Posts by OneEyedJoe

27

Evolution and Creation—both are stories!

by lsw1961 in

there are number of nobel laureates and other great scientists in both the camps defending their respective theories of evolution and creation, which means both are just stories, and both suffer from having no eye-witnesses.

if either of them were true, all scientists would have accepted it unanimously as they do with rest of the laws such as law of gravity..

this does not mean that there is no god.

OneEyedJoe

There are number of Nobel Laureates and other great scientists in both the camps defending their respective theories of Evolution and Creation, which means both are just stories, and both suffer from having no eye-witnesses. If either of them were true, all scientists would have accepted it unanimously as they do with rest of the Laws such as Law of Gravity

This is the logical fallacy of inflation of conflict. There is some disagreement in the field of evolutionary biology on certain details, but no disagreement on the fact of evolution. Furthermore you make the mistake of assuming that because someone is a "scientist" they automatically can make an educated decision on the subject of creation vs evolution, but this is simply not the case. A physicist does not necessarily have any more understanding of evolution than a baptist preacher. Interestingly enough there is a paper that was (mis)quoted by a recent awake article that goes into detail on this fact and explains why even educated people fail to understand the fact of evolution - the summary is that it's not intuitive and most people have a tenuous grasp (at best) on the timescales involved. It's an interesting read: http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/pdf/10.1139/g11-046

This does not mean that there is no God. There are two channels for the acquisition of knowledge—1) five senses, 2) intuitive knowledge—something that Einstein admitted that he used in the formulation of his theory of relativity. Now let us use our intuitive mind, along with on our experience:
1) I came through my parents (not from them, because they did not create their sperms and eggs, and also they did nothing in the formation of me within the womb of my mother which happened with no conscious effort from my parents).
2) My parents came through their parents (not from them)…..

I'm not sure just what the point is that you're trying to make here. The argument of "Zebras only come from zebras, lions only come from lions and humans only come from humans" has been thoroughly debunked if you'd care to do a little investigation on the topic of evolution. Evolution of developed species that you're likely to come across in day-to-day life is so incredibly slow that even if your lifespan were 100 times the average for a human it would be barely perceptible at best in most cases. Lions give birth to two slightly different lions and when the populations get separated, they begin to diverge genetically until you have two populations of animals that no longer closely resemble one another and are sufficiently diverged to be considered different species. There's no point in there, though, that you can look at and say "Aha! That's a new species!" Each generation looks sufficiently similar to the previous generation that they appear to be the same species, but over long time spans the similarities diminish.

After that, you seem to go on a completely unrelated tangent. I don't think that many people claim that the fact of evolution is proof that god does not exist simply because humans are the "best" species. Anyone who does make that claim is really lacking in their understanding of logical deduction. In fact, I think that few people truly make the claim that evolution disproves the existence of god. It simply proves that god is not necessary. At least not for the creation of an abundant variety of species that exist today. Other fields of study (cosmology, abiogenesis, astrophysics, etc) further prove that god is not a necessary component for any of our natural world to exist or function, but that's a different discussion altogether.

Your assessment of the function of religion is somewhat noble and certainly compassion is a worthy thing for us to seek. If you agree that JWs have fallen to the point that they are no better than the money changers in the temple that Jesus chased away, what is your assessment of Revelation 18:4? Does it not apply to you, or are you comfortable sharing in their sins and receiving part of their coming plagues?

25

Is Religion Dying Out? - AWAKE! NOVEMBER 2015

by GrownMidget in

"have you given up on organized religion?

in many countries the number of people who describe themselves as not religious is growinga trend that suggests an uncertain future for institutional religion.

some of those lands are shown here.

OneEyedJoe

Clambake - it always bothered me that I was going to people's homes to shove it in their face that I think their religion is wrong. I guess I was never really cut out to be a JW. It seems that the writers of this article realized this problem themselves:

Babylon the Great too “sits on many waters.” These, the Bible tells us, mean “peoples and crowds”—the millions who support false religion.

They say there are "millions" supporting false religion, probably in an attempt to delay the reader's realization that the article is talking about them (I'm assuming they're not atheists, because if they are I suspect they've stopped reading well before this point). Meanwhile a JW will read that and substitute the more accurate "billions" which actually reflects the JW belief that everyone that supports a religion other than JW is in that group.

13

Question time

by Sabin in

with all the evidence stacked against them on child abuse issues, why do you think they are still refusing to play ball with the authorities?

why not put their hands up & say "we got a problem, we need help to change our medieval policies, we need advise on how to conduct our affairs in away that is in the victims best interests".. do you think that it is blatant, selfish pride.

the risk of losing money & struggling as a consequence, or they truly believe that jehovah is protecting them & by admitting they have acted in this inconceivable way would bring reproach on his name?.

OneEyedJoe

They think god is backing them and they can't lose. Who would "play ball" under those circumstances? I think there really waiting for their god to bail them out and if they give up it would betray a lack of faith.

29

2015 Worldwide Memorial Attendance: Another Sign of Decline

by steve2 in

jw memorial attendance last year - 2014 - was about 50,000 shy of 20 million.

some posters on this forum had confidently predicted before the 2014 memorial that attendance would hit more than 20 milion.

they were wrong.. now, in 2015, and the memorial falling on a weekend night (where attendance is historically much higher), attendance has not only failed to top 20 milion but has declined by more than 87,000 in attendance over 2014:.

OneEyedJoe

I would think it is the other way around, as the one showing up at the Memorial and rarely at other times, the so-called "cousins" or "submarines" are away on holidays or at least weekend trips during Easter and therefore do not attend the Memorial, but they do when it falls on a mid-week night.

I don't think most people who are going just to show their face (or those that still believe but can't force themselves to go to regular meetings) would skip because it's on the weekend...I think most are more likely to skip if it's during the week and they're tired from work and have to get up early the next day.

Additionally, with their big campaigns to put out invitations, they probably get a few people interested and the closer the memorial is to good friday/easter, the more it seems like just another church to go to for a special mass and they're more likely to have walk-ins on those days. Whereas most normal people probably aren't going to bother going to some new church in the middle of the week when they are tired and have to get up early the next day.

18

Hypocrisy of JW Thinking After Tragedy Like Paris

by freemindfade in

it never has ceased to boggle my mind how twisted up jw thinking is.

when they see something like what happened in paris, in person they will express how sad and detestable it is quickly followed by "this is why we need the kingdom, and the desert god is gonna fix everything.

" here is where i get perplexed.

OneEyedJoe

Yes, apparently the only conceivable solution to the threat of genocidal maniacs is for the biggest genocidal maniac of them all to kill all the potential targets of genocide.

40

What is the org’s view on extraterrestrial life?

by My Name is of No Consequence in

i am sure that it has been discussed before.

but just out of curiosity, what is the orgs view on extraterrestrial life?

the org certainly agrees that the universe is infinitely large.

OneEyedJoe

They wouldn't concede that life could evolve anywhere, so saying that there might be life elsewhere would require that they admit that Jehovah created life on other planets. Since the bible says he does nothing without letting his prophets know, they're not likely to admit that possibility.

They're also incredibly adept at ignoring evidence of terrestrial life, instead insisting that we just appeared here 6000 years ago. I suspect that if ET life is ever discovered, they'll simply refuse to acknowledge it and will, at best, publish articles full of logical flaws that don't address the actual evidence but instead suggest that any evidence found was the result of misconduct or insufficient rigor on the part of the scientists.

52

1914—The Turning Point in History - Really?

by berrygerry in

1914the turning point in history.

30 from the human standpoint, the world troubles and global wars foretold in the bible were far from the thinking of the pre-1914 world.

german statesman konrad adenauer said: thoughts and pictures come to my mind, .

OneEyedJoe

They just love to play both sides of things. Leading up to 1914, they surely published lots of quotes about how bad things were and how we couldn't make it past 1914. There were many people at the time predicting that a huge war would break out in the mid 1910s. Of course there's always people on both sides of any issue, so cherry-picking quotes in order to paint a false consensus isn't difficult to do at all, but it's all anecdotal.

Just imagine, if WWIII had broken out in 1975, they'd probably be saying something similar - that they predicted a turning point that no one else saw coming. Meanwhile, their publications pre-1975 would still be riddled with quotes saying how things couldn't possibly make it past the mid 1970s.

31

Warwick Project Update Email

by wifibandit in

fwd from anon:.

dear brothers,.

we are happy to provide you with a brief progress update on the warwick project and explain how you can assist with a major adjustment recently approved in our construction schedule.

OneEyedJoe

So far the plausible explanations seem to be:

Someone royally screwed up the planning.
There's some financial incentive for them to move out of the other properties sooner.
They're planning something for the AGM that necessitates them being in their new cult compound.

Am I missing any?

31

Warwick Project Update Email

by wifibandit in

fwd from anon:.

dear brothers,.

we are happy to provide you with a brief progress update on the warwick project and explain how you can assist with a major adjustment recently approved in our construction schedule.

OneEyedJoe

can you explain that management triangle you mentioned?

It's what Stealth was alluding too as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle

Often summarized as Stealth said. You have 3 components to how a project turns out that are in conflict with each other. You have the scope (how much work you're going to do, and how good the quality will be), the timeline, and the cost. You can't optimize all 3 and if you make changes to one it will affect one of the other two, or both. If you want to make a project cheaper, generally speaking you let it take longer or you reduce scope/quality. Since they're doing the opposite (or at least they're not admitting to changing the scope or quality) then it makes me very suspicious of their statement.

Sometimes large constructions like these have additional costs than just materials and labor. Sometimes permits and concessions expire. There are conditions to development that must be met with work or money. If you don't finish, you pay. There was a case I remember where the watchtower bought land for development. The city approved the development and gave incentives. One was having to make some donation or purchase for the local fire department (if memory serves me well). The real state agency that managed the sale had a clause that said that the org had a number of years to develop the property. If the development was canceled by the org and they wanted to sort of "return" the property, they had to pay a huge sum of money on fines.
So sometimes accelerating the job may cost more in personnel but a lot less in red tape.

I thought about this, but dismissed it because I figured that the original plan would've already been laid out such that inspections, permits, etc were all arranged and timed correctly to avoid any fees and unnecessary costs. Assuming someone didn't botch the planning, would a shorter timeline actually save money normally? While I've had a little exposure to construction, I'm not super familiar and certainly nothing on this scale.

I guess you are saving some money by moving up the completion date by 3 months. They feed all the workers right? Saving 3 months food costs, that's saving something. Other than that, off the top of my head I can't think how it saves them money.

Any savings on food cost would be minuscule unless they've actually reduced the amount of work that will need to be done (i.e. don't build one of the dorms or something). Assuming they're keeping the project scope the same, the only way they save money on food is if there's less waste because they're feeding more people. To get the job done faster, they'll have to bring in more people, so they're feeding people for 4 months less time but they're feeding more people and it balances out.

In most cases, bringing the schedule in (especially in cases like this where there was already a fully developed plan) by throwing more people at it usually results in an increase in total person-hours required to finish the job. The more people you add the more overhead there is in coordinating them, and the more they're stepping on each other's toes and the more you have problems with the right people getting the right information at the right time. That's a big reason that, generally speaking, reducing a project's schedule increases it's cost.

31

Warwick Project Update Email

by wifibandit in

fwd from anon:.

dear brothers,.

we are happy to provide you with a brief progress update on the warwick project and explain how you can assist with a major adjustment recently approved in our construction schedule.

OneEyedJoe

This seems to support my suspicion when it was first reported here that warwick would be finishing early. It doesn't look like they're actually ahead of schedule, but they're just moving the goal deadline. It'll be interesting to see how that pans out. Will it be viewed as god taking his blessing away if they miss their date or will it be just an adjustment from the GB "In order to make the best use of dedicated funds" again?

How does moving up the deadline help to "make the best use of dedicated funds"?

This was what I was wondering myself. The project management triangle dictates that pulling in the schedule must be countered by a greater reduction in project scope/quality in order for their to be a reduction in cost. A shorter timeline won't reduce project cost in and of itself, even if they are cheating and using unpaid labor. My hunch is that they're eyeballing the potential cash from the properties they can sell once they move out. They must really need the money if they're changing plans so drastically just to be able to sell some property 4 months earlier.