Posts by Cadellin

22

Top evolution researchers agree: There is A Creator! The Watchtower is Right!

by mariu in

jw
friends

okay, it's just one scientist: http://www.jw.org/en/publications/magazines/g201404/frederic-dumoulin-interview/.

but he's a very eminent one!.

for more than a decade, frederic dumoulin has worked in the field of pharmaceutical research ... studied the effects of medications and toxins on living creatures ... such design simply could not have evolved.

Cadellin

Mario--thank you so much for the highly revealing links!! A superficial skim of this article implies this guy is an eminent Ph.D. with acress of original research--NOT!! Likely doesn't even have an undergrad degree. Yet, with their usual fakery, the WT makes it seem otherwise.

It's been said but I'll say it again: The WT refuses to distinguish between abiogenesis (how life began) and evolution (how life spread and changed). The fact of the matter is, figuring out exactly how life began is a tall order, mostly because our earth is a turbulent planet and residual traces are likely gone forever. But that does not matter one bit as to whether evolution happened. The evidence for evolution DOES NOT rely upon figuring out exactly how life began. The evidence instead is diverse, from multiple avenues such as geology, paleontology, genetics, climatology and others, all of which point to exactly the same thing--common descent with modification.

55

JW.org to be banned in Russia

by redvip2000 in

my facebook was "lit up" today with all the out cries about the possibility of the organization's website being banned in russia.. as many of you recall this past august a court in russia banned the website and sought to make accessing the website in russia illegal.

well tomorrow the appeal by the org will be heard in court.

if the appeal is denied, jw.org will no longer be available in that part of the world, causing endless lamentations and cries of "persecution", only to bolster the idea that they are truly hated by the world because they are true christians.

Cadellin

Regardless of how one might feel personally about JWs, this is chilling news. This is NOT Russia coming down on the side of reason, but returning to the era of thought-control and dictatorship. This is NOT a strike for cult-control but a blow to freedom of information. I don't think JWs have the "truth," and I DO think that they have a dangerous side. But it is anybody's right to decide whether they want to be one or not. Russia will censor JW.Org. Then UN.Org, university and scientific organization sites and, of course, search engines.

There is a dramatic difference b/w JWs forbidding apostate websites and what Russia is doing. You still have free choice here. We can still speak out against oppression here and we are free to make our own stupid decisions, if we choose. Russia is one seriously f*cked-up country.

57

This photo woke me up

by krejames in

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i was already on my way to my second fade when i went to the wildlife photographer of the year 2012 exhibition, but this photo made me lose faith in the idea of a loving creator......(the gazelle has been injured by the mother cheetah so she can use it to train her cubs to hunt).

Cadellin

Smiddy: Look again--there's a mouse in that mouth! Interesting fact: While dogs can go vegetarian, cats cannot because they cannot synthesize taurine. The only place you can get taurine in nature is from blood. (This is my understanding--any biochemists out there, feel free to correct me!). So, according to Intelligent Design, God created cats with the need to eat blood...

57

This photo woke me up

by krejames in

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i was already on my way to my second fade when i went to the wildlife photographer of the year 2012 exhibition, but this photo made me lose faith in the idea of a loving creator......(the gazelle has been injured by the mother cheetah so she can use it to train her cubs to hunt).

Cadellin

With all due respect to krejames, it's not awful. It's how cheetahs, and every other large predator, lives. When large predators are exterminated, a biomes health deteriorates as the herbivores, like gazelles and deer, reproduce beyond the capacity of the land to support them, as Aldo Leopold explains so eloquently in Thinking Like a Mountain. It does, however, tend to poke holes in the whole benevolent designer theory. If, as the Society likes to ask, the Creator can be seen through His creation, just what kind of "invisible qualities" are, in fact, being demonstrated?

This makes me think of James Dickey's The Heaven of Animals, a favorite poem:

Here they are.

The soft eyes open.

If they have lived in a wood

It is a wood.

If they have lived on plains

It is grass rolling Under their feet forever.

Having no souls, they have come,

anyway, beyond their knowing.

Their instincts wholly bloom

And they rise.

The soft eyes open.

To match them, the landscape flowers,

Outdoing, desperately

Outdoing what is required:

The richest wood, The deepest field.

For some of these,

It could not be the place It is, without blood.

These hunt, as they have done,

But with claws and teeth grown perfect,

More deadly than they can believe.

They stalk more silently,

And crouch on the limbs of trees,

And their descent

Upon the bright backs of their prey

May take years

In a sovereign floating of joy.

And those that are hunted

Know this as their life,

Their reward: to walk

Under such trees in full knowledge

Of what is in glory above them,

And to feel no fear,

But acceptance, compliance.

Fulfilling themselves without pain

At the cycle’s center,

They tremble, they walk

Under the tree,

They fall, they are torn,

They rise, they walk again.

28

Has all life descended from a common ancestor? Watchtowers view

by DS211 in

many scientists point to the fossil record as support for the idea that life emerged from a common origin.

new features appear suddenly.

would it be reasonable to assert that your preconceived idea of the movie was right because of the five frames?

Cadellin

Konceptual: Yes, the fact of human evolution is really incontravertible. To attampt to substantiate all human life as being 6,000 years is in the same boat as trying to justify a 10,000 year old universe, something for which the WTS rather hypocritically castigates "creationists." As one medical doctor said, speaking about the inefficacy of vitamins, "We don't have a question any longer--we now have a conclusive answer." I'm paraphrasing there.

Of course, that doesn't mean that all questions related to human evolution have been answered--not at all. But what IS conclusive is the FACT of human evolution over millions of years. The details will continue to emerge and shift but the foundation is unassailable at this point because of the convergence of diverse and widespread evidence, all pointing to the same thing.

Whew!

28

Has all life descended from a common ancestor? Watchtowers view

by DS211 in

many scientists point to the fossil record as support for the idea that life emerged from a common origin.

new features appear suddenly.

would it be reasonable to assert that your preconceived idea of the movie was right because of the five frames?

Cadellin

This article is simply one of the two brochures on Creation that were released a few years ago. Like most things published by the WTS on this topic, it is a breathtakingly misleading mixture of snippets of quotes taken out of context and vague and/or just plain erroneous commentary on them. Here's a great example:

For example, in 2009 an article in New Scientist magazine quoted evolutionary scientist Eric Bapteste as saying: “We have no evidence at all that the tree of life is a reality.” 30 The same article quotes evolutionary biologist Michael Rose as saying: “The tree of life is being politely buried, we all know that. What’s less accepted is that our whole fundamental view of biology needs to change

If you read this article in the full, as is easy to do online, you will quickly see that Rose's and Bapteste's comments are made specifically about single-celled organisms. In fact, the article later says that when it comes to multi-cellular, more complex life forms (like cats and rats and elephants--and humans), the multi-branching Tree of Life is still the best way to picture relationships. So why can these two scientists make such seemingly sweeping statements about unicellular life? Because the vast, vast majority of life on this planet is unicellular. Species visible to the human eye are an anomaly, statistically speaking.

Moreover, a close reading of this article actually suggests something exactly opposite to the Genesis account. Rather than implying that various "kinds" (whatever the hell that means) are not related at all, due to separate origins, scientists are finding that unicellular life is often related both vertically and horizontally--that rather than being a Tree of Life, it's more like a tangled Vine of Life, due to various weird strategies like horizontal gene transfer. In fact, in some odd cases, the vine metaphor even extends to multicellular organisms. For instance, we all carry around with us ancient viral DNA.

This grossly inaccurate WTS article is one of the things that really sealed my exit. I took the time to read some (admittedly not all, but enough) of the sources and was shocked by how badly the quotes were taken out of context and the basic ideas of the original material misrepresented.

130

Questions on Evolution and the Existence of God and...

by ILoveTTATT in

jw
friends

i know this is one huge rant, but i want to put my own questions and doubts in writing.. i am a fading jw who has become agnostic... i still believe in "god" and "jesus," but i simply cannot explain to people why i believe in them.

i just do.. about the existence of god: it is an infinite regress.

"all things were created by someone"... well... who created god?

Cadellin

Greetings, Chemical Engineer:

You've already received some good responses here, esp. from Cyrus but because I am who I am, I'll put in my two cents as well:

1. If evolution says that only the best survive, and we humble humans, self-named Homo Sapiens Sapiens, are the most intelligent species on this planet, why aren't we the ONLY species?

We weren't the only species of hominin, up until around 18,000 years ago. For the vast majority of the genus Homo's tenure (1.5 million years or so), there have been multiple species co-existing. That is the norm. So what made the difference? Hard to say, except that Homo sapiens as a species seem to be very, very good at getting rid of competitors. Still, we co-existed alongside Homo neanderthalensis for about 160,000 years. The simple answer is that we just don't know for sure why we're the only ones left.

As Cyrus and others pointed out, the species that survive are the ones best able to adapt to a changing environment. Intelligence doesn't have a whole lot to do with it, up until a point. At a certain point in H. sapien's past, we started being able to control our environment, rather than the other way around. That was a significant turning point in our ability to cope/adapt/thrive on a fickle planet.

Has actual evolution, i.e. the changes accumulating sufficiently to make ANOTHER species, been observed? If so, where? I would think that the smaller the species/the faster time to reproduce, the better chances to actually observe this.

I think you already answered this question in an earlier post. Remember that "species" as a term is an invented concept with discrete boundaries, superimposed onto a natural phenomenon that is fuzzy around the edges, as things tend to be in the biological world.

What you need to do is read a few good books, like Stephen Coyne's Why Evolution is True, Carl Zimmer's Evolution--the Triumph of an Idea, Richard Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale (well, anything by Dawkins, really. The Blind Watchmaker, River out of Eden, Climbing Mount Improbable) or Prothero's Evolution: What the Fossils Say. Fortey's Life--A Natural History of The First Four Billion Years is also good.

43

Carrie Underwood tweets, thanking God for successful Sound of Music performance

by adamah in

after a live 3 hour performance, the "american idol" winner tweets,.

"glory to god tonight...i couldn't be more proud.

what a tough thing to pull off and we did it!

Cadellin

If that's how she performs with God's help, God help her (more).

Underwood was simply embarassing. She wore an expression of mild confusion, relieved occasionally by pleased confusion. That was it. No spark, no energy, no inflection, no humor. Her singing was so-so. It was painful. As Joan Rivers tweeted, one of Underwood's favorite things should be someone who'd never seen Julie Andrews in the role.

The kids were really good, the Baroness was good, Max and the captain were okay, the nuns were splendid.

12

Glaring terminological inexactitudes in this week's Watchtower study farticle!!

by Island Man in

check out the watchtower's erroneous definitions/descriptions of evolution and creationism in paragraphs 2 and 3 respectively on page 7 of the october 15, 2013 watchtower:.

"in its basic form, the teaching of evolution asserts that all life came into existence spontaneously.

"on the other hand, fundamentalists of christendom teach that the universe, including our earth and all life on it, is only a few thousand years old.

Cadellin

Evolution, in its simplest terms, refers to a change in the gene pool of a species. That's it. As a scientific theory, it does not directly address origin of life questions. It does what a scientific theory is supposed to do: Explain a range of physical phenomenon. However, in order for natural selection to work (for a change in the gene pool to spread throughout a species), life at some early point had to have the capacity to (1) adapt and (2) pass on changes to subsequent generations. It seems reasonable that these commonalities would have arisen very very early.

"Spontaneous" in this WT "definition" of evolution will lead to JWs imagining a modern cell popping into existence all on its own. I virtually guarantee that's what will be in most Witness minds when this is studied. Yet the fact of the matter is that any "spontaneous" generation of life would have happened over hundreds of millions of years and the very first stages would likely have been nothing that we would identify as life in the modern sense. Interestingly (as a side point), it seems that life appeared relatively early in earth's timeline)

This (horribly inaccurate and misleading) WT also descrives evolution as "human reasoning." This is a trigger phrase, shutting down critical examination or reflection, since it immediately "brands" the notion as human "philosophy" which is tantamount to "teachings of demons." The fact is that Newton's Laws of Motion are "human reasoning," just as Einstein's Theory of Relativity, theories of electromagnetism, economic theories of supply and demand, etc. These are all "human reasonings" supported by (in the case of evolution) literally reams of diverse yet convergent evidence from genetics, geology, paleontology, zoology, and a host of other fields that I cannot summon at the moment, and proven over and over and over by new discoveries.

It's terribly ironic that the WT is pointing fingers at young earth creationists when they themselves are just another flavor--old earth creationists and the evidence for an old earth (which JWs believe) overlaps with the same evidence for evolution (which they reject). The belief in six literal days of creation is just as farcical as the belief in figurative creative days lasting "thousands" of years, as JWs believe, since both camps are rejecting evidence that, in this year 2013, is as close to irrefutable as we can get.

139

Ever consider joining The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?

by rawe in

has anyone here left jehovah's witnesses to join the churuch of jesus christ of latter-day saints?

what was your motivation for doing so and how has it worked out?.

if you haven't joined the lds or considered it, as an ex-jw, what is your general view of the lds faith?.

Cadellin

God, no.

No pun intended.