I can't wait for the candice conti case to finish. The several recent lawsuits are just a leak in the levees. When they have to conceed the conti case, the levees will break and the flood waters will come forth!
OneEyedJoe
JoinedPosts by OneEyedJoe
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Not on JW.org: SIX Texas victims acuse Jehovah's Witness Elder & Circuit Overseer of sexual abuse, and bring lawsuit against Watchtower for cover-up.
by Balaamsass2 insexual exploitation and abuse of six young children leads to lawsuit in dallas county.
dallas, oct. 23, 2014 /news.gnom.es/ six young adults, from north texas, all sexually abused as children, filed suit today in dallas, texas state court against three north texas jehovahs witnesses congregations (dallas, plano, and greenville), the watchtower bible and tract society of new york, and an elder.. sexually abused when they were ages 4 through 14, the plaintiffs were children of members of the dallas, plano, and greenville jehovahs witnesses congregations.
the suit states that they were repeatedly sexually abused and molested by an elder and an unknown regional circuit overseer, and that they and their families were threatened with discipline and harm if they disclosed the abuse to anyone.
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Rapid evolution in action
by cantleave ina nice example of how the introduction of a competeing species can result in behavioral and anatomical changes in an indigenous one.. http://www.the-scientist.com//?articles.view/articleno/41309/title/rapid-evolution-in-real-time/.
for most of its existence, the carolina anole (anolis carolinensis) was the only lizard in the southwestern u.s. it could perch where it wanted, eat what it liked.
but in the 1970s, aided by human pet trade, the brown anole (anolis sagrei)native to cuba and the bahamascame marching in.
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OneEyedJoe
That's just variation within the lizard kind. That by no means shows that the lizards became a new species. Scientists still can't prove macroevolution!
Seriously though, thanks for posting this. 'twas a good read.
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Awake January 2015: How did life begin? - More misquotes
by Designer Stubble in[quote]some might assume that a scientifically-minded person would pick evolution and that a religious person would pick creation.
but not always.. rama singh, professor of biology at canadas mcmaster university, says: the opposition to evolution goes beyond religious fundamentalism and includes a great many people from educated sections of the population.[/quote].
end-of-quote in awake.
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OneEyedJoe
Great work. I couldn't manage to find the source for that quote. Just goes to show that they really did learn the true lesson behind the exposure of the misquotes in the creation book: Don't cite your sources.
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JAN 2015 Awake - Yet More Fallacies and Disingenuous Statements re Evolution/Creation
by konceptual99 inso the new awake is up.. first question..... "how did life begin?.
how would you complete the following sentance?.
life is the result of..... a. evolution.
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OneEyedJoe
My critique of the first article (there's so much wrong with this drivel, I'm probably just scratching the surface) in case anyone cares. I mostly wrote this for myself in case I'm asked why I refuse to take any awakes from the literature desk this january...I want to be prepared.
My comments are in red.
EDIT: I wanted to add a crossreference to Designer Stubble's find of a misquote that I couldn't find the source for. Find that here.
1 How Did Life Get Its Start?
Right off, they're moving the goalposts. The cover is talking about evolution, but this is apparently trying to disprove the theory of abiogenesis. Not a great start, if you ask me.
WHAT SOME SAY. Life arose spontaneously from nonliving matter. Noone (at least noone who has a clue about the current state of the study of abiogenesis) says this. Similar to the way a wild wolf eventually lead to that basset hound puppy sitting next to you, the process was not 'spontaneous.' It was almost certainly a very slow process that took place over at least around 500 Million years. By no means could this be described as having happened "spontaneously."
WHY SOME PEOPLE ARE NOT SATISFIED WITH THAT ANSWER.Scientists know more about the chemistry and molecular structure of life than ever before, yet they still cannot define with certainty just what life is. I'm not sure how a continuous debate regarding whether viruses qualify as life has to do with evolution. This is the logical fallacy of inflation of conflict. They say "even the scientists don't agree!" and then attempt to assert that this is evidence that nothing any scientist says on the matter is valid. The reality is that much of the difficulty in defining what qualifies as living matter is because the more we look closely at simple life forms and other natural systems which are typically considering non-living, the more the line between the two is blurred. If anything, this is evidence that life as we know it originated from natural processes involving non-living matter. A wide gulf separates nonliving matter from even the simplest living cell. After just stating that we can't define with certainty what life is, they then assert that there is a wide gulf seperating non-living matter from living? It seems they've chosen their certain definition for life as being a single celled bacterium. If that's the case, then there's really not that large a gulf between living matter and non-living (as viruses would be considered non-living in this scheme). If you take viruses to be alive, then this gulf further narrows. There has even been found in nature systems that closely resemble the metabolism that occurs within living cells, but occurring outside the bounds of any cellular membrane. The wide gulf that they assert is vanishing ever more with each continuing decade of scientific research.
Scientists can only speculate about what conditions on earth were like billions of years ago. I'm not sure what point they're getting at here. This only bolsters the idea that it's relatively difficult to work out exactly how life began, so it's no wonder we haven't gotten it completely worked out yet. They have differing views (inflation of conflict again) about where life began—for instance, whether within a volcano or under the ocean floor This is less of a difference than they're implying. The theory that life began on the ocean floor typically revolves around life starting near a geothermal vent, which is powered by volcanic activity. Another belief is that life’s building blocks first formed elsewhere in the universe and arrived here embedded in meteors. But that does not answer the question of how life began; it just pushes the issue farther into space. The idea behind panspermia (which is what they're refering to here) is not to address some apparent imposibility that life could come about from non-living matter, it is to address the apparent quickness (but by no means quick from a human standpoint) with which life formed on earth (roughly a half Billion years after earth's "late heavy bombardment" period in which the earth was frequently affected by asteroid impacts). Pushing the issue farther into space is less about trying to dodge the question and more about postulating that even if there wasn't time for life to form for itself on earth, it could well have formed somewhere else where it had more time, then was transfered to earth via meteor impact. Again, just because there are different ideas on how life first took hold on earth by no means invalidates the idea that it occurred without divine intervention. What's more, how is saying "god did it" as an explanation for the existence of life doing anything different than 'pushing the issue farther into space.' If a simple living cell is too complex to arise from non-living matter, certainly an intelligent designer is far too complex to arrise from absolutely nothing at all!
Scientists speculate about the existence of molecules that preceded genetic material as we know it today. These molecules are supposedly more likely to arise spontaneously from inert material and are self-replicating. Yet, science has found no evidence that such molecules ever existed, nor have scientists been able to create any such molecule in a laboratory. There's a fair amount of evidence that some RNA (the precursor to DNA) molocules were able to act as enzymes (which are required to make copies of RNA) as well. Sure, we don't have direct evidence that these molocules exist, but that's like saying that we don't have direct evidence that all dinosaurs had DNA. Those molocules break down quickly, so we can't exactly expect there to be 3.5 billion year old strands of RNA floating around. Even if there was, the chances of finding it and making positive ID are miniscule, considering all the life that now inhabits the earth.
We also haven't been able to create a fusion reaction that produces more energy than it consumes in a laboratory. Is this meant to be taken as evidence that our sun doesn't exist? There are many tools we can use to learn about things, and not all of them involve reproduction in a laboratory.
Living things are unique in the way they store and process information. Cells convey, interpret, and carry out instructions contained within their genetic code. Some scientists liken the genetic code to computer software and the chemical structure of the cell to computer hardware. But evolution cannot explain the source of the information. Again, moving the goalposts. Evolution makes no attempt to explain the source of the genetic code, only it's variation and speciation after it came to exist.
Protein molecules are necessary for the function of a cell. A typical protein molecule consists of hundreds of amino acids strung together in a specific sequence. Additionally, the protein molecule must fold into a specific three-dimensional shape for it to be useful. Some scientists conclude that the odds of even one protein molecule forming spontaneously are extremely improbable. “Since a functioning cell requires thousands of different proteins,” writes physicist Paul Davies, “it is not credible to suppose they formed by chance alone.” Again, no one things that the complex protiens used by our cells today arrived spontaneously. Also, I'd like to point out that the WTS absolutely loves to quote scientists who are talking about a field outside their area of expertise. While you're asking the physicist about biology, you might as well ask him his thoughts on how best to diagnose schizophrenia, as he's probably just as well versed in psychology as he is biology.
CONCLUSION. After decades of research in virtually all branches of science, the fact remains that life comes only from preexisting life. Now that's quite a leam after first asserting that we can't even define the word life. I also can't say it enough - I thought this was about evolution (you know, the idea that one form of life came about from a preexisting form of life). Yes, the study of abiogenesis is challenging. Afterall, scientists are trying to work out the details of an "event" that occurred over geologic timescales only once (as far as we can tell) in earth's history. They're at a considerable disadvantage. Just because scientists have worked on something for "decades" doesn't mean they've made no progress or have reached some deadline beyond which there is no hope for answers. People went centuries without working out that the earth was orbiting the sun, but we eventually figured it out. Imagine if everyone told copernicus "After centuries of research, the fact remains that the stars appear to rotate around the earth" and we all just went on thinking that the earth was the center of the universe?
2 How Did Living Things Develop?
Finally, on to the topic that we were told this magazine would be about!
WHAT SOME SAY. The first living organism gradually developed into a variety of living things, including humans, through a process of random mutation and natural selection. That's a first, the WTS presenting a reasonably fair summation of the opposing argument. I have a feeling a strawman is coming, though.
WHY SOME PEOPLE ARE NOT SATISFIED WITH THAT ANSWER.Some cells are more complex than others. According to one reference, how simpler cells could develop into more complex cells is “often rated the second major evolutionary mystery, after the origin of life.” Citation needed. Ahh, well I found it for you Link (tangent - the WTS still misquoting works by Carl Sagan. He was never pleased with their misquoting him while he was alive, why should they leave the poor fellow alone now that he's dead?) The full quote is " Prokaryote cell organization is less complex than that of eukaryotes. The basic question of the evolution of prokaryotes into eukaryotes—often rated the second major evolutionary mystery, after the origin of life—is thought to involve a complex series of partnerships in which distinct strains of bacteria entered each others’ bodies, merged symbiotically, and traded genes." Far from being a deep unsolvable mystery, there is quite a bit of continuing research on the topic that is making quite a lot of progress in understanding how it happened. This is another one of those events that happened once a long time ago, so it's not likely that we'll have a firm answer soon. None of this has yet addressed the evidence that is readily available that, for example, humans and chimps have a common ancestor.
Scientists have discovered within each cell intricate molecular machines composed of protein molecules that cooperate to perform complex tasks. These tasks include transporting and converting nutrients into energy, repairing parts of the cell, and conveying messages throughout the cell. Could random mutations and natural selection account for the assembling and functioning of such sophisticated components? Yes. Many find that concept difficult to accept. Many people find it difficult to believe that waking someone who is sleepwalking is perfectly safe. That doesn't make it any less true. If we based scientific fact upon consensus belief, we'd still be in the dark ages.
Animals and humans develop from a single fertilized egg. Inside the embryo, cells multiply and eventually specialize, taking on different shapes and functions to form distinct parts of the body. Evolution cannot explain how each cell “knows” what to become and where it should move within the organism. Evolution also can't explain why the sky is blue, or why gravity is the weakest of the fundamental forces, or why airplanes can fly or why the big bang happened. What's your f***ing point? That's not what the theory of evolution tries to explain, so there's no wonder it doesn't explain it.
Scientists now realize that for one kind of animal to develop into another kind of animal would require that changes take place within the cell, at the molecular level. Wait, are they trying to suggest that a chimp one day just spontaneously morphed into a human? What happened to their earlier description of evolution as a gradual process? Since scientists cannot demonstrate how evolution can produce even the “simplest” cell there's not a facepalm gif big enough to convey how this makes me feel. Plus the quotes around simplest is quite misleading since the simplest form of life that we can find today is still the product of 3.5 BILLION years of evolution, and as such it is still significantly more complex than the first form of life would have been., is it plausible that random mutations and natural selection could be responsible for the different kinds of animals on the planet? Yep, sure is. The standard model of particle physics doesn't explain how milk can turn into cheese, but it's still plausible that photons carry electromagnetic energy. Regarding the structure of animals, Michael Behe, professor of biological sciences, says that while research “has revealed unexpected, stunning complexity, no progress at all has been made in understanding how that complexity could evolve by unintelligent processes.” I'll just leave this here. This guy's own biology department published a statement opposing his views. what else ya got?
Human beings are conscious and self-aware, have the ability to think and reason, and possess moral qualities such as generosity, self-sacrifice, and a sense of right and wrong. Random mutations and natural selection cannot explain the existence of these unique qualities of the human mind. How dissapointing, they jumped right from trying to disprove evolution as an explanation of the complexity of single-celled organisms to an assertion that it doesn't explain some traits that are supposedly unique to humans. I was really hoping they'd take an untennable stance against the mountains of evidence for a common ancestor of chimps and humans (or cows and whales, or, indeed, every mammal, and on and on). Even so, the statement that evolution cannot explain certain psychological phenomena is similarly untenable. It has been demonstrated, for instance, that certain bits of genetics can lead towards a predisposition toward aggression. If a species has too much of that in it's gene pool, it's more likely to kill itself off and those genes are not continued on. If a species, on the other hand, develops genetics that create a predisposition towards generosity or self-sacrafice, it leads that species to become more successful by working as a community. If I sacrifice myself to save the lives of 3 others that also possess the same gene that makes me self-sacrificing, that gene is allowed to continue on. There is indeed an evolutionary explanation for all the qualities mentioned here, and what's more, there's an evolutionary explanation for why some people persist to believe in an intelligent designer in spite of the mountains of evidence. How's this for a taste of your own medicine: Creationism cannot explain the existence of athiests.
CONCLUSION. While many insist that an evolutionary origin of life is an indisputable fact among these people are educated scientists, evolutionary biologists, and pretty much anyone who's examined 1% of the evidence with an open mind, others are not satisfied with the answers that evolution provides regarding how life began and how life developed. Yep, I can see how someone who ties all their self worth into belief in a diety would be left unsatisfied with the answer that evolution provides - namely, you're wrong.
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Awake! to be part of Watchtower Public Edition!
by Atlantis inthis was posted on a jw site and it would be nice if we could verify.. .. .. as of february 2015, the awake!
will come as a part of the watchtower public edition instead of as a separate magazine.
this is a huge change... with serious cost savings.
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OneEyedJoe
yeah, we've been getting them that way in the US for a while. At first they tried doing 2 WTs together and 2 awakes together in the packaging, but I guess too many people were forgetting to seperate them and giving away 2 at each door. Now the awake is inside the WT. This isn't the big consolodation that everyone is expecting, but it certainly doesn't mean it's not coming.
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Slip Sliding Away :I went to a 1 day assembly-Why?
by MissFit ini have not attended anything jw related for over a year.... until last week when i went to our one day convention.. why you ask?.
i can do what i want i'm a grown adult.. ok...ok...so my jw childhood friend who i have not seen forever, came by for a visit.. i mentally went through the check list:.
is she pioneering and need extra time?.
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OneEyedJoe
My goodness this is me. I started waking up a few months ago and ours is Saturday. I considered an excuse to not go and realized hubby was going despite. I figure it's better I'm there to hear and have good critical thinking questions for after. Ya know... So I can ' be on the watch' ha. Also... I'm going to play some games in my head, like a last days counter, Jesus mention, school is bad mention.... I can have some fun, that's what I'm trying to convince myself of. I really am curious to let you know the $cost we are assigned.
One suggestion you might be able to use as a critical point/question afterwards:
The closing talk discusses the recent QFR "noo-lite" on whether ressurected ones will be able to marry in paradise. For years they dogmattically asserted that they would not be able to, and now they're going back on that saying that Jesus' comments on the topic 'evidently' applied only to the 144k annointed. My current CO (who gave the talk) recently lost his wife, who he clearly loved very very much. When he was talking about this topic, he went on for a bit about how distressing it was to think that he wouldn't be able to be married to her in paradise. He gave lots of things he had to tell himself to reduce his grief at this fact (I know we'll both be happy regardless, etc) and it was very sad to listen to. Now, all that was unneccessary heart-ache, since ressurected ones can remarry apparently.
On the car ride home, I said to my wife "I feel really bad for xxxx (the CO)." When she asked why, I said, "He clearly suffered alot of grief and heart-ache that all could have been avoided if the society hadn't been so dogmatic about ressurected people being unable to remarry." She didn't much know what to say to that...
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How did the term "The Truth" come about?
by FeelingFree ini just wondering how this vile term came to be used in constant referral to the org, i really, really hate it!
it's only since coming out that i have realised how much the jdubs use it.
everything is the truth this and the truth that.
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OneEyedJoe
I suspect it's probably an evolution of some scripture ("you will know the truth and the truth will set you free" or "worship in spirit and truth") and has been in use for well over the 30 years I've been in the cult. I suspect it started sometime in the rutherford era, since that seems to be when most of the super-culty stuff started coming into play, but it could be older than that.
It's definitely not unique to JWs, though. Many cults as well as some of the less insidious religions refer to their body of doctrine as "truth" in a de facto sense. In all cases, it's not only arrogant, but false.
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The Present Truth is the Truth and the Old Truth is the Truth, even if they contradict.
by garyneal inthat is the conclusion you must accept if you are a jehovah's witness as my wife tries to explain to me that even if what they are teaching today contradicts what they were previously teaching, they had the truth then and they have the truth now.
the difference is, they (the witnesses and the governing body) simply believed that what they were teaching at the time was the truth but when they discovered new information they adjusted their thinking.
so since they formerly believed it to be the truth, they were in the truth.. an example she gave involved people who once believed the earth was flat.
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OneEyedJoe
There was an elder in my congregation (who, sadly passed away before I learned TTATT, so I can't be 100% sure on this) that I think MUST have been awake to TTATT because of, among other things, a talk he once gave on this very topic. He made it sound so outlandish (at least to me, even while I was still indoctrinated) that I now think he was trying to wake people up. He brought up a lot of the contradictions over the years and insisted that the previous belief and the current one were both true, even though only the current one is true. That was the last talk he gave before he stepped down as an elder, citing his health.
He was a voracious reader and a genuinely intelligent man, if a bit stubborn. Another elder once told me that "he was almost appostate" and apparently he went through a period where he was very "down on the organization." I think he had an awakening about 10 years back, but stayed in because he was dependant (poor health and old age) on family. He could always be counted on to contradict the WT in his coments any time it started to take too much of a hard-line stance on anything.
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How To Be Subversive While Knowing TTATT And Stuck Inside The Watchtower Corporation Confines?
by frankiespeakin inso you found out it is all bs but due to family and friends you don't want to be disfellowshipped and shunned.
you have to go to these rediculous meetings maybe even engage in corporation sponsored magazine drives to get the propaganda into the homes of your neighbor in hopes of making another corporation zombie mystified by childish magical thinking, of a jealous deity that wants you to work for the corporation finacial interest or else die for your lack of corporation loyalty.. it is a stressful sitiuation with all kinds of trip wires one has to beware of in order not to be heading into some back room kangaroo court where obediance to the almighty corporation is the bottom line, and a fair hearing of the facts is last on the list of importance.. one consolation is that one may eventually get friends and family out of this demanding and destructive cult with patients and passage of time.. so what ideas would you like to pass on to readers?
what are some of subversive activities one can engage in while stuck in this nasty bit of mandatory corporation exercises of preaching, selling, and building?.
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OneEyedJoe
Bumping this since the thread about the 1914 service meeting video seems to be going off topic a bit.
I've started taking magazines (as many as I can get away with) and throwing them away at home. There's already been a lot of frustration in my congregation over the new magazine arrangement (in which the congregation only gets a set supply, no set number for each individual publisher) because they're always running out, so I figure I'll try to make that a little worse. I've also heard of some congregations getting sternly written letters if they don't count as many placements as their magazine order on a regular basis, so between my throwing away magazines and not reporting any even if someone takes them to get rid of me, I might help some in the congregation see what happens when you cross "mother."
I also look for oppurtunities to give comments that are directly contrary to the WTS stance on something - the best time to do this being the oral review, since there's no written material readily available for the comment to come from, so everyone will be following along with your comment, nodding their heads only to have it contradicted by the school overseer or the next comment. The best example of this that I can think of was when they had something about Lev 5:1 in the review. The official answer was that if you find out about someone's secret sin and you don't rat them out to the elders then you're just as guilty, but that's not what the scripture was about. My answer gave an accurate interpretation of the scripture - it was saying that if someone was wronged and was asking who it was that did it and you don't tell then you're just as guilty, but if the wrongdoing wasn't publicly known, then it didn't apply. I also referenced Matt. 18:15 where it says to privately talk to your brother if you become aware of a secret sin. The school overseer kinda stumbled for a second and didn't know how to react (presumably because he was looking at the WTS answer that directly contradicted my well-reasoned scriptural answer) and called on an elder that went on to talk about how important it is to let the elders know if you find out about someone's secret sin.
Of course, if you give answers like this, you must be prepared to be sickened by the number of people who come to you after the meeting to congratulate you on how much research you put into it, etc. I just hope that some might be nudged a little out of their slumber.
Any other ideas on how to keep sane and sabotage the cult while I'm still in for the wife?
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Mormon Church Founder had 33 wives
by designs inwe know russell, rutherford franz and knorr wer kooky but joseph smith takes the cake.. the salt lake tribune of all newspapers has run an article on the lds founder's 33 wives, most of whom were teenagers.. http://www.sltrib.com/news/173364-155/plural-smith-joseph-marriage-lds-says.
would you stay an lds after knowing this, how would you rationalize staying with this knowledge.. .
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OneEyedJoe
I can't speak to what I'd do had I been raised a mormon. It would probably depend heavily on what the church taught about ol' Joe Smith. I suspect in mormon circles you'll hear things like "This one guy on the street the other day told me that Joseph Smith had 33 wives! Can you believe the lies that people will make up just to test our faith?" When you're raised in that type of environment, it would probably be easy to see that headline and thing "Poor writer, some appostate tricked him with lies about Joseph Smith" and move on without looking any deeper.
Such is the insidious nature of cults. They tell you little bits of the real truth, and convince you that it's so fantastical that it must be a lie. So when you encounter the truth somewhere else, it just seems silly.