Posts by EdenOne

3

"How many mistakes in one paragraph?"

by Doug Mason in

does the following paragraph on page 22 of the june 15, 2015 watchtower magazine provide an accurate assessment of charles taze russell?

does this paragraph contain mistakes and omissions?.

when the time approached for gods kingdom in the hands of jesus to start ruling from heaven, jehovah helped his people to understand the timing of events.

I'm an ABSENTHEIST. Are you also?

by EdenOne in

it just dawned on me.

the existence of god can't be proved, neither is there evidence of god's inexistence.

so, i'm neither theist neither atheist.

EdenOne

Viviane: Apathy implies that I don't care. That's not my position at all.

I didn't say you were an apatheist. I only said that functional atheism and apatheism both belong to the domain of attitudes rather than theoretical positions. If I knew for sure that God existed, for sure I would care.

Eden

284

I'm an ABSENTHEIST. Are you also?

by EdenOne in

it just dawned on me.

the existence of god can't be proved, neither is there evidence of god's inexistence.

so, i'm neither theist neither atheist.

EdenOne

Viviane,

I think I defined that more than a few times on this thread, but here is again: I take 'absent' in the simplest and most rational of its meanings: not present. It may include "exists, but not there", also "not paying attention/not caring", "existed in the past, now dead", or "non-existent". To say "absent" is to stop short of making any considerations about the existence of God, for the lack of evidence, while at the same time allowing for the possibility of any of them. If one day it would be possible to scan the entire universe in its entirety with all its dimensions and God could not be found, only then, beyond reasonable doubt, one could say "God/deities don't exist".

However, you have posed a question:

How do we know they are absent unless someone defines the specific properties of a deity so we know to look for it?

That's exactly the problem that absentheism attempts to address: Atheism assumes a certain kind of deity - invisible, all-powerful, all-knowing, omnipresent, entirely good and then debunks the notion that a deity like that may exist. But there are two problems with this, to wit:

What about deities that are known to have existed and have been worshiped as such - Caesar Augustus, Aten, the Sun-Disc, or the emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie I (the Jah/Messiah of the Rastafarian movement)?
What if a deity that exists leaves no physical footprint in the universe, doesn't communicate or interact directly with humans? What if said entity escapes any known definition that humans so far have come up with? How would we even collect evidence that it exists?

MASH

That axiom is also problematic for atheism, and is often used by theists.

Eden

284

I'm an ABSENTHEIST. Are you also?

by EdenOne in

it just dawned on me.

the existence of god can't be proved, neither is there evidence of god's inexistence.

so, i'm neither theist neither atheist.

EdenOne

Viviane: I can't know whether or not there is no deity, of course, but since I have no evidence that any exists, certainly not any that anyone has told me about, I live functionally as an atheist and indeed consider myself one.

This appears to be a sensible reasoning. But let me ask you this: A child of one year old who holds no belief that deities exist. Is that child atheist? Because according to the simplistic definition that "atheism is a disbelief in deities", a child is atheist. And so is a person who has a severe mental handicap from birth. They don't believe in deities, ergo, are they atheists? It's not so simple. There must be something more to atheism than simply disbelief in deities.

I posit that the overtly rejection of deities on the premise that they don't exist should be called atheism.
I posit that the disbelief in deities based on lack of objective evidence for their existence is skepticism.
I posit that the inability to believe or disbelieve in deities based on the premise that they are unknowable is agnosticism.

My proposition is that there is a fourth stand: That the only thing that can be said about deities is that they are absent, not present, from the known universe, thus leaving the questions of belief or disbelief, existence or non-existence, entirely open. This I coined absentheism but feel free to call it anything else if you come up with a more suitable term.

All of the above are theoretical positions.

However, you introduced another concept: functional atheist. That is, regardless of how your intellectual position towards deities is, your attitude in life is consistent with a belief that deities don't exist. This functional atheism is very much on the same domain of attitude of an apatheist, who "regards the question of the existence or non-existence of a god or gods to be essentially meaningless and irrelevant".

Eden

23

Every Governing Body Decision is from Jehovah

by B4Right in

how do you convince a jw that every decision that comes from the governing body is not from god?.

my mom who is a pioneer said that the students are getting their work book a month early, then proceeded to say " jehovah knows what we need".. for you who now know ttat what did it take for you?.

EdenOne

And yet, regular Witnesses accept this:

a) Jehovah is infallible

b) Jehovah is directing the Watchtower

c) Despite Jehovah's overseeing, the Organization makes mistakes.

It doesn't down on them that there's a contradiction in this. All they can say is: "Well, Jehovah is pleased to use imperfect men to do his work. One can expect mistakes to occur, but Jehovah corrects them when the time is right".

There's no winning this discussion.

Eden

11

Accident

by Louise in

jw
friends

so over easter weekend i was house sitting a lovely place.

the back door was sticking and so in order to close it, gave it a pull with all my might.

my thumb happened to be nestled in the gap of the kitchen door.

EdenOne

Ouch! That's a nasty one. Wish you a speedy recovery.

Eden

284

I'm an ABSENTHEIST. Are you also?

by EdenOne in

it just dawned on me.

the existence of god can't be proved, neither is there evidence of god's inexistence.

so, i'm neither theist neither atheist.

EdenOne

Just a brief note: It may have to do with definitions of the website, but in my computer and also on Ipad, this thread has now 23 pages. It appears that, to others, the page count is different. When I gave references to pages, I din't take into account that others might have a different count than mine, I apologize if that's the case.

Eden

19

Watchtower June 15 2015, Misleading Reference to Past Statement...

by BluesBrother in

if this has been posted up before, then i missed it...... they call this organization "the truth" so we might expect it to be accurate .

they themselves they have previously championed honesty :.

live with jehovahs day in mind (2006) p115 par 9.

EdenOne

Nice catch, BB! This is precisely the kind of thing that woke me up to TTATT ... historical revisionism. Why would an Organization feel they have to resort to that, even routinely? What embarrassing facts are they trying so hard to conceal from the rank and file? It went from there ...

Eden

49

Tsarnaev guilty - should he get death or not?

by Simon in

i think he probably will (it is the us after all) but i hope he doesn't.

he caused incredible pain and suffering to men, women and children who had never done anything to him.

many died in unimaginable agony, others are disabled for life.

EdenOne

I think he should be denied the satisfaction of becoming a martyr hero in the eyes of his islamic radical brethren. A life sentence in complete isolation for the first 25 years would be best, until the world forgets whom he ever was.

Eden

284

I'm an ABSENTHEIST. Are you also?

by EdenOne in

it just dawned on me.

the existence of god can't be proved, neither is there evidence of god's inexistence.

so, i'm neither theist neither atheist.

EdenOne

Nicolaou,

And yes, dictionaries are not always 100% perfect.

But ain't it funny how people demand definitions? Well, that's the place where they can be found. One can't demand definitions from an authority and then refuse said definition from said authority because it doesn't fit your model. (Confirmation bias)

Try to be nice eh?

I'm always nice, except when otherwise

Eden