Posts by Abaddon

61

Did God ever Exist?

by found-my-way in

reading so many posts on atheism which is the belief that there is no god, and reading comments from creationists made me ponder if there was an alternate reason for our existence.. if god is up there, why does he permit suffering?

if i were god, i wouldn't of let it happen in the first place, these are my children, why would i let them suffer?

maybe i am influenced by my creationist upbringing and beliefs while a jw, because i find it hard to wrap my brain around the idea that everything came from nothing.

Abaddon

I always wonder how you can get the spittle of the inside of my screen after I have read one of Perry's posts.

Cyber-pharasee, cut and paste Calvanist.

He is so much more interested in vindicating his self-rightous self than vindicating god.

Funny how someone who scorns atheists for setting themselves up as god does exactly the same thing (not that atheists actually do that, but he does).

He is blind to the fact that by selecting an interpretation of scripture as 'truth', when a thousand or more different shades of Christianity alone have their own 'truths', when none can show by their fruits or by proofs they are any more right in the specifics of Christian practise, he is making himself god by the conceit his opinon can be more right than the next sincere Christian.

He rants and raves when his limited understanding and vanity make him feel he can make some form of argument. And ignores or flees those that he cannot answer

61

Did God ever Exist?

by found-my-way in

reading so many posts on atheism which is the belief that there is no god, and reading comments from creationists made me ponder if there was an alternate reason for our existence.. if god is up there, why does he permit suffering?

if i were god, i wouldn't of let it happen in the first place, these are my children, why would i let them suffer?

maybe i am influenced by my creationist upbringing and beliefs while a jw, because i find it hard to wrap my brain around the idea that everything came from nothing.

Abaddon

Perry, do you still believe in the doctrine of the elect? (i.e. we are predestined to burn or go to heaven and there is nothing that we can do about it).

If you believe you are one of the elect it would explain something about the way you look down your nose at the rest of the world. You have made yourself your own god, pronounced yourself saved, and now can sit in complacency sneering at everyone else whilst you worship your own highly-elevated opinion of yourself.

If you have stopped believing in the doctrine of the elect, then you're obviously a butterfly mind flitting from one bunch of supersticion to the next, taking what you like and using it to make yourself feel less inadequate, and your latest set of beliefs are as of little interest as your last as they have the same order of reliability.

Be a good chap and clear up exactly what sort of person we are dealing with...

142

The Need To Question Atheism

by The wanderer in

jw
friends

the need to question atheism this need to question atheism stems from the fact there are some individuals.

on this board that subscribe to such.

the questions stated are not for some.

Abaddon

vinny

Enough of the 'Emperor's New Clothes' routine. I know you're naked.

Please explain where god came from without using special pleading.

You are accusing atheists of exactly what you are doing; speculating on how something can come from nothing.

You call your something from nothing 'god'. Atheists call it 'the Universe'. Your hypothesis contradicts the very arguments you use against atheists.

Merry

I have heard many athiests claim that if only God would reveal God's self to humanity with obvious proof (also claiming this would be a very simple thing) they would no longer be athiests.

Are you saying it would be too complex for god to do this? Isn't that like, blasphemous?

But I have long disagreed, suspecting that many would still not believe in God but would sooner assume that someone was just pulling an elaborate trick, a grand illusion, or else that they themselves had gone insane and therefore could not trust their own perceptions. The Qur'an says the same thing.
In imagining this occuring, I think there would be some God-believers who would feel the same way about this manifestation as atheists and would not be certain if it could be trusted as real. There would be others, believer and non-believer, who would accept it.

To me this is a cop-out (English English for an evasion or failure to deal with an issue). It is a 'clever' argument put forward by theists over the years to explain why there is no proof of god. It blames humans for the absense of proof... and limits the power of god by saying god could not manifest in a convincing enough manner. It's a crock.

Rather than admit god is a concept not rooted in provable reality, a thing of a totally different paradigm, theists would rather limit the Almighty power (in one breath before claiming the power is unlimited in the next). How is it better to 'emasculate' god than admit god's apparent nature?

So much for faith.

There is no proof of god. Does this mean god does not exist?No.

Does it mean that god (if it exists) desires itself to be unprovable?Either that or god by its very nature is not something that can be proved.

If god desires that it is unprovable, when by definiton it could prove itself (to say otherwise is to limit god's power), then this INEVITABLY results in potential harm. A person can REASONABLY not believe in god, as there is no proof. This conclusion is the result of the human mind, supposedly designed by god, coming to the very supportable conclusion that things that are real can be proved, so something that cannot be proved is not real. Thus to accept that god willfully does not prove itself is to make god cruel monster, denying its children certain knowledge that they could easily have for their betterment.

If god by its very nature is not something that cannot be proved, it means that god is far from the all-too-human spite monster smiting left-right and centre as depicted by the goatherds who traditonally write about god. It means all that smiting has nothing to do with god, as if god HAD done all that smiting there would have been proof. It might also mean that god is a concept, an ideation, a grand metaphor, an abstract. But still real enough if you believe, and I did think it WAS meant to be about faith, yes?

To me it seems many lack the courage to see god as it might be.

They are lost in the valley of pitiful excuses, worshiping petty cruel gods cast in man's image, as such 'gods' can be dealt with on a transactional basis; loving your brother as yourself or fasing at Ramadan is just another form of killing a sheep to show god you like it.

The idea of god being far grander and greater than that, a way of thinking that unites everything, is everything, seems far too scarey for many, as such a god comes without a manual written by a goat herd telling us what to do.

69

Final Thought About Atheism

by The wanderer in

jw
friends

final thought about atheismafter having reviewed the last thread about atheism, i have decided there.

exists a common theme among the postings.

the themes surrounding the .

Abaddon

The wanderer

What kind of proof are you looking for?
Video?, Audio?, Thermal images?
Explain ...

Which part of 'evidence acceptable to a peer-review science journal or court of law' don't you get? I don;t care what orm th evidence comes in, I just want it to be robust and unquestionable.

As regards your exagerated claims, kid-A provided the data on that; your claims re. Oxford and Penn State are unfounded AND you miss the point that EVEN IF your claims about the level of research or credibility thereof were true there is still no PROOF.

We get this sttement on the website you quoted;

What is the state-of-the-evidence for psi?
To be precise, when we say that "X exists," we mean that the presently available, cumulative statistical database for experiments studying X, provides strong, scientifically credible evidence for repeatable, anomalous, X-like effects.
With this in mind, ESP exists, precognition exists, telepathy exists, and PK exists. ESP is statistically robust, meaning it can be reliably demonstrated through repeated trials, but it tends to be weak when simple geometric symbols are used as targets. Photographic or video targets often produce effects many times larger, and there is some evidence that ESP on natural locations (as opposed to photos of them), and in natural contexts, may be stronger yet.
Some PK effects have also been shown to exist. When individuals focus their intention on mechanical or electronic devices that fluctuate randomly, the fluctuations change in ways that conform to their mental intention. Under control conditions, when individuals direct their attention elsewhere, the fluctuations are in accordance with chance.
Note that we are using the terms ESP, telepathy and PK in the technical sense, not in the popular sense. See What do parapsychologists study?

Great. Where is the data supporting these claims?

147

Merry Becomes A Muslim (a bit long)

by Merry Magdalene in

who is merry?

i was born in 1965, the same year that malcolm x was assassinated.

my father had committed suicide a few months into my mother's pregnancy so we lived with her parents until she married again when i was about 18 months old.

Abaddon

jelcat

Any time blood flows outside of the body the person (whether male or female) is required to perform ablution.

So if you use tampons or those new plastic cup thingies and prevent menstral blood from leaving the body then you are clean enough to enter the mosque (albeit in a seperate secion to underline just how equal everyone is)? This is a rhetorical question, I know there is no such exception, which illustrates my entire point. The prohibition against menstrating women is NOTHING to do with uncleanliness as even if they are not suffering a bloodflow outside the body they STILL cannot enter a mosque because they are a menstrating woman.

Come on ladies. Think of how fervently JW women argue that NOT being allowed to teach, male 'headship' and having to wear a hanky on their head if they say a prayer in front of a baby boy is not discriminatory. We know how hollow that sounds. Listen to yourselves. Compare and contrast; maybe you can explain to me why your justifictions for differentiation in THIS instance are not as hollow; they sound it to me but obviously convince you.

Again, we aknowledge that women are being abused around the world but this is the case with every religion. It is not just Islam.

I am glad you acknowledge that Islam, as other religions, has practisoners who abuse women.

And regardless of the reasons or the justifications that are given by any of these extreme religionists, it does not make it right, no matter which holy book these justifications percievably come from.

So you are willing to acknowledge that in the countries or regions of countries where Sharia law holds sway (in practice) over secular law women demonstrably do suffer disadvantage over and above that of women in countries with secular legal systems?

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=28054

Re. your comments about Cyrus/Alexander; what Little Toe said - either way the Qur'an is WRONG.

Re. Samaritans, there is no trace of a seperate Samaritan community co-existing with the Jews at the time of the Exodus; indeed, if there were, they'd have been purged just as many Israelites were, as their beliefs were not orthodox. Nor is it possible that the Qur'an is referring to a Samarian, as the area known as Samaria dates to the reign of King Omri of Israel, about 870BC, hundreds of years after Moses. At the time of Moses the area would hve been occupied by one of the tribes the Israelites ethnically cleansed during the first Jewish invasion of the Levant. - either way the Qur'an is WRONG.

Another point is that the jews who heard this verse recited at the time did not dispute it as they had been eager to do in other instances.

You mean the text you trust in says the Jews did not despute it. This is like saying the Bible is accurate because it says 'all scriopture is inspired of god and beneficial'. You are using internal consistency as an argument for the Qur'an being accurate. One can say Lord of the Rings is internally consistent, but no one would ever argue it is accurate outside of its own narrative space.

Oh, and JW's have been known to claim that all the faithful men of old were Jehovah's Witnesses; Islam pactising such revisonism is not a surprise.

Merry

I am interested in exploring this more as it is a topic I know little about. From what I have been able to discern so far it seems to me that some creationists got drawn into a false debate against evolution due to claims made by both materialists (trying to use evolution to disprove God and creation)...

No materialist who knows anything worthwhile about evolutionary theory would claim evolution proved god was not possible, or that some form of creation was not possible.

One of Allah's names is translated "the Evolver" so I have no problem with the idea of creation through evolution.

Good!

My problem is with saying that everything came from nothing or was just always here, without a Creator that exists outside time and space and beyond our comprehension.

Yeah, you know that is 'special pleading'? Being a sensible person you are wary of claims about something coming from nothing or always having been there. However, this sensibleness evapourates if one talks about Allah, as you are willing to accept this is the case for Allah on the basis of an 'explanation' which is NOT an explanation ('that exists outside time and space'). It is someone SAYING it. That is not proof.

Why the double standard?

I recently was researching the entropy versus evolution debate and found that my own uninformed opinion may well have been quite mistaken on that. I am still reading.

Oh, the classic Creationist allegation that evolution is impossible due to the law of entropy? Which is derided both by evolutionits AND physicists as it is based on a willful ignorance of what the law actually is and its applicability in open and closed systems. I'm glad you have spotted it.

I am glad that Jelcat addressed her own experience with this as I have none of my own other than on-line. I don't recall the context of my above statement, but I don't think I meant that I feel valued equally by men (which is not of primary importance to me) but by God, as expressed through the Qur'an.

Oh, it is an important difference (god and men). But I remain to be convinced that god as expressed in the Qur'an really sees women as equal to men - like I say above, you guys might be convinced, but me... your explanation of how such demarkation and differentiation IS equality do not convince me.

I suppose the point I am making is that if one takes a literalistic approach towards the Qur'an as direct revealed truth, then one ends up with a societal structure where women are disadvantaged. I grew up and went to school with Muslims. I have worked with Muslims. I have taught Muslims (English) and spent time discussing topics like those we discuss hre to extend their knoweldge of English. I say what I see.

I know how men can be. I grew up around males who often made a point of letting me know that females are inferior to males, and none of them were Muslims and not all of them were religious in any way. I watched with great interest a documentary by a Muslim woman called The Mosque and Me (I think) that looked into some of the male prejudice against females in mosques throughout Canada and America. She also spoke to a Muslim scholar who showed that such mens' prejudice was not supported by the Qur'an or the Sunnah and should be corrected.

Errrr... as per previous point, that is just ONE bloke and his opinions. Want me to dig up some other Imam saying something nasty about women and using traditonal scripture of some sort to support it? Which of the two is right? They both THINK they are, they both claim their opinion are supported by scripture.

Thanks for the on-going discussion. Some people don't like to debate with me IRL, thinking I want them to immediately capitulate and agree with everything I say or else shut up. I don't. How can you ever get to the meat and marrow of things that way? Best wishes for a good week.

No worries. Capitulate isn't in my dictionary, although I can be convinced with the right evidence ;-)

147

Merry Becomes A Muslim (a bit long)

by Merry Magdalene in

who is merry?

i was born in 1965, the same year that malcolm x was assassinated.

my father had committed suicide a few months into my mother's pregnancy so we lived with her parents until she married again when i was about 18 months old.

Abaddon

Merry

Abaddon, I feel you missed the point about menstruation being only one of the things we are required to purify ourselves after and before we pray. Why is that the only one that bothers you? Because it has been treated with unhealthy regard by other religions? It is not viewed the same way in Islam (or isn't supposed to be; I can't speak to the attitudes of every Muslim in every culture; some of us do still hold on to non-Islamic attitudes).

I don't think I missed any point about menstration Merry. I know there are other parts of the cleaning routine for men and women, it's just Allah, in contradiction to all known medical science, thinks a menstrating women CANNOT be clean. Or do you think menstrating surgeons take a day off to avoid infecting their patients with girl cooties? Y es, I do deliberately try to make it sound ludicous; because it IS. Not Islam being ludicrous, but thinking Allah can be guilty of such silliness being ludicrous.

I was pointing out that IF religion X (say Papua New Guinea Animism) has silly supersticions about menstration, one would not think 'aha! evidence of divine guidance', even if the Papuan Animists think so. On would say 'ah, yet another exmple of women being disciminated against due to primative supersticions'.

Or do you think such supersticions in other faiths are indicative they are also in receipt of divine guidance?

You can only have it one way or the other.

Now, if you hold the Papuan Menstration taboos as being due to ignorance, why would Allah command that Muslims persist in such ignorant supesticions? Why would Allah want his people to copy people who worshiped rocks (no, not a hidden crack at that meteorite thingy) and bushes.

If you hold that such beliefs as indication of divine guidance... you have to ask why divine guidance seems to be baseless gender-predicated discrimination...?

You seem to feel the Qur'an IS reliable. Yes.

Well, we differ. Why do you feel the Qur'an is more relaible than, say the Bible? Despite the grandiose claims made about an unbroken chain of recitation from Muhammad's time to our own, you must know that Islamic scripture has gone through at least two phases of collation and editing, so the Qur'an is no more unchanged since Muhammad said it than the New Testament is since Jesus.

Other proof the Qur'an is not reliable;

Surah 10 says there are six cretive days. Sura 41 says 8.
Surah 7 says the Pharoh used crucifiction as a punishment; there is no proof of this at the time.
Surah 20 says a Samaritan helped build the golden calf; if so the Smaritan neede a time machine as they didn;t exist asa pople until 1,000 after MOses.
Surah 9 says the Jews believe Ezra is the Son of God. This is utter rubbish.
Surah 18 says Alexander the Great wa a Mulim and died of old age. Hahahahaha. This is so wong as to be absurd.

Rest assured there are more than enough such errors to show your confidence in the accuracy of the Qur'an is misplaced.

If you are interested we can talk about these topic (evolution and whether the Qur'an is inspired) in another thread.
Cool. I look forward to a chance to explore this topic more, whether on another thread or on my own.

I think we should. The lies of (big-C literalistic) Creationists of both Christian and Islamic persuasion make many sincere people think ANY acceptence of evoluton as rejection of god. Such an opinion is the result of a total misrepresentation of evolution by those same Creationists.

I am truly not trying judge anyone (including myself), but when I observe things with which I do not agree, I feel a call to self-reflection and I try to express the hope that others will do the same. I believe we can question motives without judging them. We are doing a lot of that on this thread, imo.

Oh true.

Our enslavement to God in turn means that we have to suppress many of our souls’ desires and inclinations. Therein lies one of the greatest secrets to unleashing our real human potential. This is so because it is our human potential that separates us from the rest of this creation, and it is to the extent that we are able to conquer our physical nature that we realize that spiritual potential.

Yes, but my point was, in part, that bland assurance one is following THE way, in the face of contraindications as I have pointed too, is in no way enslavement to god, but to oneself.

Now is the time to give ourselves to our Lord, totally. The trials and tribulations we are currently witnessing will only intensify as we move closer to the end of time.
Oh please not the Mahdi. Please, do two things for me. Find the Qur'anic reference to the Mahdi. You probably already know I know that you almost cetainly know there isn't any.

No one mentioned the Mahdi, only the end of time.

So you DON'T hold Sunni views about the Mahdi? ALthough your comments NOW show it is not neccesarilly an immediate hope, you do realise before I mentioned it, it did sound like it was very soon. Interesting (and I'd fully expect you to point out such things about me :-)

I don't think you're mean at all. I am frequently trying to examine my desires, but they are often deeply hidden.

They might be hidden, but one can discern what they are by one's ACTIONS. Your actions have drawn you to a faith with many parrallels to that which you grew up in.

I do feel valued equally.

Maybe if you lived in Turkey or Iran, you'd feel differently. Maybe you feel valued equally because you are isolated from any Muslim community and can approach Islam as an anchorite (female hermit), interpret it in your own way, and not be forced on a daily basis to experience it as your sisters in Islam do. Prehaps your feeling of equality would be tempered if you actually had experience of dealing with 'born-in' MUslim males

I hope not, but I pray that if I am committing shirk it will be revealed to me more clearly. The self-examination continues...

Well, some religious traditions actually see shirk as impossible, as they view humans as being PART of the divine. Not that I neccesarily belive that but it is interesting.

Sorry it took so long to get back to you. As I say, I'd be delighted to give my pennies worth on Islamic Creationism and Qur'anic reliability one day.

69

Final Thought About Atheism

by The wanderer in

jw
friends

final thought about atheismafter having reviewed the last thread about atheism, i have decided there.

exists a common theme among the postings.

the themes surrounding the .

Abaddon

The wanderer

Just to make myself clear, I am asking you for PROOF.

I could not care less if half the Universities on the planet have research programs (although your claims are vastly inflated as already pointed out). What I care about is PROOF, of, but not limited to;

Non-corporeal intelligences
Mind reading
Precognition
Telekenesis
Clauradiance

... or any other claimed paranormal phenomena.

I can save you the effort and tell you there is none - at least none that would get published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal or accepted as evidence in a court of law.

You can say what you like, but this is a FACT. Of course, I can be wrong, in which case you can prove me wrong by showing us the claimed proof so we can determine if it is credible.

Yes, I know that people SAY this and SAY that, and some of them might not be lying, but that still doesn't PROVE a thing, as sincere people can believe in the hugest sillinesses.

Now, you might think it credible that millions of people can have made paranormal claims, and that not one of them can prove a thing, and that despite this 0% success rate in proving stuff, there is still some truth in it.

I think believeing that says more about your standrds of evidence than the actuality of the claims made.

69

Final Thought About Atheism

by The wanderer in

jw
friends

final thought about atheismafter having reviewed the last thread about atheism, i have decided there.

exists a common theme among the postings.

the themes surrounding the .

Abaddon

The wanderer

You seem to miss the difference between educated people claiming the paranormal exists and evidence that concludes such exists.

They are two entirely different things. The first means precisely nothing, the second does not exist; there is no proof of the paranormal.

If there were, it wouldn't be paranormal or supernatural, would it?

Paranormal and supernatural claims are by definition unproved.

Qcmbr

The non-believer therefore also suffers in the attempt to disprove the issue because the lack of repeatable control is not in itself what faith promises so is not in itself a proof against (the statistical uselessness of prayer will not convince the believer who has had a divine experience while in prayer.)

This is correct from a belivers viewpoint. A materialist would not see this as suffering, as being asked to disprove something which is not proved is a logical absurdity.

Now the one thing that can be attacked successfully (written dogma) results in the proliferation of faith not its nullification. Exposing fallacy and nailing it to the door of the church doesn't destroy the church it merely births new interpretations of faith (creationism has few 6 day advocates but plenty of IDers). The very proof required to destroy religion would in and of itself prove it (i.e. to logically and scientifically destroy God you'd need to find him first and prove he was a charlatan.)
Hence the battle continues both sides hampered by a lack of testable evidence one ending up with faith in a higher power and the other with faith in the intellectual fitness of mankind.

Good point; I would add that in belief strutures which do not reply upon repeatable phenomena there exists a latitude or impreciseness that lends such belief structures to schism. Look at 'Life of Brian'; there are five schisms in the group that start following Brian within five minutes of the crowd first deciding he is a prophet.

There is no measurable difference between divine revelation and making it up as you go along.

But the 'one thing that can be attacked successfully' bit is again from a belivers viewpoint, which is a diferent paradigm to that used by materialists. Atheists are NOT hampered by 'a lack of testable evidence', as such a condition infers something is unproved. After yay many millenia it is reasonable to conclude lack of testable evidence for god means there IS no evidence for god, not that we haven't found it yet.

I want the real answer to the inherant atheism that is within us all - real concrete proof that does not rely on special pleading and the light falling a certain way.

Good.

35

If an elder walked into your home right now.........

by ButtLight in

jw
friends

how many disfellowshipping "offenses" would he find?.

lets see....... the jwd up on my computer....links to psychic web sites....my smokes..books about the borg...my fiance who i live with....lottery tickets...... my birthday cards displayed on my desk.....the aposta pics on my computer......oh i could go on and on...but theres a few!.

im so bad hey?

Abaddon

Ha, did you know wth gafer tape, a staple gun, and a Jenning's Clamp you can convert most elders into urinals?

21

Entertaining God

by onacruse in

jw
friends

if god showed up at your front door (somewhat like a materialized angel?

), and asked if he could come in and visit with you, what would you do?.

Abaddon

Are we talking some person saying they are god but looking like an ordinary person, or someone of obviously paranormal status (lightning coming out of nose, flowers blooming in footsteps, etc.)?

Stealth god or obvious god?