Posts by sunny23

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.

sunny23

This thread doesn't belittle anyone's experience, it belittles biblical God. Are you implying that convincing someone that God doesn't exist belittles their experience? If anything, the view that "god doesn't care enough to act to prevent a tsunami, or he needs more children in heaven, or life on this earth matters less than in heaven," belittles the experience of tsunami family survivors EVEN MORE! Were you always atheist? I wasn't. Becoming one did not belittle any happy or sad experience I had previously experienced. How would it exactly? Are you implying too that this thread shouldn't exist unless everyone posting on it was in the tsunami or directly effected by it? That would devoid most of this entire site since most topics are hypothetical situations or discussing the experience of someone else, or of scientific inquiry.

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.

sunny23

If there were no hell, (as you say you taught as a "christian"), who suffered? Death would end all suffering. Or are we talking about the suffering of those who survived?

This thread appears to be more about your personal suffering on that day, than the people who died. DataDog

DD: Getting your body slammed into trees and lightpoles, breaking bones, and then drowning over several minutes of agony is not suffering? God watched children go through that in 240fps slow motion while eating some popcorn.

This isn't about personal suffering. Most of us here were not personally affected by the tsunami. That's not the point. 250,000 people and their families were affected. This is about them and God watching it and biblical christians inability to reconcile Gods inaction.

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.

sunny23

Hope your not feeling a bit cheated.

Oh i'm happy to be alive! Never take it for granted! I can think of 250,000 people who would feel cheated if they were here to tell you though. Fortunately I was "lucky" to avoid God's carelessness but who knows, maybe one day a tornado will tople my house over me and my godly "luck" will have run out.

Nothing to say in response to the rest of my previous post??

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.

sunny23

That is the a way in which many on that day would answer your question.

And that answer is stupid. sorry. It has already been tried here plenty.

What Hitler did unified people all over the world of different religions. This makes Hitlers genocide morally acceptable?

Likewise God created a planet earth with catastrophic potential to kill off millions of people/his creations throughout decades and has the power to stop it and yet doesn't because it unifies people with compassion? What a sick and twisted God, who would worship that? True love for ones children/creation would not allow pain and suffering if one had the power to prevent it even IF there were an after life. Inaction by an omnipotent God IS action. If superman stood by and watched a woman being tortured and raped for hours on end, would you still consider him a "good guy?"

Like I've said before God creating this earth was like putting your three little kids in a minivan down a canyon road with a brick on the accelerator pedal and hoping they figure out how to avoid catastrophy. Now humans have to advance through technology to predict tsunamis and to create advanced warning systems to avoid negligent genocide from God's f***ed up machine of a planet and carelessness to display true unconditional love that the bible says he has.

15

Possible Way For FDS / WTS To Stop Power of TTATT

by singlebaby in

so hello to all you veterans.

i have thought of a way that the slave may publish a wt in the near future to stop any efforts to .

teach the truth about the truth (ttatt).

sunny23

Welcome,

I don't think it would go down exactly that way. Even the current WT Library has old light in it unless they remove everything up until 2012 or so. Besides one could always attack their claims on: blood transfusions, shunning, 1914, or homo sapiens being 6,000 yrs old, without using "old light."

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.

sunny23

"my point being you can't write about things unless you live them. And to be fair i think many posters on this thread have used THERE colors very respectfully and have looked for the positive in other peoples belives, but nobody on this thread will change the thinking of another no matter how good the argument."new hope and happiness

I dont agree new hope, astrophysicists don't need to experience space personally in order to be able to discuss events that take place there. And there were arguments HERE on suffering that I personally had contributed to starting on page 1 and through various other pages even in the 115 range that were so convincing that IT DID CHANGE MY THINKING and the thinking of MissFit and a few others who have admitted it. You probably won't but if you were to read the whole thread like a book you would probably gain new insights and change your perspectives a bit as well. I wen't from a christian to an atheist from this thread alone. There were too many points brought up that i had never thought about that directly contradicted the type of God I believed in.

83

Blown away-- where to go from here

by All for show in

jw
friends

i stumbled upon this website a few weeks ago due to the jw.org ridiculousness, since then i haven't been able to pull myself away.

the thoughts, feelings, and concerns i have had the past few years aren't just mine.

it's global.

sunny23

Welcome AllForShow! I second what LoisLane just posted before me. Read everything you can about JW blood doctrine at JWFacts.com and then come back here and read this well developed thread about blood transfusions and the NWT here. Get your husband on board with the realisation that the lives of your children here on earth are in fact very precious and to preserve their lives is an exemption from biblical law as jesus pointed out to the pharacies while healing on the sabath day.

Take time and study/research one topic at a time and examine all facts and all viewpoints. If it is "the truth" then it can withstand any scrutiny right? You are well educated and not easily persuaded by mere opinions or twisted interpretations. Use reason, logic, and evidence to make very important decisions spiritually and elsewhere in guiding the lives of your family. College taught me a bit about the types of logical fallacies and I started noticing good use of these in watchtowers. I always doubted the blood transfusion logic they used and 1914 but it wasn't until the latest "generation" change with "new light" around 2009 that I started doing real critical research.

You acknowledge that "JW's are some of the most depressed, unhappy, arrogant, broke, pompous people I know," so don't just follow blindly anymore, take full control of your future happiness. Not All of JW's are moral/good people and it's been shown to not need any religion to be moral/good. Instill values you know YOU have and your traits of care, loving-kindness, non-prejudice, truth seeking intelectualism into your children and they will have an even bigger slice of happiness that the JW's may have so far kept you from having. Good luck and I respect your difficult and bold steps to prepare your family for the best possible life you can provide them with!

34

Is truth relative?

by Pinku in

seeing various/changing laws on the same action, some may feel truth is relative, and there is no such thing as right and wrong.. yet a closer look at beneath the details would show that truth is not relative, and everyone knows what is right and wrong.. driving in the night by putting the head-light off is wrong, but right when country is in war with another country.

behind both the conflicting laws, the truth is same: safety and welfare of the people.

this is true of notion about what is right and wrong:.

sunny23

Pinku, I agree with some of your points but some of them are "absolutes" that do not accomodate for all moral situations. What is good for the well-being of one could be harmful to the wellbeing of another. Example: A crazy man breaks into your house and proceeds to beat to death your daughter in order to rape her, you come in and hit him over the head with a bat and he dies. According to what you say, that action of defending your families life and your daughter from being raped is WRONG:

Whatever contributes to the welfare of all is right.

Whatever contributes to the harm to person/s is wrong.

16

JW.ORG signs on Assembly Hall

by Nosferatu in

jw
friends

what the hell is going on here?

i drove past the assembly hall today and noticed the square blue jw.org signs on the building.

coupled with the steel gate that keeps worldlings out, it really looks quite cultish.. so is that the new name for the kingdom halls or something?

sunny23

Let's have a contest lasting one month of who can put the most "JWFACTS.COM" stickers on these signs! I could do 4 halls tomorrow :)

49

Faith - Virtue or Vice?

by nicolaou in

faith gives you permission to believe that jesus actually did feed thousands with a few loaves & fishes, walk on water and rise from the grave.

all the evidence proves that none of this happened so why persist with faith?

why be dishonest with yourself?

sunny23

Donnye, There are supporting reasons for each of the bulleted items i listed already in this thread. I was simply summing them up briefly. I see you don't care to offer any substance to this thread, perhaps at least read it? And everyone shouldgive supporting reasonings to validate themselves. Otherwise, we would all just be spouting off baseless phrases without expounding on them. All of JW literature, especially books like the Insight, Reasoning, etc, are there to give supporting reasonings to validate their opinions and interpretations of the bible. You seem to want to only ask people about their struggles with faith on this thread. Offer something if you have something please, i'm intrigued.

CL, Lisa didn't say anything untrue or irrelevant to this thread. The OP may have been directed mostly at belief type of faith but pointing out that theists will wrongfully try and attribute trust type of faith to God is not uncalled for so much as to need "calling out" like you did. Seems like nit-picking really. If anything she was actually agreeing with your statement that "Having "faith" in a person because they have demonstrated their trustworthiness in the past is non equvical[to having faith in GOD]" Re-read her post and tell me that it doesn't agree with this. She's just stating it in different words.

I like what Terry said about Faith on your topic CodedLogic Is Faith Immoral?

"Faith is a component of survival in the self-aware.

A pathway may not be in evidence to get from point A to point B, so what remains to allow progess?

Faith allows forward momentum where a stall might otherwise be indicated.

The success comes down to a simple demonstration:

DO NOT TRY (because evidence suggests failure will occur)=NULL RESULT. Not trying guarantees failure.

TRY (even if no possibility in evidence)=POSSIBLE success. (Only those who try get a crack at what they desire.)

_________________________________

If you are alone on an island, there are no moral acts beyond maintaining life itself.

To NOT TRY to maintain life (build a fire, make a "HELP" sign out of rocks, search for food, go fishing, attempt to purify sea water, etc.) is immoral.

To give up HOPE is to condemn yourself to non-existence.

FAITH is a form of HOPE.

Hope says, "I will maintain a positive outlook and effort even though I acknowledge the possibility of failure."

Faith says, "I am absolutely convinced things will turn out for the best no matter what comes."

Faith is irrational, but has the side-effect of giving you a fighting chance."