Posts by Gopher

160

I've Come To Realize That "Facts" Don't Mean Much If A Person Refuses To Accept Them

by minimus in

jw
friends

...and that applies to religion as well as politics.. if someone simply believes such and such is true, it doesn't really matter whether you "prove" it or not.

people will believe what they want to believe..

Gopher

Satanus:

"The kind of person who automatically accepts what science says today, is the same kind of person who automatically accepted what science of the day said a thousand yrs ago."

I don't know if anyone here is advocating that we label every scientific theory as fact. Be careful of constructing a straw man here.

There are certain things that are definitely factual, and can be proven scientifically. One is that disease is caused by germs and viruses. Certain religions still practiced claim that disease is caused by bad spirits and you need a shaman to cast them out.

Scientific assertions are not facts but theories. The scientific consensus is that any two particles of matter attract one another with a force directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of distance between them. I just stated the THEORY of gravity. It isn't framed as a "fact", even though it is common to accept it as such (and some would say practically, it is factual to them).

A scientific theory is the best working explanation of a phenomenon that is happening (like attraction between masses) or did happen (development of plant and animal species).

"Certainly, science facts are incomplete."

I must kindly but firmly disagree. Facts are never controvertible. However theories can be improved upon or replaced, like the "Static Universe" theory once propounded by Einstein. However when Edwin Hubble discovered the relationship between red shift and distance, the weight of evidence shifted to the Big Bang theory and the expanding universe. Even Einstein abandoned the Static Universe theory when he considered the new evidence. "Static Universe" and "Big Bang" are not and never were framed as scientific facts, but rather as theories - the best available explanation as understood by a consensus of the scientific community. Scientific theories are constantly under scrutiny and review as the scientific search for the best possible explanation never ends.

39

When You Went Door to Door, Did You Ever Go to Any Famous Peoples Homes?

by LoisLane looking for Superman in

jw
friends

i haven't really thought of this but maybe you have knocked on some "famous" door.. i think the only one i can come close?

to is one of "the irish rovers" singer - song groups, but after he moved.. what about you?.

just lois.

Gopher

Lois: Here is a link to a picture of Mr. & Mrs. Body taken in 2012. Yes Terry was nice to take some of the magazines 30 years ago.

http://mix108.com/jesse-ventura-and-his-wife-step-into-the-limelight-to-support-vote-no-on-the-marriage-amendment/

39

When You Went Door to Door, Did You Ever Go to Any Famous Peoples Homes?

by LoisLane looking for Superman in

jw
friends

i haven't really thought of this but maybe you have knocked on some "famous" door.. i think the only one i can come close?

to is one of "the irish rovers" singer - song groups, but after he moved.. what about you?.

just lois.

Gopher

Not me. However....

Before I moved into his congregation, another ministerial servant had been regularly leaving Watchtower and Awake magazines with the wife of Jesse "The Body" Ventura when they still lived on the north side of Minneapolis, before he got into the WWF wrestling circuit and later became governor of Minnesota.

110

Tim Tebow to address Anti-Gay Anti-Semetic Mega Church

by designs in

quarterback tim tebow is scheduled to address the 11,000 member first baptist dallas congregation april 28th.

first baptist dallas and its outspoken pastor robert jeffries in recent times have called islam and mormonism coming from the 'pits of hell' and you can't be 'saved being a jew', although he clarified that being a jew is not the same type of hereticalness as being a mormon.....huh?.

pastor jeffries called the election of obama 'the rise of the anti-christ'.

Gopher

I appreciate hearing your thoughts, Tammy.

However I must kindly but firmly disagree with any assertion that atheism in and of itself leads to prejudice against unbelievers, if that's what you are saying.

Pure atheism is a mere skepticism about the existence of any deity. It doesn't teach condemnation of those who don't agree with its ideas.

Some individual atheists would take it to that extent, but that is a function of their personality. That is to say, they would be that way regardless of their philosophy or belief. (Just as I like to say, some JW's are nice people in spite of and not because of their religion.)

I am unaware of atheist persecution of Christians in law enforcement, criminal investigation, teaching and medicine. If you wish to provide a source here (or if you wish you may send it to me in a PM so we can take this topic off-line), I'm interested in hearing it because I've never heard much about it before (other than the resistance to young-earth creationists who try to introduce the topic of the supernatural into science whereas science shouldn't deal with the question of the supernatural but only the natural).

110

Tim Tebow to address Anti-Gay Anti-Semetic Mega Church

by designs in

quarterback tim tebow is scheduled to address the 11,000 member first baptist dallas congregation april 28th.

first baptist dallas and its outspoken pastor robert jeffries in recent times have called islam and mormonism coming from the 'pits of hell' and you can't be 'saved being a jew', although he clarified that being a jew is not the same type of hereticalness as being a mormon.....huh?.

pastor jeffries called the election of obama 'the rise of the anti-christ'.

Gopher

Tammy:

You seem to imply an equivalency between perceived instances of bias by atheists against believers with the instances of bias by believers against homosexuals.

Disclaimer - I am now an unbeliever, formerly a believer. And like another humanist poster on this thread, I fully support the concept of people being able to believe what they want.

That being said, here's what I think: In American society, believers are in the clear majority. They hold almost all the levers of power, and politically can get much more tilted their way. This, in spite of the establishment clause of our Constitution.

I'm unaware of times where atheists have attempted to block believers from gainful employment. Maybe you mean in the world of science?

I don't know, but I don't know that it's ever reached the point where such believers have had to fight a large establishment that has demonized them, or have had to fight against laws and lawmakers who are determined to marginalize/diminish them as unworthy humans. But homosexuals demonized by certain influential religions have had to do so. So I don't see the equivalency.

160

I've Come To Realize That "Facts" Don't Mean Much If A Person Refuses To Accept Them

by minimus in

jw
friends

...and that applies to religion as well as politics.. if someone simply believes such and such is true, it doesn't really matter whether you "prove" it or not.

people will believe what they want to believe..

Gopher

Interesting post, Gromit. It got me thinking.

Facts should be verifiable. In your example of whether your t-shirt is maroon or brown, you can get a could compare your shirt to a color chart and determine whether there is a match. Or you could find someone with a colorimetric instrument which quantifies color based on wavelength, to get a sure answer.

I think it's important to distinguish facts from what you term as asssessments/judgments. Facts are not subject to interpretation or debate. Certain facts are standards created by people (360 degrees makes a circle, a red light means stop). Other facts are laws of the universe, like every action having an equal and opposite reaction. In contrast, assessments/judgments are subject to debate - like who is the best singer of the 20th century, Elvis, Frank Sinatra, or someone else?

As you mentioned, people bring their lack of trust or their prejudices to certain discussions, especially political or religious. But little if any controversial assertions in these arenas are "facts", no matter how strongly people believe it or want it to be true.

18

You are bleeping stupid, part 2 - From the April 2013 KM

by LostGeneration in

title of article "do you regularly check the information board?".

yes they are going to have a part telling people to go read the board in back!

still not using the evil term "bulletin board" eh wts?.

Gopher

From what I remember they have been called "Information Boards" rather than "Bulletin Boards" for a while.

At a weekend service meeting back in the 70's, the chairman introduced my dad (an elder) who would be giving a Special Needs talk about a problem. What was this serious problem? They finally caught the kids of the hall smoking? Unchaperoned dating? No. It was the disrespect being shown by kids punching holes in the announcements on the Bulletin Board.

2

Cosmic Jewish Zombie

by BlindersOff1 in

.

found this on the net just want to share .. a discription of christianity .

"a cosmic jewish zombie can make me live forever if i symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him i accept him as my master, so he can remove an evil force from my soul that is present in humanity because a woman made of a rib was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magic tree.".

Gopher

And it's all scientific too, Blindersoff1

Have you seen this one? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjVLJKR6g7U

27

Watch Tower Corporation Listed Top Forty Revenue-Generating Companies in New York City, Reporting an Annual Revenue of About 951 Million US Dollars

by frankiespeakin in

so are they a religious non profit corporation?

how is this dicotomy possible that they could generate such revenue and not make an accounting to irs?.

originally known as the peoples pulpit association, the organization was incorporated in 1909 when the society's principal offices moved to brooklyn, new york.

Gopher

Hey Frankiespeakin,

Look again. It's there below the listing for "S.F. Holdings Group" and above the one for 'www.dtcc.com'.

It says this:

Watchtower Bible & Tract Society of New York

25 Columbia Heights, Brooklyn, 11201

718-560-5000

www.jw-media.org

Revenue: $951 million

Industry: Publishing

President: Milton Henshel

Employees: 3,415

It takes a lot of printing to supply more than 6 million Jehovah's Witnesses with the materials for their ministry. One publication, Watchtower, now has an average print run of 23 million copies twice per month, an increase of 7.5 percent over last year.

"Our report for the year is different from a Wall Street company," said vice president George Couch. Indeed, the company's employees are volunteers who live and work in the Brooklyn complex.

Depository Trust and Clearing Corp.

55 Water St., New York, 10041

212-855-1000

74

Living Through the Brief Liberalization of Jehovah's Witnesses, Never Recovering

by TMS in

jw
friends

with the book crisis of conscience detailing the turbulence at bethel during the early to mid 70's, the transformation from autocratic rule to governance by committee or a body of men, many of us can speak to how that felt among the rank and file of the local congregations during those years.

we learned new concepts based in large part to research done for the aid to bible understanding volume, then we were asked or coerced into unlearning those principles, going back to the old ways.

some of us never readjusted, finding ourselves very different from our more hardline compadres.. the inertia for the changes that eventually were initiated in the congregations came from the discovery that the greek words episkopos and presbyteros were used biblically to refer to all qualified men in a congregation, not just one.

Gopher

Did Ray Franz have a hand in the James Book.

Designs, ask and you shall receive!

The book was mainly the brainchild of Ed Dunlap, also a victim of the Bethel purge / witchhunt of 1980. BTW, back in the day I LOVED the James book.

I'm not sure of the extent to which Ray Franz was involved in creating the James book.

This thread about the book is interesting: http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/188186/1/Commentary-on-the-Letter-of-James