Can someone cite a source where JWs say they were physically beaten in Malawi 1975?
Coded Logic
JoinedPosts by Coded Logic
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A funny little diplomatic cable regarding the Malawi atrocities against JW's in 1975
by Saintbertholdt inno doubt that atrocities were perpetrated against jehovah's witnesses in 1972-73.. but what about the reports in 1975?.
here is an excerpt from a diplomatic cable sent to the us secretary of state in 1977.. the cable was released/declassified in 2009.. .... re jehovah's witnesses, why do we go back to the.
events of 197273?
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Physical vs. Mental
by Coded Logic ini used to think there was a true dichotomy between things in the physical world and things that were abstract or imagined.
but now i can't seem to understand why i ever thought that way.. i consider the mental to be a subset of the physical world (just as trout are a subset of fish).
all ideas, abstractions, imaginings, etc.
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Coded Logic
I used to think there was a true dichotomy between things in the physical world and things that were abstract or imagined. But now I can't seem to understand why I ever thought that way.
I consider the mental to be a subset of the physical world (just as trout are a subset of fish). All ideas, abstractions, imaginings, etc. need a physical medium - whether that be a piece of paper, a computer screen, a hard drive, or a brain. This OP is "mental" but we all understand it exists in the physical world. It's not like they're two independent things.
We all know that an imagined horse is not anything like a real horse. But just because they're vastly different (one being a large creature, the other being a specific brain state) doesn't mean they don't both exist in the physical world.
Anyone have any thoughts or refinements on this?
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Heliocentric Hole #1: Start of the Universe
by Coded Logic inadjective.
having or representing the sun as the center, as in the accepted astronomical model of the solar system.. .
the idea that the earth orbits the sun is not right because we don't know how the big bang happened.
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Coded Logic
Turtles all the way down baby! -
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Heliocentric Hole #1: Start of the Universe
by Coded Logic inadjective.
having or representing the sun as the center, as in the accepted astronomical model of the solar system.. .
the idea that the earth orbits the sun is not right because we don't know how the big bang happened.
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Coded Logic
he·li·o·cen·tricˌhēlēəˈsentrik/adjective- having or representing the sun as the center, as in the accepted astronomical model of the solar system.
The idea that the earth orbits the sun is not right because we don't know how the Big Bang happened. I know that a lot of you guys on this thread are going to say the evidence for Heliocentrism is independent of the Big Bang - that the Big Bang could turn out to be completely wrong and we would still know the earth orbits the sun. But since I just said something about it here in my OP any legitimate points you make on the topic I'm just going to accuse you of not being able to read.
My personal view is that the only thing crazier than believing in Geocentrism is believing in Heliocentrism.
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Richard Carrier debunks Christianity using Science and History.
by Island Man inhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ez2kgjk4jo4
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Coded Logic
Just because laws can be subjective doesn't mean that truth is subjective. Just because people can agree on the consequences to a certain behavior doesn't make those consequences "true".
Laws, in the criminal sense, can only ever be imposed. They're never true. It can be true that certain laws exist. But the laws themselves aren't true.
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Richard Carrier debunks Christianity using Science and History.
by Island Man inhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ez2kgjk4jo4
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Coded Logic
Wow, this Rorty guy sounds like a genuine idiot -
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Richard Carrier debunks Christianity using Science and History.
by Island Man inhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ez2kgjk4jo4
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Coded Logic
Answers should be judged on whether they are useful
Useful at what?
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Richard Carrier debunks Christianity using Science and History.
by Island Man inhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ez2kgjk4jo4
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Coded Logic
How can we know we are any better at picturing reality than a dog?
Great question! And one with an easy answer.
We can know this the same way we can know which computer models work better than others - by their explanatory and predictive abilities. Models which give us useful explanations and have the ability to predict outcomes that match up with reality are considered good. And models which give inconsistent explanations or can only predict very short term outcomes - are considered not so good.
Our sense of reasoning is a tool. And the validity of any tool is how well it works to carry out a desired task.
Remember what I said before, truth is the label that we apply to claims that match reality.
Reasoning isn't a claim. It's a set of cognitive tools we use to make determinations about the world we inhabit. Tools aren't "true". They're useful.
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A Thought Experiment
by InjusticeSystem ini am hoping some of you may be up for participating in a little creative thought experiment .
the question i would like to pose (and if it has already been asked i apologize, for some reason i cannot search for topics on my mobile) is this: what would the evidence show if the jehovah's witness' literal reading of genesis was true?
i realize that is a fairly broad question, but for example a more pointed question could be: if the vapor canopy hypothesis is correct (i have confirmed with my elder father that this is still a currently accepted understanding), what evidence in our genome or that of other creatures or on earth would we expect to see?
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Coded Logic
If as the wt believes, the flood covered the entire earth to the height of Mt Everest for example, then every living thing aboard the ark would have died from lack of oxygen and/or pulmonary embolism at close to 25,000 ft.
I'm not sure this is true. I would just expect the atmosphere to continue sitting on top of the water and Noah and friends would be at sea level pressure. You can still breath even if you're floating over the Mariana Trench (36,000 ft deep - deeper than Mt. Everest is tall). It's not the distance from land that determines pressure. It's the distance from sea level. -
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A Thought Experiment
by InjusticeSystem ini am hoping some of you may be up for participating in a little creative thought experiment .
the question i would like to pose (and if it has already been asked i apologize, for some reason i cannot search for topics on my mobile) is this: what would the evidence show if the jehovah's witness' literal reading of genesis was true?
i realize that is a fairly broad question, but for example a more pointed question could be: if the vapor canopy hypothesis is correct (i have confirmed with my elder father that this is still a currently accepted understanding), what evidence in our genome or that of other creatures or on earth would we expect to see?
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Coded Logic
Here are just a few things we could expect and some links showing how they're demonstrably wrong:
1.) We would expect every humans mitochondrial DNA to share a common ancestor around 6000 years ago. And we would expect to see this in the Y chromosome as well. Instead, we see our common ancestors being much older than that. In fact, we have to go back 150,000 years before we all share the same grandmother.
https://www.genome.gov/27555170
2.) We wouldn't expect humans and apes to share any endogenous retrovirus. Instead, we share at least 19.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2001186/
http://www.evolutionarymodel.com/ervs.htm
3.) We wouldn't expect any Bristlecone Pine trees to predate the biblical flood (2304 B.C.). Instead, we see some of these trees that were supposedly under miles water for 370 days predating the flood by 500 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methuselah_(tree)
4.) We would expect there to be no written records of the Sumerians, Egyptians, Romans, Grecians, Chinese, etc. before 2304 B.C. In fact, we would expect them to have no cultural history before that time at all. Instead, we see records of their societies forming long before the flood and continuing for thousands of years after the flood.
https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/3139/1/PAGE_31-71.pdf
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/egyptian.htm
http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/mulu/oracle.html
5.) We wouldn't expect humans to have any atavisms or vestiges. Instead, we're chock full of them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_vestigiality
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3014134/
http://www.bio.miami.edu/dana/dox/atavistic.html
6.) As birds were made on the fifth day and land animals weren't made until the sixth day we wouldn't expect to find any land animals in the fossil record before birds.
The evidence here is so common and overwhelming I won't bother posting any links. Birds don't show up until the late Cretaceous Period (about 65 million years ago). This would mean that we shouldn't see any land animals (like dinosaurs) before then. But that's not the case at all. We find them far earlier in the Jurassic Period (145 million years ago) and even earlier than that in the Triassic Period (200 million years ago). We also see other land animals (like amphibians and reptiles) living before long before dinosaurs in the Carboniferous Period (300 million years ago).
The idea that birds came before land animals is one of the most obvious blunders of the Genesis account. If the story is meant to be literal - then it's literally wrong. If it's metaphorical - then it gets the metaphor wrong.