Posts by sunny23

109

Topics Ive Been Pondering On

by JWINQUESTION in

this is my first post on here so bear with me.

currently i am still an active jw with serious questions about the jw org.

i was hesitant signing up but really need as much input from the people on this forum to get a clear understanding on things.

sunny23

Look into blood transfusions, 1914, 1975, disfellowshipping, and other questionable doctrine on JWFACTS. Happy truth seeking :)

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

Yes it is! Each one of those individual people had their own personal story, and I believe God knew each one personally.DD

Deputy Dog, When I said "This isn't about personal suffering. Most of us here were not personally affected by the tsunami." I meant to say "This isn't about OUR personal suffering." Sorry about the confusion. Of course this is about the suffering of those who were there, thats what the rest of my post said.

I have no problem reconciling it. I'm going to die on the day God chooses by the means He chooses. I'll be fine with that, no matter how or when.DD

So God choses to make infants die on particular days as well? WOW

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.DD

Deputy Dog read this please..

7. Answers that trivialise the reality of human suffering

For example..
Suffering will be unimportant compared to eternal rewards

Rational Response
This is ethically repugnant. Suffering is not reducible to arithmetic. This life really matters. Any philosophy that minimises the importance of physical human life is dangerous. It is the same mentality that leads to religious extremism and flies aeorplanes into tall buildings.

It is an extreme example of "the end justifies the means" defence, so beloved of tyrants.

Like other theodicies it is dehumanising by reducing humans to pawns in god's game.

Imagine that scientists developed a pill that would eradicate all unwelcome memories and create a feeling of bliss. How would you judge a scientist who imposed the most horrific suffering on millions of people, as unwilling subjects of his experiment, but who offered some of his victims one of the magic pills when it was over? (read this a few times over)

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.