Posts by hooberus

128

900 Top Scientists Sign Statement Skeptical of Macro-Evolution

by Perry in

we are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural .

selection to account for the complexity of life.

careful examination of the .

hooberus

Mark

108

"Jehovah ALWAYS had/used an organization". How would you reply?

by EdenOne in

in a recent meeting with elders, an argument was used to the effect that jehovah has always [= throughout history] used, or operated through, an organization; therefore, the wts must be that organization today, since god must be using one.

naturally, i know what arguments i've used to counter that argument.

but i'm interested in hearing yours.

hooberus

Mark

35

My father is dying

by peridotgreen in

jw
friends

my father, who has alzheimers, is dying now (he's 85).

i saw him today - he weaves in and out.

hasn't recognized me for a long time but was usually glad for the company.

hooberus

I'm sorry for what you are going through. A month and a half ago my dad passed on (he was 85 as well).

We lived together for the last 7 years. I'm thankful for time that we had together and that he was blessed to have his mind.

We were never JWs.

I am thankful that I was able to share about who Christ is, and what Christ did with my dad. Just as we had in the past we said goodby, -only this time it will be a little longer until we are reuinted.

My grandmother had alzheimers before she died. I think that they can know whats going on more than we realize.

you are in my prayers.

165

evolution question

by outsmartthesystem in

it has taken me almost 2 years to get to the bottom of the watchtower society rabbit hole.

being fully convinced that i was duped....i am still a little ashamed of myself for being so narrow minded.

i have vowed never to close off my mind like that again.

hooberus

Are you implying that this is actually happening in regards to things like:

1. abiogenesis

Of course. The fact that we don't yet have a really good answer is proof of this. What it means is that hypotheses are being created all the time and discarded. The falsification goes on and on.

And does this "falsification" that "goes on and on" ever cause them to question abiogenesis itself ?

And is there evidence for your claim that "Science works tirelessly to falsify everything it knows--every theory is rigorously tested and as new understanding is gained, the process starts all over again. No theory is safe--" in regards to the overall (molecules to man), evolutionary version of history, or even merely the evolutionary mechanism of mutation/selection?

165

evolution question

by outsmartthesystem in

it has taken me almost 2 years to get to the bottom of the watchtower society rabbit hole.

being fully convinced that i was duped....i am still a little ashamed of myself for being so narrow minded.

i have vowed never to close off my mind like that again.

hooberus

yes, just about every edition of nature and science has an article on evolution.

My question was not "do they have articles on evolution"? , But instead in responce to NC's claim that

Science works tirelessly to falsify everything it knows--every theory is rigorously tested and as new understanding is gained, the process starts all over again. No theory is safe--

Are you implying that this is actually happening in regards to things like:

1. abiogenesis,

2. The overall (molecules to man), evolutionary version of history.

3. or even merely the evolutionary mechanism of mutation/selection?

Are you saying that that "science" [i.e. the "evolutionary science community"] is really "tirelessly" trying to falsify them??

What is the evidence for this? For example do they publish any attempted falisifications?, or fund any attempted falsification experiments, or studies against any of these things?

165

evolution question

by outsmartthesystem in

it has taken me almost 2 years to get to the bottom of the watchtower society rabbit hole.

being fully convinced that i was duped....i am still a little ashamed of myself for being so narrow minded.

i have vowed never to close off my mind like that again.

hooberus

Science works tirelessly to falsify everything it knows--every theory is rigorously tested and as new understanding is gained, the process starts all over again. No theory is safe--

Are you implying that this is actually happening in regards to things like:

1. abiogenesis,

2. The overall (molecules to man), evolutionary version of history.

3. or even merely the evolutionary mechanism of mutation/selection?

Are you saying that that "science" [i.e. the "evolutionary science community"] is really "tirelessly" trying to falsify them??

What is the evidence for this? For example do they publish any attempted falisifications?, or fund any attempted falsification experiments, or studies against any of these things?

No theory is safe-- if it were it would be religion. NC

So if hypothetically the overall naturalistic/evolutionary version of history has been made "safe" by its proponets , then its religion?

57

Difficulties understanding passage.

by s-c-3-1-3 in

i am reading colossians 1:15-18, and understand it to mean that jehovah created jesus who then created all other things in the world, thus jesus crall things except for god who created him.

is this correct?

thanks in advance!.

hooberus

57

Difficulties understanding passage.

by s-c-3-1-3 in

i am reading colossians 1:15-18, and understand it to mean that jehovah created jesus who then created all other things in the world, thus jesus crall things except for god who created him.

is this correct?

thanks in advance!.

hooberus

20

Newton, Einstein, Naturalism, and Walking Fish- Naturalism vs Supernaturalism. Put up or Shut up!!!

by whereami in

.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbswkmobrl8&feature=digest_sun.

hooberus

me:

First of, ID doesn't prove God at all. what ID is struggling to show is that there must be intelligence behind earths biological life. If there's intelligence to be found then God is one of the valid options to consider. . .

2nd, Intelligent Design, does not offer any useful advancement & prediction on the application of science:"ID seeks to redefine science in a fundamental way that would invoke supernatural explanations, a viewpoint known as theistic science. It puts forward a number of arguments, the most prominent of which are irreducible complexity and specified complexity, in support of the existence of a designer.[4] The scientific community rejects the extension of science to include supernatural explanations in favor of continued acceptance of methodological naturalism,

If, God potentially is one of the "valid options" to consider, then shouldn't the "scientific community" not "reject" him even as an option?

51

Putting the 'probability argument' against abiogenesis in the grave once and for all

by bohm in

jw
friends

amongst the many arguments for and against creation the probability arguments stands out.

the improbability of generating the necessary proteins by chanceor the genetic information to produce themto balloon beyond comprehension.

... the odds of getting even one functional protein of modest length (150 amino acids) by chance from a prebioitc soup is no better than 1 chance in 10164. meyer continues, another way to say that is the probability of finding a functional protein by chance alone is a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion times smaller than the odds of finding a single specific particle among all the particles in the universe.. the evidence for the probability of origin of life arising from darwins warm little pond seems to have vanished beyond the realm of any possibilityregardless of any early earth scenario.. i really, really want to put it in the grave because i think its an embaressment to the theists and thinking humans in general; its right up there with 'noahs ark has been found' and 'humans have less chromosomes than monkeys', but for some reason people dont see through it.

hooberus

I really, really want to put it in the grave because i think its an embaressment to the theists and thinking humans in general; Its right up there with 'noahs ark has been found' and 'humans have less chromosomes than monkeys', but for some reason people dont see through it.

One of the reasons i hate it so much is that the people who quote it does not have any idea what the statement they make really say. The key is the use of the word 'chance', 'assembled at random', etc. – notice that this is included by all the scientists who actually calculate the probabilities, but omitted by all creationist.
Thats for a reason: the probability is strictly true, but it only cover one very limited model for how proteines are assembled (at random), and does not consider other paths; essentially it leave out the fact that the world is governed by physical laws.

This point may seem technical, and i am quite sure that a lot think that it does not matter much, if the propability is 10^-3000 there is a rather large room for error. The thing is that it is not a trivial point and it invalidate the entire calculation before the question has been resolved. I will demonstrate that by a simple example:

Yesterday i heard a noise from the kitchen. I ran out and saw a large number of rice on the floor, and my girlfriend was standing with a half-empty bag of rice. There are two options: Either she spilled the rice, ie it landed on the floor 'on random', or she carefully designed the configuration of the rice. Lets try to use creationist math to determine if there is 'intelligent' (mischiveous) design involved:

The first thing we have to do is to ignore physical laws, causal history and all that junk (thats what we do with proteines, remember?) so in this case we ignore gravity. Then, just as with proteines, we have to specify our 'configuration space'. When we have ignored gravity, the rice can be anywhere in the room (litterally!).
A grain of rice is at most 3 mm high. The room is 3 m. high. That mean that a grain of rice can be placed (vertically) in about 3m / 3mm = 1000 = 10^3 places. Lets say there is 100 grains of rice on the floor, then the probability to see all 100 lying on the floor is 10^-300. Want lower probability? just add rice or (the horror!) she may have dropped the rice outdoors..

Holy fucking shit batman! 10^-300'th must rule out the 'random' hypothesis, surely my girlfriend must have painstakingly placed the grains of rice on the floor one by one, surely i must scold her for calling it an accident and blaming 'random'!

But i am wrong. The real probabillity, when you do not ignore physical laws and causal history is 1, because rice automatically fall to the floor because of gravity. Thats why we cant ignore stuff like gravity, thats why nature has to enter into our equations unless there are extremely good arguments why it can be left out.

My example might sound artificial, but how about two beaches where on one the rocks are small and on the other the rocks are very large? ripples in the sand? Cloud formation? The earths magnetic field? Neutron stars? All of these are examples that the naive 'lets ignore physics'-calculations will tell us must be explicitly designed and they are wrong. Nature trivially do this because of some mechanisms that are hard to pin-point a-priori and have to enter into the calculation.

Thats why the 'probability' arguments are so extremely stupid. The person is REALLY arguing that, as in the case of rice, you can just ignore physics, that the system does not exhibit criticallity or complex behaviour and behave more like a cloud of gas at high temperature. They are making that statement without even knowing what enviroment we are discussing, what temperatures the system is at, or what it contain; its just a bunch of unfounded assumptions that the person dont even KNOW they should test or argue for.

And here is an example as well. What if the rice grains on the floor also spelled out the phrase "RICE IS GOOD FOR FOOD BECAUSE IT IS NUTRICIOUS."? Do we then ignore chance probability calculations as evidence for intelligent design because of the mere "fact that the world is governed by physical laws [like chemistry]"?