Mephis

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Posts by Mephis

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  14

  Evolution is a Fact #17 - Belyaev's Silver Foxes

  by cofty in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  in stalin's ussr the science of genetics was deemed "reactionary and decadent".

  scientists were sent to the gulags or simply disappeared.

  dmitri konstantinovich belyaev lost his job at the at the central research laboratory of fur breeding in moscow because of his commitment to classical genetics.

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  Mephis

  Imagining the crazy world of resurrecting that species somehow , I think a certain amount of natural selection tends to weed out the human gene pool when it comes to trying to domesticate animals which view humans as dinner...
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  54

  Things JW's and Atheists have in common

  by juandefiero in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i was just thinking about something someone said on another thread.

  to paraphrase, 'jw beliefs like there being no hellfire, immortal soul, the condition at death...have the ring of truth.'.

  i realized, atheists believe these things too!.

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  Mephis

  @prologos - I'm agnostic on such things (as in I know I don't know), but if you're positing a God existing outside of spacetime, then that God is also unable to influence spacetime. To intervene in this universe requires a process and a duration (time). So a God therefore exists outside of his creation. The absent parent of all eternity. But I'd certainly agree such a God could exist.
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  8

  Will the GB ever do this?

  by why144000 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  hi, not sure if this has been covered.. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-13/peter-hollingworth-says-sorry-to-victims-child-abuse-brisbane/6939804.

  i don't have much time for peter hollingworth.

  he has always acted like a pompous prick when i have met him or seen him on tv however he humbled himself and made an apology for his actions and the actions of the church.. any bets on if the gb would ever do this?.

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  Mephis

  Do they even recognise there's a problem which needs to be addressed by the WBTS as an organisation? Will they ever recognise that they have a moral responsibility from the position in which they've placed themselves?

  It may be late, but other religions are starting to face up to the problem and the failures of their own leadership to address the issue sooner and better, as well as how much they failed the kids who should have been protected and the survivors who should have been cared for.

  I will be genuinely surprised if the WBTS ever manages more than grudging restitution to survivors. And then only when there is no other alternative. They don't have the moral courage to face things like this. They are cowards of the worst kind because they love telling people what to do, but they want nothing to do with the consequences.
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  6

  Illustrated Stephen Hawking lectures on Black Holes

  by Mephis in

  1. social
  2. entertainment

  i loved these.

  not only the drawings, but the lectures themselves are on something right at the limits of our ability to test, and in parts well beyond.. do black holes have no hair?.

  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03gl17j.

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  Mephis

  Bless. He's actually quite nice about God in those you know? He says we can safely ignore him. Just as he ignores us. I think that's sweet.
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  8

  do we have issues with the site or is it my mac or firefox?

  by sowhatnow in

  1. forum
  2. tech-support

  im on a mac-book, and when im at the site, often my mac runs real slow, im typing and the letters are not there, and pop up a few seconds later.

  weird stuff.

  it sometimes freezes up on me.

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  Mephis

  If you haven't already, I'd run a scan for viruses and malware on your mac-book as it sounds like something funky is going on there.

  If you've not got a program to do that, I did a quick look and Avast seem to have a free version for Macs which should work. (Avast is a resource hog of an anti-virus, so uninstalling after is a good option.)

  Been a while since I touched Mac for a work though, so can't help much beyond that I'm afraid.
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  6

  Illustrated Stephen Hawking lectures on Black Holes

  by Mephis in

  1. social
  2. entertainment

  i loved these.

  not only the drawings, but the lectures themselves are on something right at the limits of our ability to test, and in parts well beyond.. do black holes have no hair?.

  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03gl17j.

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  Mephis

  I loved these. Not only the drawings, but the lectures themselves are on something right at the limits of our ability to test, and in parts well beyond.

  Do black holes have no hair?

  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03gl17j

  Black holes ain't as black as they are painted

  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03h9y3b
  
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  25

  Is a piano inevitable?

  by slimboyfat in

  1. social
  2. current

  i was at a concert last night and the presence and stature of the piano struck me.

  and i thought: if the piano wasn't invented when it was, would it have been invented by someone else instead?

  or if there was a world the same as our, except with a different history, would it have pianos now too or would it be modern world, similar in many respects, only without pianos?

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  Mephis

  Ullysses by James Joyce on the other hand... If Joyce hadn't been born and lived the life he did this book would never have existed.

  I wrote my undergraduate thesis on Beckett's Molloy trilogy (and a few other things). No Joyce means no Beckett, or at least not as he became.That curious butterfly effect of alternate histories. But it's arguable that there would have been equivalent movements with other expressions or even the same forms even if not in the same words. You have to tear out the influences by the roots to stop that. The beginning is Homer I suppose.
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  54

  Things JW's and Atheists have in common

  by juandefiero in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i was just thinking about something someone said on another thread.

  to paraphrase, 'jw beliefs like there being no hellfire, immortal soul, the condition at death...have the ring of truth.'.

  i realized, atheists believe these things too!.

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  Mephis

  Do you honestly belief that all theist and Christian scientists really want to prove God doesn't exist? Scientists couldn't care less about that, because it's not a subject they investigate.

  Stephen Hawking made that point in one of his recent Reith Lectures. God is only relevant to science if someone insists that their god interferes with scientific laws. And then they have to prove it.
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  37

  How the Internet is Destroying Mormonism

  by slimboyfat in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  interesting video, shame it wasn't about jws.

  http://youtu.be/-1bdbkjbzzy.

  what a would be your top 5 shocking things you found out about jws on the internet?.

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  Mephis

  1, The scale of the child abuse. Not just the odd 'bad apple' I'd been told. Still makes my blood boil.

  2. The nature of judicial committees for sexual 'sins'. Compounded when it is a survivor of a serious crime being asked those questions. Deeply disgusting and shameful they do that to anyone.

  3. The number of people who trod the 607 path without knowing they weren't alone.

  4. The extent of the deceit required to write a sourced WBTS article. (eg the quotations in the Creation book).

  5. I'd not checked on JWs for a long time, so the difference between the religion I walked away from and the overtly culty 'listen, obey, be blessed' really shocked me.
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  23

  Your Favorite Poetry

  by compound complex in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  thank you, dear friends, for expressing your thoughts today on the importance of the arts in your lives.

  many years ago, a number of threads were devoted to poetry, literature, even english grammar.

  rather than resurrect an old thread -- usually with zero results -- i would like to introduce a new post, asking you to add some of your favorite verse.

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  Mephis

  Couple of snippets I love.

  From Bukowski's How Is Your Heart?

  to awaken in a cheap room
  in a strange city and
  pull up the shade-
  this was the craziest kind of
  contentment
  
  and to walk across the floor
  to an old dresser with a
  cracked mirror-
  see myself, ugly,
  grinning at it all.
  what matters most is
  how well you
  walk through the
  fire.

  
  From Eliot's Little Gidding

  With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

  We shall not cease from exploration
  And the end of all our exploring
  Will be to arrive where we started
  And know the place for the first time.
  Through the unknown, unremembered gate
  When the last of earth left to discover
  Is that which was the beginning;

  At the source of the longest river
  The voice of the hidden waterfall
  And the children in the apple-tree

  Not known, because not looked for
  But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
  Between two waves of the sea.
  Quick now, here, now, always--
  A condition of complete simplicity
  (Costing not less than everything)
  And all shall be well and
  All manner of thing shall be well
  When the tongues of flames are in-folded
  Into the crowned knot of fire
  And the fire and the rose are one.