Posts by I Want to Believe

51

Theists - Please Explain This.......

by AK - Jeff in

and please don't do so with the standard "i don't know the answer - but there surely must be one.

" or some other lame attempt to defend god/bible without a real explanation.. here goes:.

i find it incredibly interesting how hard the mind works to prevent rational thought when it suits it's purpose.

I Want to Believe

The original question was about a statement that could be analyzed evidentiary style, while your new topics go to thinking processes and motivation, which would get an "Objection!" in any court, since those can't be answered, even of another human. Why did that kid go into the school and start shooting random kids? Why not use a bomb? Why didn't he shoot his bullies or his teacher first? Maybe he had reasons, maybe he didn't. He just did what he did.

By the way AK- Jeff, does the AK stand for Alaska?

51

Theists - Please Explain This.......

by AK - Jeff in

and please don't do so with the standard "i don't know the answer - but there surely must be one.

" or some other lame attempt to defend god/bible without a real explanation.. here goes:.

i find it incredibly interesting how hard the mind works to prevent rational thought when it suits it's purpose.

I Want to Believe

Ah, nice transition to a much broader topic; does that mean I won the first round? :)

51

Theists - Please Explain This.......

by AK - Jeff in

and please don't do so with the standard "i don't know the answer - but there surely must be one.

" or some other lame attempt to defend god/bible without a real explanation.. here goes:.

i find it incredibly interesting how hard the mind works to prevent rational thought when it suits it's purpose.

I Want to Believe

But, according to what I posted above, the cattle didn't all die during the first round; but all the cattle that did die were Egyptian.

So say there's 100 Egyptian cows and 50 Israelite cows.

Fifth Plauge: 25 Egyptian cows die, 0 Israelite cows. Therefore all the cows that died were Egyptian (see how that phrase could, over hundreds of years and translations be mistaken?)

So there could still be 75 Egyptian cows to lose their firstborn during the Tenth Plauge.

EDIT: I see you already figured out what I was saying. To answer your question, No, God didn't say he'd kill them all. The scripture you cited just said He'd send a plauge, no specifics.

51

Theists - Please Explain This.......

by AK - Jeff in

and please don't do so with the standard "i don't know the answer - but there surely must be one.

" or some other lame attempt to defend god/bible without a real explanation.. here goes:.

i find it incredibly interesting how hard the mind works to prevent rational thought when it suits it's purpose.

I Want to Believe

Not all theists even have to believe in the Bible at all, much less take it as infallible.

Anyway, some say it's a simple translation problem having to do with sentence structure, as in it should say "All the cattle that did die belonged to the Egyptians, but not one died that belonged to the Israelites."

45

New to the forums.

by ViridianSoul in

jw
friends

i looked all over for a place to introduce myself and either i'm completely blind or i missed it.

i figured i'd just post it here.. okay.. hello to everyone.

my name's tabitha.

I Want to Believe

Welcome! You got off a lot easier than many of us, but those lingering issues can sure be pesky. I hope you find what you're looking for here.

31

Should you ever tell tour aging parents the truth about the truth

by Star tiger in

since finding out the truth about the truth myself and having successfully extricated myself and my parents about the jw's, i find myself with a new dilema that being they still believe the bible as a literal book for their salvation as i has read all of thomas paines works and how the bible is not very good for the human family, as they are of advancing years would it be inappropriate to shatter their illusions of some kind of paradise and let them flounder in a moral precipice and wonder what their lives have been about.

on the flip side once their time has come how would i feel for not telling them their false views.

at the moment i am in the deist point of view, with a tendency of the agnostic, it is quite a dilema!.

I Want to Believe

The movie "The Invention of Lying," while not a great film, did have a few interesting ideas. It presented an extremely atheistic point of view, but still put forth the notion that "lying" in regards to end-of-life matters was a positive thing, a comfort to help everyone deal with the fear of death. What would it accomplish to take that comfort away? They probably wouldn't just accept it anyway, and all you'd do is strain your relationship.

754

Theists, why does God allow suffering..

by The Quiet One in

..specifically, the suffering of animals.

you can talk about free will/sin/people choosing to not listen to god etc to explain human suffering being allowed.. but how can you love a god that allows animals, that haven't sinned or chosen to not have anything to do with god, to have their short lives ended in often long, drawn out, painful ways.

i could list stories i've read that would probably make you feel ill, but i'm not looking to shock anyone or start an emotional debate.

I Want to Believe

"If the natural world displays god's "invisible qualities" what does it tell us about god?"

That Earth was designed as His personal Thunderdome.

32

The tower of Babel- full of holes?

by highdose in

i was thinking the other day about the tower of babel ( like you do) somthing that always puzzled me about reading the account in our modern day times is that we have today buildings that would have been vastly taller than the tower of babel.

even if purely because the materials needed to build modern sky scrapers have to be light in order to acheive that height.

accient heavy bricks just wouldn't have done it.. just why was god so threatened by a building???

I Want to Believe

"if God's right of sovereignty is to be justifiably answered man must be left alone and he CANNOT intervene, however he did, thus altering the unified message of the Bible."

This is true since the beginning, God "stacking the deck" in His favor -- why else curse the ground so that mankind has to spend so much effort just to get food? Why confuse their languages because they were capable of doing anything they set their mind too, just 200 years into a new civilization? Why say the end is coming (according to JWs) any day now, when humanity is progressively advancing faster than ever?

20

I don't like "taking the lead"

by I Want to Believe in

some men probably got off on the power/ego trip being a male jw gets you, but i never cared for it.

i'm an introvert, and was an especially awkward one at that haveing been reaised in social isolation, so it was about the strangest feeling in the world when as a newly-baptized teenager (back in the day) i started to pioneer.

i was about as green as you could get in every way but i was told i had to take the lead in the service meetings and the car group.

I Want to Believe

Some men probably got off on the power/ego trip being a male JW gets you, but I never cared for it. I'm an introvert, and was an especially awkward one at that haveing been reaised in social isolation, so it was about the strangest feeling in the world when as a newly-baptized teenager (back in the day) I started to pioneer. I was about as green as you could get in every way but I was told I had to take the lead in the service meetings and the car group. So here I was, stammering my way through it for the first couple of months while lifelong pioneer sisters and elders' wives practiced their patience. I tried to get out of it a few times and, true story, one of the sisters (unprepared for such an event) had to pull a napkin out of her purse to put on her head in order to help me out ('cause nothing says respect for Divine Authority like wearing a napkin). Out in car groups, pioneers would hand me their territory cards and ask "How do you want to do this?" I had no idea, it was their territory! Then there were those who would just lay out everything we should do but then add, looking at me, "Does that sound good?" It was very odd, like I'd been put in charge of a company after applying for the mailroom.

Recently, I told my wife that I'd rather be her partner than her head and she didn't seem to know how to take it.

20

Tolerance

by Chariklo in

in another thread, someone wrote, about another religion,.

actually i don t care about this religion.

i just don t want it my country.

I Want to Believe

Well, this is a board dedicated to breaking free from a restrictive religion. I'm no expert, but from what I've heard of Islamic law, even the gentle type, it ia a very restrictive set of rules that come from a dubious "theocratic" source. And there are plenty of wise and gentle JWs, but nobody really wants them around here either.