Posts by tetrapod.sapien

38

Are You Afraid To Die?

by avidbiblereader in

not the kind of death, but actually dying?

not trying to be morbid, but for now, it is a part of life.. abr.

tetrapod.sapien

inthe biological response, fight/flight sense, yes i am afraid to die. but i think this is healthy.

in the psychological understanding of my own mortality, no. i do hasten towards death, but i am not afraid to live either (sic).

tetra

19

Did the Watchtower Destroy your Faith in Humanity?

by The wanderer in

jw
friends

did the watchtower destroy your faith in humanity?

now that you are aware of the watchtower society and the tactics.

that it employs, what is your attitude toward god, religion, governments, .

tetrapod.sapien

what is your attitude toward God, religion, governments,
corporations, and humanity in general?

God is a metaphor to me. i hope that someday humans will see God as that again.

religion is religion. it has not evolved fast enough, and is now dieing off, plain and simple.

governments are religions. taxes are the collection plate. property is the bread. the blood of it's "citizens" the wine.

corporations are religions. and as you can tell, i don't like religions.

humanity is composed of individuals. i have good reason to believe that humanity will outlive these other misassesments of nature and the cosmos.

tetra

19

Did the Watchtower Destroy your Faith in Humanity?

by The wanderer in

jw
friends

did the watchtower destroy your faith in humanity?

now that you are aware of the watchtower society and the tactics.

that it employs, what is your attitude toward god, religion, governments, .

tetrapod.sapien

Did the Watchtower Destroy your Faith in Humanity?

yes. and it was replaced with knowledge about humanity thankfully!

i do not associate pessimism with skepticism. skeptics are some of the most well adjusted people i have ever met. i think of carl sagan when i think of skeptics. that should say a lot.

i also do not associate faith with optimism. fundamentalists are some of the most unhappy people i have ever met. i think of the governing body when i i think of fundies. that should say a lot too.

i was angry at my loss of faith in god and humanity for a couple of months. but then when i realized that in the process i had gained a knowledge about both phenomena, and suddenly i became quite satisfied with the change in me.

hope i answered your questions,

tetra

25

WHY ?

by RAF in

when it comes to believe its all about what is believable to you.

so this is not a question for believers in god, i mean if you are a believers (you think that there is a god) or an agnostic (you think that there might be something very unexplainable yet) the one i want to get into it by giving there reasons are atheists.. it feels comfortable to just follow what scientists are saying (it is supportive because they are able to explain some science) but by now about evolution its only about concept related to science to explain a possibility, but there is no scientific proof in facts.. why is it more believable to you that we are the result of a big bang which would actually comes out of something very tiny full of development codes?

i guess from that, that it would still mean that there is something bigger than just that (like believers or agnostic do think).. so why are you atheist?

tetrapod.sapien

hi RAF,

i'm sorry, but i think your comments in this thread show that you still have some growing and learning to do in this regard.

i could go through your posts and pick them apart, and show you why a lot of things you have been saying here are not true, but i wonder if you would just reject them out of hand? i have seen several people try to show you where you are off, technically in terms of the discussion, and you created "straw man" synopsis' of what you think you read, and proceed to crtisise the *strawman*, not their arguments.

WHY ?

what would you say to me if i told you that you too, are an atheist?

you see corrine, we are all atheists. do you believe in Zeus? or Thor? if no, then you are a-theistic toward those gods. you are an atheist, even though you are also a *theist* about another god.

i say this to show you how easy being an atheist is. the only difference between you and i is that i reject one more God than you do. do you understand?

i am an atheist, among other things, because YHVH makes *no sense* to me! he is transparent as our own creation. we made him in our own ridiculous image. i personally believe this is self-evident.

another reason i am an atheist is because of the God of the Gaps argument. it states that as science shows us more and more about our world, the less and less room there will be for a magical god like YHVH to reside in. and we have already seen many instances of this occuring throught the history of science. evolution is one of the big ones.

evolution and atheism are not buddys on the philosophical spectrum. evolution only explains from the moment of the first life form, to now, as being a natural event. not *who* did it. atheism is all about who did it, or who didn't because they don't exist.

i am an atheist because of the way the universe *is*, based on what i have learned about it. it appears exactly to me like a universe with no YHVH. if a universe were to spring into existence without a conscious creator/designer, this is exactly what it would look like in my estimation, not opinion.

one sunny saturday morning i no longer required the belief. it shed off me like old skin. i didn't even force it. it just happened after i had learned a certain amount more about the universe than i ever did as a witness. science and philosophy both did it for me. they blew my mind wide open.

thanks for an interesting discussion.

take care,

tetra

34

witnoids just came to my door! woo hoo!!!

by tetrapod.sapien in

jw
friends

looks like i am not on their "do-not-call" list anymore!!

mwa ha ha ha!!!

i bet they are going to have to rewrite the reasoning book now~!

tetrapod.sapien

hey! thanks everyone for your replies and kind words! it means a lot to me to be part of this jwd community.

i hope the particular sister i spoke with mostly comes back, even with her husband or an elder. she was DF'd once, and maybe it was a seed i planted.

of course, there is a very good chance that nothing will come of it too. but whatevs! it was a good time.

some of you asked how i stayed so calm. and the answer is simple, i just had to keep reminding myself that i actually was on solid ground, that i had lots of experience in these sorts of discussions already here on jwd, and i also had the moral upperhand, imho. it was strange, but there was a certain feeling of compassion that came of it. i was not afraid of any "surprise" argument they may spring on me, because frankly i have heard them all before. plus my debating partners here on jwd are much more worthy opponents than any JW could be. after all, i used to be a pioneer! no prob!

Maybe they will bust out Dave Premiere as their intelligent design expert for next visit.. (LOL!)

ROFLMAO!!! ha ha ha!! oh GBL man, too funny. i don't think dave will come near me at all. i see him downtown all the time, and he avoids me like i was a leper, LOL!! that said, i would love to get into it with him someday. there are several elders from my past that i would like to "converse" with actually, ha ha!!

SirNose,

hey man, you would be surprised the things you can learn on talkorigins.org if you are just getting into understandinig this whole evolution vs creation issue, that is a great place to start. and in true scientific class they even provide the link to their debating opponent's web site. but here is the link you were looking for, sources and all:

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA111.html

and another one on the suspicious credentials of some well know "creation scientists":

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/credentials.html

peace,

tetra

39

How Did/Would You Propose? :)

by GetBusyLiving in

jw
friends

so i'm going to propose to my girlfriend this weekend!

what do you ladies think would be totally romantic?

how did you dudes propose?

tetrapod.sapien

GBL you dirty dogg! ha ha!

congrats bro. she's a gem.

well, after RAF's advice, i don't have much to add. i'm of the opinion that carrying any ring or symbol you have chosen around with you until a really romantic moment presents itself.

good luck,

tetra

29

Musing over What is Karma, Rebirths, and the Illusions of the Senses

by frankiespeakin in

i have finally had a little time to pause for some reflection, lately been either sick(flu) or fighting fatigue to get work done while sick with the flu.. one of my favorite pastimes is to tune into jwd and read all your arguements for and against things of the paranormal nature, mysticism, evolution, and things like these.

i do enjoy those that are of a scientific shaped logic and lean more heavily towards some of their well thought out replies, i see them as open minded for the most part, and know i would never be able to research to the degree they do the subject of evolution and patiently try to deal with some rather set in their ways creationist.

they have brought a wealth of information to our board, that no doubt help many rid themsevles of the god(of the bible) delusion, a rather mean and nasty delusion that many jws need to shake to make thier coming out of mind control more complete.. while i have given up on the god delusion pretty completely, i have not become a complete materialist.

tetrapod.sapien

hey frankie!

i always enjoy your threads man. i like the way you think!

i have been attempting to explore some of these concepts myself lately. the skeptical side of my brain is pretty strong, but i have seen the need to balance it with things and concepts that are not so easily explained with reduction. for a lot of things, the "humans are delusional" argument does not cut it anymore. well, for the more esoteric type things, as you mentioned. i learned recently, that the pineal gland starts to calcify in adolesence, and does not produce as much soma pinoline, aka dmt as when we were children. and a lot of people feel that the pineal gland is the seat of, or gateway to, mystical experience. but we can still exercise it, so-to-speak. but in doing this, i have had to put my ever diligent skeptical side to rest so that i could fully experience the phenomena, often also aided with psychedelic substances. this has been a way cool learning experience for me, and has changed me for the better imo.

i read a little bit about "past life regression therapy" this last summer. i didn't get deep into it, but one of the things that struck me is that people experiencing past life regression seemed to only remember previous human existances of highly novel nature. pharohs etc. i haven't read any experiences of people remembering being an ape on the african savanah, or any other animal from our evolutionary past. this sends up some flags for me. but i am still interested in the phenomena. perhaps animal consciousness is so different from ours, that the regression did not make sense to anyone who experienced that type.

last year, i got a very abstract tattoo on my fore arm. people ask me all the time what it means. i have a hard time explaining it, but i love it. when i decided to get it, i chose it based on strong feelings i had, but nothing concrete. in other words, just emotion designed it. i had never seen the design anywhere, until i started looking at indigenous tattoos of indians from colombia and venezuela in anthropology text books. and then i saw some that looked very very similar. it had an added dimension for me, because i actually have genetic ancestory from the region. i am half colombian. the interesting thing is that it would be news to me if i had any indian in me. as far as my family knows, it was only a spanish and african mix. but i think i will get a genetic test done anyways, because you never know. so, anyways, that sort of shook me up and got me thinking. it could also just be the collective unconscious that carl jung succesfully hypothesised. we all come from the same ancestors, therefore our brains are wired similarly, and we can expect to see similar symbology across cultures that have been separated geographically.

i am still a hung jury on rebirths. but i intend to investigate further.

karma is something that i can jump on board with, i think. well, the way i see it anyways, LOL! ain't that always the case! actually, one of the few instances that i believe was a direct mystical experience, involved the cosmos, or the source, communicating to me, in its own way, about my karma. i wouldn't want to try to convince anyone of it's objective reality, but the experience shook me up. and i think that experiences that shake people up tend to be viewed a little more literally than those that are all happy and positive and filled with Light, so-to-speak.

and i have read some technological singularity theorists that posit that the universe repeats itself over and over again with only small changes each time. and i wonder if this somehow could explain karma for me. but, then again, i am still not sure about the singularity concept either. and honestly, before the experience i had, i had not really thought about karma that much at all.

ah yes. the great illusion. i like the gnostico type term that phillip k dick coined for it: the Great Black Iron Prison.

i believe that the world illusion sometimes gives people the feeling that someone else thinks they are not smart enough, or "enligtened" enough, lol. but i think it is a fairly accurate word. and i think that as our consciousness expands, that we become aware of more and more. and i believe that this is an evolutionary progression actually. and that as time has gone by, more and more people are able to see the illusion, and more and more will. what this means, i am not sure. but i do think it is happening. why would evolution stop? we are obviously going in a certain direction as a species, right now. or for the last couple thousand years anyways, which is a drop in the bucket of course.

i also like hypothesis of a holographic universe. it bakes my noodle. and i am still learning about all this stuff. it would also have huge implications if we discovered conclusively that our consciousness is quantum in nature.

anyways, thanks for stimulating my mind. what are your thoughts? i'm curious.

anyways, i have to go to bed bro. i'll check back tomorrow. happy trails! ;)

tetra

4

Getting Viruses sent to me

by SixofNine in

jw
friends

maybe some of you geeks can enlighten me.

lately i've been getting more and more spam, so obviously my e-mail addy has gotten out into the wrong hands.

but in the past few days, i've been getting spam with a virus or trojan attached.

tetrapod.sapien

So it isn't a technical reason for the setup of the outgoing mail, it is just a ruse to make people curious, ie: "hah, I'm opening a real mail sent to the wrong addy"?

um, if you are only recieving the emails with the trojans attatched, and the senders are not your exact address, then it is just a technical ploy to get people to read the email.

you probably know this, but to find out if the email is from your *exact* address or not, you need to look into the details for that specific email. if the sender is an address close to yours, then don't worry about it. if the sender, the real sender, is your exact address, then you have a troijan on your machine already. actually, that is only if you are using an email program that is installed on your computer, like outlook express. if you are using an email program that is on a server somewhere, like gmail or hotmail, then you need to bring the issue to their attention if the real address is your exact address.

sorry for the wordiness.

tetra

4

Let's hear from you!

by mavie in

jw
friends

i saw a chinese proverb yesterday that stuck me:.

"to know the road ahead, ask those coming back.".

being relatively young and inexperienced, i'm asking for your opinion about this great adventure we call life.

tetrapod.sapien

hey mavie! that was a cool proverb.

"To know the road ahead, ask those coming back."

i thought about it a bit, and i feel that there may be two ways of looking at it.

one is in the sense of asking those who have already been over the terrain for advice. sage indeed!

second is in the sense of immediate perception without having to ask anyone anything. what i mean, is if you are on a journey, and you see people coming back along the road, then perhaps you are on the wrong road! i would prefer to be on a road where all continue going forward. but i may be wrong about that last one because sometimes you may see people abandoning a certain path because it was only a fad for them, but it may be right on for you. so perhaps asking people on the road is the wrong place to ask. perhaps you already know the answer! but maybe i need to put the reefer away for a few minutes.

but anyways, i am not older than you, and you seem like a totally smart dude, so i don't know if i have much advice. i have made lots of poor choices in my life. but i'll share something that is close to my heart:

women love diamonds.

HA! just kidding. well, i am sure most do, but that was not my thought. okay, here it is:

evolution: if you do not believe in evolution, you're never really going to evolve.

peace: if you want planetary peace, you must become peace, individually, regardless of what others are becoming around you. outer peace comes from inner peace.

sentience: you might be sentient, you might not be. being able to read does not denote sentience. sentience comes from peace with your natural history, and comes from a place outside of egoic mind. a sentient person is a consciously awakened person. no one does this for you.

love: is all you need. it's last in the list for a reason, actually.

i might expand that into a thread someday.

oh, and don't listen to people when they shoot down psychedelic drugs. they don't know what they are talking about.

peace!

tetra

93

It must be "Global Warming"

by Warlock in

snow in malibu yesterday.

.

this morning i had to scrape the ice off my windshield and back window.. on the way to work i saw many a frozen front lawn and most cars were covered with ice like mine.. all on the outskirts of los angeles.. it must be "global warming".. warlock.

tetrapod.sapien

free willy,

thanks for posting all of that information. i am going to review it when i get a chance this week and see what i think.

peace out,

tetra