Posts by losthobbit

25

Do you now have a customized religion?

by losthobbit in

i was never a jw.

i was a member of the church of christ.

i didn't jump from christian to non-believer, but rather went through a transition period, and i'd guess that all of you did the same,... changing beliefs bit by bit until you believe what you do now.. when i first realized that there were logic problems in the bible i started to find excuses for those problems.

losthobbit

Thanks for the comment, Phizzy. By the way, fairies do exist... unfortunately not everyone can see them... only those who partake in absinthe. Might want to cosider hiding that from your wife :)

25

Do you now have a customized religion?

by losthobbit in

i was never a jw.

i was a member of the church of christ.

i didn't jump from christian to non-believer, but rather went through a transition period, and i'd guess that all of you did the same,... changing beliefs bit by bit until you believe what you do now.. when i first realized that there were logic problems in the bible i started to find excuses for those problems.

losthobbit

I was never a JW. I was a member of the church of Christ. I didn't jump from Christian to non-believer, but rather went through a transition period, and I'd guess that all of you did the same,... changing beliefs bit by bit until you believe what you do now.

When I first realized that there were logic problems in the bible I started to find excuses for those problems. After a while I had to admit to myself that there were certain things in the bible that couldn't possibly be true, and so I had my own customized religion. I believed some of the things that my church taught, but there were areas in which I couldn't possibly agree. This continued for about ten years until I spoke to a preacher about it, and he explained that if I didn't believe a certain thing then I wasn't actually a Christian. He was right, and it took a while until I eventually realized it.

I've noticed that some of you on this forum have customized your own religions. Having transitioned from JW to another religion / denomination / belief, you might still hold onto some JW beliefs, or you might simply disagree with the other members of your church. You might consider yourself not orthodox, but independent.

If you are such a person, I'm interested to hear, what is it you now believe?

40

How can I convince my mother the JW's are wrong?

by schnare in

this is probably going to be a long post, since i am going to be added some parts of our conversations on facebook.

my mother has been involved sort of with the jw's, since she was younger.

so she's always kind of believed in their stuff.

losthobbit

If she tries to argue that JW's are not a cult you could try using this as a checklist:

http://freedomofmind.com/Info/BITE/bitemodel.php

40

How can I convince my mother the JW's are wrong?

by schnare in

this is probably going to be a long post, since i am going to be added some parts of our conversations on facebook.

my mother has been involved sort of with the jw's, since she was younger.

so she's always kind of believed in their stuff.

losthobbit

Just going to summarize what I consider to be the best points discussed so far:

Talk together about another group that the person would agree is a problematic group. Then ask “How is your group not like this?” or “Help me to explain to others how your group is not like this group?” Leave a long silence.

JW's hate contradictions.

You can't make conclusions for her. She has to arrive at them herself. Show her something, then ask her to do the explaining. You shut up and make her talk.
Only talk about ONE subject at a time.

I also have a mother in a cult. Unfortunately nothing I've ever tried has ever worked. I do have an idea for you, which might help. I have no idea if it will, but it makes sense in my mind. I've learned from this forum that a couple of people here have left the JW's after reading up on the history of the JW cult.

Perhaps you could try something like this: "Okay mom, you win... you obviously know a lot more about the cult than I do, and I want to learn more about it. I want to learn about its history. How about we learn about its history together?"

What you do then is to research it's history and find a bunch of useful sites. Then, together you sit in front of a computer and look up stuff. Get her to summarize as you find information and write it down. Keep repeating things like "Thank you for teaching my about the history of the cult"... to try and make her feel good about it, and as if it was her idea.

Don't disagree with her, but instead keep asking her questions, like "Don't you think that's strange?"

By the way, I have no idea if using the word "cult" will help at all, but perhaps if she says "It's not a cult", get her to explain EXACTLY why it is not a cult... and keeps saying "I don't understand... please explain."

Good luck :)

8

An Accurate Prophecy by the J-Dubs!

by losthobbit in

as i was walking to the station today i passed three people handing out watchtower tracts at the precise moment that one of them happened to turn to the other and say, "it's going to rain.

" i thought it was quite amazing to hear such an accurate prophecy from them after having come across this rather interesting wikipedia entry and counting how often they have made the same failed prophecy (13, if you include the bible student movement):http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/list_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events.

i'm reading a book, called "when prophecy fails," quite an interesting book for someone like me, being rather interested in psychology, human behaviour, logic, truth, etc.. the example in the book explains what happens under certain conditions, when people have a very strong commitment to a prophecy which fails.

losthobbit

Wantingtruth, are you serious, or are you joking?

If you're serious, you may as well say, "Satan wrote the bible." If Satan caused false prophecies then he can do just about anything, and people with the kind of irrational thinking in that article cannot be persuaded by any kind of rational thinking. There is nothing that anyone can do to rationalize with them. They will ALWAYS make excuses for their irrational beliefs.

I recommend reading "Software for your brain", which can be found online for free (http://www.schoolofthinking.org/software.pdf). Otherwise, any book on cognitive dissonance.

67

Is it possible to define faith in a simple, logical, unambiguous way?

by losthobbit in

i was wondering if it's actually possible to define what faith is in a simple, logical, unambiguous way.. .

i have a theory that words which cannot be defined in a simple, logical, unambiguous way do not really mean anything specific, and therefore should probably be avoided.. .

i know there have been books written on this subject, but i think that anyone who has to write an entire book to define a simple word like faith, does not really understand what it means.. .

losthobbit

Hi jgnat

Sorry for "Floating you in the same boat as Fernando" :)

I think we probably all believe some nonsense... well, some more than others.

Those who are irrational are the ones who don't realize that something they believe is nonsense. Those who are rational are the ones who are desperate to find out which of the many things they believe are nonsense.

I read a quote recently, which I absolutely love...

The definition of a great person:

"When he makes a mistake, he realizes it.
Having realized it, he admits it.
Having admitted it, he corrects it.
He considers those who point out his faults as his most benevolent teachers."

There aren't too many people like that around, but it's certainly the kind of person I want to be.

67

Is it possible to define faith in a simple, logical, unambiguous way?

by losthobbit in

i was wondering if it's actually possible to define what faith is in a simple, logical, unambiguous way.. .

i have a theory that words which cannot be defined in a simple, logical, unambiguous way do not really mean anything specific, and therefore should probably be avoided.. .

i know there have been books written on this subject, but i think that anyone who has to write an entire book to define a simple word like faith, does not really understand what it means.. .

losthobbit

I like what gubberningbody wrote.

"The word "Faith" has been used by too many people in too many different ways to be useful any more."

Those who believe that faith has value seem to disagree as to what exactly it is. This is, of course, the problem with words... their meaning can quite often be uncertain, and adjusted to suit the person's belief.

Fernando wrote:

Faith is best understood once experienced. I also strongly doubt it can be understood unless experienced.

Which basically means that, in answer to my original question, "No, it is not possible to define it in a simple, logical, unambiguous way."

NewChapter

I was looking at the Christianity questions on StackExchange.com, and I came across someone who referred to himself as an Athiest Christian, or Christian Athiest, and he was giving strange answers to questions. People were asking him for the sources to his answers, and he explained that if you make up a religion you don't need sources, because you're the source. Bizarre... right? Anyway, I agree that it's unusual to hear of faith only applying to certain beliefs.

jgnat

People have already explained #1... so according to that definition (faith is not based on proof), you can believe and have proof, as long as your belief is not based on your proof. I can accept that, but it does beg the question as to what your belief is based on.

I disagree with your statement "Infants aren’t stupid." I think that infants are actually pretty stupid. Depends on your definition of stupid, I guess. You wrote "Infants must take a great deal of their interactions with the world on faith." I suppose you could say that if an infant saw a scary movie he would have faith that there's a monster under his bed. If we all acted like infants... Anyway, I'm not sure exactly what your point is there, so I'll move on.

I agree that we can probably not be 100% certain of anything, if we're honest with ourselves.

Your point about art seems to be the same as what Fernando wrote, that faith cannot be explained, in which case your answer to my original question would also be, "No, it is not possible to define it in a simple, logical, unambiguous way."

I do of course have a big problem with words that cannot be defined... words that "you have to experience it to find out." I used to be a Christian for many years, having what I believed was "faith". I should therefore have had this magical experience and know precisely what faith is, but instead, now that I've read many books and become a lot wiser I can simply say that what I had was merely ignorance and the common ability to make excuses for things which were illogical but was told that I had to believe anyway.

67

Is it possible to define faith in a simple, logical, unambiguous way?

by losthobbit in

i was wondering if it's actually possible to define what faith is in a simple, logical, unambiguous way.. .

i have a theory that words which cannot be defined in a simple, logical, unambiguous way do not really mean anything specific, and therefore should probably be avoided.. .

i know there have been books written on this subject, but i think that anyone who has to write an entire book to define a simple word like faith, does not really understand what it means.. .

losthobbit

Fernando

Thanks for your comment. I once wrote a blog post about poetic vs. logical arguments. Feel free to read it if you like...

http://soberauer.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/poetic-vs-logical-arguments.html

A quick summary of it, is basically that one cannot argue a point using poetry. One has to use precise, unambiguous words with a fixed definition if one wants to have a rational discussion. For this reason I'm going to try to translate your poetic definition "Faith is a wide opening of our spiritual eyes" into something less poetic, so here goes:

"Faith is being able to [something] [something]"

What I'm trying to say here is that I have great difficulty translating it into something precise and well defined... "wide opening" could be understanding, belief, acceptance... which one is it? What does spiritual mean? I spiritual that which cannot be defined, or cannot be understood, or is it things pertaining to God or any deity?

Rory

You gave two "definitions":

"Let God be found true, though every man be found a liar."

"Nothing is the way that you think it is."

I don't consider your answers to be simple, logical, unambiguous definitions at all. What I understand from what you wrote is that you believe that faith is "Believing in God for no particular reason and in spite of any knowledge one may have gained through evidence, observation or testing."

Is that accurate?

8

An Accurate Prophecy by the J-Dubs!

by losthobbit in

as i was walking to the station today i passed three people handing out watchtower tracts at the precise moment that one of them happened to turn to the other and say, "it's going to rain.

" i thought it was quite amazing to hear such an accurate prophecy from them after having come across this rather interesting wikipedia entry and counting how often they have made the same failed prophecy (13, if you include the bible student movement):http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/list_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events.

i'm reading a book, called "when prophecy fails," quite an interesting book for someone like me, being rather interested in psychology, human behaviour, logic, truth, etc.. the example in the book explains what happens under certain conditions, when people have a very strong commitment to a prophecy which fails.

losthobbit

Thanks for the insight, Blondie & Billie.

Now I just wish I could go back in time and ask, "Please be precise. Exactly what form is the rain going to take??" I imagine at that point he would have said, "It will rain rocks and fire, but it will be... invisible."

10

Im going to vote!!!

by Dudu in

yes, this month is the presidential election in my country and im going to exercise my right of voting .......... what im not sure about is if i let mom know, she is still a jw and im basically fading so, i dont want to mess it up, but at the same time i feel that i shoul be free for once and all.

i dont live with her anymore but that would break her heart, and she has high blood pressure problems so, why to bother?

i dont know :s.

losthobbit

I used to live in South Africa, so I felt a lot of pressure to vote against the political parties that wanted to kill the other races.

Now I live in the UK and just kind of figure that my one in a million chance of my vote making a difference plus the fact that I don't know the difference between the political parties makes me not bother... but that's just me.

If voting makes you feel good, then do it :)