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Author | Topic: Can a valid, supportable reason be offered for deconversion | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dawn Bertot Member (Idle past 337 days) Posts: 3571 Joined:
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that's still nonsense. a good portion of the bible is simply not messianic, and a fair portion of the bits that are have nothing to do with the messiah you're likely thinking of. for instance, there was the messiah who lead the israelites into the promised land. the messiah who unified the tribes and ruled as the first king. the messiah who led the people back from exile... A good portion of the Bible is Messianic, which demonstrates unity of purpose
there was the messiah who lead the israelites into the promised land. the messiah who unified the tribes and ruled as the first king. the messiah who led the people back from exile... None of these were of course the Messiah mentioned in Genesis 3:15 or the one in Isa 51, that would be called, mighty God, eternal father and Prince of Peace, fulfilled clearly in Christ in the New Law, correct?
makes me wonder. you've acknowledged that there was a major shift in theology, but then go on to claim unity in the very next sentence? peculiar. no, only those not paying attention at all, or deliberately trying to obscure the text, can miss the fact the fact there really isn't much in the way of scriptural unity. but lets test that, shall we? i think this will be fun. i'll post two random verses, and you explain the unity. You missed the part where I responded by pointing out that Paul and Christ acknowledge that the Old Law was only for a time, until the fulfillment of all things Why do you assume a change in a way of doing something does not constitute a continuity of theology?
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Dawn Bertot Member (Idle past 337 days) Posts: 3571 Joined:
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To make a very large generalization, for most atheists with a religious background a disbelief precedes the deconversion. The deconversion is the unavoidable consequence of not believing what you have studied and been taught over the years. You clearly did not have an adequate education in the scriptures. Since you did not provide an example, I must conclude you have none
It's not a matter of doctrine bothering us. To use an analogy, does it bother you that Santa Claus is said to use flying reindeer? I would not describe that as bothersome, just something that I don't believe in. If you could show us compelling evidence then we would believe. Your analogy is quite inaccurate and its attempts to equate Christianity w/Santa are easily deniable and silly Compelling evidence is different for some than it is for others. Aside from its historicity and archaeological content, its most compelling evidence is its unity of purpose and theme, kept consistent throughout the ages. Its Prophecy concerning the Messiah and many other things point to inspiration If it does not for you , then so be it. I need a valid reason to reject such evidence, especially where inspiration, intervention, divine guidance and the miraculous were and are involved
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jar Member (Idle past 93 days) Posts: 34140 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Dawn Bertot writes: A good portion of the Bible is Messianic, which demonstrates unity of purpose So you claim, but which would still not indicate 'unity of purpose'. In addition you have offered no evidence that much of the Bible is messianic or that Jesus is in anyway related to any of the messianic passages.
Dawn Bertot writes: None of these were of course the Messiah mentioned in Genesis 3:15 or the one in Isa 51, that would be called, mighty God, eternal father and Prince of Peace, fulfilled clearly in Christ in the New Law, correct? So you claim but there is no mention of a messiah in Genesis 3 and the Messiah in Isaiah is most certainly not Christ. If you think you can support those assertions there is a thread looking for No webpage found at provided URL: Prophecy supposedly fulfilled by Jesus. Feel free to try to support your assertion there. AbE: Why if I look and find that there is no unity of doctrine and theme in the Bible (which is pretty obvious to anyone that understands there is not even such a thing as "The Bible") is that not sufficient and supportable reason to throw away the god and religion you try to market? If I find the Bible to be just a collection of writings on a variety of subjects addressed to people of different eras and cultures, why is that not sufficient? Edited by jar, : point out that Dawn has still not addressed teh questions asked. Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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Dr Adequate Member Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Yes, because it is a copy and reprint, with a few alterations to the facts of the Bible. And yet when the same stories appear in the Koran and the Bible, you claim that the Koran lacks historical and archaeological support which the Bible possesses.
This is simply one of many themes and ultimate purposes that the Koran cannot boast, especially if it was written by one person The fact that it was written by one person actually gives it the unity of thought and purpose which the Bible so singularly lacks.
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ringo Member (Idle past 666 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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Dawn Bertot writes:
The OP seems to ask for reasons why anybody would deconvert, not just you. I don't think you "should" deconvert. Frankly, I'm just glad you're not on my side. Then provide a valid reason in argument and statement form as to why I should deconvert "I'm Rory Bellows, I tell you! And I got a lot of corroborating evidence... over here... by the throttle!"
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Dawn Bertot Member (Idle past 337 days) Posts: 3571 Joined:
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So you claim, but which would still not indicate 'unity of purpose'. In addition you have offered no evidence that much of the Bible is messianic or that Jesus is in anyway related to any of the messianic passages. When one understands the ultimate purpose of God in scripture, the unifiying of himself and man after the fall, one easily understands the messianic prophecies The proof is in the pudding itself. Your approval is not required. When all the themes in scripture are considered, the one that stands out is the reunification of man to God. That is its theme and purpose certainly anyone can stand back and continue to say, I just dont see it, deliberately or even by just covering thier minds eye. the theme is to easy to miss or ignore
If you think you can support those assertions there is a thread looking for Prophecy supposedly fulfilled by Jesus. Feel free to try to support your assertion there. I dont need to do anything, the scriptures will do it for you, just read it, with the clear theme in mind Dawn Bertot AbE:
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jar Member (Idle past 93 days) Posts: 34140 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Dawn Bertot writes: I dont need to do anything, the scriptures will do it for you, just read it, with the clear theme in mind Dawn Bertot I'm sorry but the theme if it exists must be determined by the text, not before hand. If you read with the theme already determined you are only lying to yourself. And you have still offered no support for your assertions or addressed the issued raised, which I will repeat in case you missed them.
quote: Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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Dawn Bertot Member (Idle past 337 days) Posts: 3571 Joined:
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Aha, umm so how where we blessed, and how was this fulfilled by Christ. Did the wars stop, Did hunger stop, did anything bad stop??? Or was this one of those blessing be blessed my child and then you walk out of the church and get hit by a car. The milk carton can bless the world in the same way. If you look deeper in scripture for more than physical reactions and reason, Paul explains that all spiritual blessings were met in Jesus Christ While there are always physical blessings as a result of following his principles, the main thrust was the reunification of man to God There are also negative physical results of following Christs rules and principles, as he indicated there would be Dawn Bertot
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bluescat48 Member (Idle past 4443 days) Posts: 2347 From: United States Joined: |
Your analogy is quite inaccurate and its attempts to equate Christianity w/Santa are easily deniable and silly Oh, really? Talking snakes? All different languages do to an attempt to build a tower to heaven? A man spends 3 days in the stomach of a large fish or whale(depending on the translation)? A flood which reduces all animals to a single pair or 7 pairs of the clean, with no genetic bottleneck? a couple million people traverse the Sinai desert for 40 years and leave no evidence of them having been there? There is no better love between 2 people than mutual respect for each other WT Young, 2002 Who gave anyone the authority to call me an authority on anything. WT Young, 1969 Since Evolution is only ~90% correct it should be thrown out and replaced by Creation which has even a lower % of correctness. W T Young, 2008
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bluescat48 Member (Idle past 4443 days) Posts: 2347 From: United States Joined: |
Although I was being sarcastic, your statement
also being fair, "attempted to justify" is probably not accurate either. while some of the evils are examples of evils, sure, others, like genocide, are specifically advocated. the bible does portray genocide as justifiable, and even commands the ancient israelites to commit it against certain enemies. is somewhat sensable, although it has been taken wrongly a number of times ie: The Nazis, the KKK etc. There is no better love between 2 people than mutual respect for each other WT Young, 2002 Who gave anyone the authority to call me an authority on anything. WT Young, 1969 Since Evolution is only ~90% correct it should be thrown out and replaced by Creation which has even a lower % of correctness. W T Young, 2008
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xongsmith Member Posts: 2620 From: massachusetts US Joined: |
Ringo opines:
The OP seems to ask for reasons why anybody would deconvert, not just you. I don't think you "should" deconvert. Frankly, I'm just glad you're not on my side. SHHHHHHHH! Dawn is one of our best ever undercover plants for deconversion!!!! - xongsmith, 5.7d
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dwise1 Member Posts: 6076 Joined: Member Rating: 7.2 |
Dewise writes: jar's question was in the conditional mood -- "would" is the indication. He was not making a statement that there is a lack of "unity of doctrine and theme" in the Bible, but rather asking whether your test for rejecting the Koran would also be sufficient test for whether you should also reject the Bible. So when jar says that it DOES NOT have a unity of doctrine, when looking at it, (the Bible), that does not mean to you that he thinks it does not? You see, Dawn . . . No, clearly you do not see, which is why you need to work on your abysmal lack of reading comprehension. You see, in that message you are "responding" to, jar never states that the Bible does not have a unity of doctrine! That is the problem, Dawn, you are falsely claiming that jar wrote something that he did not write! In Message 61, you wrote:
Dawn writes:
There, you gave "unity of doctrine and theme" in a sacred text as a test for whether to believe in the deity of that text. Because the Koran is not like the Bible, it cannot sustain itself by its internal evidences, in the nature of historical and archaeological support and especially in doctrine. It apprears to be a bunch of random spiritual ideas strung together, with very little unity The unity of doctrine and theme is one of the Bibles supports as being from God Then jar, in his Message 62, quoted that same text by you and responded with a question:
jar writes:
In that question, jar did not state what you so falsely claim, but rather he was asking you a simple and very reasonable question: shouldn't the same test, the same criteria, be applied to the Bible too? So looking at the Bible and seeing that it does not have a unity of doctrine and theme would be a sufficient reason to deconvert? Dawn, either you are unable to understand simple English, or you deliberately misconstrue what we write. Which is it?
My guess is that he does not think that it does. Your guess? Is that what it is? You are guessing what we are telling you? Dawn, there is no need for you to guess what we are telling you. We have written it down and presented it to you. All you need to do is read what we have written. It seems such an obvious concept to us, so why is it so foreign to you? Yet another "evil fruit"?
Dewise, you have learned some reading and writing skills, now learn some debating skills. Perhaps you could quit trying to impress everyone with your grammatical skills and contribute to the subject by doing some actual debating You've never been a part of any formal debate have you, Dewise? First, it is DWise1. Get your spelling right, Dawnette! Not that you can get anything else right! I have been involved in on-line debating and discussion since the mid-1980's. I also participated in local "amateur night" "creation/evolution" debates. I am also very familiar with professional creationist "debating" tactics, thoroughly dishonest and deception; since IDists have adopted creationist deceptive practices, I have no doubt that your own "public debates" follow the creationist playbook down to the letter -- supported by your own descriptions of your debates and by your persistent conduct here. You may disparage grammar, but then you're just an ignorant monoglot. If you had learned a foreign language, you would have learned that grammar is not an arbitrary set of useless rules (which is how it is taught to monoglots), but rather it is the structure of the entire language and the key to how it works and to how to use it and be understood in it. But since a monoglot has learned language as sequences of sounds and symbols without realization of the underlying structure, grammar appears to be useless to them. But upon learning a foreign language, you realize that grammar is your best friend; I learned more English grammar in two years of high school German than I ever did in 12 years of English:
quote:Oh, that's right, you don't want to be understood, nor to understand. Which makes total sense, since the last thing a creationist wants is to be understood. The harder it is to be understood, the more confusion gets generated and confusion is a creationist's life-blood. The last thing a creationist wants is for others to understand his claims. No, that's the second to the last thing; the last thing a creationist wants is to have to discuss and support his own claims. I have seen that so many times in the past 25+ years. But I'm more inclined towards discussion rather than debate. Instead of getting caught up in a win-lose situation, I'm more interested in the exchange of ideas and information. Of course, creationists hate the idea of discussion. The problem with trying to discuss a creationist's claims with him is that he does not want to. One basic reason for this is that there are basically two kinds of creationists: 1) the follower who just repeats claims he's heard and really knows nothing at all about it and so cannot discuss it, and 2) the professional who created the claim and doesn't want to have to discuss it because he knows full well that it is total bullshit. Well, there is a third kind, the professional who just repeats bullshit claims that he's heard; eg, Kent Hovind, whose defining moment was when he repeated as gospel truth to a church audience a false claim that he had just heard, Oate Man (Onyate Man to monoglots) which was a April's Fool joke intended to gauge creationist gullibility (most creationists were skeptical, except for pros like Hovind). A couple notable cases in point, Daniel of the TheologyOnLine forum, claimed that industrial pollution affects radioactive decay rates. I had never heard that claim before, so I asked for more information. He became extremely beligerant, the on-line version of violent, and made several extreme and false accusations. Kent Hovind made claims about the rate at which the sun is losing mass "as it burns its fuel", claiming extreme amounts of mass thus lost, whereas no more than a few hundredths or thousandths of a percent of the sun's mass has been lost in the past 5 billion years (I did the calculations and would need to refer back to them). I requested more information from him, including what his calcuations were if he had originated the claim or, if he had not originated it, then what his source was. He did everything he could to avoid discussing his own claim, even trying twice to pick a fight with me over my screenname (same as here). In an extended email exchange with a local creationist activist, I tried to discuss his claims with him and he did everything he could to avoid it. Turns out he was something of a bully. I had started because an acquaintence had made contact with him, but didn't know enough about creationism. At first, this guy would come on great guns and mock his opponent unmercilessly (that is what he did to my acquaintence and also to me at first), but the moment he realized that I had some idea of what I and he were talking about, he immediately become very mild-mannered and tried to disengage. Typical creationist mentality. The things to note about the vast majority of my postings is that I have information or ideas to get across and I write as clearly as I can to get them across to my audience. And if anybody has questions or needs clarification on any point, then I will go out of my way to respond. That is called communication, something else you despise ... excuse me, that you abhor. That is basically what distinguishes us from each other: I'm in it for the information and for the truth, whereas you are in it for the cheap win for your god, regardless of the cost. Which brings us back to the perennial question I ask creationist and which they avoid: what is Christian doctrine about "lying for the Lord"? BTW, ironically, Allah, YHWH, and your "God" ... they are all one and the same. So if you believe in "God", then you cannot also not believe in Allah. Same god, different names, different theologies. Or is it that you really believe in the theology, not the god? Edited by dwise1, : Getting the double negative right
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dwise1 Member Posts: 6076 Joined: Member Rating: 7.2 |
The OP seems to ask for reasons why anybody would deconvert, not just you. I don't think you "should" deconvert. Frankly, I'm just glad you're not on my side. Verily it has been written, by an atheist, no less:
quote: Theists sure believe the darndests things!
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dwise1 Member Posts: 6076 Joined: Member Rating: 7.2 |
Dawn, if you had read my first posts here, you would see that I was trying to establish some definitions of terms, which is what I was taught in logic class was the first step of any debate or discussion.
What I was seeing was that while we have deconversion, those deconverts end up somewhere. So it would appear that for every deconversion from one theology, there was a conversion to another theology. But that would equate deconversion with conversion and I do not think that is correct. I would think that conversion would mean that you switched theologies (or "switched gods" as per Redd Foxx in Harlem Nights -- watch it on a movie channel or DVD, because BET completely edited that line out as would other channels) because of the appeal of the target theology, such you leave your old theology solely because of the appeal of the new one. OTOH, deconversion involves such dissatisfaction with the old theology that you have to leave it, such that your arrival at whatever destination theology is more an afterthought rather than the prime motivation. Which got me thinking. Dawn, your position seems to be that once you are in a particular theology, you must undergo years of intense study in order to come up with theologically valid reasons for leaving. Well, most of the posts here share a common reason: if you can no longer believe, then it's time to leave. You want to prevent that by placing extra and stringent requirements. Well, why not make such stringent requirements applicable to conversion as well? The evangelical model for conversion is much looser. They use hard-sell tactics, mostly emotionally based, even relying heavily on the fear of death. They want you to ... no, they insist that you make an eternal decision right then and there -- I lived through the rampant street proselytizing of the 1970's "Jesus Freak" movement; the local Jesus Freak church was not just based on Chuck Smith's church, it was Chuck Smith's church. No study beforehand, no thought beforehand, immediate decision now. Exactly the same as when creationist "balanced treatment" is used in the public school curriculum -- and which is also in store for us when ID gets there too. I would like to make a modest proposal, one which has nothing to do with Irish babies (don't worry, I'm sure that one went right over your head like everything else does). Before anyone can convert, they must engage in several years of intensive study. After all, the requirements for joining your religion should be more stringent than your requirements for them to leave it. That way, nobody would get suckered in only to learn how big of a mistake they had made.
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dwise1 Member Posts: 6076 Joined: Member Rating: 7.2 |
SHHHHHHHH! Dawn is one of our best ever undercover plants for deconversion!!!!
From my old quotes page:
quote: quote:
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