Hortensia

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Posts by Hortensia

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  52

  A Manual for Creating Atheists

  by Hortensia in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  just received the book, sat down to start reading it.

  first chapter has definitions:.

  faith:.

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  Hortensia

  faith is believing something for which there is no evidence

  People around here have faith in Telos, in Lemurians, in spirit guides. Muslims have faith in Allah and the Koran. What makes your faith right and their faith wrong? They can't all be true. How do you discern which is right? It has to be based on something.

  I think it is significant that most people have the religion of their parents, of their culture. Then they believe they are right and everyone else is wrong, although if they had been born to different parents with a different religion, they would probably feel as sure about a totally different religion.
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  52

  A Manual for Creating Atheists

  by Hortensia in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  just received the book, sat down to start reading it.

  first chapter has definitions:.

  faith:.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Hortensia

  Bits from chapters three and four:

  Certainty is the enemy of truth. If you are certain you have the truth, why would you look for anything else?
  Certainty in one's faith robs a person of curiosity and the desire to explore the world and learn more.
  
  The author refers to Amazing Conversions (Altemeyer and Hunsberger) -- the non-religious convert to religion often after some emotional event, such as the death of someone loved or an event like the 9/11 attack in New York. However, the path of someone leaving religion takes years and lots of thinking, reading and discussion.
  
  Analytic Thinking Promotes Religious Disbelief (Gervais and Norenzyan) the more proficient a person becomes at critical thinking, the more like he/she will disbelieve religion.
  (No wonder the wtbts and the Taliban don't like education, eh?)
  
  Five reasons why people embrace faith without any evidence to support it:
  1. they never learned critical thinking
  2. they base their faith on unreliable evidence (like experiencing the holy spirit)
  3. they have never been exposed to competing ideas
  4. social/peer pressure
  5. they don't value truth or are relativists
  
  "Doxastic Closure"
  Doxastic means belief. Doxastic closure is a belief so entrenched or protected it is difficult to change. They are in a bubble that filters out disagreeable or uncomfortable ideas. The author included some interesting thoughts about Google - that google bases search results on your past searches and web sites you've visited, creating a little bubble that leaves out other information. So someone who visits skeptic sites will get different results from a google search than someone who visits religious sites, even though they use the same search key words. So, if you're surrounded by people who believe as you do, and google promotes more of the same kind of thinking, and you never learned to think critically, and if belief affects your social structure, well, it will be pretty hard for you to change your beliefs unless something happens to create a chink in the armor.
  
  Critical thinking is far more work than accepting simple platitudes (like my neighbor's idea about karma.)
  Tools of faith: certainty, prejudice, pretending, confirmation bias, irrationality and superstition
  
  http://www.skepticblog.org/2011/08/30/skepticism101/
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  12

  I'm Taking A "Newly Interested One" To Her First Meeting

  by Zandor in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i've been out of the organization for quite a number of years, and still feel that uneasy feeling that was washed into every cell of my being by wt indoctrination since birth.

  never seems to go away completely, does it?.

  i use to feel the need to talk about my experience in the organization to others, to worldlies, and they never quite seem to understand.

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  Hortensia

  She'll find it bizarre.

  I remember when a friend attended my step-father's funeral. She asked me later, "they don't really believe all that stuff they said, do they?" She was especially appalled by the songs, and the singing.
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  52

  A Manual for Creating Atheists

  by Hortensia in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  just received the book, sat down to start reading it.

  first chapter has definitions:.

  faith:.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Hortensia

  Believing is not the same thing as knowing. So, what's a definition for "knowing?" I consider I know something when I'm convinced by evidence, otherwise I'm just guessing. I guess knowing is drawing a conclusion from evidence. My mother used to joke, "don't confuse me with facts, I've made up my mind." The irony is that although she could say that as a joke, it's also how she ran her life.
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  16

  Raise your beers to Mr Wallace !

  by snare&racket in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  some people don't realise that attacking darwin's personal life over evolution is nonsensical as he was not the only scientist with the theory at the time.

  many scientists were debating the idea including darwin's father and grandfather.

  amongst the people throwing the theory around was a young poor welshman with a love for biology and questions, his name was alfred, yes everyone could calm down a welsh :) man called alfred wallace was also on the case...... many don't know that he contributed much to the theory too.

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  Hortensia

  Thanks, very interesting and enjoyable posts.
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  44

  Maybe I'm the bad guy after all

  by braincleaned in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  maybe i'm the bad guy after all.

  my mom and sis love me and still talk to me, although i'm clearly an apostate.

  their loophole?

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  Hortensia

  I'm sorry you feel so badly right now. Take a break if you need it. Leave entirely if you need it. Come back if you like. I hope you feel better soon, and get some stress out of your life. As for your family, might as well try to learn detachment. Sadly, the true believers in the wtbts are like little hamsters just running around and around inside a plastic wheel.
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  52

  A Manual for Creating Atheists

  by Hortensia in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  just received the book, sat down to start reading it.

  first chapter has definitions:.

  faith:.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Hortensia

  NY44M -- I get what you are saying. I don't care what other people believe, either. But I have some sort of a perverse little interest in listening to what they have to say, watching their logic or lack of logic. Why do people believe such patent absurdities? It's very interesting.
• 
  52

  A Manual for Creating Atheists

  by Hortensia in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  just received the book, sat down to start reading it.

  first chapter has definitions:.

  faith:.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Hortensia

  So, there's the reason it's hard to have a discussion between believers and non-believers: can't agree on a definition. I wonder if we could all agree that faith is belief without evidence? So then, I suppose, there would still be two camps: the believers, and those who want evidence before believing.

  Interesting endnote in Chapter One:

  Pg 40, endnote #12:

  "In his early suras, Muhammad made compromises with popular, preexisting goddess worship; later he revoked these verses -- calling them Satanic verses -- and created a new principle permitting newer revelations to supersede earlier revelations. Thus there is another way to figure out which claims about the world we should accept and which are likely false, though not through reason or evidence. The new principle is based on the latest revelation. Later suras in the Koran supersede earlier suras. Unfortunately many of the more militant suras are found later in the Koran."

  Hmmm, so new light wasn't invented by the wtbts?
• 
  52

  A Manual for Creating Atheists

  by Hortensia in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  just received the book, sat down to start reading it.

  first chapter has definitions:.

  faith:.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Hortensia

  I said it wrong. It is a claim about reality, not a statement. Thanks for catching that!

  Thanks for the scripture, too. So it was Jesus's disciples who seemed to believe in a previous life of some sort.
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  17

  I messed up again... Opened my mouth... oh well, we'll see where the cards end

  by ILoveTTATT in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  so i hadn't talked to my friends on facebook for a while because i had been too busy on my page (now two pages) and my job, and my girlfriend.

  so i go on my fb account yesterday and i start talking to a "bible study" i had had while in mexico... after learning ttatt, i have dreamed of ways to tell him and his family to stay away from jw's, but i hadn't had the courage to do so because of a) wanting to get my family awakened first, and b) noticing the horribly bad reaction of the very few people i have actually talked to (three persons).... but anyways, i felt the need to tell him, the "bible study"... he is around 15. his mom was inactive for many years until we found her in "service" and then we started her on a study and she came back... at the time, i thought i was doing a correct thing, if i had known ttatt, no way in hell i would have done that.

  now it hurts my conscience, although to my credit, i had no idea of ttatt.. so his mom, him, his brother and sister are all in some way or another associating with jw's.. i wasn't intending to talk to him about ttatt, it just happened.... yesterday we started a conversation (a is him, b is me):.

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  Hortensia

  Well, I think the way you discussed the issue was good. You eased into the discussion with examples he could understand. You got a little excited at the end, maybe said too much, but overall, I like it.