Posts by adamah

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.

adamah

FHN said- "Maybe man should consider not living so close to coast."

OK, so let's chalk that up to just another permutation of the ol' favorite of apologetists everywhere, "blaming the victims"....

Of course, these are often the same people who are completely unable to see that thinking until THEY are cast in the role of (or perceive themselves as) the victim, but it does no good, since they often only quickly forget it, anyway. For example, many see themselves as the victims of the JW practice of shunning, and THAT'S bad and not to be tolerated as it's inhuman and cruel; but a loss of 250k lives of loved ones, and the MAJOR disruption of others lives? Well, THAT'S different, since those greedy b-tards deserved it for living near the ocean (nevermind that many coastal towns economies are based on ocean fishing)!

Is it asking too much for posters to stop to analyze what sort of fallacy they are thinking of committing BEFORE they serve a steaming pile of failed theodicy?

Is it too much to consider adopting even a smatter of empathy for others, and not putting on cognitive blinders when it comes to defending YOUR God?

I know, it's very hard to analyze what you're offering up when you're emotionally-invested in offering up a defense, but people really need to spend a moment thinking and analyzing what they're about to say, rather than simply spewing whatever first comes to minds and then forcing others to point out the problems. It's the old saying about giving a person a fish vs teaching them to fish" situation, except replace 'fishing' for 'thinking'.

FHN said- Natural evil. So a tsunami is natural evil. Doesn't that personify the tsunami?

Perhaps referring to 'natural disasters' would be less confusing for some, but the term used in theological discussions of theodicy is the 'problem of natural evil'.

The problem for God is the Bible itself indicates that God expresses his Divine Will and acts via natural disasters: remember the ULTIMATE Tsunami ever, AKA Noah's Flood? God wiped out the lion's share of life on the Planet (except Noah and family, and a boatload of animals) via destruction by drowning, the same way 250k died in the tsunami. Hence God earned a well-deserved reputation for his willingness to kill humans via natural forces, and just to make the point, He followed up the Flood by destroying Sodom and Gomorrah with volcanic destruction, only a few chapters later in Genesis.

So it's not exactly a secret to anyone who's actually read the Bible that God has a clearly-documented history in His Holy Book of expressing Divine displeasure with the sins of humans via natural disasters, and if God doesn't want humans to turn a jaundiced eye towards him as prime suspect #1, suspected of causing havok whenever a natural disaster kills humans, He probably should've thought of the unintended consequences of inspiring the authors of Genesis to make such braggadocious claims, in the first place.

BTW, do I really need to point out that I'm an atheist, and this is exactly only ONE EXAMPLE of many of the kinds of 'continuity errors' found in the Bible, where the authors introduced one trait in the God character to solve one problem (eg in the Flood, they had a pre-existing Flood account from the Babylonians which allowed for the hero to assume authority to rule over his fellow man, and the writers of Genesis wanted to copy it), but they open up many other cans of worms in the process (the original account of the Flood story (Atrahasis) featured a pantheon of Gods, and only ONE wanted to carry out the Flood; however, forcing the pre-existing story to fit into the context of Jewish monotheism made Jehovah appear capricious and evil).

Adam

38

Utah man goes on hunger strike to the death to protest same-sex marriages

by adamah in

you can't make up this kind of religious nut-job fanaticism:.

http://www.4utah.com/story/utah-man-fasting-to-stop-same-sex-marriages/d/story/k9sjvlgmmeuberqg9aeobq.

although in retrospect, it's no more extreme than those jws who die refusing blood.... adam.

adamah

If the comments on that page are to be trusted, the irony is the guy apparently is engaged to a black woman, where interracial marriage had to be ruled as a basic civil right by the Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia (1967), against protests of people like him in the past who don't understand that what people do is nobody's business but theirs, not the State's, and not other citizens.

Trentin must be pulling everyone's legs, since he said this:

"Jefferson made clear that the courts are not the supreme arbitrators of what is and what is not constitutional. The states also have power," said Meacham."

UH, that's EXACTLY what the job of the SUPREME Court is: to limit the will of the electorate, and to serve as the supreme and final arbiter (or, as George Bush said, "the decider") to determine issues of citizen's basic civil rights.

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.

adamah

Cofty said- Are you saying your god is incapable of sorting this engineering problem? Nothing would change. Plate tectonics would still work as it does now but where one plate is forced against another plate they just wouldn't get stuck. Trivially easy for a god.

Unfortunately, that's not so, since the Bible says a bronze-age Jehovah God was apparently confounded by new-fangled iron-age technologies and weapons of war, like those insurmountable iron-age chariots:

“And the Lord was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.” —Judges 1:19

Of course, this passage was written in a time before Jehovah God had become omnipotent, omniscient, omni-everything character that Xianity evolved Him into becoming in the form we see today, the deity with the mostest.... But as the scripture and this very thread shows, believers learned the fine art of creative excusiology from their Jewish ancestors who wrote the Tanakh, and are attaining about the same level of success at apolegetics today as they did in the past.

Adam

170

Sign this petition - Investigation On Jehovahs Witnesses Religious Policy That Violates Human Rights and Abuses Religious Freedom

by TJ Curioso in

launch an investigation on jehovahs witnesses religious policy that violates human rights and abuses religious freedom.

link.

adamah

BOTR said-

This is antiAmerican at its very core. Did no one else see the elementary school films of the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock?

As a child growing up in a JW household, apparently I wasn't the only one who was compelled to change the channel whenever "Schoolhouse Rock" came on TV and tried to teach anything about how Satan's system of government works, so we never saw any of this kind of stuff:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xMHOBEYCXM

Adam

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.

adamah

LS said-

We come in the world heralded in by the screams of our moms. Suffering is intrensitic to the human condition from the very beginning. Through most of history it was arguably much worse than it is today. I would say suffering for a human is as comon and normal as water is for a fish. However does the fish ever stop and contemplate "wow I am really wet today?"

Considering all that what gives you the mojo to think you can ask for a suffering free existance? Is a fish ever bothered by the fact that is is wet? Does it ever long for a dry life?

I would argue while we do live in a suffering filled world, we are not "meant" to live in a suffering filled world. We are "meant" for this other life. The simple fact at we are able to long for this other type of life, is proof that it is at least possible.

So in a nutshell, your argument is that suffering is just a part of life, it's not even noticeable (or at least, it's much better than conditions in the past). Basically, LS says to suck it up, as it's not all that bad.

But then, LS flip-flops 180 degrees and says we're not actually "meant" to suffer, and hence why we long for a better existence, free of suffering.

Say what? Do you also grab all the positions on a craps table much?

LS, you seemingly fail to understand that longing for something doesn't mean it automatically becomes true, much less possible. That's magical fantastic thinking, the stuff of child's fairy tales....

That's a lie perpetuated by Xianity, as evidenced by a window sticker I recently saw on a truck window, "If you believe, all things are possible".

Sorry, but NO, that's simply not so, and telling yourself it repeatedly (and pasting the glib expression to one's car window) doesn't actually make it any more likely to be true....

LS said- Our human perspectives are very limited compared to an eternal perspective on things.

And a permutation on the theodicy of Job, where God fired off the series of questions "Where were you when I" did this and that?

Unfortunately for that argument, the Bible says Adam and Eve disobeyed God and thus gave humanity all the perspective needed to address moral issues, so the question of morality has NOTHING to do with man's technological accomplishments. Per the Bible, God instituted the practice of slavery after the Flood via "righteous and just" Noah, and that ALONE should be enough for anyone who's not morally-impaired to see the light, all the proof that should be needed....

Adam

38

Utah man goes on hunger strike to the death to protest same-sex marriages

by adamah in

you can't make up this kind of religious nut-job fanaticism:.

http://www.4utah.com/story/utah-man-fasting-to-stop-same-sex-marriages/d/story/k9sjvlgmmeuberqg9aeobq.

although in retrospect, it's no more extreme than those jws who die refusing blood.... adam.

adamah

You can't make up this kind of religious nut-job fanaticism:

http://www.4utah.com/story/utah-man-fasting-to-stop-same-sex-marriages/d/story/k9sjvLGmMEuBeRqG9aeObQ

Although in retrospect, it's no more extreme than those JWs who die refusing blood...

Adam

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.

adamah

LS said-

On the question of suffering. We suffer because WE need to learn about empathy and compassion. Suffering says very little about the nature of God but is tell us alot about OUR nature.

Unfortunately, the Bible says in Genesis 3 that God created the first "perfect" human pair devoid of, and desirous of, wisdom (which many psychologists would say is manifested by the ability to emphathize with others, putting oneself in the shoes of others). Wisdom is of course required to make proper moral decisions, needed to fuel one's conscience and to decide right from wrong, good from bad.

Story gets worse for God, though, for He forbade the first pair from possessing wisdom, forbidding them from eating the wisdom-bestowing fruit.

So God made humans without wisdom (and hence empathy and compassion), and God seemingly intended them to stay that way and dependent on Him as their source of morality; of course, they only gained wisdom and the ability to exercise independent judgment on moral issues via an act of disobedience to His one rule, but the cost was their lives. (Or so the story goes.....)

Also interesting to note that sociopaths still exist in God's "perfect" creation, or even in more limited forms, some humans have difficulty reading the emotional reactions of others (eg asperbergers syndrome, etc) which is a skill required to emphathize?

So why would God make broken and flawed humans, call them "perfect", but only engage in mass slaughtering of other humans to give them an opportunity to improve on our personality traits (believers call them their "shortcomings") which He gave humans, in the first place?

Resolving these kinds of questions involves use of an awful lot of excusiology and jumping thru mental hoops, all required to patch a horribly-flawed belief system!

170

Sign this petition - Investigation On Jehovahs Witnesses Religious Policy That Violates Human Rights and Abuses Religious Freedom

by TJ Curioso in

launch an investigation on jehovahs witnesses religious policy that violates human rights and abuses religious freedom.

link.

adamah

Rebel said-

I've been talking on this forum for hears about the UN Declaration of Human Rights and wondered if anything could be done to enforce it. I still wonder that, seeing as how the UN apparently has no power to enforce it. The petition is also directed towards US authorities who would also have no authority to enforce it.

Of course, organized religions are incredibly BIG-BUSINESS in America, and you can just hear the outcry from pastors, preachers, bishops, priests, elders, etc, all stirring up their flocks on Sundays since they won't voluntarily give up a good thing when they see it, and aren't about to let a bunch of Godless liberals in the UN tell THEM how to worship Gods!

To take action against only the JWs on shunning would involve trampling on ALL freedom of religion, and you'd have all churches submitting donations and amicus curae (legal briefs) to the Courts, IF an initiative ever managed to get to a court case (much like the JWs submitted amicus curae on behalf of their buddy Jimmy Swaggert, as they were interested parties effected by the outcome of his case).

Governments are not going to meddle into religious practice UNLESS the religions start breaking civil laws (eg murder, by offering child sacrifices to Gods). Why would they do that, when they've got a good thing going already?

Heck, the 'Duck Dynasty' family patriarch is now back after A&E kicked him off the show, but it stirred up such outrage from the religious right that A&E caved. It was perfectly within their legal right to do so, since they weren't infringing on his freedom of speech. But most believers don't see it that way: instead, they (wrongly) claimed A&E infringed his religious expression, so more idiots are proudly waving their idiot flags (and I wouldn't put it past A&E doing it as a publicity stunt, getting TONS of free publicity after the story went viral).

The difference is, trying to get a company to cave into pressure works when such media consumer-driven companies are sensitive to public opinion. But governments? Not so much, for the most part, since they're generally quite reluctant to rewrite doctrines of Constitutional law based on only 4,000 signatures.

And to the resistance from the religious right, add people who actually understand the principles found in the Constitution; then all you have left are a bunch of people who SHOULD see the importance of accepting personal responsibility for their actions, instead of demanding that the Nanny State bail them out at every turn and kiss every boo-boo to their egos, even if it means trampling all over the rights of everyone else.

(BTW, it's interesting to look at a few of the petitions that are trending on the change.org site; that should give a sense as to what issues gain traction, and actually manage to garner attention to their causes, like the lady who wants to get 911 calls to be dialed from hotel rooms, etc.)

It's another manifestation of the same narcissistic desire for some pipe-dream that's not so far-removed from engaging in preaching work to gain eternal Panda Petting sessions on a paradise Earth. Same underlying dynamic at play, based on only one's hopes and dreams.

Apparently many ex-JWs are still clinging to thinking their actions and opinions actually matter to others, as if there's "something" that can or should be done, so an easy answer is to sign some random poorly-worded petition that pops up since signing a petition is helluva lot easier than trudging from house-to-house, door-to-door, etc. Such ill-conceived tactics only end up going nowhere, and since it's so easy to sign a petition online, it's more of merely venting rather than anything, and only causing some loss of credibility for all those involved (which plays into the GB's hands).

As stated elsewhere, JWs aren't going ANYWHERE, since a sucker is born every minute to replace those who die, and unfortunately most people are hell-bent on learning life lessons 'the hard way' via personal experience, telling themselves "it'll NEVER happen to me!" (until it actually does happen to them....). Part of the human dynamic, I guess....

Adam

27

To Active JWs Your January 2, 2014 Daily Text Contains an Error

by PelicanBeach in

to active jws your january 2, 2014 daily text contains an error.

thursday, january 2. .

who the father is, no one knows but the son, and he to whom the son is willing to reveal him.luke 10:22.. .

adamah

Tiktaalik said- Pelican's detailed response of "Whatever" says much.

I took it as an admission of Pelican's willingness to believe literally anything, just as long as there's a history of others who've believed in it in times past. He's willing to believe in whatever?

Fact is, the ones who really SHOULD care about what they believe are the individuals themselves, since only fools don't really care about what they accept as truths (i.e. their beliefs), but many instead take the 'machts nicht' ("whatever") approach and are willing to believe in anything, AKA gullible.

Pelican said- I wrote “whatever” because Adamah’s postings on this thread are in monaural mode, one track thinking. He posts anti-Bible comments on a thread which is meant to show JW lurkers that their Watchtower leadership is scripturally deficient. That is the purpose of this thread ; to correct or reveal their deficiency. But Adamah goes on with his anti-Bible rhetoric anyway and hands this thread right into the lap of the GB who are constantly telling their members not to take what is written on forums like this seriously because in the end all here are apostates and anti-Bible and anti-God. He takes a thread meant to open a little crack and drives it into a blind alley instead.

Yeah, your response was a non-response, AKA waffling, ducking a question. Wanna try again?

The problem is you want to separate the JWs apart from the Holy Bible, when the situation is actually much like Jesus ironically stated when referring to a house that's built on a foundation of sand. There is no salvaging a house built on sand, so it needs to come down. Hence JWs are only one manifestation of the Abrahamic-based beliefs (Judaism, Islam, Xianity), since ALL are rooted in the Torah/Tanakh, an ancient work written by uninspired and fallible men.

Pelican said- Yes, there are Bible thumpers who are one track minds and can’t think of anything else but there are also atheism thumpers who are one track minds and who will take a thread meant to open a door into oblivion for the sake of their favorite one track. Oh well, that’s life.

Who brought atheism into the discussion, except YOU? Not me....

Your failure to respond to the question I raised is noted by many, so if you (or Kate, since she piped in) want to explain and resolve the Bible's obvious contradictions on this topic that I raised in prior post, feel free to do so. Many here can relate to the sometimes-encountered situation of a question raised by a householder that you cannot answer, so you promise to research the answer and get back to them with a response. So do you promise to get back to them, or do you simply write them off as 'not interested', knowing that looking into the answer might challenge YOUR faith?

I suspect you will do the latter (and won't even try to answer), instead preferring to ramble on about some other issue, thus derailing your own thread.

Simple question: do you (Pelican) give a rat's ass about the TRUTH (AKA reality, the actual history of what happened in the past)? Or do you prefer to cling to comfortable fantasies? I'm going out on a limb here, but I suspect you don't actually care about truth, since you prefer not to deal with the uncomfortable possibility that you've 'jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire', and are simply trying to rebuild on another plot of land that's also quick-sand.

Adam

170

Sign this petition - Investigation On Jehovahs Witnesses Religious Policy That Violates Human Rights and Abuses Religious Freedom

by TJ Curioso in

launch an investigation on jehovahs witnesses religious policy that violates human rights and abuses religious freedom.

link.

adamah

WTFree, signing that petition is doing nothing, but it's even worse than doing nothing: it IS feeding the JWs notorious "persecution complexes", something for every elder to point to and say how ex-JWs and AAWA are living up to the GB's description of apostates of trying to use every angle in the book to discredit God's org.... NEVERMIND the fact that "Satan's govt's" are actually protecting the JWs here.

Is AAWA actually out to plant 'false flags' as operatives of the WTBTS?

I swear, I'd hope they were actually trying to be the gang who couldn't shoot straight and hatch such with ill-conceived campaigns, as they have a track record of showing absolutely zero forethought in such stunts.... Granted, it's an old petition (from 2011) so it may be an old initiative, but it's another 'fail', since it stands absolutely NO chance at succeeding in it's goals, at least in any civilized Nation that has a Constitution (U.S., CA, GB, etc). Instead, it ONLY serves as a show of stupidity, and a PR win for the WTBTS to point to and to drive current JWs in even deeper, serving up a nice hot serving of 'confirmation bias'.

Adam