by Sanchy 59 Replies latest jw friends
Your just arguing.
the wt is CLEARLY ‘dumbed down’ compared to what it was 5 years ago, let alone 10 or 15 years ago and it is clearly ‘dumbed down’ compared to average newspapers or even a normal conversation between adults. You dont have to defend everything the organization does.
To be fair, the WT has admitted it is "dumbing down" its literature (though they don't use that term) to aid in the translation process. They translate all or some of their "literature" into, I forget - 600? 800? languages.
It is far easier to translate "dumbed down" sentences into the more obscure languages, especially into languages where words for advanced concepts may not really even exist.
It is still insultingly dull for the vast majority of their readers, but there is at least a rational reason for it.
Well, morph, we will just agree to disagree. We are at an impasse.
Another response, this time from Bobby the apologist:
Evolution is allegedly about survival, right?
Our alleged animal ancestors had been "surviving" for millions of years without the ability to reason, without music, art, advanced intelligence, etc and so on. In fact, those traits and abilities are really totally unnecessary for survival, as all animals today are surviving quite well without any of the abilities we have as humans.
It just lends more credence to the Bible's account that we are a special creation, made in the image of God.
The typical "Where did art and music evolve from?" argument. Said argument does nothing to discredit the theory of evolution and natural selection. Having said that, a simple google search provides interesting answers. For instance, I easily found the following regarding art and evolution from LINK:
Along those lines, the visual arts stimulate and promote human cognitive abilities in numerous ways. To start, physiologically, the eye captures physical data from a chromatic surface and, through a cascade of transductions, converts this data into the language of the brain—namely, electrical impulses, which travel to the brain and its visual cortices. Subsequently and progressively, “…a mental object, an inner representation of a painting or object, will take shape”7. These mental objects can be manipulated in the mind’s eye, a real-time mental workstation used for manipulating spatial and visual information. This quality of mental flexibility would have made the visual arts advantageous to our primitive ancestors, for the ability to simulate an event mentally and visually before it occurred would have led to better planned and calculated approaches to a variety of situations. For the first time in our species’ history, the cosmos could be framed in a painting for the viewer to contemplate. “For prehistoric man, the use of images probably testifies to a reflected vision of shapes in which the viewer is confronted with an organized image of his universe, an image of a relationship to objects that come into his field of perception”7. The creation of images reflects a method of organizing sensory data with the purpose of acting on the dangerous world of nature and defending man from all his threats3, a sort of rehearsal for strategic action in the hostile environment in which our ancestors lived.
re "dumbing down"...
Par for the course for a religion that demonizes anything further than high school education.
Of course you're gonna end up with:
"Look Caleb, look. See Sophia preach."
When their deep faith in a biblical creator is challenged, they would rather just ignore the truths and facts and stick with the comforting lies....
Doubter If Jesus is real and in an invisible Heaven, he is invisible, thus, making an invisible return acceptable.
I appreciate you are explaining things as would a dub...BUT...
It doesn't say anywhere in the Bible that Jesus return will be invisible. Quite the opposite.
They need that pointing out. Just sayin'
Plus, he is already a King...(no invisible 1914 crowning):
All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age,'" (Matthew 28:18-20).
Notice that Jesus does not simply tell them to go. He tells them that He has been given all authority both in heaven and on earth, and therefore they are to go.
And nowhere in the new Testament are Christians to preach about "Jehovah`s Kingdom" ,for such a term is not found in the Christian Greek Scriptures
Christians are to witness about the" Kingdom of Jesus Christ"
EccentricM wrote: ... no mid-species transitions were ever found, only full species. As such they made the erronous claim that "certain species were the missing links"(?) despite having no evidence that was even the case, but said it was anyway.
This could not possibly be more wrong. It is a classic case of creationist ignorance. The fossil record contains an embarrassment of riches of transitional species. Two of the best examples are the transition from lobe-finned fish to tetrapods and the journey of land mammals to whales.
The transition from reptiles to mammals is also very well documented in the fossil record.
For hundreds of other examples see Prothero - 'Evolution, What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters'.
Later with genetics they found.. oh, all life shares DNA, and so they say "aha, that confirms it, it's all true". What they did not consider is that we are all simply made.. from the same materials, hence, DNA (ingrediants) being the same, but no "lineage" like in direct human ancestry has ever been detected or studied.
Again the ignorance (and spelling) is painful.
If we did not have a single fossil the comparison of DNA would prove common ancestry. The evidence has nothing to do with the fact that all living things share a common code, it is the specific similarities, differences and common errors that matter.
Imagine you are a teacher correcting the homework of a group of students. If they all wrote that the Battle of Hastings happened in 1066 that would only suggest they all properly read the same textbook. There is only one way to get the answer right but there are an infinite number of ways to get it wrong. If 3 pupils all said that the answer was 1977 then you would have very strong evidence of copying. If you found many such identical errors in the same 3 papers you have proof. DNA comparison is a bit like this.
Cytochrome C comparison is one very good example (which many creationists wilfully misunderstand)
If you bring up the current state of "statis of evolution" as well as living fossils as an argument, they shall say "not all life forms evolve if they don’t need to, hence why we have “living fossils”, life forms that have not changed at all for billions of years, and we have many of them". This idea I think seems to contradict evolution. Why? Because something does not change if it does not need to, it only adapts to it’s needs to survive.
Nothing in the history of life EVER adapted. NEVER. NOTHING. NOT EVEN ONCE.
If a species exists in a stable environment then there is no selective pressure and mutations are not favoured by Natural Selection. This does not contradict evolution, it is precisely what evolution predicts. It does contradict a common creationist misunderstanding of evolution.
So… why evolve in the first place? Was the first micro-organism in danger? Could it not survive in the sea by staying at it was?
Again this is predicted on the error that individuals adapt to circumstances by evolving. There is no intention in evolution. Random changes are selected if they give an advantage to the individual that hosts it. If resources are scarce then individuals who are better equipped to survive AND reproduce will leave more copies of their genes in the gene pool. If resources are plentiful selection pressure is less or even non-existent.
Evolving means to adapt and change in accordance to one’s enviroment,
No it doesn't. Repeating this trope doesn't make it true. Nothing adapts to its environment.
but if all life came from a single cell, which includes said enviroment, that means there was nothing to adapt or respond to in the first place, which should incur stasis.
If anybody can explain this sentence I will be happy to comment.
