Posts by Etude

112

Are They Cynically Shutting Down The Organization?

by metatron in

jw
friends

i've raised this idea before but recent events seem to support it.

changes in the watchtower may be guided by more than a need for cash flow: they may simply be liquidating/shutting it down as discreetly as possible.. of course, this doesn't mean they stop working on their upstate ny country club - but it could mean that the throrough going exposure and disproof of their beliefs on the internet, when it emerged, took many of them by surprize, as it did many of us!

after awhile, they generally gave up trying to make any sense of their doctrines - and coupled with cash flow issues - moved towards a quiet retreat.. take a look at a few things:.

Etude

metatron: I can't but compare to what the Mormons achieved. There came a point where, instead of being isolationists and a pariah to everyone else, they radically altered their views (without vivisecting their core) and became a force to be reckoned with.

I don't think the JWs want to down-size. I think that in order to remain viable, they know that they have to be more significant, not just in numbers but also in influence and visibility at some level. I think that their present course (slimming and trimming) is setting them up to become something new.

85

Did Life Originate By Chance or Intelligent Design? Or is There a Third Option?

by JimmyPage in

jw
friends

when discussing the argument of how life originated the wt always boils it down to being chance vs. intelligent design.. no scientist in their right mind believes it happened by chance.

nor do most scientists believe that life is a product of god.. there is a solution that the wt completely ignores and that is... natural selection.. how many here who believe in a creator have honestly examined what natural selection really is?.

(i've been reading "the god delusion" by richard dawkins and was very surprised when i came to the chapter that actually mentions the watchtower society's arguments for intelligent design.

Etude

NewChapter: Sorry you missed it.

This IS Dawkins' reasoning. See "The God Delusion" Chapter 4, page 137 --

"Just as we did with the Goldilocks orbits, we can make the point that, however improbable the origin of life might be, we know it happened on Earth because we are here."

Whether it's the "origin of life" or its development (Evolution), Dawkins attributes an event to causation tacitly and not with much logic. That's the point I'm trying to make of such statements, rather than making a challenge to what did or did not happen.

Dawkins wrote quite a lot about the Anthropic Principle. I considered his introduction of this subject matter some of the most difficult concepts of the book. See "The God Delusion" Chapter 4, see sections:

1. "THE ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE: PLANETARY VERSION"

2. "THE ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE: COSMOLOGICAL VERSION.

I never contended that there isn't evidence regarding some type of evolutionary change. What I contend is that how it happened is far from established, going from A to B, etc.

sizemik: " Dawkins is commenting on "origins" not process " Precisely. He really does not emphasize process. But as a naturalist and a Botanist, he well knows that any science needs the riggor of proof and an established repeatable process for verification. That is his main intent (even though I feel he does not succeed) in explaining the "delusion" of god by some means, either the moth suicidal instinct, memes or whatever.

" Dawkins is saying simply that the fact that we are here proves we must have originated somehow " Even you must admit that this statement is very similar to what a theist may say: "The fact that we are here proves that God must have created us somehow". In either case, the "somehow" does not rise to the level of proof that a natural science requires.

112

Are They Cynically Shutting Down The Organization?

by metatron in

jw
friends

i've raised this idea before but recent events seem to support it.

changes in the watchtower may be guided by more than a need for cash flow: they may simply be liquidating/shutting it down as discreetly as possible.. of course, this doesn't mean they stop working on their upstate ny country club - but it could mean that the throrough going exposure and disproof of their beliefs on the internet, when it emerged, took many of them by surprize, as it did many of us!

after awhile, they generally gave up trying to make any sense of their doctrines - and coupled with cash flow issues - moved towards a quiet retreat.. take a look at a few things:.

Etude

metatron: Your take on this issue tickles my brain, especially the part about replacing a bunch of publishers with racks of servers.

I've long suspected that the WTBTS was on its way towards a major change and a re-assessment of itself in a new direction. I know that a lot of attrition there had to do with the advancement of technology. Today is a long way from ancient Mann and Cotter printing presses.

But what really made me realize that they would inevitably face some major changes was that the increase in their ranks failed to meet their expectations. Every year when I read their Year Book, I failed to see how their "Good News" was delivering, in spite of their glowing accounts of converts.

In addition, the explosive growth of the Mormons and their significant influence in almost every industrial, political, financial facet of life must have made them envious. It stands to reason that, judging by growth alone, God's blessings were going to the Mormons.

It's possible that the new crop of GB members is thinking in another direction. I don't put it past them, now that they are the FDS, the pull some of the tricks that the Mormons have pulled, such as having major "revelations" that turn some of their long-standing positions a complete 180º. Some of these, of course, include the acceptance of blacks into the priesthood and the abolition of polygamy.

I think that the WTBTS (really the Jehovah's Witnesses organization) wants to be more "significant" or "impacting" or "legitimate". I think that's why they decided to become a United Nations NGO. Of course, these changes take time and I don't doubt if they have been cleverly plotted to occur at prescribed instances. I'd watch the bastards carefully in this respect. It may well be that at one point, we will be directing our concerns towards an entirely different animal than the one from whose jaws we once escaped.

85

Did Life Originate By Chance or Intelligent Design? Or is There a Third Option?

by JimmyPage in

jw
friends

when discussing the argument of how life originated the wt always boils it down to being chance vs. intelligent design.. no scientist in their right mind believes it happened by chance.

nor do most scientists believe that life is a product of god.. there is a solution that the wt completely ignores and that is... natural selection.. how many here who believe in a creator have honestly examined what natural selection really is?.

(i've been reading "the god delusion" by richard dawkins and was very surprised when i came to the chapter that actually mentions the watchtower society's arguments for intelligent design.

Etude

sizemik: Not at all. You're confusing metaphors instead of paying attention to the logic behind the statements. Dawkins and others who make such statements use the "fact" that we are here as "proof" that we evolved, seeing that there are no other more attractive explanations and theories -- "It (Evolution) happened on Earth because we are here". I don't see how that can be any clearer. "The fact that we are here proves that we are here", would be a more accurate conclusion and even that may be logically flawed because it provides an answer in terms of itself.

My example of the wet streets is a well know logical fallacy. It takes a true premise and comes to an incorrect conclusion. It's not about water. It's about making the leap that it must have rained when there is no compelling or logical reason to do so, at least not without demonstrating why.

But the most glaring problem with some of the proposed theories is that for the most part, they fail to specifically delineate the process by which the many evolutionary changes occurred. They fail to specifically show how we got from A to B and so on. I'm not saying that a process didn't occur. What I am saying is that we can't put all our intellectual eggs in one collective evolutionary basked without a bit more certainty about how the eggs came about.

If you're a fan of Dawkins' you will also realize that in order to justify that we are here and that for the right set of variables (the universal constants) to exist and make it inevitable for us to be here, his introduction of the Anthropic Principle (strong or weak, take your pick) is necessary. The problem is that while a nice and reasonable idea, it can never be proven. That's the same type of logic: Some sort of anthropic effect must exist in order to justify our own universe.

The anthropic (strong) principle states that in order for all the laws and values we know in physics that make matter behave as we know it, there must be an infinite number of universes (the multiverse) with every other possible combination of values (and laws) in order to justify that the one we find ourselves in is indeed tenable. That requires the kind of faith the apostle Paul hounded everybody about.

Not accepting such ideas does not mean we are forced to conclude the opposite. The point is that we don't have to accept any of it if a conclusion is not warranted.

102

Conti v Watchtower - Court Denies Watchtower Motion re: Substituting Bond - November 16 court documents in pdf

by jwleaks in

jw leaks has published the latest court documents, in pdf, relating to "candace conti v the watchtower bible and tract society of new york" as filed on november 16, 2012.. the watchtower society motion to substitute or reduce bond on appeal is denied.. www.jwleaks.org.

.

Etude

"If Travelers is very conservative, they would be more likely to assist a "Christian" organization, especially if the Watchtower represented itself to them as the "innocent, injured" party in all of this..."

I doubt that any insurance carrier would be likely to favor an organization on the basis of anything other than financial reciprocity. "Conservative" in the case of Travelers means "fiscally" conservative, meaning that they won't do anything stupid that would make them lose money.

I know nothing about legal matters, so I just wanted to restate what I understood regarding a "settlement". My capture is that once the veredict is handed and the case has been determinied, it is up to the defendant (or perhaps any litigant?) to propose a settlement if any of the following is true:

The settlement is offered during a period of time between the decision and a point of acceptance or appeal.
The settlement is presented while an appeal is in progres, which can change the outcome of the original decision.
The settlement is presented before any or all appeals are exhausted or before the time for filing an appeal is past.

Is that right?

85

Did Life Originate By Chance or Intelligent Design? Or is There a Third Option?

by JimmyPage in

jw
friends

when discussing the argument of how life originated the wt always boils it down to being chance vs. intelligent design.. no scientist in their right mind believes it happened by chance.

nor do most scientists believe that life is a product of god.. there is a solution that the wt completely ignores and that is... natural selection.. how many here who believe in a creator have honestly examined what natural selection really is?.

(i've been reading "the god delusion" by richard dawkins and was very surprised when i came to the chapter that actually mentions the watchtower society's arguments for intelligent design.

Etude

We need to be careful and not fool ourselves here. Look at these two sentences from Satanus' citation:

1. "Every cell is able to communicate through having evolvedthe ability to produce, recognize, interpret and respond to signalsin its environment."

2. "When you come right down to it , this ability to communicate [produce, recognize, interpret and respond to signals] has allowed cells to evolve."

http://www.scq.ubc.ca/conversing-at-the-cellular-level-an-introduction-to-signal-transduction/

So, the writer is saying that the cell developed (evolved) the ability to communicate AND it's saying that the ability to communicate allowed the cell to evolve. That's what Terry calls "language manipulation".

It's that kind of wording that makes me incredulous to some scientists claims. For example, Roger Penrose says, speaking about the Goldilocks zone:

"The argument can be used to explain why the conditions happen to be just right for the existence of (intelligent) life on the earth at the present time. For if they were not just right, then we should not have found ourselves to be here now, but somewhere else, at some other appropriate time."

And Richard Dawkins follows suit, along with many other evolutionists by saying:

"Just as we did with the Goldilocks orbits, we can make the point that, however improbable the origin of life might be, we know it happened on Earth because we are here."

Those types of statements beg us to stretch our imaginations but do nothing for our intellect in determining by what process the change actually happened. It's like saying: "The streets are wet, therefore it must have rained because when it rains the streets become wet."

Dawkins' book is quite interesting. I credit it for pointing me to a better understanding of irreducible complexity and how that's not a good argument for creationism and for stating that it was not "chance" but the accumulation of tiny statistically improbable events (mutations, genetic changes) to an unstated but apparently sufficient degree (millions?) over millions and millions of years that eliminated the "chance" factor to a snowballing inevitable effect for change to a higher degree of complexity. That is a subtle difference than "chance".

But in essence, Dawkins' book is in part an attempt to use the "badness" of religion to explain the illogic of religion. It fails to make a distinction between religion and the idea of God or the persistent human spiritual instinct as possibly separate entities and instead lumps them all into one common delusion.

The book also seeks to explain religion in terms of Natural Selection, which he feels is a must for science. He does this by proposing several possible explanations, the most significant of which and by far the most controversial being "Memes". He does this without explaining the mechanics of memes or even the "unit" of meme. He does offer other explanations, but the point of science is to offer THE explanation.

prologos: Einstein was not a creationist and I don't believe there's any obfuscation about that. Bottom line, JimmyPage, is that your question will remain unanswered for quite a long time.

452

Faith... and Trust: The Same Things?

by AGuest in

in a discussion with some other dear ones, the question was asked as to what such ones put their faith in.

in response to one comment that"one can't function without faith," another disagreed, stating ones can, that "many do so every day... the ones who have trust" (in things like the sun rising in the east versus the west).

that trust extended to "faith" based "on nature and the natural order of things.

Etude

I don't know. It sounds like there's a lot of mental masturbation going on here. I don't see how it's possible to discuss a topic without solidly defining the terms. What is faith, really? The topic has been discussed interestingly and ad nauseam in this site. Here are two:

Can we look at FAITH in a more practical way?

can spirituality replace religion?

47

REALITY may not be what you think

by Terry in

a counterfeit $100 bill looks virtually the same as a genuine bill.

ask yourself what actual difference exists between them?.

a really good elvis impersonator may look and sound pretty darned close to the real elvis--but, is "close" the same as genuine?.

Etude

Terry: I was speaking in a formal sense. Mathematics is a logical set of rules we have come up with which sometimes apply to nature and sometimes do not. What mathematics (and its relatives, the calculus and higher disciplines) reveal can be gateways to great discoveries. What I think you mean to say by "it is proved everyday everywhere" is that we apply those rules of Mathematics every day, everywhere. There are times when scientists have to develop "new" Mathematics to deal with some stubborn problems. But Mathematics itself (its structure, rules and reasons for rules) escape origin and an explanation.

Unlike with Physics, where experimentation verifies the theories and axioms proposed, there is no way to "verify" the theories and axioms in mathematics. Math largely justifies itself until it doesn't. And even if it does, the Holy Grail of scientists is to find what explains Mathematics (the Meta-Mathematics) There are meta-mathematics being proposed and considered all the time. Here is a link to a book on Metamath (http://us.metamath.org/downloads/metamath.pdf) The problem is that even if that elegantly proves why mathematics work the way it works, now we need to find what explains the meta-mathematic.

There is an enormous and compelling allure about mathematics that (to me) indicates its own reality, where multiple dimensions are quite common and where you can add and subtract infinities. But I think it will be a long time before we can apply those equations to our everyday reality. So, even when we can work with mathematics and figure out what your hand would look like on the other side if you pass it to another dimension (I read about this once), the reality is that presently we can't do it in real life. So, which is real, Mathematics and the proof that multiple dimensions can be manipulated or the reality that (presently) that is impossible?

47

REALITY may not be what you think

by Terry in

a counterfeit $100 bill looks virtually the same as a genuine bill.

ask yourself what actual difference exists between them?.

a really good elvis impersonator may look and sound pretty darned close to the real elvis--but, is "close" the same as genuine?.

Etude

Right. This is why "reality" for religious people is so broad and inconsistent. The reality that tells one to shoot a little girl in the head for her support of of female eductaion may be influence the same way that another religious "reality" where we will live forever in a pastoral setting, petting lions, and picking fruit eternally.

But even with Mathematics, we need to exercise caution. While there are mathematical proofs and 99.99% of it is consistent within itself, Mathematics itself cannot be proved. That's why it's not a natural science. Furthermore, in order to explain it, we need to come up with a meta-Mathematics and then a meta-meta-Mathematics and so on. There comes a point when we just need to accept what we have. But for me, that doesn't come until after I've taken a few wacks at it, to the best of my ability, to see if it holds up.

47

REALITY may not be what you think

by Terry in

a counterfeit $100 bill looks virtually the same as a genuine bill.

ask yourself what actual difference exists between them?.

a really good elvis impersonator may look and sound pretty darned close to the real elvis--but, is "close" the same as genuine?.

Etude

Reality vs Delusion:

" Ultimate reality isn’t known right now. " I disagree. The problem lies in what we mean when we say "reality". Is it the everyday reality of our experience (intrinsic) or the reality of the universe apart from us (extrinsic)? For the world to make sense to me, the two need to meet or one flow into or from the other. One (the intrinsic) is more subjective, the other (extrinsic) less so, which allows us to assume that it exists whether we're here to experience it or not. It's the former I mostly concentrated on which we perceive in different ways, depending on our unique points of view. Therefore, making sense of it all requires questioning our perceptions or observations (as an everyday experience or as formal study of quantum physics).

This is why I mentioned and cited the Innocence Project reference showing how flawed our methods of perceiving an event (reality) actually are. That alone should make us wonder how it is we see things and what it is we assume reality to be.

With due respect to my hero Rene Descartes, I would say that "reality is known". Even if our reality consists of a common delusion that we live in a country with streets and laws and that we go to work every day, etc and that if it only exists in a dream, then THAT is our reality.

" Our core thinking has to be grounded in reality. " Which reality? How else can we describe reality (at least the every-day kind) other than as an observable experience? How do we incorporate the tragic events of an automobile accident we witness other than via our senses? How do we account for the fact that if you ask ten witnesses to the accident, you may get ten different accounts of what happened?

I realize someone will point out that one thing appears to be real: an automobile accident happened. The problem is that not everything we judge as reality is that concrete. Until we thoroughly question that experience or object with experimentation and logic, we may be left with different (possibly contradictory) versions of "reality". That's why I mentioned the example about the boulder in the middle of the road. One reality approximates another reality. The difference can be so insignificant as to not matter (like when all agree a car accident took place). But there is always the chance that it may matter significantly depending on the subject in question (like when we try to determine whose fault it was).

" While the observer may alter an object, it is only because the nature of the object allows it to be altered. " How does a person determine the nature of which objects or events allow themselves to be altered? How do we ascertain its true "nature" while not assuming that what we think is its real nature is that indeed and not our version of it? How do we recognize the " reality & function " of nature unless we can first ascertain that what we are referring to as "nature" is accurate and not just an assumed version of reality?

The answer to me is that, while assuming that everyone has a view, even a very similar view or reality, we need to question and examine our personal reality and that of others in order to determine if it approximates the truth. The truth is in the methods. This is not an easy task and, at least for me, doesn't always bring answers. But at least I'm willing to know that often, I live under assumptions. In t he end, like Descartes implies, whether I'm really dreaming I'm writing this and will wake up any second now, at least this is MY reality.