this is a personal observation and certainly not representative of all atheists.
i enjoy discussions with folks of this persuasion; in general they appear well read and somewhat more educated than many believers.
as a group most atheists cringe and become insensed when discussing the existence of a deity with believers especially fundamentalists.
Lets see what's on which side.
On the christian believers side you have.
Jw's
The Pope
Fred Phelps
Ted Haggard
Jimmy Swaggart
Talking snakes
Worldwide floods
Living inside fish
Losing you superpowers getting a harcut.
Beating your slaves.
Marrying your rapist.
Hating gay people.
6,000 years of human existence
On the non believers side you have.
Richard Dawkins
Sir Richard Attenborough
Stephen Hawking
Carl Sagan
Science
Evolution
I know which sounds more credible to me.
there was an error on the latest awake!
cover.
here is the correct version.. .
It never ceases to amaze me how people can bag evolution but believe in talking snakes and people losing their superpowers getting a haircut.
i don't believe in the bible either, but i'm just curious as to why others don't.
ridiculous misogyny and mass murder by a petty little god are two reasons for me.
(ilovehigh-lighting) .
What about losing your super hero powers by getting a haircut. That seems plausable not..
i'm sure at some point you have mentioed it somewhere on the site, perhaps several.
but this question is i guess personal.
for those her were born into the jdub religion, why did you leave at whatever point?
I was very young at school and we were talking about creation and the flood and I remember saying to some
kid if God didn't create it who did? And the kid said who created God?
That seed of doubt stayed with me till I left on my 21st birthday.
and it is a clear night here on the east coast of the usa.. so i took a few shots of the moon.
here is one that i liked.... .
anyone else a shutter bug?.
as i understand it, being gay is not a sin in the organization, only homosexual acts are sins.
i've never read anywhere that gay jw people are encouraged to "fix" their gayness and marry.. i've certainly known a fair number of confirmed bachelor types who live exemplary lives in the witness sense - one life-long bethelite i knew springs to mind - but are clearly (to me anyway) gay.
they've all been in the closet though.. i wonder if any jw has ever been out of the closet, but not disfellowshipped since they don't have sex?
My mother suggested I could stay a non practising celebate gay because the new system was so close I would be perfect and straight in it.
That was 25 years ago and the gay aint washed away.
She also suggested suicide was a viable option as I would get resurrected. It was the cruelest thing she ever said.
due to the fact there are about 27,000 members of this religion that are known pedophiles, and the information about it is kept in a secret database file, i wonder how many lurking jw's as well as others are aware of the severity of this problem?
remember, it's 27,000 pedophiles that they know about.
what about the thousands that don't get caught?
My father was an elder in the Tamworth (Australia) congregation many years ago when another elder's wife approached my dad with a diary of her husbands exploits. My father had left his diary in the glovebox of our car which I read one day waiting on field service.
He had molested all of his 6 daughters (he had 11 kids) and even had sex with their goat. His wife divorced him instantly and he was removed as an
elder and he ended up going to jail soon after on an unrelated insurance fraud scam.
As soon as he left jail he moved to a new congregation and was re-instated and married another JW sister.
Without his diary confession I'm sure his exploits would have continued unabated the sick bastard.
i remember there was this heavy metal group called wasp.
some of the witnesses said it stood for we are satans people and that wasnt even true.
stairway to heaven by led zeppelin was a no-no because they said if u played it backwards it talked about worshipping the devil.
AC/DC supposedly meant bi-sexual at the Assembly I went to in the 80s. They also went after Eagles,Fleedwood Mac, Queen ect it was a long list.
After that assembly my mother burnt most of my record collection and made me sell the rest.(2000 odd Lps and singles)
I think I got like 50 bux for the lot.
It was THE major reason I left the JWs soon after. Music was my only thing keeping me sane at the time and removing it was the last straw for me.
i've lived through some ... a death where my brother caught an elderly lady as she dropped dead while singing !.
a girl in early twenties marries a man (elder) 27 years older ..still married 30 years later !.
an elder is stabbed with a knife.. but it hits his belt buckle.. police called.
I know a lady when I grew up who had a husband who died in his 80s while she was in her late 40s. Soon after she married a guy who just turned 21. Last I heard they were still married when he turned 40. Also there was a couple her first name was Kerry and the guy she married last name was Carey so she became Kerry Carey. Echo echo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywqnv3g6cpi.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdh_h_pko8m.
.
Kirk likes bananas God's perfect fruit.
