Raf

Ok fine. "And She Was" By Talking Heads

I have to say that I was THE anti-"evolutionist" in my high school, and today I am really embarrassed about it. I remember submitting a science project asking why horses and cows have different kinds of teeth when they eat the same kinds of grass. Or something like that. It was 40 years ago. I used to blame evolution and its doctrine of survival of the fittest for the rise of Hitler. Hitler, who, by the way, was not an atheist. And not a proper Christian. An evil SOB whose "God" was a hateful corruption of the Christian God. But not an atheist. Anyway, as I educated myself, I realized certain truths that, to be honest, quite surprised me. 1. Evolution does not have an endgame. It's not headed somewhere. 2. No species is more "advanced" than any other. We are where we are, when we are. Gorillas are just as advanced as man... it's a matter of their suitability to survive in their environment. 3. "Survival of the fittest" isn't about who's strongest. It's about who lives long enough to reproduce.

Our experiences are not mutually exclusive. The recognition that one has lost face does indeed open a floodgate that forces you to re-evaluate EVERYTHING. And that did happen to me. Some of it, I worked out by myself. Some of it, I followed the footsteps of people who walked the path long before I did. But I found that a lot of it was retracing my steps and realizing it was there all along, that I was suppressing doubts instead of recognizing their role as protectors of my conscience against self-deception. Even as a Christian, I knew the story of Job could not be true. Seen in its most pro-faith light, it makes God out to be a gigantic anus. A friend of mine once got angry because his cat died, and someone else in the family replaced him with an identical looking cat. Now, that family member wasn't actually responsible, directly or indirectly, for the first cat dying. But still, the palliative for a dead cat is empathy, not a new cat to replace the old one. But we're supposed to believe God did right by Job because he gave him a new wife and kids!?!?!?!? Only if it didn't happen and real people didn't die horrific, unnecessary deaths so that God could win a BET he KNEW he would win in the first place is such a morally bankrupt story even remotely justifiable. And this has NOTHING to do with how VPW butchered this story.

Our experiences are not mutually exclusive. The recognition that one has lost face does indeed open a floodgate that forces you to re-evaluate EVERYTHING. And that did happen to me. Some of it, I worked out by myself. Some of it, I followed the footsteps of people who walked the path long before I did. But I found that a lot of it was retracing my steps and realizing it was there all along, that I was suppressing doubts instead of recognizing their role as protectors of my conscience against self-deception. Even as a Christian, I knew the story of Job could not be true. Seen in its most pro-faith light, it makes God out to be a gigantic anus. A friend of mine once got angry because his cat died, and someone else in the family replaced him with an identical looking cat. Now, that family member wasn't actually responsible, directly or indirectly, for the first cat dying. But still, the palliative for a dead cat is empathy, not a new cat to replace the old one. But we're supposed to believe God did right by Job because he gave him a new wife and kids!?!?!?!? And there was a LOT of that. Only if it didn't happen and real people didn't die horrific, unnecessary deaths so that God could win a BET he KNEW he would win in the first place is such a morally bankrupt story even remotely justifiable. And this has NOTHING to do with how VPW butchered this story.

That the Bible says something is proof that the Bible says it. It is sufficient evidence to base a doctrine on. It proves that somewhere along the line, believers accepted this as a fact. It does NOT prove they were correct in doing so, or that the incidents relayed ever really took place. You can say "I believe this happened because the Bible says so." You cannot say, "Because the Bible says this happened, it therefore did, and how do you respond to it?" I mean, you can SAY that. But the answer might come in the form of giggles.

Re-reading the thread from the beginning and I don't recall answering this question. I don't think I ever had those worries. Maybe the route of my journey was a detour around that location. See, I WAS right. There is a God and his son is Christ and I'm born again and I'm going to heaven and the Bible is God's Word and and and... And whenever I encountered a piece that didn't fit [why don't we know Noah's wife's name when she like Eve is the mother of all living? How did so many civilizations survive the Biblical flood without interruption? If the Exodus took place as described, why didn't they name the Pharoah?] I put that piece aside. After a few years, I noticed that the pieces I put aside not only outnumbered the pieces that were positive or constructive, but the pieces set aside, for the reasons set aside, actually fit together like a shoe in a sock. So by the time I was in a position to consider the "consequences" of atheism, I had already rejected Christianity as inconsistent with reality. Fearing hell would mean accepting as truth something I was increasingly recognizing as a lie. By now you'll have heard of Pascal's Wager, which was presented in a simplified form in PFAL. Briefly summarized, it says: "You might as well believe. If you're wrong, you lose nothing, but if you're right, you gain everything. Unbelief gives you nothing to gain if you're right and everything to lose if you're wrong." Pascal's Wager is not only stupid: it posits a stupid God who can't tell a sincere believer from a poser afraid of punishment. It also presumes only two choices: unbelief or Christianity. There are THOUSANDS of other choices. Heck, there are thousands of options in Christianity alone. A God who has to threaten hell to gain worship is not a God worth worshipping. True, not all Christianities teach a literal hell, but so what? Many do. And those that don't have other issues. So to answer the question concisely: never worried about being wrong.

"I don’t mean to invite discussion of this. I missed some posts. Not sure what’s going on and it doesn’t really matter, but I couldn’t resist another opportunity to write 'four-crucified stupidity.' " I would not dare ask you to refrain.

Nathan, Because you have incomplete info. I am going to invite you to self-edit so the offending party does not feel the need to respond. How you proceed is up to you.

Ken is an idiot of the highest order, and I could see taking offense if you think he's right, but unless you do, the shoe should not fit. If it doesn't fit, no one's talking about you.

One of the first things I realized pre-deconversion is that the story of Job was just a story and not history. It does not pretend to have actually taken place in history. It was a fable, no more historical than The Fox and the Grapes. Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob... fictional characters in an origin story designed to unify a politically vulnerable people. It took a little longer for Moses and Joshua to sink in.

Which of you by being a megawatt movie star can add a cubit to his stature?

Heh heh heh. George thought he was completely lost, and he was. Was this Simple Minds?

The problem from an unbeliever's perspective is that some believers tend to hide God in "I don't know." Where does thunder come from? I don't know. GOD!!! Actually, there's a natural explanation. Does it account for hurricanes? No, I don't know where... GOD!!! Actually, there's a natural cause for hurricanes. Evolution answers a lot of questions and challenges a lot of preconceptions. But it doesn't answer a LOT. Nor does it claim to. How did life begin? Evolution does not answer. The answer does not affect evolution at all. So even if it was God who got the ball rolling, that does not change the FACT of evolution. It happened. It's how we arrived at the variety of species we have today. It's why there are more species of birds on earth than there are verses in the New Testament. Some creationists are fond of asking questions that lack foundation and comprehension. Why is evolution "only" a theory? Because so is gravity. Theories don't graduate into laws. Theories in science are conclusions, not hypotheses. You don't experiment to prove a theory. You experiment, get the results and incorporate them into the theory. Evolution is not a hypothesis. It's not a preconception. It's the opposite of a bias. It's what you get when you ditch the biases and let the evidence speak for itself. But there will always be questions to which we don't have the answer. And we will answer "I don't know." And the Ken Hamms of the world will say aha! GOD is THERE! Until we find the answer. Then God is elsewhere. Every. Single. Time.

Seems to me we have addressed this claim before. I would ask that we all be respectful of each other's journeys and not seek to second-guess what others believed at different points in their lives. Frankly, it's rude. If you can't handle the fact that a sincere Christian had a sincere change of heart, you should sincerely reconsider visiting a forum called Questioning Faith. I apologize if I misunderstood your point and respectfully request clarification.

Paul was a very skilled and knowledgeable interpreter of Old Testament scripture, which is probably why he was so good at converting Jews to Christianity... Except of course he wasn't. He was dreadful at it. That's why he turned to the Gentiles. See, it's a lot easier to sell bizarre interpretations of the Old Testament to people who had no fundamental understanding of the scriptures than it is to sell them to people who actually knew what they were talking about. I mean, it shouldn't strike anyone as odd that the demographic least likely to accept Paul's interpretation of Hebrew Scripture are the very people who most revere Hebrew Scripture.

I always thought WordWolf was the best clue giver in this category. And he was.

The discussion here so far assumes Tongues are genuine and questions whether it proves anything. That is off topic on THIS thread. Examining SIT as part of the "deconversion" process is fair game but not what was happening.

Nice catch. Abraham was ready to make his kid a burnt offering. Jephthah made his kid a burnt offering. VPW made his followers into burnt-out offerings. And we haven't even gotten to Job yet!

waysider, I think it would have been great if vpw had included a citation that could be checked. He's not exactly reliable. But he's not necessarily wrong just because we don't trust him. Here's my thoughts on human sacrifice in the Bible: There is nothing in Genesis that even hints that Abraham was asked to do anything other than kill his kid. There appears to be no historical record of any interpretation of Genesis 22 that claims Abraham misunderstood what God meant when he asked to sacrifice Isaac. Centuries of Jewish scholarship and rabbinical tradition: not a hint of this "Three's Company" interpretation. I have a hard time thinking VPW got this one right and no one else in history did. Jephthah is another story. There does seem to be at least some support for the notion that his daughter basically lived out her life as a kind of nun. It's a minority position, but it's not without support. I intend to look into it further, but that's where I'm at now. A few points: In the story in Judges, we never hear God's point of view. Is he ok with what Jephthah vowed? Is he ok with Jephthah following through? We don't know, because he doesn't say. And he doesn't say because... Wait, why DOESN'T he say? I mean, he stopped Abraham. He got a jackass to talk to Balaam. For someone so chatty to suddenly fall silent when the life of a teenage girl is at stake...? Out of character. And let's suppose Jephthah's daughter suffers the fate VPW suggested. Does that make it remotely just? I mean, yeah, it's better than killing her, but what is the lesson behind this story? Because Jephthah is kind of an a-hole. And why should his daughter have to suffer for his hasty vow? Maybe more later.

Digressing ends here. Next mention gets deleted without warning

Good point. There are tons of Bible stories that make no sense when you look at them dispassionately. Abraham is just the tip of the iceberg.

Obviously no one is entitled to an opinion on scripture except chockfull, so you should just accept that you're wrong, biased and wearing sh!t-colored glasses because if you don't, you might kill another Christian GSer to keep him from posting. Is that how it works now? Self-appointed prophets are ok because they have faith. Non-theists are blinded by bias because they reject God

Couple of points. First, I would seriously not brag about being in that company. Second, that I chased DWBH off the site is a slanderous lie. That you believe your so-called insider information WITHOUT HAVING DISCUSSED IT WITH ME speaks volumes about your fact-finding efforts. Had you one OUNCE of decency and fairness, you would have contacted me for my side of the story. You never did. You judged me on the word of a man who has chased every close friend out of his life with his increasingly unhinged behavior. But you never even ASKED for my side of the story. Why don't you ask oldiesman how DWBH treated him before I had to step in? Because that would be fair and that's the last thing you want. Has OS seen any meaningful eclipses lately? What did they mean? Before you go trusting his lying-ass word about what happened on GSC, why don't you check out his reliability? Better yet, I defy you to find a single example of me shutting OS down over an issue of faith. One. ONE. You won't be able to because it never happened. Of course you know skyrider stopped posting because he died. DIDN'T STOP YOU FROM DISHONESTLY BLAMING ME FOR HIS ABSENCE THOUGH, DID IT?

So have many of the atheists. Hell most of the moderators are gone. PAW is gone most of the time. Most of GSC did exactly what its critics said they should do: they've moved on.

Something is really wrong with you, chockfull. If you want to relitigate DWBH's departure from GSC, you are free to take it up with the site owner. But at this point after being told multiple times you continue to blame me, there is no reasoning with you. Continue to post all you want. Continue to express your evasive, criticism-immune faith all you want. I will not stop you. I didn't expect an apology from you, bur I did expect a modicum of decency. Somehow you didn't even manage THAT.