u/Appropriate_Look_171

The Bible is wild.

It is front to back about how to have sex, how to own slaves, who to murder and what incense to burn lest you be set on fire.

And of course the slavery stuff.

And then there is the part where “if two men are fighting and a woman breaks up the fight and accidentally touches one of their penises, she needs to have her hands cut off”. Try to make sense of that, and of course it has to be the woman.

And when they say, no, no, it is metaphor, even the metaphors are bad.

Hosea is basically “spousal abuse”, where god is “in the right” while he will “sexually devastate and harm and besmirch and punish Israel”, then come back like “let’s make up together”.

Is that marital abuse or moral wisdom?

And yes, there is also “the donkey that talks”, “the snake that talks”, “the dragons” and all the other wild stuff people pretend is profound because they were taught to fear the book.

You can find some pretty parts in it but, overall, overwhelmingly, it is not a good book, and no child should have anything to do with this book.

My book of bible stories; many jw kids grew up with it.

You can find a bit of corn in the worst turds, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not a turd.

And btw, comfort does not rescue it either.

You can get comfort in fairy tales without a book that tells you how to own slaves.

False hope is still false and the bad far outweighs the good.

Just because people were trained to respect the bible, that doesn’t make its claims credible.

The bible is full of claims, and some of those are not small. It has talking serpents, talking donkeys, angels, demons, global floods, virgins who give birth without having sex and without breaking the hymen, resurrections, miracles, and also invisible creatures that control history.

Just because a book says it happened, that doesn’t mean it happened.

Furthermore, there are other equally fantastical books, like the Bhagavad Gita, the Quran, etc., that also make supernatural claims, like the moon breaking in half. But depending on what side of the world you are from or how you were raised, you won’t give that “other book” the same respect and credibility.

But let’s go back to the bible (lowercase intended). Its claims are not just unproven. Internally, it is messy, incoherent, and has been, it´s being and will continue to be disproven externally.

For example, there are conflicting creation orders, Matthew and Luke give different genealogies for jesus (lowercase intended), Judas dies in two different ways, the resurrection stories don’t line up cleanly, and the flood story has been completely destroyed by geology. The earth is about 4.54 billion years old, and flood geology has fatal scientific problems. This literal picture does not survive scrutiny by evidence.

But some say, "Oh, but it has ancient cities that existed, that proves is true!".

Yeah, that’s like saying Spider Man is real because New York is real. A real city in a made up story doesn’t prove the miracle in the story. A real king doesn’t prove a prophecy. A moral lesson doesn’t prove divine inspiration. There are tons of moral lessons in anime, like JJK. Does that make them divinely inspired? And of course, an old text doesn’t become true just because it survived.

When you remove the privilege the bible is given, it is no different from any other ancient religious text that has supernatural claims, carries contradictions, and, when it can actually be checked it fails, terribly.

So the bible has not been proved it has been protected, go ahead and remove the protection, and you’ll see it for what it is: a fantasy book.

Like a building without good support, Faith collapses, once you test it.

A jw uses faith to defend jehovah the same way a mormon uses faith to defend j smith, a muslim to defend mohammed a catholic to defend mary, saints, miracles and the church, and every other faith based idea to defend their claims.

Faith is the same method with contradictory conclusions.

This means that faith does not identify truth, it only protects whatever belief a person has already accepted.

A reliable methd to truth needs to clearly separate true claims from false claims, but faith cannot do that because any religion can use it and every false religion already does.

So when someone says "I believe it on faith", they are clearly admitting they don't have a reason.

Faith can prove commitment? absolutely, but it doesn't prove reality.

And btw, personal experiences are not a path to truth either.

Like a building without good support, Faith collapses, once you test it.

A jw uses faith to defend jehovah the same way a mormon uses faith to defend j smith, a muslim to defend mohammed a catholic to defend mary, saints, miracles and the church, and every other faith based idea to defend their claims.

Faith is the same method with contradictory conclusions.

This means that faith does not identify truth, it only protects whatever belief a person has already accepted.

A reliable methd to truth needs to clearly separate true claims from false claims, but faith cannot do that because any religion can use it and every false religion already does.

So when someone says "I believe it on faith", they are clearly admitting they don't have a reason.

Faith can prove commitment? absolutely, but it doesn't prove reality.

And btw, personal experiences are not a path to truth either.

Nobody comes out believing in jehovah, jesus, allah, satan, demons, hell, heaven, sin, armageddon, paradise, or holy books, that has to be taught.

When you teach a child that invisible beings are watching them, judging them, reading their thoughts, threatening them, or deciding whether they deserve life or death, that is not harmless that is psychological control.

Adults can believe whatever they want, but putting supernatural fear into a child before they can think critically is indoctrination.

And yes, in many cases, it is abuse.

I don’t mean with verses, feelings, or “look at the trees” , that is not evidence just your beliefs talking.

I want demonstrable, provable evidence for the supernatural.

Something we can test, check, and separate from imagination, culture, fear, trauma, coincidence, or human psychology.

If God is real, show me evidence for God.

If Satan is real, show me evidence for Satan

Not bad things happen, therefore Satan, or not good things happen, therefore God.

Humans already do horrible things without demons, and humans already do beautiful things without gods. So where is the evidence?

I am not talking about the claim or the book making the claim or the interpretation of the claim:

I mean the evidence. This evidence has to be detectable

And before someone says “you can’t demand physical evidence for something beyond physics” that misses the point.

I am not asking to put God or Satan in a test tube, I am asking for any demonstrable effect in reality.

If God heals, answers prayers, speaks, protects, punishes, reveals truth, or performs miracles, those effects should show up somewhere.

If Satan tempts, possesses, deceives, attacks, or causes evil, those effects should be distinguishable from normal human behavior, trauma, mental illness, coincidence, or bad ideas.

If the supernatural interacts with the world, we should be able to detect the interaction, if it never interacts with the world in any detectable way, then it looks exactly like it does not exist.

So God and Satan don't exist, prove me wrong.

Edit:

Looks like posts like this ruffle feathers even in ex Christian spaces, which is insane.

If you cannot question your own beliefs, you are not free, you are still protecting someone else’s wild imagination

Here we go again.

A tragedy happens, people are scared, as they should be, some families are affected and somehow the religious spin machine turns it "how appropriate is the daily text today for our brothers and sisters in Venezuela".

I want you to stop and think for five seconds.

If God can help after the earthquake, why not prevent the earthquake?

If someone says, "thank you Jehovah, my house was not damaged", what are they really saying about the people whose homes collapsed? That god protected some and let others suffer?

Can you call that love? justice? or favoritism?

And if the answer is "we do not understand Jehovah's ways", then stop saying you understand enough to give him credit when you survive.

You cannot credit God for the people who made it and excuse him for the people who did not.

What you end up is not evidence of divine help, instead, survivor bias colored by bible verses.

Step 1. There is one thing in your beliefs or dogma that doesn't make sense.

Step 2. You look and try to reinforce in the "official" explanation.

Step 3. This explanation works only if you do not question it too deeply.

Step 4. You then notice the same pattern with other teachings.

Step 5. Now you realize the answer changes depending of what needs to be defended.

Step 6. You start asking better questions, not "how do I defend this? but "Is this actually true?"

Step 7. You compare your religion to other religions.

Step 8. You realize that you reject other religions for the same reasons people reject yours.

Step 9. You notice that you were not being honest with yourself and you were using two standards. One for your religion and one for the other religions. You requested strict evidence for everyone else, except for yours, and use some special pleading for your own beliefs.

Step 10. You stop protecting your beliefs from examination.

Step 11. The entire structure starts losing support, little by little. Brick by brick, claim by claim, doctrine by doctrine, one assumption, one fear, one emotional attachment.

Step 12. You leave, not because you are a rebel, you want to sin, you never had real faith. You are leaving because the belief cannot survive your own honest scrutiny.

I am an atheist, but I spent over two decades as a JW. I came from a Catholic family, and my mom, against a lot of opposition, became a JW when I was about 7 or 8. So of course, she passed on that belief system to me and my siblings. Even earlier than that, she dragged us to church twice a week. My point is that belief in God, Jesus, and later the JW doctrinal system was implanted at an early age.

When I became a teenager, still unbaptized at the time, I stepped away from religion and went off to pursue girls, friends, studies, and work. But I always told myself that if I ever became religious again, I’d be a JW.

And of course, at 27, after a few setbacks in life, I started studying with my mom again, got baptized, and then spent the next 25 years doing unpaid labor for the religion.

Now, looking back, there was never a time when I didn’t believe in God. That idea was inculcated very early in life, and along with it came all the other ideas: that Satan existed, that demons existed, that the Bible is the word of God, that a time of destruction would come, that you needed to be serving Jehovah to make it to paradise, and that serving Jehovah meant being active in the organization.

But I never questioned whether any of this was true. What was the basis for it all? What were the hidden assumptions I was never evaluating? What were the foundational building blocks for the entire structure that became my faith? And most importantly, what was the evidence for my beliefs?

I don’t blame my mom. She did what she thought was right. But she did me a great disservice. I was sold ideas without evidence: that a God I had to answer to existed, that a magical man called Jesus came to this earth and was sacrificed, that the Devil was out to get me, and that if I didn’t serve God I was going to perish in Armageddon. But had she taught me how to properly evaluate these extraordinary claims, I would have never wasted more than two decades in the destructive cult that is the JW religion, or any other religious system, or the belief in a deity for that matter.

I was also taught the lie that only God-fearing people are good people. However, life kept giving me examples against that idea, and some of the worst human beings I had to deal with were zealous religious people inside and outside the JW cult.

Reality showed me that honesty, justice, hard work, responsibility, and other virtues are present in religious and non-religious people alike. I learned those mostly from the example of individuals who were not religious: my dad, my grandpa, friends, teachers.

So to answer the question: Why do most people believe in God? Because they were raised with that idea, authority figures in early childhood inculcated it, nurtured it, and no evidence or proof was needed for a young impressionable mind that would inherit not only the religion of his parents, but most importantly a core belief in a god. Yes, there are some other people who become religious later in life, mostly searching for meaning after adverse life events as a coping mechanism. We humans are very good at this.

I cannot go back in time. I just wish I had learned epistemology much sooner in life. Now that I’ve been free from the ideas of deity, religion, and magical thinking for a while, I feel my life has far more purpose. I don’t feel the fear and the guilt that accompany religious people. I value the limited time I have to live and understand that I must live it fully and that there is value in helping others and being kind is worth it, but not because that’s what a deity expects me to do, but because we all are in the same boat.

I understand now that I am not special, other than to myself. That I don’t have a God-given purpose. That I am not part of some special group marked for salvation. That God doesn’t speak to me in my heart. That my personal experiences are real only to me unless I can prove them with sufficient evidence to others. That no destruction caused by a deity is coming, nor did such a thing happen in the past. That extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.

And that old phrase I used to hear while I was proselytizing the WT lies was true:

“The world ends for those who die”.

If you’ve read this far, I only have one piece of unsolicited advice for you:

Deconstruct religious thinking as soon as possible. Learn epistemology, critical thinking.

You may find that life looks much clearer through unclouded lenses.

As an atheist, I don’t believe a deity exists because there is no evidence to demonstrate it, but if it turns out there is one, that deity should have done a better job proving its existence without dispute, clear as day, and not let human-made religious texts plagued with fantasy become a moral compass for humanity fueled by contradictory personal experiences.

Many of us were taught to treat personal experiences as proof, a prayer that seemed to have been answered, a talk that felt aimed at us, something worked out at precisely the right moment and we called it Jehovah’s hand. Then after removing the JW lens, some just relabel it, oh, it is God’s hand.

But stop and think again, how did you know that?

Here is a simple example:

Suppose you park your car on Main Street and walk into work. An hour later, without your knowledge, the car is towed.

Do you know your car is still parked on Main Street?

No.

You may believe it is, because that was true when you left it, but you do not know it now, because your belief is no longer connected to the present facts.

Knowledge requires a belief tied to reality, not just confidence carried over from an earlier assumption.

And this comes into play when people say, “I know Jehovah helped me,” or Jesus, or Allah, or God helped me.

How… do… they… know?

Did they rule out coincidence, effort, probability, psychology, or ordinary causes?

Or did they move from “something happened” to “[insert your supernatural here] caused it” without sufficient grounds?

But it gets especially hard to ignore when people in contradictory religions use the exact same reasoning, because:

Mormons do it.

Evangelicals do it.

Muslims do it.

Witnesses do it.

It is the exact same method, with different conclusions.

Now let’s say you had a formula that could justify whatever result you wanted.

What would that tell you about the formula?

Or in this case, the method?

Many “spiritual experiences” may be ordinary human experiences interpreted through a conclusion that was accepted in advance.

And that is what I suggest you start questioning.

Was I actually knowing some supernatural being acted, or

was I believing it the same way I believe my car is still on Main Street without checking?

Friends, let me insist, unless you deconstruct from magical, religious and supernatural thinking you are sitting ducks for religious manipulation.

Think!!!

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