i know this has been talked about in the past but im new here..
I employed this metaphor a couple of days back:
Suppose that you see a friend about to drink a poisoned glass of milk, even if the poison represented only a small percentage of the whole. Should I include the nutritional aspects of the milk in my warning?
Ismael
new article that will help you understand the watchtower's thinking.
during the era when it formulated its blood ban:.
http://ajwrb.org/science/the-watchtower-on-science-and-medicine.
Edited
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqzc2m8_mba&list=uus0vqkpnsxult0gsz6ahpta.
1. Was this something local or something that was broadcasted throughout the congregations?
2. Does someone how was actually there, had an impression from any female who heard the actual talk?
3. Is this guy for real?
4. When was that recorded?
Ismael
scientist and atheist richard dawkins has admitted he does celebrate christmas - and enjoys singing traditional christmas carols each festive season.. the writer and evolutionary biologist told singer jarvis cocker that he happily wishes everyone a merry christmas - and used to have a tree when his daughter was younger.. dawkins, one of the most famous atheists in the world, was interviewed by sheffield born cocker when he stepped in as a christmas guest editor on radio four's today programme.. 'i am perfectly happy on christmas day to say merry christmas to everybody,' dawkins said.
'i might sing christmas carols - once i was privileged to be invited to kings college, cambridge, for their christmas carols and loved it.. read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1100842/why-i-celebrate-christmas-worlds-famous-atheist.html#ixzz39dwxid00 ?.
Wait, I have a stupid question.
Why christians celebrate Saturnalia?
Roman pagans first introduced the holiday of Saturnalia, a week long period of lawlessness celebrated between December 17-25. During this period, Roman courts were closed, and Roman law dictated that no one could be punished for damaging property or injuring people during the weeklong celebration. The festival began when Roman authorities chose “an enemy of the Roman people” to represent the “Lord of Misrule.” Each Roman community selected a victim whom they forced to indulge in food and other physical pleasures throughout the week. At the festival’s conclusion, December 25th, Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness by brutally murdering this innocent man or woman.
In the 4th century CE, Christianity imported the Saturnalia festival hoping to take the pagan masses in with it. Christian leaders succeeded in converting to Christianity large numbers of pagans by promising them that they could continue to celebrate the Saturnalia as Christians.
So, as I mentioned before, association.
Ismael
scientist and atheist richard dawkins has admitted he does celebrate christmas - and enjoys singing traditional christmas carols each festive season.. the writer and evolutionary biologist told singer jarvis cocker that he happily wishes everyone a merry christmas - and used to have a tree when his daughter was younger.. dawkins, one of the most famous atheists in the world, was interviewed by sheffield born cocker when he stepped in as a christmas guest editor on radio four's today programme.. 'i am perfectly happy on christmas day to say merry christmas to everybody,' dawkins said.
'i might sing christmas carols - once i was privileged to be invited to kings college, cambridge, for their christmas carols and loved it.. read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1100842/why-i-celebrate-christmas-worlds-famous-atheist.html#ixzz39dwxid00 ?.
One word, association. But it not just christmas, any holiday, vacation long weekends, golden week, or any free time. Why, because we are social beings.
"Association" in psychology refers to a connection between conceptual entities or mental states that results from the similarity between those states or their proximity in space or time. The idea stems from Plato and Aristotle, especially with regard to the succession of memories, and it was carried on by philosophers such as John Locke, David Hume, David Hartley, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, and Alexander Bain. It finds its place in modern psychology in such areas as conditioning and in neural network models of memory.
Give a free day and call it Apollyon “Destroyer” day. You will see that christians will see a chance for association, catch on the holiday and will start "celebrating".
Ismael
the present moment is real.
however much you may remember the past or anticipate the future, you live in the present.
the next second of your life is the future.
"As time flows, this structure of fixed past, immediate present and open future gets carried forward in time. This structure is built into our language, thought and behavior. How we live our lives hangs on it. Does mans concept of time meaning, seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks etc etc fit in with the flow of the universe" - giveme
I am impress. Anyway, time is tricky.
In a recent experiment, scientists placed two atomic clocks on two tables, then raised one of the tables by 33 centimeters, and found out that the higher clock was running faster than the lower one at a rate of a 90-billionth of a second in 79 years.
This is called time dilation, and it happens because (as Einstein's theory of relativity predicted) gravity warps time as well as space. The closer you are to the ground, the more you are affected by the Earth's gravity and the slower time moves. On the other hand, as you get higher, gravity's pull weakens and time speeds up.
Keep in mind that this is an insignificant amount of time we're talking about here. It has absolutely no bearing on your life, unless you rely on GPS equipment. Because a clock inside a GPS satellite runs at 38 microseconds per day faster than the same clock would run on Earth, a computer has to constantly adjust everything to make up for that difference. Otherwise the consequences would be disastrous: In only one day, the entire system would be off by 10 kilometers, and it would just get worse from then on.
Oh, and by the way, gravity isn't the only thing that can mess up time ...
Another thing GPS satellites have to take into account is speed, the faster you travel, the slower time moves. Scientists have proven that the same thing happens to you every day, on a much smaller scale. Making one of the clocks move at only 20 mph caused it to slow down its tick by almost 6 x 10-16. In numbers we can understand, that translates to "Not a whole lot, but still".
So, let's say you're driving to work at around 40 mph, that right there is apparently enough to cause time to move 0.0000000000000002 percent slower than it would if you were standing still.
In another experiment, one atomic clock was taken on a plane trip around the world while the other one stayed home. Even though the clocks were perfectly synchronized at first, the traveling clock came back from its 50-hour, 800-kilometer trip missing 230 or so nanoseconds.
So the clock gained time from being farther from the Earth than the other one, but it lost even more just by going faster. What's even weirder is that from the perspective of the clock on the plane, the clock back home is the one that's running faster than normal. You don't actually feel time slowing down or speeding up: Only someone outside your conditions can tell the difference.
People can witness the same events happening at different speeds. Einstein claimed that events that appear simultaneous to a person in motion may not look simultaneous to someone who is standing still. So reality may actually be a mess of people walking around in slightly different timelines that sometimes synch up or intersect, depending on their conditions.
Last, but not least. One day, time itself must die. So how long have we got? In four out of five possible calculated scenarios, time is most likely to end in about 3.3 to 3.7 billion years. In the fifth scenario, time could end before you finish this sentence.
So it turns out we live in a reality that's like an old pocket watch, and one day it's just going to wind down. In fact, when it happens, we won't even see it coming. The scientists describe it like watching someone falling into the event horizon of a black hole. Things slow down and eventually just ... stop.
We won't even be aware of what's happened. Everything will work one second and won't the next. We'll all just be frozen in place, completely still. Forever and ever.
Ismael
http://www.wired.com/2010/09/ordinary-relativity
http://m.sciencemag.org/content/329/5999/1630.abstract http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Unit5/gps.html http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/einsteinlight/jw/module4_time_dilation.htm http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100923/full/news.2010.487.html http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130077353 http://www3.open.ac.uk/media/fullstory.aspx?id=19636 http://www.bartleby.com/173/8.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/large-hadron-collider/3319218/Time-is-running-out-literally-says-scientist.html http://m.phys.org/_news205133042.html
if these things come true and many people have them whether believers or non beleivers, where do they come from.
"Where Do Visions,Dreams and Prophecy Come From
If these things come true and many people have them whether believers or non beleivers, where do they come from" - giveme
The part about prophecy is very tricky, you just let any event past. Then, claim responsibility for the "prediction" of the fact. Their you go, you got yourself a fulfill prophecy. As for visions and dreams, here are some factors that mighty play a part.
Your brain's pineal gland can sense geomagnetic activity. It's not magic, it's just helping to regulate hormones for your sleep cycle. Some people are sensitive enough to fluctuations in the Earth's magnetism that it creates anxiety and depression (high magnetic activity hurts the output of melatonin, a hormone that helps regulate your mood).
After recording his dreams for eight years, psychologist Darren Lipnicki stumbled upon this correlation: low geomagnetic activity means crazier dreams.
It would make sense if (as Lipnicki suspects) it's all about magnetism and melatonin. After all, people who take melatonin supplements say that they experience crazier dreams. This also leads to the conclusion that weird-ass dreams are the sign of a healthy brain, your melatonin is doing its job.
Certain types of drugs can have strange effects on their user's mental state, and many hallucinogens, like mushrooms, LSD or absinthe are reputed to offer experiences similar to lucid dreaming.
Scientists in Germany experimented on 15 subjects by pumping different smells into the room as they entered REM sleep. During the study, they wafted the odors of things like rotten eggs and roses across the noses of the sleeping subjects and asked them about their dreams after they awoke. It turns out that the unpleasant smells tended to trigger more negative dreams.
The researchers believe that this is due to the effect that smell has on the limbic system of the brain, which governs emotion and behavior. This appears to be a hugely underrated factor in how our brains work. According to one expert, our sense of smell alone has "direct access to the subconscious areas of the brain, which affects emotion, mood, and memory." Even when you sleep.
Ismael
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306987709001388
http://www.sleepandhypnosis.org/article.asp?id=54
http://news.nationalgeographic.com.au/news/2008/09/080923-smell-sleep.html
http://www.saga.co.uk/health/mind/sweet-smells-mean-sweet-dreams.aspx
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19926755.700-sweet-smells-make-for-sweet-dreams.html
apparently, the carvakas in anceint hinduism were materialists and skeptics, arguing that consciousness ends with the death of the body and that therefore we should take pleasure in this life while we possess it and practice compassion toward others.
they also argued that direct observation is the only certain way to know anything, and thus the existence of supernatural forces and realities cannot be established and must be rejected.
"Read the damm book, it is not a paper as you state !" - im stuck in
You are right, it is a book...now. In 2007, Lanza wrote an article titled "A New Theory of the Universe", the paper appeared in The American Scholar, this was base work for the book Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the Universe in 2009.
"Also Lanza is a very intelligent man not just one with a theory but as well an MD and surgeon and graduated from M I T." - im stuck in
Although I am not questioning Lanza's reputation as an MD or researcher, this argument is a fallacy.
"The points I mention are mine and I do not give a rap what any of you think." - im stuck in
The only way to keep people from analyzing or questioning your opinions is to keep them to yourself.
Ismael
apparently, the carvakas in anceint hinduism were materialists and skeptics, arguing that consciousness ends with the death of the body and that therefore we should take pleasure in this life while we possess it and practice compassion toward others.
they also argued that direct observation is the only certain way to know anything, and thus the existence of supernatural forces and realities cannot be established and must be rejected.
Well, beside the rant, personal attack and logical fallacies, nothing new was brought to the argument.
We should have no personal stake in any of the beliefs we hold, but simply in the rational assurance that whatever beliefs we do hold are indeed correspondent with reality.
The problem is that some might think (and/or are trying to convince others) that Lanza's paper is dealing with a "supernatural" event. Believers tent to flee to this pint of nothingness whenever science stomp on their believes. But claiming the supernatural is an non argument.
If a believer could proof that the criticism to Lanza's is incorrect and the analysis against his work is unsound, they will be perfectly happy to stand shoulder to shoulder with science, mathematics or physics to back that "supernatural" event up. And on that bases they will say that I am wrong. Some tried to "hammer" science and believes systems together. Some used "Special Pleading" to justify their believes. It's when everything fails that believers realize that science and religion don't mix.
Respectfully,
Ismael
can you imagine what this world would be like today , with 7 billion people , if their were never , ever a religous concept in anybodys mind ?.
wouldnt this world be such a better place to be in if it was devoid of all religion ?.
if religion never existed from the time man/woman first walked the earth until now how do you see , pros or cons , how humakind would fare today.. as i said in my o.p.
