Jim wants to testify to you [YOU RESPOND]
Offline From: [email protected]
Sent: Saturday, May 30, 2009 7:39 PM
Subject: [Defend my God!] God
Jim sent a message using the contact form at
http://www.rationalresponders.com/contact.
I was raised Lutheran and thought Jesus was a cartoon Character as a child
There was a time I though all things all together were like god
There was a time I made my ex-wife my god
There was a time I went though VERY deep depression when she left me and I
was very sick needing surgery I was suicidal I attempted
At my lowest point I felt the hand of God hold me it was amazing I saw
a what I call a cold corner of hell and then saw me as a little tiny jim
in the palm of this HUGE LOVING hand the comfort was incredible
I have seen the interview you have online and an interview you did on
night line
Have been healed of sever sciatica pain down both legs one night feeling
as if it was Jesus around 2/3s of my body This was many years of
extreme pain and it was and is real to me I have not had the pain for
many years and did have it for many years before that healing
My fiancée had died 16 years ago while giving birth to her youngest
son her body dead for 4 hours she experienced Heaven and was told it
was not her time at one point asked if she wanted to go back she said yes
and was back in her body in the delivery room where her mom was praying
over her dead body
I am sorry to hear some of the things you have gone through in your
stand to not believe in God the death threats and stuff that is just
dumb of them
I do believe in the God of Abraham He has reviled Himself to me in ways
you most likely would not believe and that is OK it is a choice
If you want to think of me as dumb that is ok also I just felt driven
to write to you
The God I believe in is a Loving God
I do not understand why we go through allot of Crap in life and we all do
I do believe in Heaven and hell and know I will be in Heaven
Thanks for having a place that i can send an email
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With all due respect, subjective experiences that one might interpret as being encounters with God are not a valid reason for thinking that any such being exists. The human brain is an amazing organ and it can create all sorts of internal experiences that do not necessarily tell us anything about reality outside of one's skull.
I'm fifty years old and I've had sciatica, too. Eventually, it went away, as it does with many people.
Near death experiences are most probably a product of the brain's reaction to a lack of oxygen. They can be reproduced in the lab.
That is almost correct. How one decides to judge the difference between truth and nonsense is often a choice. Some people choose to judge on the basis of tradition, subjective emotional experiences, and the like. Others choose to judge on the basis of reason and evidence. The former often leads to belief in God, Heaven, Hell, and so on. The latter does not, if followed consistently.
Tradition and subjective emotional experience have given us very little of practical value. The pursuit of reality through reason and evidence have given us modern medicine and more efficient methods of producing food.
It used to be that if you wanted three children, you'd better have five because two would most probably not survive past infancy. It used to be that if you wanted a lot of children, you should plan on marrying more than once because you were likely to have at least one wife die while giving birth. What made the difference? Prayer? Faith? No. Hard work and a dedication to rational, scientific investigation are the reasons that, in western societies at least, infant mortality and maternal mortality are now rare. Your God didn't do that -- science did.
Reality is the graveyard of the gods.
I am sorry those bad things happened to you. But everyone here including me have had bad things happen to them.
I lost my adoptive father when I was 13. I saw my grandmother DEAD from a heart attack when I was 7. My mother was raped when I was 16. I have lost both my biological grandparents. My adoptive mother currently has chronic health problems.
Bad things happen to all of us. Far worse has happened to others around the world. I'd say both you and I have nothing on the Jews who were forced to burry their fellow Jews who were gassed. I'd say that we have nothing on the victims of Darfur.
It is normal for humans to try to find comfort in times of extreme emotional stress. It has caused people to change positions BOTH WAYS.
I didn't give up god belief because bad things happened. I slowly over a period of years questioned it and came to the realization that it was not a sustainable position, BASED ON EVIDENCE, not on anything good or bad that has happened in my life.
Holding any position on any issue, much less a god claim, should not be based on the fear of bad happening or the promise of good happening.
When citizens of Iraq are affected by other Muslims violence or death due to our weapons, they lose family members, fathers, sons, daughters, wives, and like you, they cling to Allah for comfort. Because they suffer, is that proof to you that Allah is the one true god?
It sucks that bad things happen, but there is no magic to bad or good and no need to cling to a deity to explain these bad things.
It is not complicated nor does it require a fictional super hero to explain.
For the same reason mudslides happen. For the same reason ecoli exists. For the same reason earthquakes happen. For the same reason tornados' happen.
Bad happens because it is part of reality. It is not a result of comic book heros vs comic book villains.
The Ancient Egyptians thought the sun was a super natural being that cared about them. They prayed to it and falsely believed any bad or good that happened to them was a result of his will. If you can accept that they were wrong, what makes you think you escaped the same human flaw they fell for in believing what they did?
Our species have always suffered at the hands of natural, nature including health problems, environmental disasters, war and crime. All these things are NATURAL.
Natural does not mean good or bad, NATURAL simply means that which happens and can be observed. The sun is natural, but you wouldn't want to live on it's surface.
Again, all of us empathize with what happened to you. And having support from others in rough times helps you get through those rough times. But clinging to invisible fictional beings only gives you a placebo. What really got you through it was your own desire to get through it.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
JamesJohn, I've read your testimony and all I can say is, if that's the best God can do, he needs to work on his skills.
Liberate your mind. Fuck religion.
Why is hardship and sulk stories followed by slight glimpses of good things that happen to you evidence of god, this happens to everyone. I just dont get the "bad things happen to me but god help me through it" argument for belief, so many people dont make it thru and have it so much worse than you, its notfair to them to say god is out their helping people, its twisted.
Brothers, it's time to testify and I want to know, are you ready to testify? Are you ready?!. I give you a testimonial. The MC5! *WAAAAAAH*
Exactly. Just look at all the suffering in the world. Is this person trying to imply that those people aren't praying as hard as s/he did? I know they are praying for God to pull them out of their hells on earth, but he's ignoring them. Either that or there simply is no god. When you look at it that way, it all makes sense.
Liberate your mind. Fuck religion.
Can you imagine what this god of his is hearing everyday, the cries, the rape, people being murdered, dying of starvation, all praying, over and over billions of prayers everyday. According to him he ignores 99.9% and randomly helps .1% by simply allowing naturally good things to come to them here and their that are not uncommon things atall, really???? Wow, i mean he's good, REAL GOOD! I believe anyone who claims god has helped them in their life by telling their sulk story is a direct insult to the good people enduring imaginable hardship around the world who are also praying, how arrogant of you, ya god cares about YOU and not 100 childlen that just died teriblly painful deaths while i was writting this post, mind-boggelingly arrogant.
Very fucking arrogant. Two "arguments" theists give that make me want to burn my clit off:
1. "I was addicted to crack, coke, meth, and heroin, was in a gang, was raped and beaten and left for dead, and God saved me."
Yeah, he saved YOU and let thousands of others who, believe it or not, were suffering worse than you were, DIE painful and agonizing deaths. This line of thought is so fucking egocentric, and it goes to show how special Christians think they are over others.
2. "I don't judge people. I don't hate gays. I don't proselytize. I don't tell people they will burn in hell. I don't deny women their reproductive freedoms."
Okay, so because of the things you personally do not do, we should just let religion destroy humanity. Got it.
Liberate your mind. Fuck religion.
Also it refuses to give god credit for getting the person addicted to crack, coke, meth, heroin, and letting the person get raped and beaten. Sure they can say God wanted him to learn a lesson, but would it have been that harmful for an all knowing all loving god to have implanted those lessons in us before our birth?
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But Brian, you don't understand! FREE WILL!!! FREEWILLFREEWILLFREEWILL!!!111!!!1oneoneone!!1
Liberate your mind. Fuck religion.
God apparently took away his ability to punctuate along with his pain.
I would just like to point something out. Not that all Christians think this way (my mother is intelligent enough not to) but the ignorance associated with theism carries over pretty intensely into this type of subject, too. My entire extended family is hardcore Christian, and I actually had to listen to my uncle who is an emergency room physician say something as ridiculous as, "There are no starving children in this country [USA], and with most other developed countries being primarily Christian, they also do not have people who are starving."
So, don't expect this argument in particular to really hold any water with those people.
'Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. God wants you to go to war.'
It's amazing; how much peculiar and off-color discussion I miss out on sometimes...
Question: does anyone else see some of these threads/driveby posts to be 'litmus tests' for the level of compassion and empathy RRS has in general?
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
The god of abraham has 'reviled' himself to me. I'm so pleased to hear you believe going to be safe in heaven while I'll be burning in hell. Now you've reviled yourself to me, too. Thanks and have a lovely weekend.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
I wouldn't expect any reasonable arguments would. The argument is still valid.
Tru dat. Anyway, we shouldn't worry, because the Christian god supports all kinds of foundations to make really sad commercials showing off poor dying children that aren't actually poor or dying but it doesn't matter anyway because if you give your hard-earned money to them then the hosts and producers become infinitely richer and the children will still be there to make more commercials! Yay! Wait...
'Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. God wants you to go to war.'