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  • #855983
    mepal
    Member

    Just make sure to play your part right! 😉

    and welcome aboard the Grand Looney Coffee Room!

    #855984
    kapusta
    Participant

    ames, thats it! When I was queen, I never forgot! At least I appreciated it, I think I should take back the honor. 😉

    *kapusta*

    #855985
    areivimzehlazeh
    Participant

    Major Yeshivish

    BIG WELCOME TO THE GRAND CR!

    There are nice mods (aka moderators)

    There are strict mods

    There are big mods

    There are lil mods

    There are absentminded mods

    There are sharp mods…

    all in all- you get a fare share of the deal if YOU POST ALL DAY AND ALL NIGHT 🙂

    Please stick around- we love having you here

    (sorry- that’s the extent of my poetic abilities)

    #855986
    squeak
    Participant

    Not bad areivim, but if you want to improve you should just plagiarize from Dr. Seuss v’Rochvo like the rest of us.

    #855987
    areivimzehlazeh
    Participant

    starwolf- welcome! Please- have a seat, sit back, post away…

    Thanks for joining the Grand CR crew 🙂

    #855988
    areivimzehlazeh
    Participant

    Big welcome goes out to DovInBeitShemesh!

    Thank you for considering the CR your place- please stick around 🙂

    #855989

    Areivimzehlazeh. Yiyasher Koichacho Al Hakabolas Punim! Love you too!

    #855990
    Jax
    Member

    Big welcome to all of today’s new members, from the CR Board & CR Gang & CR Crew!

    #855991
    areivimzehlazeh
    Participant

    WELCOME BACK GOODY613!

    Please stick around 🙂

    #855992

    Since this question might be bothering some other people, i’ll enlighten you all a bit. I don’t, I assume from his/her writings, & neither does anyone really know mine/mine. Besides it was not a Mussar Shmooze, as I/I wrote there!

    #855994
    areivimzehlazeh
    Participant

    and everyone is entitled…

    #855995
    YW Moderator-72
    Participant

    ahavas yisroel chinum

    you wrote:

    “Areivimzehlazeh. …Love you too!”

    I am not sure how this post was approved.

    Although we do allow public recognition of good posts we do NOT allow public displays expressing emotional feelings towards other posters. It is inappropriate and if you continue, we will block you.

    #855996

    i am back

    #855997
    Joseph
    Participant

    from where?

    #855998
    YW Moderator-72
    Participant

    welcome back… have you got catching up to do…

    #855999
    kapusta
    Participant

    I think we need a welcome back thread for all our returning wanderers.

    *kapusta*

    #856000
    mepal
    Member

    Welcome back, CNP! Stick around!

    #856001
    areivimzehlazeh
    Participant

    Although old members that have returned to active posting would not know to check this thread, I will nonetheless do my duties for the chushuva CR

    Does the new thread title help?…80 Thank you mod 80 🙂

    A very Grand re-Welcome goes out to:

    COKE NOT PEPSI

    BAAL KISHRON

    We’re so relieved to see you join us once again! Please do not desert us and keep posting- thanks 🙂

    #856002
    areivimzehlazeh
    Participant

    I cought a big fish

    WELCOME BACK CHARLIE BROWN!!!!

    We are so PLEASED to see your sn back on the boards.

    We beg you- PLEASE STICK AROUND

    man oh man- have you got catching up to do…

    So happy to see you back 🙂

    #856003
    areivimzehlazeh
    Participant

    luv2hack- if this is what you really love doin, where’ve you been for the past 3 months??

    Welcome back to the grand CR! Please stick around 🙂

    #856004
    areivimzehlazeh
    Participant

    MI KEAMCHA YISROEL- can’t believe that screen name was never taken before

    A BIG WELCOME to this chashuva organizatzya- The CR!

    Please stick around and post 🙂

    #856005
    kapusta
    Participant

    Thanx 80, I like the new title!

    *kapusta*

    #856006
    oomis
    Participant

    Welcome back to everyone who has been away for a while. (Does the fact that you have returned, mean you are technically doing “teshuvah?”)

    #856007
    areivimzehlazeh
    Participant

    mods- welcome back 🙂 Please stick around 🙂

    #856008
    YW Moderator-72
    Participant

    when we get posts coming in significantly more frequently than 2 in a 2 plus hour time span… I will call the troops in from running my errands…

    #856009
    areivimzehlazeh
    Participant

    Welcome Back SJSinNYC! Glad to see you posting again 🙂

    #856011
    areivimzehlazeh
    Participant

    WELCOME BACK DR PEPPER!!!

    Please do stick around and keep posting- we appreciate each and every one 🙂

    #856012
    A600KiloBear
    Participant

    Just to let everyone know – my departure is permanent.

    I am no longer in any way involved with Judaism or the Jewish community and have returned to a secular way of life. No hard feelings; just a realization that I cannot maintain my former beliefs and practices against overwhelming scientific evidence that supports atheism.

    Since I have no desire to participate here whatsoever and certainly no desire to sway anyone else’s beliefs in any way, could you please delete my account? Thank you and best wishes to all.

    #856013
    Joseph
    Participant

    A6KB, Just out of curiosity, why did you choose to post that rather than simply stop posting/reading?

    #856014
    mazal77
    Participant

    A6KB – I hope your read this, and B”H may Hashem lead you back home, especially in this zman of Teshuvah.

    The world was built perfectly by Hashem. May Hashem open your eyes to the miracle of the growth of even a blade of grass to the power of the sun. There is a Creator and the world did not just happen on it’s own.

    #856015
    Bemused
    Participant

    A6KB,

    I pray for the day when you will know you have overwhelming evidence that Hashem created and is in charge of our world.

    No matter what actions you have taken, Hashem loves you, and will welcome you back to His loving arms as many times as you fall.

    May Hashem watch over you and protect you.

    #856016

    There are no words adequate for this.

    ??? ??? ???? ???? ?? ?? ???? ???? ?????

    Where there’s life, there’s hope for teshuva.

    May Itzik aka “A600KiloBear” once again find his way back, as well as all other binei Yisroel who have lost their emuna.

    #856017
    A600KiloBear
    Participant

    It wasn’t necessarily meant for posting, more as a request to remove my account. I don’t use the world’s most secure ISP and as people know of my decision I have reason to fear someone would use my account here to discredit me.

    Believe as you wish, this is a free world. But I must believe in what has been proven and what I see in this world, and do as I see fit.

    We all have our comfort zones. Yours is yours and mine is mine. Something may have created the world, but it is a very random world full of disease and ugliness – and opportunity. Only science and commerce can put an end to some of the ugliness by funding and then finding cures for disease and better ways of managing resources.

    So long as it is not political Islam or any similar ideology that can cause damage to innocent people including myself, I really don’t care what others believe.

    #856018
    A600KiloBear
    Participant

    Just one last thing.

    Rationality opened my mind to the growth of a tumor, the dissolving of human flesh by tiny bacteria that are stronger than any chemical designed to kill them, the birth of a defective baby who will never know a good day in his life and will be a burden on himself and others, the quadriplegic who was healthy until the moment his car was hit by another one because the second driver was distracted for a moment.

    This is not perfection. This is a random world, with no reward and no punishment, but one which eventually human beings or our evolved successors will understand and conquer. Khomeini lived to be 86. Rudolf Hess lived to be 93. How many times do we see appeals when a “frum” head of household passes away in his 30’s or 40’s of a disease he had no control over? This is no test from any deity. It is a test that we’ll overcome when DNA mapping lets us know once and for all what is in store for us and what we can change to live longer and better (and considering how shidduchim work, I know that there will be a Dor Yeshorim that will make sure those with defective DNA don’t pass it on to the next generation, which will mean an even bigger shidduch crisis and this time for a good reason).

    No Torah sage discovered the polio vaccine. Two atheist scientists did because that was what they set out to do.

    #856019
    feivel
    Participant

    all your questions have validity only if there is only an olamHaZeh.

    if this world is not a place of reward and punishment but only a fleeting moment before the real World then your kashas are not kashas.

    #856020
    A600KiloBear
    Participant

    I believe at this point that this physical, random world is the only one there is and ever will be (unless the Muslims get a dirty bomb and destroy it one day which is a very faint possibility).

    I don’t worry about the afterlife or about Moshiach anymore. No proof, no belief. However I also don’t care to argue with those who choose another belief so long as they do not harm me in the name of their belief.

    And by harm, I mean Islamic terror, not putting up an eruv or running a shabbos siren or even practicing kiruv (just know that I no longer consider myself a Jew and when confronted by any attempt at kiruv I can now honestly state, sorry, I am not Jewish, have a great day).

    #856021
    squeak
    Participant

    A600KiloBear

    Member

    I don’t use the world’s most secure ISP and as people know of my decision I have reason to fear someone would use my account here to discredit me.

    Sounds to me like this is exactly what happened.

    I’ve reread some of “your” posts from not more than a couple of weeks ago. I find it impossible to believe that a transition from that to this could have occurred just because of one conversation in a bar. (and really, the “there is no G-d because bad things happen to good people” argument is a very weak one, even to an atheist. The answer is too easy.)

    #856022
    A600KiloBear
    Participant

    Listen, it is me.

    I wanted so badly to believe after coming back the second time.

    But I realized little by little that I just don’t belong. First of all, I want to stay alone in life. A family and community oriented set of beliefs is just not for me. In the real world, I am single. Means the same as my height. I’m not 6’9″ so I can’t play basketball, and I’m not married so there are events that I wouldn’t be invited to – so what? On the other hand there are many things I can do just because I am not burdened by a wife and family.

    In the frum world, I am nebach half a person, which is just not the way it really is. According to biology, I am a whole person with control over my decision to mate or reproduce as I see fit. I choose to remain alone because that is how I feel happiest. Others feel otherwise and I understand why they do.

    When you start realizing you have no place, you start reading and researching, especially when you were always taught to question and debate. And that is where my reading led me, to a realization that as much as I would like it to be true, Torah just doesn’t hold water for me.

    So, I leave in peace. When I left the first time it was because of run-ins with a corrupt and criminal individual who had and sadly still has an important position. Had he never interfered in my life (and believe me I was not involved with him but went my own way), I would not have left in anger the first time but rather faded out as I am doing now. This time, I have not one bad word to say about 99% of the people I met over the past four years, but something just doesn’t make sense to me and who I really am just doesn’t belong in the frum world.

    Therefore, I must move on and must live according to reason, rationality and pure fact. I will never answer every question I might have, but now I no longer care. I know what I want in life and am pursuing it to the exclusion of these questions.

    #856023
    kapusta
    Participant

    The first time I saw this, I hoped it was a joke of some sort, but unfortunately it seems that it isn’t. I hope, BE”H, that you will find your way back and see the beauty of the truth. Hashem will welcome you back with open arms at all times. May you merit to return and greet Mashiach and see everything answered in truth. Hatzlacha.

    *kapusta*

    #856024
    squeak
    Participant

    Since you say that you were always taught to question and debate, I hope you won’t mind if I do so too. After all, I was brought up with that same method. You have given 3 different reasonings above for your decision:

    1) The world is imperfect

    2) You don’t seem to belong in a frum setting

    3) Torah doesn’t hold water in the face of scientific explanations

    Then at the end, you say that you will live instead according to rationalism. That may have been a pervasive and intriguing way of thinking in the Renaissance era (Spinoza, Descartes, Kant, etc), but modern thinking has shown that human beings are not rational beings at all, but rather are rationalizing beings.

    Any one of the three reasons you have given in your above posts can be countered by alternative logic, assuming the opponent in the debate is competent. You are merely rationalizing with this, not truly stating your reasons.

    The subconscious of the mind is far more powerful than the rational portion, as psychologists have proven as early as the end of the 19th century. Rational thought without empirical evidence is next to worthless. Take physics as an example: Every theory postulated is a result of reasoning coupled with observation. Supposing we develop new measuring tools and an observation changes. As soon as that happens, physics changes. The previous way of thinking becomes laughable, no matter how rational it seemed before the tools were developed. It has already happened countless times, and it will happen countless more times in the future.

    It is the same thing with mankind’s quest for truth. We lack tools to make the necessary observations. As a result, we are compelled to answer our own questions without observations; some attempt to do this with rational thought. The Jewish people believe that we do not need tools, because the Torah tells us as much as we need to know. That means that we do not have all the answers, only what we have been given. But no one without the Torah has all the answers, either. Certainly not the rationalists.

    I can only imagine what it was that shook you enough to cause your way of thinking to change. All I can do is invite you to investigate the science from more than one perspective. The religion of science is a very weak one. We have a lot to be grateful to science for – a long list actually – but giving us truths about the world we live in is not amongst that list.

    #856025
    A600KiloBear
    Participant

    But science has given us the truth about Torah as well.

    Rational, rationalizing, it does not matter.

    I cannot rationalize the decision to maintain a tribal identity and tribal practices in a borderless world.

    If you can and this makes you happy, fine. So be it. It just weighs me down and distracts me from what I really want in this world.

    #856026
    Joseph
    Participant

    There will be no shortage of reminders that the world is not borderless; or remind one of their tribal identity, when they wish to forget it.

    #856027
    A600KiloBear
    Participant

    Sorry, but those scare tactics don’t work for me anymore. No one will stop me from anything even if I remain a practicing and identifying Jew, let alone if I say that I am of no ethnicity and identify myself only by my (non-US second) citizenship.

    In the 30’s there was no Internet, no fax machine, no up to the minute communication for people to understand who Hitler was.

    Besides, as many assimilated as frum Jews survived the horrors; many of the assimilated ones or the ones who lost their faith in the camps went on to live very successful lives in the US, Canada and even Israel.

    Today even a plain old incompetent like Obama is being brought down by mundane Twitter messages among other things. Roosevelt wouldn’t have lasted more than one term today either, nor could he have hid his (physical) disability.

    #856028
    squeak
    Participant

    I don’t think that the “scare tactics” are necessary to make the point.

    Itzik, it is true that good things happen to bad people, and bad things happen to good people. But you have already said the answer to this – you said that you are free to choose what you want to do with your life. This is absolutely true. It is also the answer to why bad things happen to good people.

    Imagine for a minute that a certain type of person was never afflicted by tragedy. Let’s say for argument’s sake that statistics show no Catholic who went to confession ever got into an auto accident, ever got sick, ever lost money in the stock market, or ever had so much as a backache. I guarantee you that with the release of that study skeptics would start going to confession every week to test the study. If nothing bad happens to them after that, it would soon become “the ultimate segula” to go to confession, right? Pretty soon, everyone would be going and no one would ever suffer again. I don’t believe in confession, it is a load of garbage – but if everyone who went was protected from all harm, I wouldn’t have any choice but to become a practicing Catholic, would I? What kind of an idiot would do something (e.g. missing confession) that is guaranteed to bring about retribution? Besides, the fact that doing it protects you would be proof that it is the right thing to do. I would have no choice in what I do.

    There is no free will to do right or wrong unless the the bad things that happen in this world are distributed indiscriminately to good and bad people. Who could possibly choose to do bad if you knew that lightning would strike you a minute later? Similarly, are you really a good person if you do good only because you know it will protect you from all harm? It is only your choice if there is no consequence.

    #856029
    squeak
    Participant

    Mod, tell me you didn’t really read that in 10 seconds!

    #856030
    A600KiloBear
    Participant

    There is no consequence except the obvious.

    The only commandment is the 11th – thou shalt not get caught. And of course there is the even more obvious that if you engage in certain behavior like drug abuse or drunk driving you’ll ruin yourself fast.

    I know of someone who ran a tax scam that was so simple I could have run it back in kindergarten. It paid for him to do it. He sat his year in Club Fed, even spent Yom Tov at home, and died an old, rich man years after his release.

    Try that nowadays with the present state of computers and you’d get caught in 2 minutes and get sentenced to 10-15 years.

    Look, this is my last post here. You are happy as you are, I am happier the way I am now. Goodbye and good luck.

    #856031
    areivimzehlazeh
    Participant

    Itzik,

    I’ve always said you’re a smart person and I still believe it. It’s the ones that have so much knowledge that ultimately have so many more questions. But there are answers! YOU KNOW IT. So- why don’t you attempt to get the answers from an APPROPRIATE party. This discussion in the CR… sounds like a cop out. You know very well that we do not have all the answers. Perhaps some of us have very good answers to a lot of your questions- but this is not the place and (once again) you know that very well.

    DON’T GIVE UP. PLEASE.

    It’s Ellul, Hashem is so close, he is waiting to hear from you- at least try one more time.

    You don’t want to hear this, but Hashem did not give up on us. (yes, THAT Hashem- you know, the one that created the world, that created YOU… that created good and “bad”… that created science… that created everything in a way so that it looks like TEVA…)

    If there is any truth, it is that Hashem did not give up on us. I can’t stress this enough.

    And of all the people, I don’t need to tell YOU all this.

    Hold strong- YOU ARE NOT GONE. You will always be a PRECIOUS Jew (you can still swallow that). The fact that you still debate is proof of this.

    I don’t think my words will change you in any way, but you know they are true. That’s not up for debate.

    I will be davening for you, Itzik.

    Your absence in the CR is a gaping hole- Klal Yisroel can feel it too.

    Moreover, Hashem is here for all of us including YOU- WHENEVER WE NEED.

    – areivim

    #856032
    A600KiloBear
    Participant

    Sometimes, the quest for truth leads to a different truth than the one originally expected.

    What can I do? We are just masses of chemicals in a random world.

    Enjoy yourselves. Over and out.

    #856033
    areivimzehlazeh
    Participant

    Itzik-

    You know we have no answer to that unless we start bottom up; which we’re not going to do in the CR since we will get snagged on every point. We are not Rabbonim or Gedolei Yisroel- we are average Yidden and you’ve stumped us.

    Please approach a capable and appropriate Rov or Gadol.

    We’re davening for you.

    #856034
    A600KiloBear
    Participant

    I’m not asking for answers. I am just saying goodbye. This is my final farewell, my final day of transition back to the world I should never have left.

Viewing 50 posts - 1,301 through 1,350 (of 1,686 total)
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