It should go without saying but, if you are going to make comments in a forum on a thread wherein other people are able to freely post comments, it really doesn't matter who you were directing your comments to. Use a private message if you don't want to expose yourself to a community response.

In fact a suggestion, just start using PMs for EVERY response you have in this thread. I mean all your posts have been nearly universally critical thus far and served to more severely derail the intended purpose of this thread than any poster's comments thus far.

-------

Kirby, I eagerly await part III. Quite the opposite of being tl;dr it has actually been quite riveting for me, particularly given my background with JWs and my observations of the similar conditions among other children and young adults in various congregations. Where the similarity stops often enough is the fact that many of the ones I knew stopped short of baptism.

So yeah, I can't wait to read the finale.

Cosign.

It is not the rule. I guarantee you there are billions of grandparents teaching children ideas that you think are wrong. Be it teaching their grandchildren that Allah is the correct God or that gays and minorities are equal to white heterosexuals... its being taught out there by grandparents and you are quite certain they are wrong.

Just because a lot of people can trust their parents to not willingly hurt their children doesn't mean the parents aren't passing on stupid and wrong ideas.

What you MEAN to say is that you can trust your grandparents to teach certain ideas that have been taught to your parents and passed on to you that you agree with... but that is entirely different then what you posted earlier about "learning wrong things".

NOTE: I am using the traditional definition of 'wrong things' meaning things that are not true as opposed to the Splenda definition of 'wrong things' which is "anything that contradicts what Splenda believes." I accept that I and most grandparents believe and teach others many wrong things. Splenda decides what is true and ignores all evidence to the contrary.

Do you think if churches in general admitted the validity of evolution instead of lying about it, it would prevent de-conversions like yours or do you find the fact of evolution itself compelling evidence that Christianity is wrong, not just the brands of Christianity that attack evolution?

kirby, thanks for posting, I await III with interest.

I'd like to throw my $.02 in here, if I could. From my perspective, if I hadn't been taught such a literal view of the Bible from such an early age, the knowledge of Evolution *may* not have played such a huge role. Even so, it wasn't the final nail in the coffin, since I was mentally able to justify some form of Theistic Evolution. The undoing of a literal Adam and Eve through the HGP and DNA sequencing was much more damning, imo. No literal Adam and Eve means no 1st Adam, which means no need for a 2nd Adam.

I can sympathize with Christians who adopt Theistic Evolution and other matters of science, but I ultimately feel they are just making mental concessions so they may maintain a comfortable belief. Christians who reject science just piss me off. I know I should let it go, but I still feel like I was lied to my entire life, and it angers me to see people propagating those same lies that were fed to me.

If I have to hang out with people like Splendour all day for eternity in heaven, then I'll just take the other option. It can't possibly be worse.
Hell, if the other place is everyone the opposite of Splen, I bet its pretty awesome.

+1

I can say that my grandparents, at least the two that I knew, loved me very much and still do. However, their views about the world are completely wrong, and they installed them in my mother and myself when I was younger. It wasn't their fault, they were just doing what they thought was in my best interests.

Come on Kirby, get part three done! I've been checking the forum constantly hoping that it has come. This is worse than waiting for Christmas as a kid.

Haha, I'm hoping to get it posted some time tomorrow, I've spent most of my time on here preparing answers to the questions in the other thread. Glad to know people enjoy reading it.

That's a very eloquent picture.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words except most people don't know they can be using them like false idols to stop you from asking the real questions that lead to the truth.

I'd never let a picture stop me because I always wanted to know God even if quite a bit of the time that was a subconscious desire that I hardly recognized was there.

I never fall for the false images that the world propagates. That'll just make you give up when the truth is people can always make the world a better place.

What that pic is getting at is probably the main reason why I'm very confident certain types of God don't exist.

That pic is a self defeating image that people keep re-posting to reinforce on here.

But Jesus Christ came to teach people how to transcend this world.

i assume you know these real questions and have already asked them, would be nice if you shared what these real questions are

I don't think I'm supposed to even if I'd wrote them all down.

Compare the Bereans with the Thessalonians. The NT says the Bereans were more noble though they're both Christians.

The Bereans were more noble because they took all their questions to God by checking the scriptures.

That's how you build a knowledge of God and a relationship with Him.

Hearing in church can only get you so far. The scriptures cover more details than a sermon ever can.

Btw, philosophy asks a lot of misleading questions because quite a few philosophers conclude God is unknowable.

So doesn't that make God's revealing of Himself in his Word like a personal introduction?

The NT says in several places that the way to know spiritual things isn't through philosophy. Philosophy can lead you all over the place except the place where God wants you to start from.

Philosophy might start you questioning but it can't get you the answers.

For answers you need the bible.

Quoting again to make sure this little gem doesn't go missing. Splendour sure is knocking them out of the park lately.

You seem fairly confident that you have the answers from the bible, but you also say you don't know if you know all of the real questions.

How can you know the answers without first knowing all the questions to ask?

Who am I?
What am I?

========

Isn't that The foundational question?

I'll expand further if you wish.

I think God gives people many answers through the bible.

This questioning and answering has a shaping effect on people that this ability to approach God personally through the bible fosters so the questions at times are general ones about general human conditions and sometimes they are personally specific ones about our own specific condition.

You could take a look at the book of Job where Job questions God and God questions Job and see an example of it.

Your questions might not be identical to Job's but they could be important ones, too and the answers you get will be important to you.

http://www.gotquestions.org/Book-of-Job.html

welp, you ignored this so....

Just forget I mentioned it.

The solution to the hard questions in life:

is similar to

...to approach Tom Cruise personally through a biography or watching Mission Impossible...