Posts by Coded Logic

4

Interesting Opening statement in a public talk

by Da.Furious in

on sunday we had a talk, don't remember the title, but something about having zeal in our ministry and we are the best and have the truth stuff.

the interesting this was the opening statement.. the speaker started: we may have seen on the tv or knew about the tv evangelizers, they have lots of energy in preaching on the tv and they ask for donations by text showing on the screen and their talk is based on asking for money.. then he moved on to talk how our organization is truly supported by god...... the thing that shocked me as related to the ignorance the speaker had.

haven't he watched the jw.org tv channel?

Coded Logic

Hahaha, sad thing is - you were probably the only person in the whole building who caught that. JWs are trained NOT to make critical evaluations of the bORG. Obey. Obey. Obey

20

Round and round the not so marigoround

by Coded Logic in

i find most theist arguments to be either confused or dishonest at best.

and most of them i regard with mild annoyance.

but there is one track of thinking that is so stupid it really gets under my skin: when, in order to try and prop up "faith", people try and tear down reason and critical thinking.

Coded Logic

I'm not sure what you mean when you say consciousness arose out of nothing. Nor that it has no purpose. As best we can tell, consciousness is an emergent property of brains. The more complex the brain (e.g. fly vs dog) the more self aware the creature is. And I'd also point out that brains are immensely useful. Being able to make sense of our environments and make predictions about the future is hugely beneficial to an animals survival.

More importantly, even if we do presume the existence of a God, I still don't see how that sheds any light on the nature of consciousness except to kick the question back further: Why do god's have consciousness and how did their consciousness arise out of nothing?

...

Concerning Rowan Williams' pig analogy, I find it more than a bit problematic. We know a pig's foot print because we have prior experience with pigs feet and their foot prints. And even if we came across an unknown creatures foot prints we could still make educated guesses about that creature by comparing it to other creatures foot prints.

But with gods we have no prior knowledge. We can't tell the difference between God inspired life and non-god inspired life. God created universes and non-god created universes. God formed consciousness and non-god formed consciousness.

If Rowan William's can't tell me what types of legs a creature has - much less if it even has legs - how can we determine what kind of foot print such a creature might leave? If Rowan Williams' can't tell us any aspects or properties of a God - how can we go looking for the effects of such a god?

. . .

Lastly, I'd like to point out that the problem of evil is really only a problem for Christians who claim God is all loving and all powerful. And it's a HUGE problem. One that, rightly for the ages, atheists have been bringing up again and again because it's just so absurd. Saying it's "nothing new" in no way diminishes how utterly devastating this problem is to mainstream Christianity. It'd be a bit like saying "talking about Jupiter's moons orbiting the gas giant is nothing new against geocentricism. The Heliocentric's have been point this out for hundreds of years."

Well yeah! Of course they have! Because it shows how demonstrably false the teachings of the church that the earth was the center of the universe was. Likewise, the problem of evil shows how demonstrably false many Christians belief that an all loving and all powerful god exists is.

(P.S. The Bible saying something is "incomprehensible" in no way excuses it from it's demonstrable falsehoods. Christians don't get to say "God is incomprehensible" therefore humanity really did begin six thousand years ago with Adam and Eve despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary. Or, the sun was formed after the earth - or God is all loving and all powerful - or any other nonsense in the Bible - simply by appealing to the incomprehensible.)

20

Round and round the not so marigoround

by Coded Logic in

i find most theist arguments to be either confused or dishonest at best.

and most of them i regard with mild annoyance.

but there is one track of thinking that is so stupid it really gets under my skin: when, in order to try and prop up "faith", people try and tear down reason and critical thinking.

Coded Logic

Alright, so not a single definitive statement we can make about gods or the supernatural.

Are there any well founded - although provisional - statements we could make about the gods or the supernatural?

(as a side note - would you not be comfortable making definitive statements about synthetic propositions [e.g. there are no married bachelors]? Would you not be comfortable making definitive statements about analytical propositions [e.g. apples do not grow from blue coral reefs]?

236

What did President Trump say about Sweden?

by kpop in

this you will never see on the mainstream media.

before you comment watch the whole video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqaigeqxqgi.

Coded Logic

I judge a religion on:

A: What it inspires it's followers to do.

and, to a lesser degree,

B: How it's followers generally behave.

There is no doubt in my mind that Islam is by far one of the worst religions currently around. It's followers are so intolerant, bigoted, tribalistic, and dogmatic it's absolutely astounding. Mainstream Islam puts the Westboro Baptist Church to shame - and that's a tall order.

20

Round and round the not so marigoround

by Coded Logic in

i find most theist arguments to be either confused or dishonest at best.

and most of them i regard with mild annoyance.

but there is one track of thinking that is so stupid it really gets under my skin: when, in order to try and prop up "faith", people try and tear down reason and critical thinking.

Coded Logic

SBF,

I feel I already answered your question in the very last sentence of my thread:

I'd rather have questions I can't answer than answers I can't question.

But, beyond the words or Richard Feynman, I think there's something deeper here too. And that is that I care about what is knowable. I care about what we could actually learn. And this is why I hold science in such a high regard - even beyond it's practical uses - because it always operates on the frontiers of knowledge. It is always pushing back against the unknown and shinning a light into the darkness of our ignorance.

There may be things that we can never know. There may be things that are so complex and fundamental that they will forever remain beyond our grasps. But why waste one moment worrying about that?

Every single year new instruments that can detect things never before detected are built. Every single year tens of thousands of new discoveries are made in every single field of study. There are more scientific papers published in a single day today than existed in all the libraries a hundred years ago. The biggest "problem" science faces right now is that experts are working in narrower and narrower fields because there's so much to know. Trust me when I say a lack of discovery is NOT a problem!

I've also noticed a patter with you SBF - in that for our scientific and empirical methods to knowledge - you ask for infinite evidence. And yet when it comes to claims about Gods or the supernatural you seem to have almost no filter whatsoever. It's a very strange and unbalanced thing to behold. Is there even one single statement that we could definitively make about the gods or the supernatural?

I ask this because, the last time I checked, things which don't manifest in reality and things which don't exist are identical.

7

MOVIE REVIEW; SILENCE (A story about Faith, Martyrs, Apostates, and Stupidity)

by TerryWalstrom in

jw
friends

silence (movie review)_________.

unless you are a catholic, ex-catholic, an evangelical christian, or a total apostate to your former religion or church--this film is not for you!_____.

martin scorsese has wrought a filmwhich no 2 eyes will see in the same way.. on the surface, it is about the clash (the push back against christianity and priests by buddhists and officials particularly in nagasaki) resulting from catholic evangelism inside japan.

Coded Logic

Funny how in the movies it's the Christians who are always getting persecuted when in real life it's often the complete opposite.

20

Round and round the not so marigoround

by Coded Logic in

i find most theist arguments to be either confused or dishonest at best.

and most of them i regard with mild annoyance.

but there is one track of thinking that is so stupid it really gets under my skin: when, in order to try and prop up "faith", people try and tear down reason and critical thinking.

Coded Logic

Because what a person believes informs how they behave. And how a person behaves has consequences for themselves and for all those around them.

Because the more closely we can get peoples beliefs to line up with reality the better off we all will be.

20

Round and round the not so marigoround

by Coded Logic in

i find most theist arguments to be either confused or dishonest at best.

and most of them i regard with mild annoyance.

but there is one track of thinking that is so stupid it really gets under my skin: when, in order to try and prop up "faith", people try and tear down reason and critical thinking.

Coded Logic

I find most Theist arguments to be either confused or dishonest at best. And most of them I regard with mild annoyance. But there is one track of thinking that is so stupid it really gets under my skin: When, in order to try and prop up "faith", people try and tear down reason and critical thinking. Just posted this on a comment thread elsewhere and thought it'd be nice to store it somewhere that I could readily get to it for the future.

Faith isn't a pathway to truth. I hope that one day you will come to understand that what a person believes - matters. That our beliefs are the gate keepers of our actions. And, as such, we should have good reasons for believing the things that we believe.

There is no position - no matter how absurd - that cannot be justified by invoking "faith". Because faith is empty. Faith is the answer people give when they don't want to understand things for themselves. It's the answer they give when they can't be bothered to do their homework. It is the epitome of intellectual laziness. The foundation of mental atrophy.

However, asking questions (or philosophy as you put it) is the complete opposite. Asking questions is a pathway to truth. It is honest and intellectually rigorous. It makes you disciplined in your thinking - and by extension - disciplined in your actions. It allows us to put our good intentions to positive use.

When I left organized religion I didn't lose my faith. Rather, I found my curiosity. And I hope that one day you will too. I hope that you find the courage to start asking questions. For it is far better to have questions you can't answer than answers you can't question.

28

I would like to rant about how I get really upset when I get some weak invitation back to the cult.

by schnell in

jw
friends

my mother wanted me to know that the co gave a talk that kinda-sorta reprimanded an elder in her hall.

he is not the reason i left at all, and this does not address anything to do with me or our family.. my mother-in-law sent me texts which i ignored and now she has sent a picture to my wife on facebook just for me, and it's a prodigal son meme that says, "you see the signs, come back it's not too late".. yeah, it's not too late to accept a global flood in 2370 bce, or that man was created in 4026 bce from a golem spell, or that an us-and-them cult mentality is at all healthy or loving, or that religion is going to be banned by the un, or that i should expect anyone else at the door to accept these stupid ideas in the information age.. what am i supposed to say?

i usually just ignore them, but before i do that, i see that shit and i storm into this weird internalized rage where i start writing a response and deleting it.

Coded Logic

I think you should do the same thing you do when anyone else exhibits bad behavior - you should call them out on it. "Hey Mom, I think it's really unfair that you are perfectly willing to impose your beliefs on me but you cry foul whenever I tell you about the sorts of things you believe. How about you take a college course on evolution with me and then afterwards we can talk about me going to some of your meetings?"

19

Moral High Ground

by Spoletta in

it seems that the other threads about trump's policies are veering off into endless ideological theories about how much better we are than islam.

does anyone think there is a chance that islam can be changed in the same manner that christianity has over the centuries?

with the inflow of ideas from western countries into the middle east, will people gradually want to move away from sharia law to something less patriarchal and cruel?

Coded Logic

Well let's not lose sight of the fact that Christian's had a little help from Jesus. A peace loving hippy who went around saying things like "love your neighbor as yourself", "return evil for to evil to no one", and "be peaceable to all men" kinda goes a long way. To be fair, I find myself complaining a lot more about how Christians DON'T follow Jesus rather than the ways in which they do follow the guy.

But conversely, Muhammad was a war lord who said things like "lay in wait to attack the poly theist", "kill apostates", and "wage jihad against the non-believer". We are genuinely terrified when Muslims act in accordance with the founder of their religion.

There's no two ways about it. Any reform of Islam is going to have it's work cut out for it. And is going to have many challenges Christianity simply didn't have not the least of which is that Muhammad claimed to be the "final revelation". While I appreciate the work people like Maajid Nawaz are doing I sometimes feel that an outright rejection of the Quran and organized Theism would be far more effective instead of trying to reinterpret dogmatic scripture.