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Let's not confuse TWI with Christianity. In my experience, cults are far more interested in combatting demonic activity than the average Christian is. In my experience, Christians just want to live their lives and respect their beliefs. Cults? Cults want you to be afraid of every demon or devil lurking behind every corner, en garde! ready to fight at a moment's notice. It's EASY to let extremism paint all of religion, just like it's easy to let nihilism define atheism. They're not the same thing, but how do you resist the temptation to conclude If A, Then N? Especially when you add time to the equation, when it becomes increasingly justified. An atheist NOW may not be a nihilist, but ask him what he thinks of everything 6 billion years from now, and the opinion of an atheist will be indistinguishable from that of a nihilist. But the point is most of us are not nihilists NOW. Atheists do not reject moral principles and we don't consider life meaningless. There is much meaning in life. In fact, this being the only life we have, we treasure life. That's why you don't see atheist suicide bombers. No one's promising us 72 science textbooks if we sacrifice ourselves for Darwin. You'll never see us flying a plane into a building while shouting "REASON!!!!!!" until the last second. Defining a group by the actions or beliefs of its extremists is usually not fair at all. Muslims suffer some of the worst prejudice for this. Atheists too. Christians, not so much. There are so many Christians that most people recognize "that's not all of us" when they're criticizing one religious group. JW's have the blood transfusion ban, not Christianity. Westboro Baptist teaches God Hates F*gs, not the average Christjan. But that's part of what makes it so challenging to discuss some of these issues. No matter what belief Charity deconstructs as part of her journey, there will always be some branch of Christianity somewhere that says Or So now, while Charity tries to make sense of what Christianity teaches and whether/why she rejects it, she suddenly becomes compelled to evaluate and reject every alternative interpretation of Christianity before being permitted the luxury of saying, "You know, I think none of it is true." Well that's preposterous. There are 45,000 Christian denominations on earth today. 45 THOUSAND. The OVERHWELMING MAJORITY of Christians and Jews, throughout all of time, believe that Genesis 22 records God telling Abraham to kill his son as a test. When the angel stops Abraham, at no point is there a "correction." The angel SAYS: The angel does NOT say: "Stop! You TOTALLY misunderstood what God asked you to do. He wasn't asking you to kill your son. Are you crazy?" And the Bible later says Abraham BELIEVED God, and it was imputed to him for righteousness. It doesn't say "Abraham misunderstood God, but in doing so he demonstrated a faith that impressed the Almighty." I do not know if Wierwille was alone in teaching that the burnt offering meant something other than what Abraham took it to mean. I do know that he cited no sources in making this claim. Where is he getting this information? He doesn't say. And I may not have delved into the practice with all the resources and time of a scholar, but I am not finding a scrap of support for Wierwille's sentence quoted above. If anyone can find a scholarly source, not Wierwille, to indicate that God might have meant something else when he said "offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I will tell you," I would be glad to see it. But absent any other evidence, the only source for this claim is Wierwille. The verse and context are clear: God was testing Abraham when He asked him to kill his son. And Abraham passed the test. The angel didn't intervene to correct Abraham. The angel intervened because IT WAS A TEST and IT WAS OVER. Did God really want Isaac to die? No. If He did, He would have let Abraham go through with it. Did God tell Abraham to kill Isaac? Yes. He was testing Abraham. He says so. But doesn't the Bible say God does not tempt? Yes. A thousand or two years after the Abraham incident, God says he does not tempt people with evil. But obedience to God is not evil. Trusting God to fulfill His promises is not evil. Abraham passed the test because he trusted God, not because he misunderstood Him. Let the Bible speak for itself and the message is clear. Now, stepping OUTSIDE the internal story that's being told, we turn our attention to the story as human beings. God told Abraham to kill his son. It was a test. ABRAHAM DIDN'T KNOW THAT. We do. So we can look at the big picture, while Abraham is stuck in the present. God just told me to kill my kid. What do I do? Any parent with a heart is going to answer the same way: "Tell Him No!" Maybe add an expletive or two after that. As unbelievers, we are not criticizing God in this story, because we are not asked to identify with him. We are criticizing the character we're supposed to admire, the one we're supposed to emulate, the one we're supposed to look up to as an example of steadfastness of faith: Abraham. But in REAL life, if someone told you he was about to kill his kid because God told him to, you would do everything in your power to stop him because, and this is key, you would not even entertain for a nanosecond the notion that he's telling you the truth. And since the subject of this thread is deconversion (and by extension deconstruction) it should be pointed out that the majority of Biblical stories are tales you would flat out reject if someone claimed them in front of you right now. Imagine someone washing up on Miami Beach right now and saying, "Lo! Spring Breakers! I just spent three days and three nights in the stomach of a whale after passing through his 25 centimeter esophagus, and I sat there with hundreds of pounds of krill in a vat of hydrochloric acid, only to go back through the esophagus for the whale to throw me up three days and three nights later (by the way, the Apple Watch battery lasts a long time, but that's how I knew how much time was passing as the acid disintegrated my skin). And I have come to tell you REPENT! REPENT! Or God will destroy Miami!" You would not have gotten two sentences into that without calling mental health experts and fitting him for a nice white coat with REALLLLY long sleeves. But you're supposed to believe Nineveh heard Jonah's warning and converted. There is no evidence of any long term sudden change of religion in Nineveh. Just a Bible story that never happened. Similar to how the story of God testing Abraham never happened. It's a story. If it were real, Abraham would be the bad guy and no one would admire him.

To be clear, I was answering a question about what's accepted about the Bible on THIS THREAD. Not on GSC. There are other sections of GSC where the Bible is treated with less skepticism (because to treat it otherwise would derail the thread).

It was a pretty big hit. I can remember the chorus, but not the line you quoted. George

Replies to this post have been hidden for the time being and it is locked to future comments for now. They were coming in too rapid fire succession to handle any other way. i will review things this evening. I cannot right now because of, well… other things I need to do. - Modgellan In other words, everyone take a breather. Christians and non- christians are both still welcome at GSC. Gots ta go for now.

Augusta, ME? George

I imagine it's Brad Paisley's "I'm Gonna Miss Her," which I've heard a lot more than the Playboys' song. Ooh love to hold ya, ooh love to kiss ya Ooh love I love it so Ooh love you're sweeter, sweeter than sugar Ooh love, I won't let you go George

When you consider the irony in this, it's almost comical in a perversely twisted way. Want something from God? Follow a complicated formula. Make sure to cross every T and dot every I. Want something from Satan? No problem. Just think it. It's yours. You want to know what killed that little boy? He spun 'round and 'round trying to make sense of it all and fell over dead from dizziness.

Agreed.

All I have had a good time over close to 20 years posting on this site. I have worked through plenty of cult recovery. I have called out all of the areas in the BITE model where TWI enslaved people. It has now come to the point where I feel that a Christian viewpoint is no longer welcome on Greasespot Cafe. It is fine to me if people in working through the trauma of the cult operation leave Christianity. However it is not fine to them that I remain Christian. I cannot call out faulty logic without moderation and hypocrisy with leaving the posts attacking Christianity unaltered but removing the Christian perspective posts. So for that reason this will be my last post on this site. Those of you that have my email please reach out. Best wishes in your lives developing a post TWI healthy life logic and development.

This is as labyrinthine a rabbit hole as how El became Yahweh. There should be plenty of books, articles and videos on the subject. I suspect someone here has an answer, but I think you are on the right track. It seems to me, if I remember correctly, the contemporary Christian idea of Satan is an evolved amalgamation. The ha-satan of Job is not the god of this world Paul writes about, and different still from what people mean today when they say Satan. ———— I had never heard so much daily talk about the devil until I married into that Way family. The adversary received more credit than God - no joke, no hyperbole, no figger of speech. The power of God depended upon beleeef, but the power of the adversary depended on nothing and was an absolute factual certainty. According to them, the devil was everywhere, especially over your shoulder - Look out! God and Christ were absent in another realm. I had no idea how polytheistic Christianity was until I took “the class.”

I hope for her recovery.

Where did the idea of Satan come from in the bible? Apparently, there was no actual Satan in a human or earthly context nor in an otherworldly context in the OT until the 6th century BCE. When the Israelites were freed from Babylonian captivity by Cyrus in 539 BCE, the Judea people returned to Jerusalem and lived for the next 200 years as a Persian-client state. *Bill Zuersher argues that during this time, Judah was influenced by the Persian belief of Zoroastrianism. Under this belief, Ahura Mazda, the god of goodness and Ahriman, the god of evil, are in a struggle against each other. This played out as good vs evil in the lives of humans. It was taught that good will triumph soon and in the meantime, a lot of emphasis was placed on moral teachings. There is an afterlife and a supernatural opponent to the good god. The afterlife includes a resurrection and judgment followed by one going to either paradise or the pit. This mythology appears to show up in the NT where Satan appears as the god of this world (along with his devil spirits) and Jesus teaches in Matthew of "being in danger of hell fire" (chap 5) and being cast "into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth" (chap 13). Is this a mere coincidence? Is this doctrine necessary to explain the evil that is present in the world? *Video: Bill Zuersher - Seeing Through Christianity - A Critique of Beliefs and Evidence

Maybe you'll remember "Cecilia" from ~Simon & Garfunkel~ and they're album "Bridge Over Troubled Water". It did reach #1 on the top 100 for Cashbox in 1970. It did play on the radio. FREE POST

No. It's on the other side of the country.

Everyone give up? I'll just pick a more crossover song? Or give it to George, who got as close as he could while still having the wrong song

Definitely.

It really is cool

Right idea, wrong song. The titles are very close though. This one's a country song.

What a great video Rocky. It's funny and it's about atheism, the "miracle" of modern medicine and some good life lessons one of which is how donating blood saves lives. Were you interested in reading the book?

Carson City, NV? It's more or less a ghost town. George

Still not getting it. George

"Sure Gonna Miss Her" by Gary Lewis and the Playboys? George

Enough warnings had been given recently about how to respond to each others' posts. My reply simply overlooked the way he chose to address an issue he had with me so instead of dealing with it, I thanked him that his post helped me to remember to use "IMO I think"...instead of telling someone what they ought to do. And I meant it. He was upset that I didn't apologize and let me know this in such a way that required an apology from him. Thanks for the video - I'll watch it in the morning.

Well, it was a test. "How far will Abraham go? How deep is his commitment? I've got to find out. Hmmm... a test... a test... rock ridge... rock ridge..." "I've got it!! I'll tell him to make his precious Isaac a burnt offering to me. We don't want him to actually go through with it and slaughter the lad, we just need to see if he would. It's a test, remember? Tell you what, if it looks like he's going all the way, pop up at the last minute and stop him. I'll make sure an animal appears nearby, a goat or sheep or something. Keep your eyes peeled for movement in the thicket. Now, let's get to work..."

Thank you, and yes, she is.