Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Wow, I totally believe in the Bible now!

After getting back from work, I found a leaflet from Jehovah's Witnesses in my mail, which was about life after death. One part of the leaflet asks "Can we believe what the Bible says?", and of course it says yes, for three reasons that basically amount to "because the Bible says so". Well I'm totally convinced now! Is that really the best they can come up with? That kind of circular logic wouldn't fool a kindergartener. It's like if all Charles Darwin came up with while writing On The Origin Of Species was, "look at my beard! Would a man with such an epic beard ever lie to you?" (Yes, I know he didn't have the beard yet when he wrote it, it's just for the sake of example.) And this is why I'm not a fan of organized religion (among other reasons). Too much suspension of disbelief involved.

25 comments:

  1. That's not even suspension of disbelief, but flat out "believe me because I said so". The kind of reasoning that every 5 year old understood was bullshit when mommy and daddy used it to answer questions that were either uncomfortable, without a good answer from them, or the child dared questioned the way things were. At least make up some bullshit about miracles or how religion changed some schmuck's life. Something at least theoretically tangible.

    That said, do JW's in those parts proselytize in English or French (or bilingually?)

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    1. The leaflet was monolingual French, so I'd be inclined to say French only. It's not even worth wasting extra paper to print bilingual leaflets in rural Quebec. The only places I can think of where it could even be considered are Montreal and its suburbs, Gatineau and maybe Sherbrooke.

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    2. Ah (from USA so shows how little I know...that and I assumed you were from such areas given your English)

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  2. That's what every argument about religion boils down to. You can refute anything they say, and when it comes down to it the only thing they can come up with in the end is "My religion is true because my religion's holy book says it is!"

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  3. Oh! I got one of those in the mail, I scanned it and posted it on some image boards.

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  4. The funniest thing is how they don't actually identify from which group the leaflet's actually coming from until you reach the fine print on the last page... at least, that's how they do it in my region. Really pathetic. They are so desperate they will go as low as trying to hide their beliefs in hope of catching our attention before we know.
    If they actually showed more pride, I'd have some sort of respect for them at least. (Even though in the end I still wouldn't care at all and just put their leaflet in the garbage.)

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  5. Slow, can you write a verbatim (but translated) transcription of those three reasons?

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    1. No, I already threw it into the recycling bin. It's basically just excerpts from the Bible.

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    2. Which amounts to "The source material states this, therefore it's all factual." Got it.

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  6. I got the same leaflet the other day, except I was home when the Jehovah's Witnesses came knocking.
    The guy, no joke, wanted to give me the pamphlet to 'spread the mind-blowing message about the Bible'. If I didn't have a guest over at the time, I would've let rip on him.

    Anyways, the pamphlet as Slow said doesn't really offer a whole lot of argument, it just leads to http://www.jw.org/en/ which is the Jehovah's Witness website. Yeah, you read that correctly.

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  7. My girlfriend's brother is of that religion. The rest of her direct family are Seventh-Day Adventists. Not the best first impressions to be had. At least they don't try to convert me...

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  8. You know Slowflake, I'm religious, and believe in Jesus myself...but I know EXACTLY what you're talking about, and quite frankly, I think it's doing a disservice to the faith (whatever their intentions were). I remember having the exact same thing happen to me while I was still fairly young, and pondering topics like whether Masturbation was right or wrong. I wanted some guidance both from my parent's (which I got), and from what the Bible itself said on that topic, so I looked on the internent...

    And guess what? I got tons and tons of results going for no...but when I look through them to find out why it's wrong? Pretty much all I get from them is two excerpts from the Bible...

    Mathe 5:27 - 27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’; 28 but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye makes you [w]stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you [x]to lose one of the parts of your body, [y]than for your whole body to be thrown into [z]hell. 30 If your right hand makes you [aa]stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; for it is better for you [ab]to lose one of the parts of your body, [ac]than for your whole body to go into [ad]hell."

    And I think MAYBE one other verse...but basically, ignoring all the other rhetoric, literally all they said was "Masturbating is a sin because because sexual sin is bad!", you know what I mean?

    Fortunately, I got both wiser council, and after more digging through Leviticus, the Bible doesn't seem to think it's much different from sleeping with your wife (or only a bit less clean depending on how you read it I guess).

    But yeah, if you'll forgive me on that weird tangent, I can empathize entirely with you, and I hope that you won't take this bad experience and generalize it to all of us. Will you please not do that?

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    1. There is also gay marriage, which falls in a similar category to this

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    2. I'm not religious but it reminds me of this stand up comedy from Eddie Griffin he was basically like "All religions have the same central belief: Dont fuck with me and i won't fuck with you. Jews, muslims and christians all believe in the same god, just different messengers. Who gives a fuck who the messenger was, Did you get the message!?"

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    3. The main problem I have with religion is that any positive potential it could have (and there is for sure) is that it's often used by greedy people as a means of gaining influence. French Canadians, for instance, were kept in the dark ages until 1960 by the stranglehold of the Catholic Church and a government that was all too happy to play along. And that's just one of many many many many examples.

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  9. Yeah Religion can be an asshole sometimes, case in point: Kashmir, Northern Ireland, the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch trials(witch trials in general) and all of the attacks on India from extremists. i hope this doesn't piss people off too much, but dang slowflake. You finally took on the touchiest subject aside from race. You have Balls of Steel. Everyone can appreciate that.

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  10. Well of course, fair's fair. I mean, don't get me wrong, if you start calling the religion or the Bible misogynistic or anything, THEN I'll debate you (and I WILL be able to debate you, as someone who's read the whole thing), but otherwise...yeah, that's fair :) !

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    1. Okay then, what's the context for:

      "And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence."

      And:

      "Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord."

      And I could be at this all day.

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    2. (gleeful) Ooh! A religious debate that does not amount to both sides calling each other idiots for believing what they do! I'll get the snacks!...
      Yes, I am mentally five at times...

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    3. Yeah, but here's the thing. It's perfectly normal to not agree with everything your holy book says - in fact it says so much that if you do, then you're probably being brainwashed, Well, there's that and the sheer amount of contradictions in them (most notably the Bible, if only because it's what most of us know best) - heck, the Bible itself has a few more progressist passages in regards to sexism.

      As far as I'm concerned, if you want to be a good Christian, the only thing you need to worry about is "love thy neighbor as thyself". The rest is just padding at best.

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  11. [quote]As far as I'm concerned, if you want to be a good Christian, the only thing you need to worry about is "love thy neighbor as thyself"[/quote]

    The Bible more or less flat out says that actually. Jesus is asked what the most important law to observe is, and he answers, basically, "Love the Lord and your neighbor as you love yourself".

    http://biblia.com/books/gs-netbible/Mk12.28

    [quote]"And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence. Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord."[/quote]

    I put those two verses together because they come from the same page. Anyways, I always just sort of read that as Paul being a man of his time, much as he wasn't keen on the idea of men and women marrying rather than taking vows of celibacy that they might follow the LORD...

    http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+7&version=NASB

    Even though them doing as he suggests would obviously be bad for the Earth, in that the population would shrink rather than grow. Heck, God himself tells his sons and daughters to "be fruitful and multiply", so God himself clearly doesn't have a problem with it.

    Also, in Acts 18:38, it mentions two people, Priscilla and Aquila, a husband and wife couple, taking a man aside to correct him on some facts about scripture that he was misconstruing...

    http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts%2018&version=NASB

    Granted, it didn't involve Priscilla teaching the man by himself, but it seems to me that if she didn't have ANY role, she would've been left out of the passage entirely, you know what I mean?

    Sometimes, when a man in the Bible speaks, it's not him being a prophet of God so much as it his him just being...well, him.

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    1. Tell that to the most hardcore Christians, who are convinced every last letter in the Bible is the word of God, and sometimes even treat it as a history or science book because of that. That's the problem, moreso than the book itself.

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  12. Well, I consider myself pretty "hardcore", and I don't have that opinion. I mean, I think all the events described in the Bible were real events (except for perhaps the Book of Job), but I don't think every time even a good man had something to say, that he was necessarily right, although I DO think it's important for women not to be haughty and for men not to be violent and impulsive (Paul also instructs men on proper conduct right before those passages you mentioned), as is the implied message in those verses.

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  13. And to give you an impression of how "hardcore" I am, I don't believe in sex before marriage, and am still a virgin at the age of 20.

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