From Jonathan Culler's "Literary Theory": "...meaning is determined by the context, since context includes rules of language, the situation of the author and the reader, and anything else that might conceivably be relevant. But if we say that meaning is context-bound, then we must add that context is boundless: there is no determining in advance what might count as relevant, what enlarging of context might be able to shift what we regard as the meaning of a text. Meaning is context-bound, but context is boundless." Translation: the universe is big. If you haven't read the complete works of Douglas Adams, stop breathing, right now, and go do it. The three-dimensional potential measurements of the universe, that it is a potential sphere potentially 26 billion light years in diameter and growing, in no way cartographically surveys the sub- and hyper-dimensional crannies where such a Mesopotamian cumulonimbus Herm might have his privvy council. And there might be something we have no terminology to comprehend awaiting outside of what we can our "universe." According to the popular conception of a God that is outside space and time, being outside our physically observable universe is _the perfect_ place for a privvy council. Our telescopes cannot _get there_, so we _can't see_ that he's "Not there." Am I far off the mark by saying that the only thing an atheist will insist on is that "science has not observed phenomena that would suggest a god"?
Posts by rmt1
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21"Science has proven that God doesn't exist"
by AlmostAtheist ina quote from a poster on another thread that i promised myself i wouldn't hijack:a portion of [posters on jwd are] antitheists which means they hold the view that science has already proved that god doesn't exist.
may i ask, who are these posters?
i don't read every post on jwd, i could buy that i just missed it.. atheists by and large have come to that point by realizing that things that can't be proven shouldn't be believed outright.
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12
Scientists find Goliath inscribed on pottery
by truthseeker infyi.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9997587/updated: 9:30 p.m. et nov. 10, 2005scientists find goliath inscribed on potteryreference from 950 b.c.
lends credence to bible tale, archaeologists say.
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rmt1
lol undercover
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19
% Women vs. % Men in JW
by void ini read a scientific study a few months ago that stated the women where more susceptible to religion than men.
(i am trying to find this article as i dont like not backing up my claims.
anyway it got me thinking a lot.
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rmt1
Good enough. I was trying to account for those types of JW men who have intense emotions inwardly, and intense loyalty to the organization (my one friend wrote epic poetry about Jesus and Satan jousting at Armageddon like he was an Alexander Pope...), but who typically repress outward emotion. I figure that these are rare and disproproportionate vis a vis women who are looking for a more complete package of emotional exchange.
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% Women vs. % Men in JW
by void ini read a scientific study a few months ago that stated the women where more susceptible to religion than men.
(i am trying to find this article as i dont like not backing up my claims.
anyway it got me thinking a lot.
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rmt1
Mes deux centimes. (re blondie) Women are more socially conditioned for cooperation and delayed gratification vis a vis men, as well as social fulfillment in roughly egalitarian groups. Men are conditioned for competition, yes, even JW boys who are not *told* they’re being conditioned or groomed for competition under a theocratic merit/nepo/aristocracy. (re freedomlover) Part of this social conditioning is purely related to the brute economics of being JW. You have the face-to-face assurance that if you’re down and out, some brother or sister will help you subsist. (Whether or not this happens is entirely irrelevant to the assurance factor at retention.) This is a baseline fall-back position upon which JWs make their main selling point of community and equality, while not as great a percentage of men fall into this segment of economic non-independence/non-solvency. Why did Bush have so many blue mothers vote red? Security. Their maternal evolutionary sense of duty to future generations took precedence over other concerns. (I voted blue but I would never opt to short-circuit biologic intuition…) The term “Hall” denotes public space owned and operated by the public, to which the public can retire or retreat or assemble. “Kingdom” implies plenty and beneficience, like in a patron client relationship. “Kingdom Hall” implies at base a communal shelter from economic brutalities which forms the home-base or kernel of any attempt at self-improvement. *Confession, do you mind extracting that regarding “social feeling” vis a vis “religious feeling”? I would think that the stereotype that women are somehow more inherently religious or more inherently devoted to a Mesopotamian cumulonimbus Herm is a construction that favors men as more the providers of, less needers of, such communion.
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you call it cognitive dissonance. i call it pain
by coolhandluke inwhen i was growing up i never watched cartoons.
i didn't play with other kids who were not of the same faith.
i didn't curse.
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rmt1
poetry
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14
What's the Society's beef - The act of going to college OR getting a degree
by truthseeker ini have a question - the society laments about those jw's who ignore "wisdom from above" to pioneer after high school but go to college instead.. they use a fictional account of timothy rejecting higher education at the drama this year.. they scream in the oct 1st wt that university (consisting of four years) is bad and ask rheotorical questions to parents such as, "christian parents, is this what you really want for your children?".
if the act of going to college campus was so bad, why doesn't the society permit "online degrees?
" - these are more cost effective and just as valuable as a traditional campus based ecuation.. so what is it about going to university that really upsets them?.
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rmt1
Obviously, both. There are some psychological aspects of physically travelling TO a geographical space that is its own little "world" (eek), dedicated to an objective of human knowledge, which implies wisdom, an attitude of inquiry and exploration that typically permeates the very physical space a JW must cross to get to their Janitorial Sciences 101. (oops, that was catty.) Added to that is the atmosphere of liberal values and occasional monuments of political activism, all this without the JW even meeting the first soul. The 'act' of 'going to' a college campus is already enough of a death-knell for many restless young JWs. Same as Brooklyn's take on Carnival, only different.
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12
Anti-Semitic vs Anti-Islamic
by Jourles ini watched the apprentice a couple of days ago and something made me think for a minute.
during one of the team's task, the "gay" guy poked fun at the project manager essentially calling him a "tight assed jew.
" in the boardroom, trump brought up the question to the gay guy asking him if he was anti-semitic.
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9
A question about Phi
by forsharry into those atheists and scientist-ies out therewhat explanation do you have for the divine proportion (phi) in relationship with the non-proof/proof of some kind of divine presence?
do you believe it is simply coincidence or is it a questionable aspect of the physical realm that might point to something higher than simply evolutionary roulette?
i ask this because it is one of my niggling questions that separate my belief that were either a.
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rmt1
Triagonal, hexagonal, tetrahedronal stacking, our universe's version of the strongest and most efficient engineering geometry, recurs in nature in contexts of static non growth. Think bubbles, marbles, organism cells, diamond crystal. Phi frequently recurs in contexts of growth, where there is something new that has to be found a place for, but that place cannot be where the originator or the originating population already is. Phi might be called growth stacking (in contrast to static stacking). The growth stacking that results in the physical shape of the Nautilus is an elaboration of the stacking hexagon of, say, a turtle’s shell. Keep in mind that it does this, not because it’s programmed to (unless you are absolutely helpless to believe that God programmed it), but because it is following the path of least resistance and highest efficiency, just like triangle stacking. If it recurs in various places like the face, I would argue that it merely exhibits the universe’s fairly inevitable deployment of a basic proportional toolset for making the most efficient use of limited resources. Obviously you don’t want your eyes too near your mouth where you might fork them, nor your ears too near your nose where you might place the q-tip incorrectly, nor your etc etc ad infinitum. Phi is the universe being efficient. Why would G O D have to be efficient? Isn’t he made of, like, Zeus-bolts? But if one doesn’t believe in God, one must acknowledge the local universe as finite in energy and matter. I would argue that Phi is the universe’s, quantum mechanics’, Newtonian physics’, and evolution’s equivalent of making a welfare check stretch. We only happen to have called it beautiful because we happen to be fond of living, but at base it’s nothing so miraculous.
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Do you watch satanic movies or ghost shows?
by ButtLight ini remember when i was younger, and flipping through the channels, and seeing the girls head on the exorsist spinning around.
i freaked and turned it of really quick.
i thouhgt a demon was going to come out of the tv!
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rmt1
"Ninth Gate" with Johnny Depp is a guilty favorite of mine. It's slow and sumptuous, so there's your warning.
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67
Dont be so hard on satan
by gringojj ini think people forget that satan was a creation of god, just like all of us and everything else.
obviously god had a purpose in creating satan.
god has love for everyone and everything, including satan.
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rmt1
Crash course in worldly wisdom for ex-JWs pondering (+/-) Satan and divine power dialectics: Milton's Paradise Lost, Goethe's Faust, Machievelli's The Prince, Thoreau's Civil Disobedience, Melville's Moby Dick. The movie "Devil's Advocate" is a good introduction to Paradise Lost.