Posts by stapler99

35

Quantum Universe

by undercover in

jw
friends

an acquaintance was telling me about how there have been some new discoveries in quantum mechanics and that "everything we know is going to change", his words.

he said that these top scientists and physicists have already met with the world's top religious leaders and explained to them what they have discovered and how it will change everyone's perception about reality.. i'm not all that informed on quantum mechanics and all that scientific mumbo-jumbo other than to know that some people believe that there are parallel universes and that it might be possible(?

) that we exist in different universes at the same time.. from what this guy was telling me, i gathered (i think) that reality and our perception of reality is based on nothing tangible except information.

stapler99

Is reality real? I don't think that's a meaningful question. All an individual can do is evaluate the information that comes to them through their senses, and try and predict what they will experience in the future, depending on various courses of action that that individual might take.

So in this predictive process we form models, representing what we believe the world around us to consist of. Before the development of quantum theory it was believed that if we had enough knowledge about a certain domain of reality, (reality defined as that domain that we model in our minds, to which our predictive processes may be applied) then we could predict to a very high degree of accuracy certain aspects of that part of reality. For example we may have thought that if we know the "position" and "velocity" of a set of particles which interact, we could predict exactly the behaviour of these particles.

Quantum mechanics gives us a different model of the world from the one which we're used to. One in which concepts such as "position", or "momentum" are slightly different. Saying that a particle is in two different places at once needs no longer bother us after we have realised there is not really such a thing as "position". And "energy" and "mass" are again just concepts, which we use to model the universe. They are only useful insofar as they can make predictions.

In quantum mechanics one can assign to various objects mathematical functions, which represent our knowledge about that object. These functions represent the probablities of gettting certain results when one observes the objects further. I don't think that this ideas of "parallel universes" is something that can be proven or disproven, but if it helps you to understand the theory, you might imagine that at the point of observation the universe splits into universes in which each of these observations were made.

The interesting thing is that different observers who have made different observations have different mathematical functions representing (each's model of) reality. Hence two observers may, to each other, be in a state of quantum superposition, even though they are actually both conscious beings. Whether they exist in parallel universes, or questions like whether we can know if other people are conscious or not, are questions which are impossible to answer, and it is questionful whether they are meaningful. (Depending on how you define meaningful...)

17

Any Americans understand this?....honest it's the English language

by ninja in

jw
friends

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scnlfr1ep08.

.

edited to make link clickable ~ scully.

stapler99

I was mistaken - he was actually saying "don' gies any o' yer sh*te".

12

"They don't even know what they believe!" -- JW

by AlmostAtheist in

jw
friends

a jw once said (more than once, probably) in regards to members of other faiths, "they don't even know what they believe!

" i know that's a legitimate quote from a real jw because i'm the one that said it.

i often found that the people i met in field service would claim to be a catholic or a methodist or whatever, but wouldn't have a clue about the beliefs of their church.

stapler99

The difference between Jehovah's Witness and members of more popular religions (with the exception of most Catholics) is that a major part of their beliefs is the God-inspired nature of an earthly organization. There isn't really such a thing as "Jehovist Witnessism", a religion containing the beliefs of Jehovah's Witnesses. In fact insofar as such a thing exists, it changes as the central organization changes.

There are no non-Watchtower-affiliated JW's. (Except for these people: http://the-true-jw.oltenia.ro/index.html). There are no cultural JW's, the way you might have atheistical Christians who enjoy going to church or listening to church choirs, etc., but don't care that much about theology. What culture has come out of this so-called "religion"? Hint: the Kingdom Melodies don't count.

17

Any Americans understand this?....honest it's the English language

by ninja in

jw
friends

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scnlfr1ep08.

.

edited to make link clickable ~ scully.

stapler99

I think I got the general gist, lots of drug references and threatening to "do yer ma". It took me a while to realise that he was saying "donkey's hernia" at one point, this seems like a random selection of words (maybe it's a common Glaswegian expression, I don't know.)

Although I think I understand this sort of speech quite well, me trying to speak like that comes across as very forced. Och aye, min, ah cannie spik like they dee in Glasgow, it's afa hard, etc. etc.

21

If Children grow up in the Truth but never get Baptized, why no shunning?

by NotaNess in

jw
friends

i kind of understand the "never made the real commitment" part, but isn't learning the "truth" for 15 to 20 years, and going out into the "world" as opposed to committing,... the same as choosing to not accept jehover's (aka wts) ways and be with the brothers and sisters in union?.

why is the shunning treated different?

is it because, there's always hope by the parents, that they will come around?, etc.. .

stapler99

I think the answer is quite simple, it is just that a rule was never brought in to authourize such shunning. They are just using the rules that they apply to people in wider society, dividing people into unbaptized, baptized and disfellowshipped, each being treated differently. There isn't really a corresponding situation to children of Witness families who never were baptized.

89

IDENTITY=Behavior There are no CAUSELESS crimes or innocent evils

by Terry in

we often hear it said: love the sinner, but; hate the sin.. we try and reform the child molester.

we put career criminals through rehabiliation.

we let the drunk driver off with a fine and a warning over and over until an innocent family is wiped out.. why separate the deed from the doer?

stapler99

I don't believe in fundamental concepts of "evil" or "the scales of justice". I support punishing people who murder, rape or steal because of the practical effects, i.e. deterrence to others and preventing the offender from re-offending. When people commit acts like drunk driving then there must be some deficiency in that person. Maybe we can call that deficiency "sin". When considering whether these people should be locked up for life or banned from driving from life one might ask, have we managed to remove these deficiencies in such a manner that the offender won't commit the same actions again? As well as that there are cost issues, such as the cost of keeping a petty thief behind bars for his whole life. The cost issue, along with the harm you are doing to the criminal have to be balanced with the benefits such as deterrence.

If someone shoplifts a small item, and they are fined or gaoled for several months, then after the judicial process hass completed the flaws in that person that helped to shoplift in the first place may not have been extirpated. I wouldn't support a life sentence though, because of compassion towards the criminal.

64

Are Interracial RelationshipsA Taboo Subject?

by The wanderer in

jw
friends

are interracial relationshipsa taboo subject?the exposure to individuals of other racial backgrounds was helpful in my past .

jehovahs witness life to see past racial prejudice.

i am grateful for the exposure.

stapler99

MsMcDucket, thank you for that list. Some of the items mentioned were also mentioned on the website from the link I gave before. The expression "real McCoy" does not refer to Elijah McCoy. Frederick Jones did not invent the refrigerated truck. And Daniel Hale Williams was not the first to perform open heart surgery.

But that is not the point. Doubtless there have indeed been many blacks that have made signifigant contributions to our knowledge and technology, bad examples such as the ones mentioned notwithstanding. Probably some of on your list are valid. However that does not mean that the creative and intellectual potential of blacks as a group is equal to that of other races. Looking at IQ levels for example (which don't give the whole picture of what someone can achieve but it is good for demonstrating this point) the IQ in a population follows something like a normal distribution curve. Between population groups the mean of the curve may differ by a handful of IQ points, 5 or 10. This may sound insignifigant, and there is indeed considerable overlap between the populations, but at the extremes of the distribution there is much more of an effect. Shifting the curve towards lower IQ by a small amount results in greatly less people with high-level IQs, the very people who are likely to contribute towards progress, scientific and other, and many more people with moronic IQs, the people who are going to make the social system break down and contribute to general disorder and chaos. So although there may be a number of black geniuses, doesn't mean that a merging of the white and black gene pools wouldn't have a catastrophic effect for the nature of our society.

Not that I would say that IQ is the only issue. Generally it has been shown that East Asians have a higher IQ than whites. That doesn't mean that I would be in favour of miscegenation between the Chinese population and the European population, in order to increase IQ levels in Europe. My view is, once we have established that racial differences are real, then it becomes worth trying to preserve the races as they are. That way the diversity means that each race can contribute to humanity whatever its unique characteristics have to offer in the way of progress.

64

Are Interracial RelationshipsA Taboo Subject?

by The wanderer in

jw
friends

are interracial relationshipsa taboo subject?the exposure to individuals of other racial backgrounds was helpful in my past .

jehovahs witness life to see past racial prejudice.

i am grateful for the exposure.

stapler99

snowbird, that was a fascinating account. Unfortunately many of those black inventors weren't responsible for the inventions you credit them with. See this website: http://www33.brinkster.com/iiiii/inventions/. It debunks some of these claims. The only inventors that it doesn't mention that you claimed, are

Jan Matzelinger, shoe lasting machine

Walter Sammons, comb

C.J. Walker, hair care.

There may have been others that I missed, but I wouldn't trust the above three based on an account full of inaccuracies.

64

Are Interracial RelationshipsA Taboo Subject?

by The wanderer in

jw
friends

are interracial relationshipsa taboo subject?the exposure to individuals of other racial backgrounds was helpful in my past .

jehovahs witness life to see past racial prejudice.

i am grateful for the exposure.

stapler99

found-my-way: I don't think that that the white race will remain the same no matter how many people have inter-relationships. In fact whites have a low birth-rate compared to other races. Supposedly "white" countries experience mass non-white immigration all the while Africa remains black, East Asia remains Mongoloid, etc. White countries are really the only places where the dogmas of multiculturalism and multiracialism are pushed. That the races will merge in such a situation is an historical inevitability.

I am also confused by your feelings of guilt about what your ancestors did. Is this something you say to sound non-racist or do you actually feel remorse? Know that it wasn't just whites who engaged in the slave trade, there were whites, blacks, Arabs and Jews involved. Every people's history can be criticized negatively. Maybe what whites did in North America and other places was wrong. This involved the destruction of native American culture and way of life. Maybe it's right that certain reparations or considerations should be made for the Americans. But that shouldn't mean that whites should suffer similarly and be destroyed racially and culturally, albeit over a longer timespan. And it's not possible or feasible for the whites to return to Europe. There are no white homelands anymore. It's not possible to send everyone back where they came from. Just as few would recommend a "Japan for the Ainu" policy. Policy shouldn't be determined by history, but by the present need of the peoples involved. What the Europeans did in North America may have been wrong, but really, what are you supposed to do about it?

I don't think wanting preservation for your race makes you a hater. bluesapphire, I understand that you will never think that such an preservational endeavour is important, but understand that I am not advocating Hitlerish policies, genocide or warfare. The situation of whites today can be compared to Tibet, which the People's Republic of China is flooding with non-Tibetans in order to destroy Tibetan self-identity. Maybe some Tibetans are like you and don't care about the difference between Chinese and Tibetan. But if a Tibetan did want to preserve his Tibetan heritage, would you compare him or her to Hitler?

64

Are Interracial RelationshipsA Taboo Subject?

by The wanderer in

jw
friends

are interracial relationshipsa taboo subject?the exposure to individuals of other racial backgrounds was helpful in my past .

jehovahs witness life to see past racial prejudice.

i am grateful for the exposure.

stapler99

I am very much opposed to inter-racial romantic relationships. Although I believe that on an individual level, it is possible that persons of different races may feel as loving and close to each other as persons of the same race, I think that the destruction of racial differences that mixed-race children produce mean that on a societal level that it should be avoided. I believe that racial identity is a useful and desirable concept to exist in society.

Why? Aren't we all members of one race, the human race, and shouldn't we judge by individual? For a start, although it may be an unpopular opinion, I believe that racial differences extend beyond skin colour, face/skull shape, or any other physical structure that you care to mention. There is a definite relationship between race and crime levels, economic and educational achievement. Whether this is due to cultural reasons or not is hard to know, but I feel since it is the same nature of correlation all over the world, and throughout history, that I think it is perfectly reasonable to believe that genetic factors had at least some influence. The achievements of civilizations that consist of mostly Blacks are not impressive.

Yes, I do find it difficult to hold views like this. I can talk to a non-White person and feel friendly towards them, and forget about their race and view them as an individual. However, I believe for the long-term survival of Western civilization that an attitude of White racial preservation has to become more prevalent.