be first in yours. They will shun you if you leave. How sad. Their love for you will not be strong enough to overcome the love they have for Jehovah and his Organization. Their choice, not yours. Your choice is whether or not you have the courage to start a new life. Tough place to be in. I don't envy you, but it could be your opportunity to escape. My df'ed nephew did this. He broke away from his Jehovah's Witness family and wife and struck out on his own, and he is doing quite well, the loss of part of his immediate family notwithstanding. Those of us standing outside of the Watchtower faith still treat him like family. I'm quite proud of him.

14

What do atheists and agnostics typically do for their funeral services?

by tootired2care in

in contemplating my current beliefs in life right now, it occured to me that my views as an agnostic would probably make for a strange funeral service if my friends and family were to have one.

strange in that most funeral services always have some mention of god, and some religious context with afterlife explanations.

has anyone ever been to a non-religious funeral service for someone who was atheist or agnostic and what was it like?

Nickolas

My father was an "atheist", as much as he thought the label is bullshit. He preferred to think of himself as a humanist. His funeral arrangements were clearly specified in writing by him and I was executor of his estate. He was a decorated navy veteran and specified a Canadian Legion funeral but there was to be no prayer, no priest or chaplan, nothing of a religious nature attributed back to him. If someone felt inclined to get up and mumble some religious nonsense, who cares? No-one did. There was an open invitation in the local media and about two hundred people showed up. A few of his associates and I got up and said some appropriate words and then the legion ladies arrived with the food. This was followed by cremation and burial of the urn to the top of my mother's casket. It was what she wanted and he didn't object. She died 3 years earlier. She was a devout Roman Catholic and her funeral service had all the insense-infused chanting, organ playing and mumbo-jumbo by solomn, shuffling creeps dressed up in black, flowing robes, then lowering the casket with the embalmed body in it into the ground so that it could goulishly resurrect itself out of the ground when the time came, as mother believed she would. I much preferred Dad's arrangement.

An atheist's funeral is like anyone elses. It's where his friends and family say their goodbyes, not for his sake but for theirs. People who attend are free to think or say whatever they wish about death and the afterlife because an atheist, in particular a dead one, doesn't care.

My funeral directions to my executors are simple. Once it is released from the morgue or hospital or wherever, take my dead body to the funeral home where it is already arranged for it to be put inside a cardboard box and cremated. The ashes are to be put into a plastic bag and then into a carboard box. Put an ad in the paper telling people I'm dead. Have a little dinner in my honour if you feel like it. Hell, have a big party if you feel like it. Do whatever you want with the ashes, but put them preferably under a few rose bushes, well mixed with rotted cow manure and a little bone meal.

319

Dan Savage talks about the bible and Christian students flee

by Terry in

.

zap2it.comdan savage, bullying and the truth about gays and the biblehuffington post - 42 minutes agodan savage, bullying and the truth about gays and the bible... walked out of dan's speech the moment he began talking about the parts of the ...

Nickolas

ZZZzzzzzzzzzz........ . . . . . .

27

What's a Good Standard for Right and Wrong?

by Perry in

1. if you say that reducing harm is a valid standard because that is what people want, then how are you not committing the logical fallacy of begging the question by saying that what people want, is what makes something morally right?.

2. if you say that reducing harm is a valid standard of morality because that is what people want, then how are you not promoting an arbitrary standard since it is based on peoples subjective feelings and desires which change?

3. if reducing overall harm is the standard of morality, then should a nation that is being attacked by another nation not practice self-defense, since by defending itself it may very well increase overall harm to both nations?.

Nickolas

Aside from the momentous, finger drumming tautology your OP impends, Perry, your point at first seems to balance on sexual infidelity, which quickly becomes sexual infidelity and lying about it. Your concept of suffering transcends the physical and goes to the psychological (a broken heart) and spiritual (a broken soul) when you introduce the devastating psychological/spiritual danger posed by atheists and why society might want to incarcerate them. Blending Christians into the equation seems a bit odd, except that Christians are indeed seen as spiritually corrupt in some countries as are atheists in yours. As we approach the finish line you are arguing about intervention wrt people who do harm to themselves. Are you speaking in terms of physical harm or psychological/spiritual harm? I'm not sure. But then we get to God, and your rationale for Him to intervene when people are doing harm to themselves. Spiritual harm, I suppose. Tsk tsk. And then the rimshot ...

32. If what-is-good-is-what-reduces-harm, then shouldn’t you ignore all of these questions since they might harm your worldview on morality? J

Fundamental morality is divorced from religious faith because religious faith can't agree on what is right and what is wrong. That is why your logic is flawed and your conclusions spurious. If I cause you to be "hurt" because I, for example, lay evidence before you that the biblical god is a fiction (and a bad one at that) then that is not my problem but yours. I am only a transmitter. You are the interpreter. If I punch you in the nose, that's where I cross the line. If I get as fat as a pig indulging myself while children die of starvation in Nigeria, I may have crossed a line there, too, but I don't think so. Morality is not black and white and it is not fixed by things committed to print or graven in stone tablets. It is elastic, it is contextual and it is interpretive. But back to your sexual thing. If my wife cheats on me it should not surprise me that she will resort to lying, too. Will that cause me psycological harm? I suppose it would. But it would still be the truth, and I would much rather know the truth than be kept in the dark. Could it be that those who hold their belief in God so dearly just don't want to know the truth because it would hurt?

319

Dan Savage talks about the bible and Christian students flee

by Terry in

.

zap2it.comdan savage, bullying and the truth about gays and the biblehuffington post - 42 minutes agodan savage, bullying and the truth about gays and the bible... walked out of dan's speech the moment he began talking about the parts of the ...

Nickolas

I was encouraged by this video. Not so much its content as the apparent number of people who stayed to listen and who expressed support. You can only tell from the sounds in the background that there was still a sizable crowd of people remaining in their seats. This was my first introduction to Mr. Savage. He comes across as a coarse Sam Harris clone and in fact uses one of Sam Harris' famous examples of biblical sexual repression and associated misogyny with only a halfassed acknowledgement of where he got it from, as if presenting it as his own thought. He has potential, but he's a lightweight spokesperson for atheism. But back to the crowd. In a country (to paraphrase Mr. Harris, who is not a lightweight) in which the vast majority of people believe in God and where the true non-believer is in the margins of society, is it not remarkable that so many people stayed? Almost as if the USA is finally waking up.