Posts by Liberty

38

Response to RWC's Atheist Questions

by Liberty in

hi rwc,.

i'm sure you're a very nice person and i don't want to get into an argument but rather a civil debate.

i just wanted to point out that as ex-jws many of us are a little obsessed with truth (not to be confused with "the truth" tm) and that after being burned by the watchtower society and hating ourselves for being so stupid to have fallen for its bs we have now become highly skeptical of the bible as well.

Liberty

I also wanted to point out that all of the predictions made about the future (those beyond what happened in the Biblical scope) have proven to be false. Its been two thousand years and Jesus has still not returned as he promised. The World has not ended. There have been no battles between the armies of God and the Devil. There is no thousand year reign of Christ and the dead have not come back to life.

To impress us a prediction must be about future events spelled out in detail that then really happens just as stated AFTER the prediction was made so that everyone can clearly see it was a true prediction. The Bible fails this test completely. The only "fulfilled" events are undocumentable and all in the distant past, while all predictions for the future remain unfulfilled just as one would expect from mere human beings. In short, the Bible tells us nothing about our future. It did not predict space flight, visits to the Moon, cloning, TV, radio, atom bombs, etc. and into infinity. If God could not foresee these major events I have little belief He could tell us anything about the future.

38

Response to RWC's Atheist Questions

by Liberty in

hi rwc,.

i'm sure you're a very nice person and i don't want to get into an argument but rather a civil debate.

i just wanted to point out that as ex-jws many of us are a little obsessed with truth (not to be confused with "the truth" tm) and that after being burned by the watchtower society and hating ourselves for being so stupid to have fallen for its bs we have now become highly skeptical of the bible as well.

Liberty

Yet more points RWC,

The Bible makes for itself the claim that, "all scriptures are inspired by God" so how can I be faulted for rejecting the Bible as a whole when such large sections of it have been proven false by the evidence I can clearly see all around me. The fact that I cannot believe in the Bible as God's true word is totally consistant considering simple logic and an understanding of the observable Universe. Why would God create a Universe full of evidence for us to find which contradicts His inspired word? It also seems strange that the more we discover the less true the Bible seems instead of the other way around. Bible apologists are always modifying their theories to conform to science rather than science having to conform to the Bible's views. Why is this the case if the Bible is true? So far you have presented no evidence for me to even believe the Bible, let alone to believe in your God. If we can only know God through the Bible and the Bible is proven false then I am left without a guide since God chooses to remain unseen and silent.

You mentioned in an earlier post that you believed the Bible was true, as opposed to other ancient writings, because only the Bible could predict future events accurately. I have heard this presented before as evidence but applying logic to these predictions soon renders them meaningless. Since the Bible was describing events that happened in the distant past how can we be sure that these predictions were not recorded after the fact? For example, WWII is long since past for us and we know what happened but if I now wrote a book which described in detail all of these events but said it was written in 1920. A person finding such an old text a thousand years from now would be astounded by my powers of precognition as I accurately "predicted" all of the events of WWII. How would they know after a thousand years the difference between a book written in 1920 or one written in 2002 because there is only a 72 year difference between the two? What if I wrote my book in 1946 instead of 2002 and claimed a writing date of 1936, such a ten year difference would be imperceptable after a thousand years. How much more so would this be true after more than two thousand years? The Bible's dates at writing are even more difficult to substatiate because we are not sure who wrote these works or when exactly they were actually translated from an oral prophecy into a written one because we have so little extra-biblical evidence and no original manuscripts. How do you know the Bible predicted these now long past dates and events?

If Jesus was real those who wrote about him 70 years after his birth already knew the old Bible passages needed to make him appear as if he fulfilled them and "prove" he was the Messiah, so surprise surprise the events in his life were "predicted" by Scripture. There is no evidence of any Gospel writings until around 70 AD so Jesus was dead for 40 years before the events of his life were even commited to paper. The human mind is not capable of retaining accurate information about the past without the help of external documentation. Do you even kow the name of your grandfather's grandfather? I don't without doing a geneology search. I know nothing of this close relative who lived just 100 years ago or so. As a further illustration of this fact I went to a cave in Missouri and the historian explained that all that is known about the white man who first explored the cave was his last name. The origin of some ladders and timbers found in the cave were completly unknown even though they must have been used there just 140 years ago or so since they were of a European style. All of these events are forgotten,details lost, and people's lives forgotten in just a few hundred years in a modern industrial era with a wealth of printed history. How much more true is this when dealing in thousands of years in an age where writing was rare and all copying done by hand? I can't even tell you about my great great grandfather so how could we trust someone to accurately relate the events of the past from the Bible days without it becoming mixed with myth and gossip, especially if it remained a soley oral tradition until being written down long after the events took place. There were no reporters or cameras to record these events, no newspapers to file away and research, no scientific journals....just the word of a wandering tribesman.

38

Response to RWC's Atheist Questions

by Liberty in

hi rwc,.

i'm sure you're a very nice person and i don't want to get into an argument but rather a civil debate.

i just wanted to point out that as ex-jws many of us are a little obsessed with truth (not to be confused with "the truth" tm) and that after being burned by the watchtower society and hating ourselves for being so stupid to have fallen for its bs we have now become highly skeptical of the bible as well.

Liberty

Hi RWC,

I wanted to get to a few more of your points as time permits. As to Biblical chronology, please note that I started with Adam and Eve since I knew that Bible literalists have backpeddled away from the concept of 24 hour creation days replacing them with more science friendly "undefined lengths". I only addressed the Bible's chronology from the creation of man which is clearly mapped out and given specific time frames as Bishop Usher dicovered centuries ago. By following the geneology of Adam's family tree the Bible gives us its own limited time frame which is oppossed to reality. This is not due to any lack of understanding on my part but is clearly the Bible versus reality. All the evidence says that a number of human beings had existed for far longer than the Bible's own historic record can possibly accomodate even if Adam lived without a mate for ten thousand years.

I also ignored the fact that the Creation sequence mapped out in the Bible is nonsense even if I grant that the word "day" doesn't really mean a day and could be millions of years long. How could light exist before the Sun? Or how could the Earth, which relys on the Sun for its orbit gravitation, have been created before the Sun? Read the account for yourself and you will see that it makes no sense even if it took millions of years. Read for yourself the Tower of Babel story and you will see that God was afraid of man's abilities embodied in the mud brick tower that they were building and He confused their language to slow down their intellectual advancement. You made up your explaination, for such is noted nowhere in the account. You need to reread your Bible as it is clearly spelled out. Your explainations are extra -Biblical and designed to make nonsense sound reasonable. I understand why and don't fault you for it. You believe strongly and will try anything to make sense of it. There is a limit however to this kind of apologetic thinking, especially when faced with the harsh reality of evidence.

38

Response to RWC's Atheist Questions

by Liberty in

hi rwc,.

i'm sure you're a very nice person and i don't want to get into an argument but rather a civil debate.

i just wanted to point out that as ex-jws many of us are a little obsessed with truth (not to be confused with "the truth" tm) and that after being burned by the watchtower society and hating ourselves for being so stupid to have fallen for its bs we have now become highly skeptical of the bible as well.

Liberty

Hello again RWC,

I am glad to see that you do not insist that the Bible stories should all be taken literally. The Bible is not historic or scientific but rather it is but one of many ancient religious texts. As to faith, my belief, or faith, in God is irrelevant in a scientific sense because we cannot present evidence of His existance. My belief in spirits or mysterious beings of any kind cannot be supported by evidence so they remain unreal to the scientific community much like ghosts, Bigfoot, or the Loch Ness Monster.

Bigfoot may very well exist but until conclusive evidence is presented I cannot say that this beast is real. God now inhabits the same realms of imagination as ghosts, Nessie, and Bigfoot... perhaps even less so, since Bigfoot has left us footprints, sound recordings, pictures, hair, and a few movies, though these are still vague enough to have been faked. The difference is that Bigfoot could someday be captured, examined, and eventually be proven real.

In contrast, those who are believers in God have created a Being which by His very definition cannot be proven by evidence. They say God is silent, invisible, and knowable only through our faith in an old book which even you yourself concede has parts which are symbolic and are not to be taken literally. One ancient ethnocentric culture's book of myths and symbols is not enough evidence for me to build belief upon.

You say I know of God's existance but refuse to acknowledge it. In reality, I know nothing of God except that which my culture's propaganda has indocternated me with. Had I been born in Saudi Arabia my god would be Allah and I would believe in Islam and the Koran as my truth. You would say that the Muslim's religion is false based mostly on the fact that their culture is different from your own so why should I believe any religion to be superior if it is mostly determined by the random distribution of cultures? Does God really leave our ability to find and know Him all to the random patterns of luck?

38

Response to RWC's Atheist Questions

by Liberty in

hi rwc,.

i'm sure you're a very nice person and i don't want to get into an argument but rather a civil debate.

i just wanted to point out that as ex-jws many of us are a little obsessed with truth (not to be confused with "the truth" tm) and that after being burned by the watchtower society and hating ourselves for being so stupid to have fallen for its bs we have now become highly skeptical of the bible as well.

Liberty

Thanks again to everyone who has contributed to this subject!

RWC asked some specific questions that I haven't had time to address so I'll try now. Yes, actually I do think God should appear in the sky for all to see and announce loudly, "I am God and I am ready to answer your questions now." If belief in Him is vital to our eternal salvation then this is the least He could do. He should also be patient with the skeptics who'll want to test and prove He really is God since He hasn't visited in several thousand years and such an event would be unusual and foster skepticism to say the least. If the Devil was real, it would only be fair to have him show up as well and they could have a public debate so we could make up our own minds about who is right. Such an appearance makes much more sense to me than requiring faith in a mysterious ancient book to reveal Him while He remains invisible and silent letting the Pope or Governing Body interpret what they think it all means.

If I had vital information about saving someone's life would I hide it in an old comic book written in an obscure language hoping they'd find the message among all the hundreds of other old comic books and then be able to tell which Superman story is the true one and then dicypher the symbolism or listen to others who think they've figured it all out? This method is especially ineffecient since there are so many "experts" to choose from who think they have not only the right book but also the right answer.

Why would any intellegent person, let alone a Super Being God, choose such a silly, haphazard, and culturally unfair method of conveying vital information? It makes no sense and if it were not so deeply imbedded in our culture the whole plot seems quite insane.

38

Response to RWC's Atheist Questions

by Liberty in

hi rwc,.

i'm sure you're a very nice person and i don't want to get into an argument but rather a civil debate.

i just wanted to point out that as ex-jws many of us are a little obsessed with truth (not to be confused with "the truth" tm) and that after being burned by the watchtower society and hating ourselves for being so stupid to have fallen for its bs we have now become highly skeptical of the bible as well.

Liberty

Hi RWC,

First off, I wanted to clarify that I am not a working scientist but rather just an ameteur. I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I too was a scientist but in the sentence when I wrote, "other scientists" I was refering to other scientists along with the authors of the research I've read and not that I was a scientist as well. I don't want to use an "appeal to authority" as an arguing point because this would be a logical falacy. My understood status as a professional scientist could be used in this manner so I wanted to clear that up.

Ameteur "scientists" are still welcome to present evidence and anyone who subjects their findings to the scientific method can be taken seriously by the scientific community. Anyone can be a scientist in this sense if we make observations from the natural world and apply scientific methods to these observations. All that is required of us is our natural curiousity and a devotion to evidence. The ethic of science is to expand human understanding so we have an obligation to present evidence which could be used for this purpose.

Now on to your points. My understanding of current Physics explains that matter and energy have always existed and cannot be destroyed but can only change state (the conservation of energy law). Your understanding is similar except that you add God as an extra first step. You ask where did matter and energy first come from and I could answer it has always been. I could ask you the same question about your first step, God, and your answer would be the same. My point being that adding God as a first step really doesn't improve our understanding of the "how did it get here?" question. The God explaination just confuses the issue. If I replaced God with Pooh Bear as the origin of matter and energy for example, it doesn't change the fact that matter and energy have always existed since Pooh Bear is either matter or energy himself and eternal. God comes from no where as does my non-God Universe so how is your explaination better? Your watch maker analogy is equally flawed for the same reason. How did God come together without an inteligent designer? God is even more complex than plants or animals so how could He just appear from no where? The origin of God is thus equally unbelievable at best. In fact, since we cannot see or feel God (He is unobservable) His origins are even more questionable than that of the observable Universe which we at least know now exists. Neither of us knows the answers to these first origins questions so they become unintentional "Red Herring" arguments throwing us off the trail of real importance, that which we can know and observe. I can argue all day that I have invisible silent friends that I believe are real but since you or no one else can see or hear them you could not argue for their reality even if you believed in them too except to say, "I have faith that they are real" What you or I believe is not important in a scientific sense except as it relates to observable reality. Creation Science is not a science because it has faith in unobservable and nonphysical "evidence" which is required to build the rest of its physical arguments upon.

The Bible does however, address observable events in the Earth's History which are possible to see, touch, and document to test if they match reality. The Bible does not explain God's origin so there is nothing to compare the evidence to. The Bible does say that there was a flood which wiped all of humanity and the animals from the earth and then explains how Noah, his family, and the animals on the Ark survived. After observing all the evidence this explaination can clearly be proven false.

The Bible also provides its own internal chronology which can be compared with extrabiblical chronologies including Geologic time. The time frames mapped out in the Bible do not coincide with what Geology, Biology, and Anthropology prove. Humans have existed for much more than the last 6000 years the Bible claims since Adam's creation. Adam and Eve could not have been the first human couple since they are predated by tens of thousands of years by many other humans. The Tower of Babel story is clearly false as well considering that the compression strength of mud brick is very low disallowing a tower of any size that could possibly cause God to fear it or be threatened by it. This story is especially silly considering that even medium sized mountains, which are easily climbed and much higher than any mud brick structure could ever be, are all over the Earth. Why did God allow mountains if he didn't want us to get into the sky? Or rockets and steel skyscrapers for that matter?

The earliest stories in the Bible are the most inaccurate which is exactly what one would predict in a human produced myth but not in the inspired word of an infallable God. As the stories progress into later ages the place names and dates become more accurate. Not all of the Bible is false. I would agree that the location of cities or a king may be correct but then again so are the Pagan's histories which are myths sprinkled with fact but that does not make their gods or far-fetched stories true. If the Bible is inspired by God then it should all be true and not just parts of it. If I can disprove just one event then the whole book is in question if I am to believe that it is really God's word and not just the work of imperfect men.

38

Response to RWC's Atheist Questions

by Liberty in

hi rwc,.

i'm sure you're a very nice person and i don't want to get into an argument but rather a civil debate.

i just wanted to point out that as ex-jws many of us are a little obsessed with truth (not to be confused with "the truth" tm) and that after being burned by the watchtower society and hating ourselves for being so stupid to have fallen for its bs we have now become highly skeptical of the bible as well.

Liberty

Hi again RWC,

Thanks again for your response. I just wanted to point out that I do not have "faith" in scientists or their theories. Scientists use the scientific method which requires presenting evidence which is then constantly scrutenized by the scientific community as a whole. Unlike religion, faith is not involved in science. No one is expected to believe anything, and an individual's belief is based upon their assesment of the evidence which is always open to questioning and reevaluation. New evidence will change the general beliefs of the scientific community so science is always prepared to change when enough objective evidence is observed from the real world.

Literalist Bible appologists are in trouble throughout the modern world because they do not subject themselves to the scientific method nor do they produce compelling evidence to support their claims. I believe what I believe based upon my understanding of the evidence, which I have observed on my own, not because a University Prof. told me I had to. I have seen with my own eyes that baby frogs are fish with fins and gills which then change into air breathing, limbed amphibians as adults. I have seen the fossils of toothed "birds" with long lizard tails, wing clawed hands with clear feathers. These things are "missing links" between lizards and birds. I could go on & on listing the evidence I have observed myself, not to mention what I have read which is then checked by other scientists. I don't have to take a scientist's word or have faith in his theories because I can observe evidence and reproduce his experiments for myself. If I have a better explaination it is my duty to present it and find more evidence in support of my theory. Ego, competition, and curiousity keep scientists honest because they rely on the scientific method.

Where is your evidence? I would like to see the reasons you believe in what you believe. If you present compelling evidence the scientific community will look at it. No one presents evidence that the Bible stories are true so how can I be expected to believe them? Is the Tower of Babel story true? Can the Sun stop in mid sky? Do rotting corpses come back to life? Was the Earth created before the Sun? Was there a global Flood? All the evidence I've seen says that these things don't happen except in fairy tales because there is no evidence for them. God will not even produce evidence of His own existance so why should I take the word of just one of many equally silly ancient books that it's view of Him is the true one and all others are false? Just because I was born into a culture that says our religion based upon our book is the truth is not evidence enough for me. I want to see the truth for myself. Where is the evidence that our Bible is better than all the other holy books? So far they are all equally unprovable, equally silly, and equally unbelievable when confronted with the measure of evidence. With the evidence standards of traditional Christianity why are not Islam and its Koran, The Book Of Mormon, Egyptian, Norse, or Assyrian texts all equally valid?

38

Response to RWC's Atheist Questions

by Liberty in

hi rwc,.

i'm sure you're a very nice person and i don't want to get into an argument but rather a civil debate.

i just wanted to point out that as ex-jws many of us are a little obsessed with truth (not to be confused with "the truth" tm) and that after being burned by the watchtower society and hating ourselves for being so stupid to have fallen for its bs we have now become highly skeptical of the bible as well.

Liberty

Thanks to everyone for their responses.

It is endlessly interesting to me how others feel about the Bible. My girlfriend, a recovering Southern Baptist, and myself, a recovering JW, have had many conversations based upon how and why we believed in the elements of our respective religions and why others still believe. Being a science and history buff from an early age I began to have questions about my JW doctrines at around 12 years old which caused me to avoid baptism. I am glad I did not take this step as my eventual leaving would have been even more painful and complicated. I was watched closely because of my unusual unbaptized status, especially by the time I was in my midteens, but I was generally a well behaved kid and kept most of my questions and opinions to myself allowing me somewhat normal relationships with other JW kids. I felt guilty because I could not reconcile what I saw in the congregation with our own JW doctrines, let alone, with what I read in the Bible. I had many questions and the Society's answers were pathetic at best. "Wait on Jehovah" was a constant refrain.

My growing love for science, history, and Eastern religion were all contributing factors to my hating the narrow minded ignorance the Watchtower Society encouraged. I also had an "evil" hobby which really challenged my faith in the Bible, I kept aquariums of both fresh and salt water fish. Whenever we studied the Flood I knew that there could not have been a release of fresh water into the oceans because all of the sea life would have been wiped out and the reverse would be true for freshwater fish if the flood had been of salt water so why did we have both fresh and salt water fish just a few thousand years later? This was especially difficult to explain considering the Society's hard line against evolution and animals changing over time. I knew from experiance that only a few special fish are capable of adapting from fresh to salt water environments, and even then it had to be done gradually. Corals and other delicate sea creatures could not tolerate even the slightest changes, so the World Wide Flood, as preached by the Society, was frankly impossible from this evidence alone. Not to mention huge amounts of other evidences piling up against the Society as 1975 came and went and 1914 receaded ever farther into the past with no end of this World in sight (the obvious failure of the 1914 Generation link to the End is even more shocking now that 23 more years have past since I left).

After I left home I just never went back to a Kingdom Hall. I struggled with my belief in God for years after leaving the Watchtower behind. Unfortunately, I had followed the Society's rules about higher education and had not taken college prep classes in high school nor applied for scholarships but my desire to learn was strong so I worked and saved my money and finally got into a University. I was older than the other students and not as well prepared but I made up for it in enthusiasm and took science and history classes. Wow! No wonder the Society discouraged a University education! None of what I had been taught by the Society was true. These classes supplimented my own research and knocked down every argument a Bible literalist could make. After several Geology, Biology, and Paleontology classes evolution made perfect sense, and other puzzle pieces started to fall into place. The World was much older, stranger, and its history far more complex than the Bible was capable of revealing. The God of the Bible was small, petty and illogical. I prefer my Universe without Him and His irratic behaviour. I reasoned that, if the Bible wasn't true, belief in a non-communicating extrabiblical God was pointless. I had finally become an Atheist.

38

Response to RWC's Atheist Questions

by Liberty in

hi rwc,.

i'm sure you're a very nice person and i don't want to get into an argument but rather a civil debate.

i just wanted to point out that as ex-jws many of us are a little obsessed with truth (not to be confused with "the truth" tm) and that after being burned by the watchtower society and hating ourselves for being so stupid to have fallen for its bs we have now become highly skeptical of the bible as well.

Liberty

Good to hear from you RWC,

I am curious about the extent to which you believe in the literalness of the Bible. Do you think the Noah story is true, for example? Do you accept creation through evolution or a more literalist view? My computer is at work so I can't always get back to my postings but will try to preserve a dialogue if possible.

If you have evidence that doesn't just circle back to belief in the Bible I am very interested. I have found nothing from the objective extra-biblical evidence which supports a belief in a literal Bible history. I don't mean stuff like the accurate locations of towns described in the Bible but big stuff like the Flood which the sciences I am familiar with dispute. Thanks for your response. I am intersted in knowing why you believe in what you believe. What supplimental-beyond-the-Bible evidence do you use to support your beliefs.

38

Response to RWC's Atheist Questions

by Liberty in

hi rwc,.

i'm sure you're a very nice person and i don't want to get into an argument but rather a civil debate.

i just wanted to point out that as ex-jws many of us are a little obsessed with truth (not to be confused with "the truth" tm) and that after being burned by the watchtower society and hating ourselves for being so stupid to have fallen for its bs we have now become highly skeptical of the bible as well.

Liberty

Hi RWC,

I'm sure you're a very nice person and I don't want to get into an argument but rather a civil debate. I just wanted to point out that as ex-JWs many of us are a little obsessed with truth (not to be confused with "The Truth" tm) and that after being burned by the Watchtower Society and hating ourselves for being so stupid to have fallen for its BS we have now become highly skeptical of the Bible as well. In my own search for truth, though I am but a poor ameteur researcher, I discovered that science and history can quickly destroy the apologetics of literalist Bible supporters.

You ask Atheists where we get our morals but did you ever seriously research where your Bible got its rituals, beliefs, and laws. Even a shallow study of history will show very quickly that the Hebrews were predated by many Middle Eastern cultures. These older cultures provided the Hebrews (who eventually became the Isrealites) with all of their morals, laws, and beliefs long before any of your Bible was written. The Bible is a relatively young book and logic tells us that new books usually borrow their ideas from older books and not the other way around.

History also shows that the Hebrews were a very minor force in the region and that many superior cultures conquered and dominated them leading to influence flowing from master to slave and not the other way around. The Egyptians contributed the removal of the foreskin, dietary taboos, monotheism, and other major philosophical influences to the Hebrew culture long before there was a Bible. Other superior cultures then continued to influence the development of the Hebrews as they each conquered and ruled the region in turn. The truth is that your moral code came from so called pagan cultures and not God.

Don't believe me. I challenge you to research it for yourself. Are you a lover of real truth? All you have to lose are your prejudices and preconcieved notions. Why not risk seeing reality? You are a Christian only due to the accident of your birth culture. Transend this limitation and look for objective reality beyond your cultural prejudices. If your original beliefs are really true you will find them in your search. Are you afraid of what you might find if you look to hard? A friendly challenge because I want you to free yourself.