There's a fair amount of evidence that we don't actually have free will. Our brains are complex, chaotic system in which small changes can drastically alter outcomes, which makes us somewhat unpredictable and gives us the appearance of free will. So my question would be: Would a loving god withhold free will, then tell us we have free will and punish us for our mistakes in spite of not having free will to avoid them?
OneEyedJoe
JoinedPosts by OneEyedJoe
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Would a loving creator give humans the gift of free will?
by Heisenberg inthey say ignorance is bliss... well, i wish that god did not give adam free will.
i am ok to not have free will if it means i will live forever in perfect paradisiac conditions.it has been explained that free will is a gift from god.
they say 'who would want to live life like a robot?
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How and Why?
by The Rebel ina recent thread i read about bethel " sending an old man packing" has bought to my attention it's one of many threads that show the most " loving" organisation in the world is cold and without love.. how can an organisation that is so unloving, have so many kind hearted people as members?.
this is the sincere question that i have not found an answer to.. the rebel..
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OneEyedJoe
Because kind-hearted, honest people imagine others to be similarly kind-hearted and honest. So when an organization claims to be the most loving in the world and the "truth" they can't fathom that people could be so corrupt and dishonest and unloving as the cult truly is. So they remain trapped. And still more kind-hearted honest people see the ones that are trapped and think "surely these kind-hearted honest people wouldn't allow themselves to be associated with a unloving lying cult" and they become trapped too. -
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Evolution is a Fact #5 - Vitamin C
by cofty inpart 1 - protein functional redundancypart 2 - dna functional redundancypart 3 - ervspart 4 - smelly genes.
in part 4 we saw that roughly half of the 800 genes in the human genome that code for olfactory receptors are broken remnants of our evolutionary history.
they were vital to our distant ancestors but in humans, as in our primate cousins they have been allowed to fall into disuse as our eyes became more important to our survival than our nose.
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OneEyedJoe
Ease off, clambake. This is all really basic stuff regarding evolution that Cofty is taking time out of his day to organize and post in a thoughtful way for those that are interested. He makes no claim to be furthering evolutionary research and he makes no claim to have special qualifications aside from having done his own research on the matter.
Has any of what you are spewing been peer reviewed?
Yes, all of what he's been posting has been, because it's all very well understood and accepted fact in the field of evolutionary biology.
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Favourite Comedy Quotes
by LoveUniHateExams ini wanted to post a serious, profound quote in stillin's thread but my mind went blank and i'm pretty crap with serious quotes anyway, so i put a jokey quote from the red dwarf computer holly: .
it's better to have loved and lost than to have listened to an album by olivia newton-john.. when a bemused lister asks why, holly replies "because anything's better than listening to an album by olivia newton-john!".
this got me thinking, what are everyone's favourite comedy quotes?.
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OneEyedJoe
Mitch Hedberg is responsible for a great many of my favorite comedic quotes/one-liners:
This shirt is "dry-clean only"...which means it's dirty.
I don't have a girlfriend. But I do know a woman who'd be mad at me for saying that.
And one of his that I always think of in relation to JWs, particularly the cart witnessing:
When someone hands you a flyer, it's like they're saying here you throw this away.
There's also a lot of good Mark Twain quotes out there, I think my favorite is:
The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.
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Please help with Rama Singh's letter
by I am a Bible Student inhello could someone please help me with the actual letter that rama singh wrote asking wt to retract and apologise for misquoting him in the january 2015 awake?
i am giving it to the elders in my former congregation as part of my farewell letter.
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OneEyedJoe
Related threads, in order of my estimation of their usefulness to the OP are below. Looks like you're right, Steve - they told Dr. Singh that they'd pulled the quote but certainly did not print a retraction and probably did not apologize. At least there's no mention of an apology.
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/286780/awake-january-2015-how-did-life-begin-more-misquotes
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Please help with Rama Singh's letter
by I am a Bible Student inhello could someone please help me with the actual letter that rama singh wrote asking wt to retract and apologise for misquoting him in the january 2015 awake?
i am giving it to the elders in my former congregation as part of my farewell letter.
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OneEyedJoe
It doesn't appear to be up on the original link anymore, but maybe this will help:
http://taze.co/2015/01/17/rama-singh-awake/
http://www.inquisitr.com/1766536/biology-professor-creationist-magazine/
Also, here's an article he wrote about it. I don't think this is exactly the same as what he wrote in the open letter, but it makes many of the same points:
http://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/5474687-religion-science-driven-by-reason/
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Ridiculous statements in this weeks study article
by the truth is mine inmaybe it is just me but when i read this paragraph all i could do is shake my head and wonder how i used to buy into this crap and how people don't wonder what the hell the writers are thinking'.
"imagine what life would be like if god did not have love for mankind.
we merely have to look at the awful history of this world with its human rulerships under its unloving and wrathful god, satan the devil.
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OneEyedJoe
To us statements like this seem obviously ridiculous, but it's really quite clever. This is spoonfeeding the r/f the thought stoppers they'll need to keep themselves from seeing reality. It's pretty standard cult indoctrination - reframe all that is bad as evidence of evil Satan and all that is good is the result of god's love. -
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There are some real beauties posted here!
by stillin inthis one is worth repeating.
it was buried in a thread and u've been thinking about it all day.. a quote from mark twain, one of my all-time heroes.. "it's easier to fool a man than it is to convince him that he has been fooled.".
isn't that the truth....
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OneEyedJoe
In the same vein, I love this Carl Sagan quote:
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
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looks like the org. stopped all the "leaks"
by nowwhat? incedars site hasn't had anything new since september when the new mid week meeting was disclosed.
wonder if the moles were caught.
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OneEyedJoe
Maybe the new light got too bright and they're still waiting for their eyes to adjust.
There haven't been any changes since the midweek meeting got changed, so why would you expect to have gotten a leak of something?
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Are You Raising An Introvert?
by darth frosty inits not easy being an introvert in an extrovert worldespecially when youre a kid.
it is even more difficult if none of the adults in the kids life recognize that the child is an introvert.
this doesnt happen only when the childs parents are extroverts, but also with introverted parents who have never understood their own introverted nature.. .
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OneEyedJoe
You're the Mastermind! Wow, it sure is lonely at the top and being one of the rarest and most strategically capable introvert types! Masterminds, like you, know this all too well. Masterminds form just two percent of the population! It's no surprise that it's often a challenge for you to find like-minded individuals who are able to keep up with your relentless intellectualism and chess-like manoeuvring! Masterminds are imaginative yet decisive, ambitious yet private, amazingly curious, but they do not squander their energy. You are truly one of a kind!
Looks like the test is a slightly simplified myers briggs test. I think I recall the INTJ type being referred to as the mastermind as well.