Posts by tootired2care

45

Does anyone here believe that things are worse than they were in the past?

by Trismegistus in

jw
friends

i still hear this crop up every once in a while, so i figured that i'd open it up to a wide audience.. things are looking pretty good to me..

tootired2care

I used to believe this as a JW until I saw the movie Gladiator with Russel Crowe, that was definitely one of my aha moments. To think that the main entertainment for the seat of civilization at the time (Rome) was to come together, and watch people and animals hacking and tearing each other to pieces, it really made me re-think my beliefs.

Also if I recall correctly, from the mid nineties until now violent crime world wide has decreased exponetially. I attribute much of this to better education, video games, and porn. To be fair, bad things have always happened, and will continue to happen for the forseeable future but no one can factually deny that things have improved.

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

tootired2care

1 Timothy 6:20–21
20. O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called “knowledge,”
21. for by professing it some have swerved from the faith.

So apparently the tribal "knowledge" that should have been avoided, is what ended up saving the islanders who rejected the path of Christianity. Interesting, gee what a useful book of "true knowledge" the bible is.

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

tootired2care

Investigations happens, facts are collated and analyzed and tests are performed. There would never be a wait and see approach, but rather an approach of "well, let's go see what's in cupboard, if there are pots and pans, things we can cook, oh look, we have ingredients for pudding, let's make that and feed everyone". We see this today in things like flu vaccinations where natural causes have killed millions, yet science has provided, not a perfect solution, but a way to save millions, we see those claiming "It's a mystery" happily partaking of the advances and answers that they claim we should just wait and see what the answer is, or that it's a mystery. - Viviane

Welcome to the forum Viviane, and well said!

In all of recorded history it's only science that has done anything to address the big problems facing mankind.

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

tootired2care

When you purchase a home, the seller must disclose any issues with the house or they are liable to be sued. The loving god portayed in the bible would not even meet the basic criteria for a home seller.

Is it too much to ask for an almighty, all-knowing, all-loving god who supposedly created this home just for us to at least provide a basic set of public buidling, health and survival guidlines on things like: where not to build; how to avoid random cyclones, and diseases; how to detect a total extinction level asteroid? If he did this, he wouldn't even have to intervene. Why didn't your loving god provide such disclosures?

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

tootired2care

You are in the process of escaping from a prison, otherwise known as the Watchtower Society. Please take care not to repeat the same costly mistake you have already made. - Gladiator

This comment applies so well to this discussion. It’s amazing the leaps of logic that some are prepared to go through to defend the concept of a loving god and blame the victim. The evidence against a loving god has stacked up clear to the heavens. Interestingly I don’t recall anywhere in the bible, or any holy book for that matter, where this loving god gave folks a heads up as to where it’s safe to build. Man just had to figure that all out on his own through centuries of painstaking trial and error.

I don’t want to drift off topic, but just consider events like the Black Plague, and the Spanish flu. Is it the fault of the infected that they died? Should they have known better to move somewhere else? The truth is there is nothing they could have done; the earth has always been chalk full of random and capricious dangers; and theism that promotes a loving god has no satisfactory answer for this. You’re of course free to believe it, but why continue to imprison yourself to the concept that there is a loving god who can just sit back and idly watch so much misery for hundreds of thousands of years, and then demand morality, obedience and other such nonsense from his subjects?

Ten deadliest natural disasters

Rank	Death toll (estimate)	Event	Location	Date
1	1,000,000–4,000,000* [1]	1931 China floods	China	July, August, 1931
2	900,000–2,000,000 [2]	1887 Yellow River flood	China	September, October, 1887
3	830,000 [3]	1556 Shaanxi earthquake	China	January 23, 1556
4	242,000–779,000	1976 Tangshan earthquake	China	July 28, 1976
5	500,000–1,000,000 [1]	1970 Bhola cyclone	East Pakistan (now Bangladesh)	November 13, 1970
6	300,000 [4]	1839 India Cyclone	India	November 25, 1839
6	300,000 [5]	1737 Calcutta cyclone	India	October 7, 1737
8	273,400 [6]	1920 Haiyuan earthquake	China	December 16, 1920
9	250,000–300,000 [7]	526 Antioch earthquake	Byzantine Empire (now Turkey)	May 526
10	260,000 [8]	115 Antioch earthquake	Roman Empire (now Turkey)	December 13, 115

Let's also not forget the several past extinction events on the earth either.

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

tootired2care

Nothing like a heavenly lobotomy to make an eternally happy subject. Forget all that nasty stuff from the past, which we shall never speak of again!

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

tootired2care

"Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" - John 1:29

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." - John 3:16

According to xtian theology, sin is what ultimately causes suffering, because man is alienated from god. If man were not alienated from god they would not suffer calmities like the 04' tsunami. 2,000 years ago Jesus supposedly fixed this problem by sacrificing himself. 2,000 years later there is still suffering (why?); also, many xtians still believe the world is full of sin, even though jesus promised its removal upon his sacrifice. The only logical conclusion from this is that theology as defined in the bible is a lie, and a complete failure.

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

tootired2care

"does the promise of eternal life make suffering morally right?"-Cofty

Here is something to think about regarding the woman carrying her dead daughter in the earlier picture that cofty posted. Hypothetical: suppose this woman is somehow resurrected to heaven, wouldn't the awful memory of her terrible loss essentially be an eternity in heaven of suffering? It's not like she can just unlearn the pain, and agony of that frightful day. What kind of screwed up morality is that?

93

Appointed by holy spirit

by Ben57 in

jw
friends

i have been reading the posts on who is and or had been an elder.

it amazes me at what many have said.

perhaps i have misunderstood what they were saying.

tootired2care

So when you're baptized you agree to be "in association with only organization that strives to live by spirit". Oh wait, that's not what they say do they? They say in association with "gods spirit directed organization". The present tense verb "directed" can only mean here that jokehovah magic is at work in their behalf. These men are delusional, and they really do believe and teach this. Accept it.

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

tootired2care

I wonder what lessons this poor child has learned from the almighty. What was it that Jesus said about birds again?