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A layman's journey from religion to reason
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Render unto Caesar
Godspeak
Ethiopians imagine their gods as black and snub-nosed; Thracians blue-eyed and red-haired. But if horses or lions had hands, or could draw and fashion works as men do, horses would draw the gods shaped like horses and lions like lions, making the gods resemble themselves.
The Word
Spread the Gospel
Hymn book
If I may toot my own shofar, a few of the posts I like best:
Spake the people
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i'm new... promise to brief nearly more oftentimes!
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Either that, or I'm controlling Satan.
Hey Luce. Fetch me a sandwich. Pronto.
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seems like you all are just letting satan control you.
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what a hard hitting statement/quote.
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And what's more, it's some nonsense about "God will set a judge". Big deal; humans have been...
i'm new... promise to brief nearly more oftentimes!
Either that, or I'm controlling Satan.
Hey Luce. Fetch me a sandwich. Pronto.
seems like you all are just letting satan control you.
what a hard hitting statement/quote.
And what's more, it's some nonsense about "God will set a judge". Big deal; humans have been appointing judges for millennia. God is slow!
The Gideons win! They've made their mythical character real by sheer volume of paper alone! : )
Though I wonder... Based on reams of print, there's a good chance that Frodo, Harry Potter, and Winnie the Pooh are as real as Jesus now...
haha i actually thought they might mke an honest attempt a answering. instead you just get biblical threats. how stereotypical.
Clearly the God believer won the argument and you lost. Xenu and none of the others (including the leprechaun) has a book in almost every hotel, is one of the best selling books in the world, and is in more places (households included) than any other book? I didn't see Xenu's book at the corner store. In fact I didn't see him in those churches either, but they all had a book about this god and jesus character. Until Ganesha has books in print like this God wins. doh!
Well that certainly didn't answer Epicurus' quiz. Then again, to be honest, he did ask a whole bunch of questions at once, which isn't good interviewer technique.
So, if you're interested in answering, we could reduce Epicurus' words into a single, simple question:
Assuming some God creature exists, is he/she/it: (a) willing to prevent evil, but not able; (b) able to prevent evil, but not willing; or (c) both able and willing to prevent evil?
Or if a (d) choice is needed, speak up – though I think (a) to (c) really cover the possibilities. What do you say?
31For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed.Acts17:31
Acts 17:31When they all call him God31For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed.
Tapeworms are still cool, though! They even let you talk like the Queen, as Mark Twain noted:
We quite agree!
If you knew the real truth about Vishnu the Preserver, you would never be a non-Vaishnavist Hindu.
If you knew the real truth about God, you would never be an atheist or defaithed.
Ooh, I stand corrected. I always thought that {tapeworms} was a subset of {flatworms} and so they'd do it too, but the family (well, phylum) tree's more nuanced than that. (Thanks, Wikipedia! *thumbs up*)
Awesome. I'll keep an eye out for the video.And thanks! Yeah, I don't know... part of me wonders if I'll eventually see a theist respond to that post with, "But I do have faith that [fairies / unicorns / leprechauns / vampires / orbital teapots] don't exist. Undying faith. Doesn't everybody?" It wouldn't suprise me. Faith is a virtue, after all.
I don't know whether tapeworms have any of the cool multiple-head-type powers that flatworms have, but for that nifty ability to latch onto a digestive tract and just take things easy from there, I have to give them a nod of respect.
Ahh, internal parasites, you've got everything a slacker could want but the sweatpants.
Great! Looking forward to that sequel.
Fortunately for us, RB is on the case. Let's
BTW, glad to learn of your blog. I like your post Faith to be an Atheist; it addresses a particularly inane charge made by the truly witless. "It takes faith to not believe in my deity" makes as much sense as "It takes faith to not believe in vampires".
Hey, as I said in my response to your comment, I am making a video that will feature just such a theme. It should be up in the next day or two, depending on my schedule.Thanks again for the support!
Really interesting post! I've been known to say that, of the super-gross-out awful medical conditions one could have, having a tapeworm would probably be one of the coolest (considering). They are amazing critters.
I haven't heard of such a video -- hadn't heard of one like this before reading those couple posts on Debunking Christianity -- but I agree, one like the one you described would be more universally compelling. If I was savvier with such things I'd do it myself, but A/V editing is one of the areas of technology I've not ventured into. I'd feature it on my blog as well if it were to exist.
All-righty! The comment is a wee out of place in a post about flatworms, but I did indeed mention Jehovah's Witnesses, and the gist of your comment is certainly germane to the site overall.
Thanks! And my hat is off to the people compiling information on JW abuses (or other religious abuses, or heck, any other institutional abuses). It's a service to all.
The following SUMMARIES OF OVER 1400 JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES CRIMINAL and CIVIL COURT CASES will provide the BEST and MOST ACCURATE info about Jehovah's Witnesses, their beliefs, and how they ACTUALLY practice such day to day. The following website summarizes 900 court cases and lawsuits affecting children of Jehovah's Witness Parents, including 400 cases where the JW Parents refused to consent to life-saving blood transfusions for their dying children, as well as nearly 400 CRIMINAL cases -- most involving MURDERS: DIVORCE, BLOOD TRANSFUSIONS, AND OTHER LEGAL ISSUES AFFECTING CHILDREN OF JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES jwdivorces.bravehost.com The following website summarizes over 500 lawsuits filed by Jehovah's Witnesses against their Employers, incidents involving problem JW Employees, and other secret JW "history" court cases: EMPLOYMENT ISSUES UNIQUE TO JEHOVAH'S WITNESS EMPLOYEES jwemployees.bravehost.com
"I have to say that it MIGHT have been a little easier for you to walk away if your family was drifting away and you had friends outside the congregation."
Without a doubt, that made it easy for me. I've come to realize that I was in an unusually accomodating situation! I know it's far more difficult for many other people, whose family and friends remain in "the Truth"; for them, it's really throwing away everyone closest to them. My hat is off to everyone in that situation who manages to escape; they're far tougher than I needed to be!
Re fear of the New System: Very interesting take on things – and, I have to admit, a surprising one to me too! I don't believe I ever heard of any JW expressing fear of the New System (at least, no one said anything like that to me!).
In my case, I never pictured that all the works of mankind would be destroyed. Maybe that idea is in a publication I missed, or maybe it's an area where different JWs imagine different things, but – to the degree I thought about it at all – I imagined that, sure, we'd still have boats and buildings and all kinds of stuff in the New System. Maybe pre-NS art, music, etc. too, as long as it wasn't sacrilegious stuff (and I'll grant that, from the fundamentalist viewpoint, that does whittle the offerings down a lot).
Cars? Trains? I myself never heard a prediction one way or the other on that; my assumption would have been that, sure, we'd still have them if they were needed and the bad effects (pollution, etc.) were mitigated (divinely?). Or maybe we wouldn't need them, and then, hey, that's great, because, you know, eternal life in paradise to the max! (Translation: Maybe the NS story is as vague as "life in heaven" scenarios, after all...)
In any case, I guess I imagined that we'd still have as much technology and art and other good man-made things as we wanted (as long as it was also Pleasing To The Lord and all that). And on a personal level, I was pleased as could be about the thought of living down close to the animals and bugs. But that's because I was a kid, and was already outside trying to play with all the animals and bugs I could catch. : )
Now, all that said, there was still one quiet horror lurking below all that Tribulation + NS stuff, and you touched upon it: Billions of dead people denied entry because they didn't have the right religion. Including Grandma and Grandpa and all those school classmates and...
We kids did ask about that, and the answer was always some sort of vague cross between "That's why Jehovah's giving them a chance now" and "When the NS comes, you'll be happy and you won't worry about it". Or something like that. Essentially "don't think about it".
It seems to work on kids. But I'm certain that had I stayed with "the Truth" into my 20s, that point would have caused an ever-widening crack in my "faith". My thinking now is this: If, bizarrely enough, it should turn out that the Christian God is real and "the End is nigh" and all that, then I would praise Adam for having chosen his wife over God, and I would likewise throw in my lot with humanity, not some invisible sky alien. If that means passing up God's little "reward" and going down with my loved ones, than so be it! I can't respect anyone who'd choose otherwise.