NrFive

I planned to finish this part yesterday, but four pints of Guinnes and some chess got in the way.
If the spelling is especially bad today, Ill blame the beer..

Since noone commented on the last article, Ill have to write solely from my point of view.

It is hard not to sympathize with the woman and her child. The child has suffered for several years, under the hand of an abusive father. We assume that the mother never knew what was happening before the visit to the doctor.
One would say that this is enought pain for the family to handle.
The mother takes the rather humane decision not to let her 9 year daughter risk going through with the pregnancy, and they have an abortion. There was a apperent risk for the young girl´s life, the only reason why they noticed it was because she complained about intense stomachache when she was only 4 months into the pregnancy.

And after going through all of this, they get the information from the church that they will be excomunicated. That must have been horrid. Feeling that they have done nothing wrong, but suffering a lifelong punishment for it.
As I wrote in the previous article, about 90% of the population of Brazil is catholic. Think about it. You would have 9 out of 10 in every situation that would see you as an outcast, a sinner.

Abortion is not "allowed" according to the bible. It is regarded as a life as soon as the mitoses starts. And if this rule is absolute, than the church have no choise but excomunicate them. But I cant really say that the church acts consistently. Since the abusive father is allowed back, shouldn´t the family be to? The man did in fact abuse the little girl for several years! Not one time, not two, but for several years. And the mother makes a decision to save her 9 year old daughter, and gets kicked out?
Hardly divine fairness, would you say?

I read some days ago. A 9 year old girl had been raped by her stepdad for several years, and had now been pregnant with twins. This happened in Brazil, where abortions are illegal, aside from when its a result of a rape or when the mothers life is in jepordy.
In this case, both of the qualifications were valid, and a doctor performed the abortion.
This resultet in that the arch-bishop in the country choose to excommunicate both the docor and the mother of the 9-year old child.
And in a country like Brazil, were about 90% of the population are catolic, thats a harsh punishment.

The stepdad that had been raping this young girl is welcome back to the congregation, if he comes back to the church and performs a confession. It seems like the mother and doctor wont have that oppertunity.

Even Cardinal Battista agrees with the arch-bishop and argues that God´s law is above man, and therfore is still valid in this event.

What do you think?
What I think? Ill let you know soon

Just read through an article with the name as my title.
It´s written by a man that tries to explain how God can create a hell with eternal pain for those of us that choose sin before God.
You can find the article in whole here
There are several things I´d like to disagree with this article.
My former religious believs are based on that God never created hell as a place of eternal suffering. When referred in the bible as the burning Gehenna, I was taught that it referred to the pit of garbage outside of Jerusalem. People that didn´t deserve a proper burial, thiefs and murderes, was thrown down this pit of burning garbage. When Jesus talked about the Burning Gehenna he talked about a death where you are completly forgotten and burned down to ash.
There is, to my knowledge, no verse in the bible that talk about eternal suffering as the punisment of evil men.
I did a search in Bible2000, for the word: Gehenna. Nothing. But when I searh the word: Hell, I get more than 10 hits. Not anyone of them talks about suffering. According to mat 10:28 we should be afraid of hell(gehenna) because God can destroy our body and soul there. Still nothing about eternal suffering.

Second, the writer talks about how God is just, by giving us the oppertunity of chooing between good or evil. And if we choose evil, we have choosen hell, and for that we can´t blame God.
But this is only true if the choise is absolut. If we can be sure which way leads to which end.
If you are given a choise between two roads and you can see that the left on ends in a pit of burning flesh, while the right one goes to a heavenly paradise, which one would you choose?
But if you can´t see any ending to any of the roads, and both roads look the same, how can you then be blamed for taking the wrong turn?

It can only be called a free choice, when we actually knows for sure what we are choosing. And religion today is a maze of different belives. There´s a large amount of holy textures that all say they have the salvation to humakind. There´s million of people of different religions that all claim that they have the only true way to heaven...
And in all this, the almighty God, the God of Love, wants us to choose right, so that we can avoid a eternal time of pain.

I don´t belive that a God of love would create a hell. If there is a God, and if he cares about us, I would understand if he takes away those people that only do harm, or help them to see the error of their ways. But even the most evil person should not have to face a eterenty of pain for 60 years of bad things he/she has done.

A tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye. Not thousands of years of unhuman pain for a lifetime of crimes...

One specific thing that Jehovahs wittnesses are know for, is the door to door knocking they do. They come to you, often very polite and well-dressed and want to talk about the bible. Awake and the Watchtower is their most used magazines.
They try to get your attention, finding something that you find interesting and trying to find a biblical interpretation to it.
Most people I know have met a Witness, they are very hard-working and cover a large portion of the population during one year.

Why do I explain this? Beacuse I want to give you my perspecive to all this. From one within.
This is not an anti-Witness blogg. I have no larger grudge agains the congregation, and many things they do are good, or atleast harmless. But its a part of my history, a part of how I am. If there´s anything inside my head that could be of use for others, then something good comes out of it

I was a Witness for 24 years. I´v spend countless hours in the "service" walking from door to door, or out in the street, talking to people I meet. Sometimes I loved it, other times I hated it.
Its a tedious work, at times. But you keep at it. I know a lot of my "former" friends that went out 50-70hours a month doing this work, and many working part-time do manage. And they seemed happy.

Many people I met got angry when we came. They slamed the door in our faces and screamed at us. I´v heard many stories about people chaising witnesses away with a hammer och a shotgun, even here in Sweden. But why did we still keept on coming?
I had a good explanation for this back then. It went something like this:
If you had the cure for cancer, or any other terminal disease, and the only way to save people was to personally go out and give it to them, would you? A witness goes out and talk to people because they belive that they found the cure for all mankinds problem. Death is not a problem, global warming is something that will be fixed. This is something they have complete faith in! And they have the answer. But to save other people, they need to go out there and tell them. Cause if people don´t hear about it, they won´t be saved.
If you had the responsiblity on you shoulders, would you stay home?
That´s way witnesses keep coming to your door. They wanna give you a salvation, that they belive will save humankind.

And this was something I belived in to. I don´t think I do anymore, and it saddens me

As my girlfriend pointed out yesterday, I didn´t finish with this topic. Well, I could go on for hours, but that would be a tedious reading, so Ill try to keep it short.

I ended last section with the notion that I wanna belive in a God, but that I don´t belive that people can act as the voice of God. And that is a problem, since all litterature we have is written by human hands, translated by human hands and interpeded by human minds. Therefore it would be really hard for me to accept and/or belive in any group-based religion.
Could it then be possible to belive in a God and still have a logic sence about it?
For me, it depends on what one says that God is. A logic reasoning for me, would be that God is energy, but with a mind, or a thinking. Since we know that energy never dissapers, that it only changes shape, that could be an answer to God.
Lets take a theoretical walk down the eons before man. The most accepted scientific answer to the creation of the universe is Big Bang. Where all energi and matter in the whole universe was collected in one point. For some reason it started expanding and eventually created the universe around us.

Where all this energy came from, noone knows. One popular idea is that there is a cyclic unverse, where an endless universes have come before, and endless more will come after. But one problem persists. There is, to my knowlegde, no answer to where it all begun

In the bible, it says that God existed before time. That he has no beginning and will have no end. This fits in rather well with the idea that Big Bang created time. Since time only exist to measure change, and when the universe was a singularity there was no change, there was no time. If God is the energi in this singularity, if God is the "universe" that would mean that he´s outside of time. He is a constant. He is the energy that is the basic of everything.

For me, this is not an impossibility. If there is a God, he/she is an it. It´s a "being" of pure energy. Almighty in its power.

Ill think Ill have to do a part 3 of this

Could that be possible?
Well, that depends on how someone would define the word religion.
Since religion often try to explain those things that science can´t explain to us, it tend to drift abit from what one usually would say was logic.
After all, religion tries to explain why we humans inhabit this earth, what the greater meaning of life is. Science is more into explaining how we came to exist and the rules of the universe.
So, how come so many religions keep on existing and thriving in a society where more and more scientific discoveries are revealed?

To begin with, Im gonna try to explain it from the perspecive of an Jehovah´s Witness. Or to be more precise, a former Witness.
I spend 24 years with the congregation here in Sweden. It was something I was borned into, and felt very naturaly when i grew up. Several familymembers choosed not to adopt the ways of the religion, and from a rather early start I had the "privelige" of having parent both in and outside of this religion. I have always thought that it helped me to have a broader viewpoint, but the latest year have thaught me that aside everything, I was still rather narrow-minded.

When someone asked me how I could belive in a book written several thousand years ago, a book that has been changed by humans of the centuaries, I often said that the Bible was blessed by God, and his tool to make sure that we humans got the "right" message. I know, for a lot of you out there, it sounds crasy, and in no way based on logic. But there and then I belived so. The evidence from the bible was proof enought. I´m not gonna get into the evidence here, since I don´t remeber them all. But when I was a Witness I truly belived that God had blessed the bible and it was God´s words that I was reading. I always thought that logic was something present in the word of the bible. And in some extent, it is. There is a whole lot of things in there that we can use. Especially from the new testament, and with Jesus.

Anyhow, I know the feeling of beeing sure about something. To have faith. But there is something dangerous about faith to. Faith have a tendence to ignore facts and logic. And sure, somethimes thats something good, but perhaps not when it affect everything in your life.

It took something really serious for me to start challenging my believs. Lifechangning things. If those thing never had happend, I would probably still be a Witness today. But I´m not. And as we all know, hindsight´s a bitch...
It´s easy to sit here now, and condemming the choises I made then, to think: what if?
But i try not to.
During the last year I´ve read and studied some religious litterature aside what comes directly from the Witnesses. Not the books from other ex.wittness since many of them are angry and value bitternes higher than logic reasoning.
But the books I´v read have actually helped me put some perspecive to my former religion. The abbility to see the same situation from different viewpoints. It´s hard, but good, since it helpes me grow my own opinion.

Anyhow, back to topic. My own experince have taught me that Religion probably can´t be based on logic, since a big part of relgiion is faith in others, and faith in a God. And even if I do wanna belive in a Almighty God that wan´t me good, I have no desire to belive in people that belive them self to be the voice of God!

Almost all religon is controlled, or guided by people actiong as guides to God. And in these people I don´t trust...

This seem to be a right many people have issues with.
Before I start, i wanna point out that this is not a question about judging. What I mean here is the right to ask for an explanation.

Let´s take an example:
I actually had this disscution with friends of mine last week. We started talking about the possiblity that ghosts really exists. When one in the group said she belived, I asked her for a explanation to why she belived in ghosts. Right there and then she couldn´t give me an answer, and instead went with the classic: I don´t know, I just do.

From here the disscution took a turn from the subject and on to the right to question someones belives.
And to make a long and very lively disccution short, we came to the conclusion that it should be okey to question, but not to judge.
It should be ok for me to question your ideas, but never to put my own ideas as above yours.

It is of course in anyone´s right not to answer, but that doesn´t take away my right to question, true?

Anyhow, we also came to another conclusion that I find particular interesting. We talked about how to affect someone into changing their beliefs. Often you can´t change someone´s belive with just replacing it with another one. Rude fact will probably work in the opposite direction and make the person less likely to listen to what you have to say. This have been proven over and over again in human history. So, how do we do? According to our disscution, and your welcome to challenge me on this point, there´s only one way to make someone change their belife, and that by changing their reason to why they belive in it.
We often kling to things beacuse it makes us feel save, or beacuse we´ve been taught it from parents when we were small.
But if you can get an answer to why they belive in something, you could from there understand where the belief comes from and also start trying to change reason for it.

And why would you like to do something like this you ask. Since there actually are so many bad things that people belive in that only brings pain to the world. for example: Rasism, circumcision(I´m thinking about the barbaric female circumcision) and many more awful thing people belive in and practice! These thing will never change If we are not allowed the right to Question!

I´m a man, a son and a brother.
I´m a friend, an unwelcome guest
I´m a lover, a hater and a person of decent qualities

I´m nothing more, nor less than anyone around me.