"theism" here means "belief in a god" or "the worldview that an intelligent designer created the universe and life.
" ("god" here means a being with a mind who initiated and/or wound-up the universe, and designed life on earth)the most common claim that i see atheists making on twitter, is that "no evidence" exists in support of belief in a god.this post will remove any excuse atheists have for claiming "no evidence exists" in support of an initiator.
atheists can still reject this evidence as "weak," but they cannot truthfully say it does not exist.now, it is true that we do not have "observable, repeatable, falsifiable, empirical, scientific" evidence conclusively proving that an initiator exists, but we do have many lines of philisophical, experiential, and logical evidence.and... here... we... go:1:) many leading scientists, including stephen hawking, say that the space-time-matter universe had a beginning at the singularity/big bang.
Atheism is a lack of belief in god(s), not necessarily a response to a claim.
How can a lack of belief in something be a belief? That's illogical!!
A lack of belief = belief? I agree that is illogical.
Please help me see the connection to our discussion.
"theism" here means "belief in a god" or "the worldview that an intelligent designer created the universe and life.
" ("god" here means a being with a mind who initiated and/or wound-up the universe, and designed life on earth)the most common claim that i see atheists making on twitter, is that "no evidence" exists in support of belief in a god.this post will remove any excuse atheists have for claiming "no evidence exists" in support of an initiator.
atheists can still reject this evidence as "weak," but they cannot truthfully say it does not exist.now, it is true that we do not have "observable, repeatable, falsifiable, empirical, scientific" evidence conclusively proving that an initiator exists, but we do have many lines of philisophical, experiential, and logical evidence.and... here... we... go:1:) many leading scientists, including stephen hawking, say that the space-time-matter universe had a beginning at the singularity/big bang.
"theism" here means "belief in a god" or "the worldview that an intelligent designer created the universe and life.
" ("god" here means a being with a mind who initiated and/or wound-up the universe, and designed life on earth)the most common claim that i see atheists making on twitter, is that "no evidence" exists in support of belief in a god.this post will remove any excuse atheists have for claiming "no evidence exists" in support of an initiator.
atheists can still reject this evidence as "weak," but they cannot truthfully say it does not exist.now, it is true that we do not have "observable, repeatable, falsifiable, empirical, scientific" evidence conclusively proving that an initiator exists, but we do have many lines of philisophical, experiential, and logical evidence.and... here... we... go:1:) many leading scientists, including stephen hawking, say that the space-time-matter universe had a beginning at the singularity/big bang.
OGTG
Cofty/Outlaw
If anyone I debate this topic with has yet to learn that:
1. agnosticism is about knowledge
2. atheism is about belief
3. knowledge is a subset of belief
then I find all conversations about the topic are futile
Cofty, it seems Outlaw is rather jealous of your former elder status.
I really have to take exception to item 2 above. Atheism isn't about belief, ffs. It is merely a response to an unproven assertion that god exists.
Atheism is a lack of belief in god(s), not necessarily a response to a claim. Piraha children are atheists for example. Your definition of atheism is too narrow in scope, also known as the frozen abstraction fallacy.
"theism" here means "belief in a god" or "the worldview that an intelligent designer created the universe and life.
" ("god" here means a being with a mind who initiated and/or wound-up the universe, and designed life on earth)the most common claim that i see atheists making on twitter, is that "no evidence" exists in support of belief in a god.this post will remove any excuse atheists have for claiming "no evidence exists" in support of an initiator.
atheists can still reject this evidence as "weak," but they cannot truthfully say it does not exist.now, it is true that we do not have "observable, repeatable, falsifiable, empirical, scientific" evidence conclusively proving that an initiator exists, but we do have many lines of philisophical, experiential, and logical evidence.and... here... we... go:1:) many leading scientists, including stephen hawking, say that the space-time-matter universe had a beginning at the singularity/big bang.
Cofty/Outlaw
If anyone I debate this topic with has yet to learn that:
1. agnosticism is about knowledge
2. atheism is about belief
3. knowledge is a subset of belief
then I find all conversations about the topic are futile
Cofty, it seems Outlaw is rather jealous of your former elder status.
the difficulty of finding a marriage mate is well known for sisters.
but i would say it's hard for brothers also.
i was talking to a jw last night.
Plenty of hot chicks in my congregation. Plenty.
the wonders of facebook have accidently made my paths cross with the sister of this particular elder who served in my circuit (london) for many years and would have probably been made an elder at the very beginning of the arrangment in the early 1970's he knew my father very well, spoke at ca's visting speaker etc, and was a member of the hlc, he resigned a few years ago, he was a real hard core make no bones about it and would have been one of the very last you's expect to step down and leave, just goes to show..
I resigned as an elder in 2012, served for 14 years. Just as a reminder to JWN folks.
hey!
i'm new here, and i'm posting from chile, anyone else?
i bet we have some lurkers from here too, hope you register :).
I got FB friends in Chile, does that count?
it's been 12 years since i first read ray franz's books and the scales came off my eyes.
by that time i was in my forties.. since 2002 i went back to school and have worked with 3 very professional organizations.
but my biological clock is ticking away and while my peers are looking forward to retirement, i am only beginning.
Homegirl I'm with ya.
By the time I woke up, three years ago. I had 22 years of full time service under my belt, 6.5 of which were Bethel years.
I don't think occasional sadness about mis-spent decades is abnormal. We must just make sure that our golden years aren't spent watching wheel of fortune and hanging out at bingo parlors.
honestly, do you??
and if you do, isn't that hypocritical!.
Idioms exist! Jesus Tap Dancing Christ!
before anyone gives me the "bears/wood" similarities, this is a post based on insidethekh's reply on the mormon v jw thread.
(http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/beliefs/287545/1/who-is-copying-who-jws-or-mormons) i like to see wt friendly posts on here as some of the wt bashing displays the same logical fallacies as levelled against the wts and it's followers so it's good to consider reasoned debate.. on the one hand i think itkh makes a fair point if you compare the worldwide success of mormons v jws but there is an overall context to the preaching work that is completely ignored by those fully "in" and has been a major factor in my move from being an active witness to one on the cusp of getting out.
from a statistical point of view there are great headline numbers presented by the wts but if you put them in the context of the number of witnesses, conversation ratios, ratio of new witnesses to birth rates, numbers that must be leaving, growth differentials across the globe, penetration in muslim nations and so on then these numbers become meaningless.
365,000 babies were born every day in 1997.
Since humans have a life cycle and some sort of age of accountability, preaching worldwide to a growing/dying changing population makes no sense.
Everyone would need to stop breeding and stop dying for the worldwide message campaign to ever really matter. When that happens, we'll talk.
