by AlmostAtheist 59 Replies latest jw friends
but clearly it has twice as many numbers as the first set we considered
Not so clearly to me. How can one set of infinite numbers be twice as large as another? It defies logic. The only way a set of numbers could be "larger" than another is if at least one was finite.
At what point do we throw our hands up and call it "infinity"? (allegedly there is such a point, statistically speaking).
The whole numbers set will reach that point twice as soon as the even numbers set.
Bravo. Nice question. I must say you are outdoing min latley with all your questions. His are more therapeutic. Yours are probing the internal contradictions of the jw mind.
How about this one. Since any dub, once successfully confronted with the faulty logic of the scriptural basis for the blood doctrine, will then say "well I need to put my faith in God's arrangement or I risk my chance for eternal life" or some such gibberish. Do they realize by saying that, they are effectively saying there is nothing they won't do that the org commands.
Lie
Cheat
Murder
Rape
Pillage
Molest chilren
Give your kid cyanide laced kool-aid
They must obey God's arrangement.
If you said that to them, they would likely say "it isn't in the Bible", now if you just whacked with the blood thing, you can say, "well neither is the ban on blood transfusions". In all fairness, I don't think most dubs would do the above if it came out in the WT next week.
But some would.... think about it.
CYP
Auldsoul, I'm not sure about this:
(3) They believe that the tree of life is in heaven and can only be reached after death (see Revelation Climax discussion of Revelation 2:7)
I thought the society's view of Rev. 2:7 was that the actual physical tree of life was contained in the Garden of Eden and once the flood came was destroyed. The tree of life mentioned in Revelation 2:7 is figurative. I don't have my Rev. Climax on me so I can't be sure.
Theocratic warfare is ok, even if it is lying (which allegedly was the Devil's sin)
Your topic is a very good question. When they actually reason on certain points and actually SEE what they really believe, they will be shocked.
how about
1. Is the Watchtower inspired? (obvious answer is no)
2. Is the Bible inspired? (obvious answer yes)
3. Why are people removed who don't fully agree with the Watchtower but fully believe the Bible? One of the most confusing things for JW's to understand is the fact that Jesus ransom actually applies to the anointed class first, and then the "other sheep" by extention. This is a clear violation of basic Christianity. I don't know how to word it, I'm sure somebody could come up with a good one for this.
daystar:
Not so clearly to me. How can one set of infinite numbers be twice as large as another? It defies logic. The only way a set of numbers could be "larger" than another is if at least one was finite.
Not at all. There are degrees of infinity, as I attempted to demonstrate. LittleToe:
The whole numbers set will reach that point twice as soon as the even numbers set.
No it won't. If you call out a number from the "whole numbers" set, I can simultaneously call out a number from the "even numbers" set. For every unique number you call out I will call out a unique number. After any given amount of time, we have both called out the same number of numbers. After an infinite amount of time, therefore, we will both have called out the same infinite number of numbers. QED
See http://mathforum.org/isaac/problems/cantor1.html and following pages for more.
What I like about this topic is that it shines a light on how people think in the abstract!
In no particulary order.....
INFINITY is a concept and not an actually existing something. It is a mental construct with a potential and ONLY that. That is why you can play with it and watch it recede into the distance, yet, cannot get your mind around it in actuality. A potential cannot ever be an actual. (Why? Because an actual is never a potential, dummy!)
Gary Buss has written a rather beautiful piece which I hope everybody takes the time to read through. Why? Because when something silly is written simply it exposes the idiocy of believing it! Great job, Gary!
INSPIRATION? All it really means is that the mightiest and most Supreme intelligence in the entire universe (according to his press release) doesn't do a damned thing without a man's big honking, muddy footprint ending up in the middle of it, suspiciously blocking the evidence of it being divine at all.
INHERITED SIN? It struck me one day quite suddenly that what this is all about is GOD'S ATTITUDE and not sin or man's conduct. GOD HOLDS A GRUDGE and then tries to earn big credit by coming up with a Rube Goldberg scheme to change his mind! Life on earth for humanity is about appeasing an invisible grudge-holding, chip-on-his-shoulder spoiled brat of a deity! If God made us---we reflect his workmanship (or lack of it) by our behavior.
FREE WILL? Free from what? Our nature? Impossible! If we are BY NATURE sinful--we will think sinful, do sinful and choose sinful.....especially when faced with the choice of serving God! If we are FREE to choose God, then, how did we suddenly get free of our sinful nature? You can't have it both ways. Preaching to the sinful and expecting free choice detached from that nature is like persuading short people to be tall: it is nonsense!
ARMAGEDDON? This is an idea that appeals to sadists and reflects their character and morality. How is it different from Bin Laden and his cronies sitting around thinking about how many infidels would die if they crashed a plane into the World Trade Center? In the case of JW's it is God in the place of Bin Laden and his angels are the terrorists.
BELIEF? FAITH? If you just stop for a moment and think about it clearly----if you don't KNOW something and have no evidence for it--yet INSIST it is true---what you are doing is idiotic and childish. Calling it "faith" doesn't improve what it is: stubborn and irrational preference for what cannot be proved. The more faith a person has; the more out of touch they are with what a working mind does with reality. Reality cannot be changed by what we prefer it to be!
MYSTICAL thought? Children often have trouble identifying how things work and assign wild and fantastic "reasons" for ordinary things. They may hide under the covers for fear a monster is in the closet and assume the money under their pillow came from a tooth fairy. This may be cute and silly, but, it is mystical thought which is the opposite of rational thought. Humans are postively addicted to it! Grown ups believe in True Romance, Fate, synchronicity, epiphany, miracles, optimism and invisible people (angels, demons, god, space aliens, etc.) This sort of thinking may be fun, titillating, exciting, entertaining and exhilrating---but, like pornography---IT AIN'T REAL LIFE! It is sloppy and ill-informed thinking which is a bad habit and nothing to be proud of. If you don't have facts---all you have is ZERO--you don't get to make up your own facts to replace the zero. Remember, people are entitled to their own opinions and not their own facts.
PRAYER? You are just talking to yourself and pretending somebody real is listening! When you were a kid and had conversations with your dolly or teddy bear you were doing the SAME DAMNED THING and with just as much effectiveness--so stop kidding yourself.
DELUSIONS? When somebody tells you something that turns out to be true (which you didn't believe or expect) and you are angry at them; you've just stumbled over one of your delusions! The real world can be unfair, unpleasant, chaotic and cruel. Building a better world (in your head) and pretending to live there is just like the child with their head under the bedcovers when the wind is howling like a werewolf outside and the shadows on the wall look like crooked clutching fingers. The sooner you face facts and abandon delusions the sooner your efforts will be directed toward what really makes a difference in everyday living: active participation in building a better life by dealing with it.
T.
To really bend a JW's mind, tell them that they really must believe in evolution.
The reasoning goes something like this:
There are literally millions of species of animals in the world today. There are thousands of species of just beetles, for example. Thinking of just the insect species alone, Noah's ark would have been just a big bug carrier, no room for elephants, tigers, etc.
"But the Reasoning Book says that Noah just took different kinds of animals into the ark. He took a pair of elephant kinds, tiger kinds, beetle kinds, etc."
Well and good, but if that is the case, then thousands of beetle species have evolved (adapted genetically, if you want to avoid the dread E word) from just one (or a few) pairs of beetles over the past 4300 years.
In fact, if a JW believes in the flood account literally, he believes in a form of evolution that progresses much faster than what most scientists believe in.
I always found it easier to grasp the concept of the infinity by mentally just calling it by some synonym "an endless recursion, or regression" or similar...endless just means let the computer run forever and since it never can, it is pointless if there seem to be "more" numbers in one sequence or another - i.e. whole numbers vs. even whole numbers, etc. - but then, that's just my way to get a handle on it.
However, working off that, it got me thinking about the Fibonacci series...you just start with 1 and each next number is the sum of the previous two numbers... 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 and so on. It is infinite, too.
I have a book which makes an anology of these numbers to "mating pairs of rabbits"...assuming that 1 means a male and female pair. They create a sort of idealized population growth mapping as new rabbits are born and grow up to mate again within half a generation. Of course, to be precise you would have to fix some formulation for older rabbits dying, wars, mormon rabbits, homoerotic rabbits, celibate rabbits, etc...but, it got me thinking about the number to be resurected after the big A.
I guess you see where I am going? I have not done any real research on it, yet have always have had the sneaking suspicion that this would pretty much blow the population question for the 1000 year reign out of the water. After all, humans do not breed like rabbits; we have a pretty much 1 - 1.3 or maybe as low as 1 - 0.85 growth rate now. This means previous dead generations are nearly as big as current population with each iteration. And this really matters NOW - with the high earth population of today! If these prophecies do not get around to coming about soon, the world will have passed through several past and several more future multi-billion generations. Where is the WT going to put them?
Yet, the typical JW believes in New Earth unconditionally. The implication would be that wiith most all these people back, the princes have a big food, housing, and infrastructure problem. And, don't forget that even if the electric plants, harvest equipment, etc. are left intact, everyone of that last generation (who knew how to work the stuff) are melted in the big one! The princes can mostly print magazines (if they had ink and electricity), wash windows, and clean a latrine. The past generations that come back knew how to fire a steam locomotive, loot and pillage, hunt bison, etc.
Of course, you can get past it all by just saying you have faith everything will be taken care of...
