I'm not a scientist and I do not claim to be. For that matter, I'm not a philosopher either. Please just view my thoughts for what they worth.
Science looks at observable processes. Intelligent Design is not an observable process. I.D. will always look like a cop-out to scientists because it doesn't follow that a test can be done it.
This is my point: Imagine you knew a method by which something could build itself. Would that prove that it did build itself and wasn't built by someone else? No.
Imagine that something looked so difficult to build that it doesn't appear possible that it could have built itself. Does that prove that it was built by someone else? No.
I know that this is definitely over simplifying it, but here it goes: Imagine there is a field that has a charred area in it. Charred areas can be caused by lightning striking a tree and the conditions being right for the bolt to ignite the plants in the field. Someone could have also have lit a match. However years have passed and the area is grown over with charred parts still exposed. How do you prove which one it was?
LayingLow
JoinedPosts by LayingLow
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365
Richard Dawkins Gets "Expelled" by Ben Stein!
by Perry ini just got back from seeing the new movie release "expelled" which is a documentary exposing the militant culture of supression regarding intelligent design in the scientific community.
in a "million years", i never would have imagined that ben stein could get the author of "the god delusion", richard dawkins to speak favorably about i.d.
(intellignet design).
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LayingLow
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Why do we get stumbled out of JW's because of imperfect people?
by reniaa ini see this a lot on this forum, loads of people saying they left jw's because of "hypocritical ....... ( put elder, pioneer, couple, sister, brother, governing body) here.. but?.
why would you expect any man-run organisation if you believe the bible, to have to be perfect and not be full of imperfect people that will come across as hypocritical?.
the bible examples from israelites onwards name anyone :- moses, king david, pharasees, paul the one thing the bible doesn't do is white-wash them it shows that however much we follow the laws we are always fighting our own imperfection usually failing every time and needing to be corrected sometimes punished (moses had to give-up chance of seeing the foretold land), so why do we hold this against jw's as a reasons not to be a jw's anymore?.
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LayingLow
I can't really comment on the statistics for why people leave the JW's. I know that from reading posts about how people had problems with the people, you might draw the conclusion that the reason they left was imperfect people. However, that may not be the case. I left for purely doctrinal reasons as did many others as you have read in their comments. If you read some of my posts talking about certain things I've seen in the organization you may draw the conclusion that people are the reason I left but that would the furthest thing from the truth.
Personally, I don't think that individual conduct disqualify a religion as God's favored people. Using the instance of Israel, God didn't choose them or keep them because they were righteous. He actually was just fulfilling his promise towards his friend Abraham.
Now the Father promises Jesus a bride, his body, Christians. Using the Abraham/Israel model, God will stay faithful to his favored people until the conclusion of the age. When Jesus returns a second time he will sift the weeds from the wheat.
Using the Israel model that you put forth, we should expect a group of people who were formed by God and later fell into wrong teachings and improper conduct. Eventually there would appear splinter sects and there would arise groups like the Pharisees who felt they had "the truth" and that all the other Jews (Christians) were dirt.
Does any of that sound familiar? How did it go for the Pharisees? Jesus came looking for those who were willing to be humbled and prepared for what God was soon to do.
The pharisees rejecting the rest of the Jews sounds so much like the JW's rejecting rest of the Christians. Was it necessary to become a Pharisee so that you could be saved when Jesus came back? Just a guess here but I imagine it will be a similar scenario when he comes back again.
On a side note, what was the defect of the Pharisees? Didn't they push an outward form of godliness but forget to be cleaned on the inside? The Holy Spirit is promised to indwell Christians in this age but the JW's stick to rules in order to show godliness and teach that the "great crowd" isn't indwelt by the Holy Spirit at all. What's the deal with that? -
365
Richard Dawkins Gets "Expelled" by Ben Stein!
by Perry ini just got back from seeing the new movie release "expelled" which is a documentary exposing the militant culture of supression regarding intelligent design in the scientific community.
in a "million years", i never would have imagined that ben stein could get the author of "the god delusion", richard dawkins to speak favorably about i.d.
(intellignet design).
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LayingLow
When I said spontaneous generation I meant it not in the pre-Pasteur sense (flies from mud). I apologize for that terminology. I meant it in the abiogenesis sense (life from non-life). I view abiogenesis as something seperate from evolution. I may have worded my post wrong if that is the confusion I caused you.
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Richard Dawkins Gets "Expelled" by Ben Stein!
by Perry ini just got back from seeing the new movie release "expelled" which is a documentary exposing the militant culture of supression regarding intelligent design in the scientific community.
in a "million years", i never would have imagined that ben stein could get the author of "the god delusion", richard dawkins to speak favorably about i.d.
(intellignet design).
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LayingLow
I just got back from watching the film. I wanted to know exactly what Richard Dawkins had said and with what tone. This is what I observed:
He was asked how that first cell got here and he visually drew a blank. He said quite honestly that he hadn't a clue. Then he said that it was possible that an alien society developed and planted a "seed" here.
He paused for a moment and said why he couldn't accept I.D. It was the implication that God had no beginning. He could accept a creator or originator that had a beginning but not one that didn't.
The tone was definitely serious and not in jest.
In the end he didn't say "I believe in God". He did however say that he didn't know how that first cell started.
I can say without reserve that Richard Dawkins believes that everything must have a beginning, therefore excluding God.
Both parties agreed to change in species over time. Technically that is the "evolution" part. However, the term evolution seems to be quite loaded language that also includes spontaneous generation. That part is not science (it is faith [not observed, not repeatable, not calibrated, etc.]). It is clear that there is no consensus among scientists as to what started the first cell. That being the case, it is a guess (in the form of a strong assertion on both sides). Both sides may assert their faith, but it shouldn't be covered as a "scientific theory". Neither of the theories are scientific.
Adaptation, mutation, and natural selection are facts. Spontaneous generation is a religion. -
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Your JW Relatives Have 2 Personalities - Cult & Authentic- See the Change
by flipper inin steve hassan's book, " combatting cult mind control" - one of the points that assisted me the most is understanding that all cult members have a " cult " personality which turns on when defending their faith, and they have an authentic, non - cult personality they were born with- the personality they had before being programmed by the jehovah's witnesses or any other " cult".
how is this dual cult/ authentic personality manifest ?
hassan mentions in his book that, " one moment the person is speaking cultic jargon with a hostile or elitist know-it-all attitude .
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LayingLow
I can sense a switch in my personality from easy going to rigid and serious. I still do it though. I can start out one way in the morning and can be the other by that night. For me it is passion. Passion for an ideology makes my volume increase and every other thing mentioned. When I'm not presently considering a topic that I'm passionate about I drift back into a really lax mode. I can't say for sure that this started in the JW's however. I think I've always done it. Maybe I'm screwed up like that, it's hard to say really.
The glassiness comes from a mental disengagement with the person and a concentration on the thought of passion (human rights, or whatever). Unfortunately I can also do that if I'm bored. I try to pretend I'm interested but my mind has disengaged.
This all comes from an inward sensation of believing that others must feel the same as me about something. It's weird, it's like if I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything, then there's no pressure, but as soon as something comes up, click. It's there.
Anyone else experience this? -
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Criticism worthy of your time
by johnnyc inas i read posts throughout this site, i became amazed at some of the criticism people have actually spent time creating, reading (as i did), and responding to.
dont get me wrong, some of what i read are good issues that seem worthy (to me) of discussion, but to be honest, i find that 90% of the posts are based on ridiculous petty topics that are obviously tied to a sense of deep hatred of the wtbts.
i can appreciate that some of the people who leave such post, and have this hatred, are taking their time to discuss such things as part of a therapeutic process to combat the fact they spent a large portion of their life dedicated to an organization they feel abandoned them at some point.
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LayingLow
On that note, why wouldn't Barbour be the FDS then (assuming that the one given the insight into the 1874 presence/ 1914 expiration of gentile times, would be the one led by God)?
That prophecy interpretation was definitely Barbour's. -
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Dr. Bernstein Diet
by Thinking of Leaving inhas anyone tried it?
the lady i take the bus with has been on it for the past 3 weeks and has already lost 15 pounds.. any experiences to share?.
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LayingLow
I edited this because it doesn't directly relate to the topic.
It does seem amazing what people are willing to do to lose weight (besides exercise).
A low calorie diet that makes you lose more than 2 lbs per week is definitely going to atrophy your muscle mass. If you do that, then even if you lose the weight, you will still have a lower capacity for naturally burning calories on a normal diet (50 calories a day X 1 lb. of muscle). In the long run this means that you will gain the weight back quicker and have an even harder time losing it the next time. -
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So what caused you to have doubts in the first place?
by nicolaou ini had no doubts at all about the 'truth' untill a friend of mine in the cong' began falling away.
in trying to help him i had to ask questions and do research and that of course cracked the doors of my mind open for the first time in over thirty years.. years ago, when jwd allowed members to have signatures, i used the following quote from voltaire as mine.
i still love it.. doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous..
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LayingLow
Things that helped me along the way:
-Having problems with scriptures about how you should be in Christ and baptized with the Holy Spirit.(The whole two-class Christian system)
-Having problems with them forbidding speaking in tongues (Not that I do, but it obviously says in the scriptures not to forbid it.)
-Having a householder ask me what I would do if I read the scriptures and could see one thing clearly while another belief was espoused in the WTBTS literature. He asked me who I would listen to. I said the scriptures and stuck to it (That's why I'm not a JW any longer)
-I read some of the Studies in the Scriptures by Russel. This was huge in that it allowed me to see alternative views to interpreting scriptures that were actually more logical than the WTS (and yet still wrong!). That was what really got me. How he could be more believable and use more scriptural proof than them and still be wrong. I thought "Wow, if he could be wrong with that compilation of doctrine the WTS definitely could be."
-Audio booking the N.T. and listening to it constantly emphasized all of the above points.
The only thing that kept me in so long was that I would suppress the doubts and distract myself with some material pursuit. I was a better Witness when I was more focused on material things. Whenever I would regain the focus on spiritual things I would again get full of doubts and want to leave. Then the cycle would happen again. I'm not talking so much about getting a nice house, etc.. etc.. I mean thinking about "When is that next build", "Where are we going to hang out after service", "That next part I'm going to give", and things like that. The organization may call them spiritual activities (Except the one), but they really are a distraction from doctrine and a focus on activity.
I remember being at a quick build and thinking, "This is really a great time, with nice people, I wish they had the truth.", but I knew they didn't. -
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So what caused you to have doubts in the first place?
by nicolaou ini had no doubts at all about the 'truth' untill a friend of mine in the cong' began falling away.
in trying to help him i had to ask questions and do research and that of course cracked the doors of my mind open for the first time in over thirty years.. years ago, when jwd allowed members to have signatures, i used the following quote from voltaire as mine.
i still love it.. doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous..
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LayingLow
Yeah, all those anti-biblical comments about "Following the slave" set triggers off in my head as well. It wasn't the first thing to get me thinking, but when I had hidden my doubts it would certainly bring them back to mind. I remember at times during the convention thinking to myself, wouldn't it be crazy if they just came out and said "This is all an experiment, we just made half this stuff up to see if you all would accept it without reservation. You should be ashamed of yourselves."
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Patchy memories
by Princess Daisy Boo ini often think back to my childhood and discover that my memories are very patchy.
names, faces, school teachers, things related to being a brought up as a dub.
memories of some years are patchier than others - for example when i was about 10, we moved from the city that we had always lived to a small town, 2 hours drive away - we moved back to the city 3 years later - i remember very little of the first two years in that small town.. i seem to think that the years where the memories are patchy were times when i was quite unhappy.
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LayingLow
I don't think that is peculiar to adults who were raised JW's. I wasn't and I have very foggy memory / don't remember much of my youth. I remember some parts were depressing and so I have always spent my time thinking of the present/future. Some people think of the past often. I'm not one of those people. It seems like people like that (friends that I've known) remember my youth better than I do. I think if you review it often it sticks more. I may be way off but that is something I've been pondering over lately as well.