Posts by PrimateDave

53

No, God does NOT have the right to make rules for us - and here's why . . . .

by nicolaou in

reading through reniaa's latest topic i found the following sorts of comments from believers and unbelievers alike.

i think they show how habits of thought run most easily along the well grooved and often travelled ruts in our minds.

we need to question these 'obvious truths' more often .

PrimateDave

There are in fact already "rules" that are made for us that apply universally (Pun!) and which cannot be disobeyed. Gravity, electro-magnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces are fundamental to physics (not psychics!). No one can disobey the law of gravity. However, to disregard its effects could lead to death.

The existence of all life on earth is defined by the harnessing and directing of flows of energy. Nuclear fusion from the sun releases electromagnetic energy in the form of photons which stream out into space. A small fraction of those photons reach the earth. Some life forms evolved the ability to chemically store that incoming energy in molecular form.

Aside from reproducing, life forms exhibit the capability to export entropy as long as sufficient energy can be absorbed by the organism. The success of any lifeform is soley judged (not trying to anthropomorphise nature, but hopefully you get my drift) on its ability to reproduce, which in turn is based on how successfully it can utilize energy from its environment.

Early humans were like any other animal in their ability to directly interact with the environment to obtain the needed energy to grow and reproduce. When early humans learned to use tools and manage fire, their ability to survive even in hostile environments increased. The development of agriculture gave much greater yields of energy to humans than they had previously known as hunter-gatherers.

The excess energy increased population and allowed greater social complexity to develop. With that social complexity humans began to attempt to understand and control their environment more. They developed beliefs in spirits and gods that could be petitioned for success or appeased for forgiveness.

The current success of humans on earth is based on the multiple forms of energy we have learned to harness, much of which has recently come from ancient sunlight captured by photosynthesis and stored in molecular form (fossil fuels). Sadly, despite our current level of social complexity, we are still tied to the ancient superstitions and more than a few modern ones as well.

Whether or not there is a deity, the laws of the natural universe are undeniable. What is interesting to me is that the ancient deities of mankind were no more aware of these complex laws that the priests who served them. The evidence suggests that men made gods in their image. Therefore, the rules of social organization attributed to gods were instead the inventions of men.

Dave

115

Say Something Nice About Alabama ...

by snowbird in

jw
friends

... please do.. i need a lift.

.

sylvia.

PrimateDave

I have family living there.

Dave

16

After Armageddon: Vision of The Future (Part 1)

by cameo-d in

jw
friends

after armageddon: vision of the future (part 1).

---an original story by cam---.

armageddon has come and gone and i am left to tell the story.

PrimateDave

I would like for you to continue your story too. I would only hope that my constructive criticisms will make you want to refine your story.

You seem to be disappointed that this story does not fit your criteria of a holocaust. Your suggestion of more gore, torture and destruction is not my vision at all. You seem to have made up your mind what Armageddon will be like and *surprise* what if you are mistaken? What if it's not at all like what you imagined? You have a preconceived notion and you might be totally wrong when it comes down!

Well, isn't Armageddon supposed to be horrific? Isn't that what the Watchtower Society has long portrayed in its literature? What you are describing seems more like the TV show "Jericho" which I found mildly entertaining. But that's fine. So you have a vision of a grand conspiracy stuffed into the skin of Armageddon. Let me take a different approach then. What you have appears to be a diary of sorts, or perhaps something some anonymous person wrote up as a report for someone. Ask yourself, who is the narrator? Who is he writing to? Why? Or maybe what you have written could be called your plot summary disguised as a first person narrative.

I am also puzzled by your very first sentence: "Armageddon has come and gone, and I am left to tell the story." It seems to suggest a sole-survivor scenario. My first impression is that a huge global calamity has occurred, and the narrator is all alone and writing his story in case someone else may have survived and will read it some day. However, right away we find out that he isn't alone. In fact there's quite a lot of people and they are being organized to collect wealth left over from people who have died. I find the situation implausible.

You see Jehovah's Witnesses who are so docile that they do what they are told without question. I see a lot of frightened people who are only going to follow orders at the point of a gun. Despite all their talk about wanting the end to come, I think most Witnesses are very scared at the prospect of the Great Tribulation. Besides, I think you are overestimating (underestimating?) the average Witness. Most are far less obedient than the WTS would have you believe. (Isn't that right, Reniaa?) Nevertheless, any good work of fiction can make implausible scenarios seem completely possible, so that is your challenge in this case. Help your readers suspend their disbelief.

Anyway, you are right about my vision of an "Armageddon." In a post-apocalyptic scenario it is my belief that centralized government is the first thing to go. Without highly trained people, infrastructure (energy, water, transportation) fails quickly. Without infrastructure, even the most advanced armies come to a halt. Once the food is gone from supermarket shelves, people begin to go hungry. And then all hell breaks loose...

The best post-apocalyptic novel I have ever read by far is The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

Synopsis: [from a PDF copy of the book]
A searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy's
masterpiece.
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the
ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and
when the snow falls it is gray. They sky is dark. Their destination is the coast,
although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing;
just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the
clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food — and each other.
The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in
which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, "each the other's world
entire," are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an
unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate
destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in
the face of total devastation.
The prose is quintessentially McCarthy: spare, desolate, unemotional, reserved of
both unnecessary vocabulary and punctuation (he recognized the necessary evil of
periods denoting the end of a sentence. Some contractions are so designated with an
apostrophe, some not. Exclamation points are avoided with the same vigilance as
would be shown to beanies with propellers). Although most English teachers I've
been a captive audience to would consider him Satan incarnate, he still can turn a
phrase of almost unbearable beauty.

16

After Armageddon: Vision of The Future (Part 1)

by cameo-d in

jw
friends

after armageddon: vision of the future (part 1).

---an original story by cam---.

armageddon has come and gone and i am left to tell the story.

PrimateDave

Writing Fiction Step by Step

Fiction Writer's Workshop

Are you serious about writing fiction? You should know that I did read your story, at least what you posted of it. Why post something that's not quite finished? Why are you surprised that I have offered constructive criticism? This is an open forum, and anyone can say what they want. I have not made a personal attack on you. I have merely given you my opinion of what you wrote. People do that all the time even to professional authors. If you can learn to take other people's ideas and criticisms to heart, you can hopefully improve your stories and get the praise you desire.

Dave

16

After Armageddon: Vision of The Future (Part 1)

by cameo-d in

jw
friends

after armageddon: vision of the future (part 1).

---an original story by cam---.

armageddon has come and gone and i am left to tell the story.

PrimateDave

An excerpt from Parable of the Sower:

SATURDAY, JULY 31, 2027--
MORNING
Last night, when I escaped from the neighborhood, it was burning. The houses, the trees, the people: Burning.
Smoke awoke me, and I shouted down the hall to Cory and the boys. I grabbed my clothes and emergency pack and followed Cory as she herded the boys out. The bell never rang. Our watchers must have been killed before they could reach it. Everything was chaos. People running, screaming, shooting. The gate had been destroyed. Our attackers had driven an ancient truck through it. They must have stolen a truck just to crash it through our gate.
I think they must have been pyro addicts-- bald people with painted heads, faces, and hands. Red faces; blue faces; green faces; screaming mouths; avid, crazy eyes, glittering in the firelight. They shot us and shot us and shot us. I saw Natalie Moss, running, screaming, then pitching backward, her face half gone, her body still impelled forward. She fell flat on her back, and did not move again. I fell with her, caught up in her death. I lay there, dazed, struggling to move, to get up. Cory and the boys, running ahead of me never noticed. They ran on...
[The next day]
...There were no unburned houses back in the neighborhood, although some were burned worse than others. I don't know whether police or firefighters ever came. If they had come, they were gone when I got there. The neighborhood was wide open and crawling with scavengers. I stood at the gate, staring in as strangers picked among the black bones of our homes. The ruins were still smoking, but men, women, and children were all over them, digging through them, picking fruit from the trees, stripping our dead, quarreling or fighting over new acquisitions, stashing things away in clothing or bundles. . . . Who were these people? I put my hand on the gun in my pocket-- it had four rounds left in it-- and I went in. I was grimy from lying in dirt and ashes all night. I might not be noticed. I saw three women from an unwalled part of Durant Road, digging through what was left of the Yannis house. They were laughing and throwing around chunks of wood and plaster.

16

After Armageddon: Vision of The Future (Part 1)

by cameo-d in

jw
friends

after armageddon: vision of the future (part 1).

---an original story by cam---.

armageddon has come and gone and i am left to tell the story.

PrimateDave

How about this excerpt from "This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen":

The train has been emptied. A thin, pock-marked SS man peers inside, shakes his head in disgust and motions to our group, pointing his finger at the door.
“Rein. Clean it up!”
We climb inside. In the corners amid human excrement and abandoned wrist-watches lie squashed, trampled infants, naked little monsters with enormous heads and bloated bellies. We carry them out like chickens, holding several in each hand.
“Don’t take them to the trucks, pass them on to the women, says the SS man, lighting a cigarette. His cigarette lighter is not working properly; he examines it carefully.
“Take them, for God’s sake!” I explode as the women run from me in horror, covering their eyes.
The name of God sounds strangely pointless, since the women and the infants will go on the trucks, every one of them, without exception. We all know what this means, and we look at each other with hate and horror.
“What, you don’t want to take them?” asks the pockmarked SS man with a note of surprise and reproach in his voice, and reaches for his revolver.
“You mustn’t shoot, I’ll carry them.” A tall, gray-haired woman takes the little corpses out of my hands and for an instant gazes straight into my eyes.
“My poor boy,” she whispers and smiles at me. Then she walks away, staggering along the path. I lean against the side of the train. I am terribly tired. Someone pulls at my sleeve.

This really happened. Where was god? How can people who believe in Armageddon be so insensitive to the massive suffering that such an event implies? In my opinion any work of fiction that tries to describe such an event needs to make it real, so that people might begin to question their beliefs.

Dave

16

After Armageddon: Vision of The Future (Part 1)

by cameo-d in

jw
friends

after armageddon: vision of the future (part 1).

---an original story by cam---.

armageddon has come and gone and i am left to tell the story.

PrimateDave

Here is another reference. "The Blood of Dresden" excerpted from Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut. It was actually this story that I first had in mind when I tried to look up Vonnegut's account of being an American POW in Dresden, Germany, in WW 2.

"We cut our way through a basement wall to discover a reeking hash of over 100 human beings. Flame must have swept through before the building’s collapse sealed the exits, because the flesh of those within resembled the texture of prunes. Our job, it was explained, was to wade into the shambles and bring forth the remains. Encouraged by cuffing and guttural abuse, wade in we did. We did exactly that, for the floor was covered with an unsavoury broth from burst water mains and viscera."

Happy writing!

Dave

16

After Armageddon: Vision of The Future (Part 1)

by cameo-d in

jw
friends

after armageddon: vision of the future (part 1).

---an original story by cam---.

armageddon has come and gone and i am left to tell the story.

PrimateDave

Interesting....

Have you ever read Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler? It is quite a facinating fictional novel detailing the gradual collapse of civilization from the perspective of a young woman living in southern California circa 2025.

When you started relating about the collection of valuables from the homes of the deceased, it reminded me of this WW 2 Holocaust story: "This Way For the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen"

And speaking of WW 2 holocausts, I was also reminded of this personal account about the burning of Dresden written by Kurt Vonnegut: "A Single Column of Flame"

When the Witnesses speak (quite often, unfortunately) about how 'bad' things are getting, I often wonder what point of reference they are using for that statement. I've read many accounts written by WW 2 survivors, people who were actually in life threatening situations (like two of the stories above), and I've got to tell ya, we don't know bad. Seriously, unless you've been living in a war zone recently, you've got it pretty good comparatively speaking.

And that brings me to my constructive criticism of your story. It is very ... bland. Rather like a Hollywood TV drama series, it sanitizes what supposedly should be the most horrific event in the history of humanity. At the end of the day you've got a place to eat and sleep. You've got electricity and water. People are organized. You go and collect valuables from homes. WTF?

Read the WW 2 narratives to see how people really are in the face of truly horrible events. Even the fictional post-apocalyptic Parable of the Sower gives a pretty convincing take on what happens when things start to fall apart. I don't mean to be unkind. For what it is worth, it would be unkind to simply say "hey that's a good story." You'll never improve like that.

Dave

71

What Religion Are You?

by homeschool in

jw
friends

i see that there are many people on here who've left the jw's and are still christians...but i wonder what type?

non denominational?

has anyone changed to something completely different like hindu or buddhism?

PrimateDave

Pastafarian. All hail the FSM!

Dave

30

Genesis 1:2 "God's active force" and equivalents

by Spike Tassel in

and a mightywind that swept over the surface of the waters [the new english bible].

and the spiritof god hovered over the surface of the water [the revised english bible].

and the spiritof god moved upon [was brooding upon] the face of the waters [american standard version (asv), the modern reader's bible, the webster bible].

PrimateDave

Stephen, it is obviously a unique translation. I really don't see why some people are getting so worked up about it. Other translations use the words power, breath, wind, spirit, and Spirit. I assume there is some significance to the fact that some translators choose to capitalize the word "spirit." Perhaps that is due to their Trinitarian bias which I find strange due to the fact that we are talking about a Jewish holy book. There is no reason to assign personhood to the breath, wind, spirit, or active force mentioned in Genesis 1:2.

Once again I must express my gratitude to Leolaia and Narkissos for their exceptional insight into these texts.

Dave