Here in the southern U.S. it isn't uncommon for even elders to own high-capacity handguns and assault rifles (AR-15s and AK-47s). I've known several. Though it is usually kept on the down low if they want to keep their privileges.
Razziel
JoinedPosts by Razziel
-
21
J. W. Man charged in 8 rural Virginia shooting deaths
by koolaid-man inhttp://www.twincities.com/ci_14236171?nclick_check=1.
-
-
-
21
The Probabilty of there being an Intelligent Designer part 2. (some responses)
by hooberus inon the thread "the probabilty of there being an intelligent designer" the poster "elsewhere" wrote:.
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/beliefs/187282/1/the-probabilty-of-there-being-an-intelligent-designer.
here is my basic reasoning on why i reject id:.
-
-
Razziel
If you were at the edge of an inflationary universe, it would appear as an event horizon, similar to that of a black hole. Even traveling at light speed, it would never appear to get any closer. It would seem like a solid of nothingness, but from the observers viewpoint they would never cross the boundary.
Instead of thinking of space as a volume, think of it as a surface. The surface can have positive curvature, negative curvature, or can be flat. In any case, the geometry is either closed, or open. There is no "brick wall", so-to-speak, at a boundary. We can't visualize in 4d very well, so we reduce to 3d or 2d analogies, but the math in 4d space works.
-
21
The Probabilty of there being an Intelligent Designer part 2. (some responses)
by hooberus inon the thread "the probabilty of there being an intelligent designer" the poster "elsewhere" wrote:.
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/beliefs/187282/1/the-probabilty-of-there-being-an-intelligent-designer.
here is my basic reasoning on why i reject id:.
-
-
Razziel
Existence is only a paradox if you try to explain it in the framework of causality. Using that framework, the existence of God is a paradox as well.
-
21
The Probabilty of there being an Intelligent Designer part 2. (some responses)
by hooberus inon the thread "the probabilty of there being an intelligent designer" the poster "elsewhere" wrote:.
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/beliefs/187282/1/the-probabilty-of-there-being-an-intelligent-designer.
here is my basic reasoning on why i reject id:.
-
-
Razziel
Here is the reason the majority of scientists reject ID.
To scientifically judge the plausibility of competing theoretical explanations in relation to each other, inference to the best explanation is used. This consists of submitting each theory to several criteria, known in sum as the criteria of adequacy. The best theory is one that satisfies the criteria better than the others.
The criteria are:
1. Testability (whether there is some way to determine if a theory is true)
2. Fruitfulness (the number of novel predictions made)
3. Scope (the amount of diverse phenomena explained)
4. Simplicity (the number of assumptions made)
5. Conservatism (how well a theory fits with existing knowledge)
Evaluation of evolution and ID:
1. Testability - Evolution is testable. Countless test implications have been derived from evolutionary theory, and have led to countless experiments being conducted, confirming the theory. ID is relatively new, but is in the process of being tested on the one main prediction that ID theory makes. The premise is that the development of complex biological systems cannot be fully accounted for by natural (darwinian evolutionary) processes alone. Therefore there must be outside influence by an ID. The prediction is that though incremental evolutionary changes might be seen in a laboratory setting, evolutionary leaps to more complex systems (i.e. organisms developing entirely new abilities) will not be observed. In the last 5 years, bacteria-level organisms have been observed in the laboratoty developing entirely new abilities. The E. coli experiment mentioned in the previous thread is one such example. That experiment was not intended as an ID test. I'm sure more experiments will be conducted in the future specifically to test ID involving multi-cellular organisms.
2. Fruitfulness - Again, evolutionary theory has made innumerable novel predictions that have been confirmed as true. The one novel prediction ID makes has had doubt cast upon it, but this will have to be tested using a variety of complex organisms before it is proven false.
3. Scope - Evolutionary theory is now used to explain observations in a wide variety of scientific fields. IDs scope is basically limited to "evolutionary leaps" that result in more complex organisms. Some will say that since ID falls back upon an unknown designer using an unknown force to influence evolutionary events, it does not increase our understanding and therefore has no scope.
4. Simplicity - Evolution makes assumptions. ID makes more, and are beyond natural processes.
5. Conservatism - Evolution has consistently agreed with observations, evidence, and experimentation. If multiple evolutionary leaps are observed in complex organisms in a laboratory setting, ID as it is officially stated now will fail this criteria.
Evaluating all five criteria, evolutionary theory fares better than ID or other similar explanations. That does not mean evolution is 100% correct. It just means it's the best explanation when compared to competing theories. On every criteria, they are inferior. Based on these methods scientists are justified in rejecting other theories in favor of evolution, and that is exactly what the majority of them do. If, in the future, another explanation arises that meets these criteria better than evolution, even if it somehow involves a creator, intelligent designer, or aliens, the majority of scientists would switch to using the new best theory.
As reference for the criteria of adequacy, I dug up my college book, "The Power of Critical Thinking", 2nd ed., by Lewis Vaugn.
-
49
A Demon Experience?......This was/is very serious to me.
by awildflower inso when we moved here from maine to okc, six years ago this coming april, my daughter was 7. the military moved us so it brings a big moving truck to your house and unloads all of your stuff etc.
we had been settling in for a few months and my daughter starting telling me that she was hearing things in her room.
small things at first, just enough to prick up her ears.
-
-
Razziel
I'll share my experience.
Several years ago, I married a girl new to being a JW (now divorced). As far as I know, she had never had psychological problems before. A couple of years into the marriage her mood and outlook on life started getting very dark. I knew something was wrong but didn't know what. Things got worse very quickly. We would watch tv at night in bed before going to sleep, and when I would look over at her after making a comment with no response, she had appeared to have gone into some trance-like state. I could raise my voice, try to move her, etc., and I got no response. She was as stiff as a board. Her eyes were not glazed over as seeing something in her mind, but always fixed unmovingly at the doorway to the bedroom. We had a dog who slept in the bed, and when this happened he generallly got very agitated. He'd get up, the hair on his neck would stand, and he would bark at nothing. At first I attributed the dog's agitation to my visible tension at trying to get my wife out of whatever state she was in, but on several later occurences, the dog's agitation is what led me to look over at my wife and see her in that state. This happened dozens of times over the course of about 3 months.
After anywhere from five to fifteen minutes. she would "wake up" and be hysterical. Crying, sobbing, and shivering uncontrollably. She would let me hold her to comfort her, but refused to talk about it at all. She wouldn't answer any direct questions. After that, we would finally go to sleep, and everything would seem ok until it always happened again a few nights later.
At this time, I was inactive for several reasons related to injustice, but still thought overall JWs were the truth. Two years before I had resigned being a MS and a regular pioneer. With my beliefs at the time, it didn't take long for me to suspect some demonic source as the cause of this. The second to last time this happened, I started asking her questions around the subject instead of direct "what is going on" questions, and then I started getting some answers. I asked if she wouldn't talk to me because she didn't want to, or because she couldn't for other reasons. She replied other reasons. I asked if someone had told her not to discuss it. Replied yes. I asked if this someone was there in the room with us. Reply was "I can't say".
I asked why specifically she couldn't tell me, and got no answer. I asked her if she was aware of me talking and moving her during her trances. She said yes. I asked why she couldn't respond to me during the trances. No answer. I asked if something physically kept her from reacting to me. Reply yes. I asked if that something was the same person who forbid her to talk to me about this. No answer.
Then I asked was a physical threat involved. Answer yes. Was it against her? Answer no. Was it against me? Answer yes. Does it involve death? Answer yes. I stopped the questions for a couple of minutes to think. She went into the trance again, the first time I'd actually seen it start. She had been looking at me, then something behind me caught her attention, and she went frigid.
At this point, I directly verbally addressed what I believed to be the source of the problems. I didn't speak angrily or say any threats. I chose my words carefully, but I will not repeat what I said. I did not invoke Jehovah's name, but I did invoke Christ. I spoke confidently and authoritatively in an elevated voice.
The wife came out of the trance and went hysterical. I got nothing further out of her that night, and I didn't sleep. This was the last time I observed her like this. The next day I went hunting the house for anything in our possessions (since that was what we were all tought as JWs). An aunt across the country had sent some family items a few months before, and I found a catholic saint's icon that was a family heirloom that I didn't know had been sent. I got rid of it.
A couple of weeks went by and the nighttime was peaceful. We didn't speak about what had happened. I noticed things did not return to the way they were before however, so I asked if everything was ok. She wouldn't answer and I had to go through the process of elimination again, but what I learned is that the "someone" no longer bothered her when I was home, but visited her during the day while I was at work (she worked part-time and was off several days of the week). As a result, she left the house most days so she wouldn't have to deal with it.
I would like to say, that regardless of my beliefs at the time, I still thought schizophrenia or some other disorder could be the cause of this, since I had not witnessed anything of supernatural nature. We had many counseling sessions, visited psychiatrists, and she was prescribed a number of various medications.
Over the next couple of months, she spent less and less time at home, even at night, sleeping over with friends. This put a big strain on the marriage. Finally, she confided that the "someone" had told her that it wanted me, but couldn't have me, so it would settle for her. This culminated in two almost successful suicide attempts over the next three months, where she was hospitalized. She also (unrelated to suicide attempts) totaled three vehicles she was driving during this time, and was institutionalized against her will twice during this period. Unfortunately a legal obstacle to getting people the help they need is that if a person can cogently convince institutional doctors they are fine, and aren't a continuing threat to themselves (even if they just tried to kill themselves!!!), the state can only hold them for a short period of time and must release them.
She later told me the "someone" was there coaching her when she tried to kill herself. Our marriage did not last much longer after this. She emerged from this experience a very different person from whom I married, and soon had several affairs. I was willing to work through this, but she decided she needed to get away from this area, got a job transfer, and moved across country. She seemed to just want a permanent seperation, but I made the decision to initiate divorce rather than living in limbo and just remain friends if this is what she needed to do. That was five years ago, and we've both gone on to make new lives for ourselves.
I asked her once recently if she still had any "experiences" and she said occasionally, but nothing to the degree of what happened towards the end of our marriage. Since all of this, I went back to school and finished a degree. With increased education, I now lean to think she was secretly unhappy with the marriage and saw no honorable way out, but kept it bottled up. I think this eventually led to what appeared to her as a physical manifestation of her inner emotions. It is medically documented by brain patterns in schizophrenics that what they see and hear is reality from their point of view. I see no reason to believe this couldn't temporarily happen in an otherwise normal person due to extreme stress or emotional turmoil. Further, she had only recently been exposed by JWs to the concept of demons and evil spirit creatures who have the power to manifest in the physical realm. For a person previously unrelated to that belief, it can be a frightening concept, and I find it reasonable that may be how her inner turmoil manifested itself in a way she would have to consciously confront.
Pets can be sensitive to our moods and vibes, and I think the dog immediately noticed when she zoned out. He knew something wasn't right, but he didn't know what, so he randomly barked at a threat perceived through his observation of her. I've gone on to experiment some with that. If I begin to act nervous or otherwise uncharacteristic around my dog, they will feel nervous or threatened purely based on my behaviour at some unseen threat.
-
140
The Probabilty of there being an Intelligent Designer
by cantleave ini have been thinking a great deal about where i stand at this moment in time in terms of a belief in a creator verses a belief in an evolutionary process.
i think the best way to describe it is an exploratory path.
i look at what is around me and i acknowledge it is remarkable.
-
-
Razziel
No I haven't. Just read the brief description of bayesian probability on wikipedia. At a brief glance it looks useful and similar to iterative techniques used in a lot of fields. It strikes me as a possibly quick way of narrowing down likely solutions to systems of partial differential equations.
-
140
The Probabilty of there being an Intelligent Designer
by cantleave ini have been thinking a great deal about where i stand at this moment in time in terms of a belief in a creator verses a belief in an evolutionary process.
i think the best way to describe it is an exploratory path.
i look at what is around me and i acknowledge it is remarkable.
-
-
Razziel
Thermodynamics overload in getting an engineering degree leads me to say that if I could choose only one assumption out of everything we know about our universe, it would be that the 2nd law of thermodynamics is inviolate.
From that assumption I see two paths. The total entropy of the universe is finite, or the total entropy of the universe is infinite.
If entropy is finite, there are several possibilities, from an entropy transfer from a larger system or God/ID, to a one shot wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am heat death.
If entropy is infinite (but still always increasing), the 2nd law is not violated if there were previous or future big bangs ad infinitum (by whatever non-deflationary mechanism, i.e. quantum fluctuation of the vacuum, etc). If entropy is infinite I would put the odds of a God/ID as being very low.
The entropy of the visible universe is finite, and cosmologists lean towards it being finite overall, but there also several hypothesis arguing it may be infinite, so maybe time will tell.
I took a couple of university-level quantum mechanics courses as electives, and I have to say, virtual particles was one of the most intriguing subject we covered. Even more-so than entanglement. It's a bad analogy but it reminds me of the imaginary portion of AC current and voltage. Can't be measured but the effects are real.
-
140
The Probabilty of there being an Intelligent Designer
by cantleave ini have been thinking a great deal about where i stand at this moment in time in terms of a belief in a creator verses a belief in an evolutionary process.
i think the best way to describe it is an exploratory path.
i look at what is around me and i acknowledge it is remarkable.
-
-
Razziel
My take:
Bluntly put, intelligent design is just an attempt to rationalize the fact that the creation account as presented in the Bible conflicts with well-established scientific findings. Both evolution and creation predict things other than what they were introduced to explain, so they are both testable. Over the last 150 years many of the novel predictions of evolution have proven to be true, whereas the predictions from creationism conflict with nearly everything scientists have discovered.
I would say the emergence of ID is a vindication of evolutionary scientists because it's basically a result of scientifically-literate creationists realizing "we can't beat 'em, so we'll join 'em, and say God did it that way."
There are a few problems with that. First, ID is not a theory, though it is presented as one. ID is an explanation, but it predicts nothing. So it can't be tested. At least the creation account in Genesis could be tested and proven right or wrong.
Next, ID still explains things by appealing to something incomprehensible, an Intelligent Designer and his/her incomprehensible ability to guide evolution. It doesn't increase our understanding of anything, so it really isn't an explanation at all. It has no scope.
Finally, ID is fine with me as a spiritual belief in light of what we've learned about the universe, but it is NOT science and it might as well be its own new religion. It throws Christianity and the purpose of Christ's ransom on its head. Yes, one can do all sorts of mental gymnastics and re-purpose Christ's ransom, but it directly conflicts with the teachings, writings, and beliefs of thousands of years of Christians and Jews and what is recorded of Christ himself.
All that said, I know where the facts and empirical evidence leads, but I still haven't come to terms with what I personally believe.
-
-
-
Razziel
Just got done taking quantum mechanics this semester as my last technical elective towards a mechanical engineering degree. The primary driver for theories describing the universe in more than four dimensions is that gravity is not understood very well, even with the special theory of relativity. Quantum physics mathematically describes electricty, magnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces with incredible accuracy. Many of the values predicted for physical constants of the universe match those obtained in experiments far more accurately than classical physics ever did. (Some to 20 decimal places or more). The equations of quantum mechanics can be simplified or reduced to the equations of classical physics when classical assumptions are made.
But when quantum mechanics is applied to gravity in a 4-dimensional universe, it doesn't work. It predicts gravity (and the gravitational constant) should be a lot stronger than what we observe. (By many orders of magnitude). One mathematical explanation for this is extra dimensions. As simply as I can state it, the extra gravitational force "bleeds off" into these extra dimensions. Also, since scientists have yet to observe any force carrier for gravity, gravity wave, or any subatomic particle from which the property of mass arises, it would also be possible that this originates in an extra dimension, and gravity and space-time curvature are the only effects that we are able to observe (or as yet know to look for) in our 4-dimensional universe.
The effort to understand gravity has led to the string, super-string, and brane theories that are around today that all have more than 4-dimensions. Theories like alternative realities have been made popular by sci-fi but are mostly fringe theories and are more based on new age metaphysics than mathematics or the scientific method. Some people have taken things like the uncertainty principle, superposition, entanglement, and probability, and ran with it in all sorts of philosophical directions without really understanding what the underlying mathematics means.
Like a previous poster mentioned, anything that is real (in the context of what I think the OP means) in a dimension in our universe would be real in all dimensions, but not necessarily observable, though its effects might be if one knows what to look for. Brane theory skews that idea somewhat but without getting technical the result from our point of view would be the same.
Again as mentioned "real" is a relative term. For example, AC electricity has both real values and imaginary values. The imaginary part can't be measured by an electric meter. But the imaginary part of the electricty costs real money for the electric company to produce. That part of your electric bill is estimated by a multiplying factor. Something else intriguing are "virtual particles" which are basically not real but can become real, and are used in the explanation of hawking radiation emitted by black holes.
-
83
Apostate Brainstorming Session
by AllTimeJeff ini have been meaning to bring this up for a long time.. sometimes, i think we (former jw's) who are very rightly concerned about all the lies of the governing body have some great ideas about how to expose jehovah's witnesses.. some of us have very passionate and distinct ideas.
not a few of us have websites with our own personalities evident.. i don't wish this to get personal.
even if i disagree with some presentations or rhetoric of some, i know that it is sincere.
-
-
Razziel
To go along with Heaven's post, general education plays a large part. Some people possess the intelligence to intuitatively distinguish valid from non-valid and strong from weak forms of argumentation, but most of the general population needs to be educated to sound methods for doing so. A lot of people can't even idenfity circular logic. I faded about 3 years before I went to college, but when I finally took "Logic and Critical Thinking" in school, it really helped me put words and methods to some of the ways I had previously evaluated arguments and gave me some new ones.
We're not just fighting the control of a human institution masquerading as Christ's substitute, we're fighting human nature as well. Our brain protects us from many hurtful situations in our past or present. Though many of us confront our manipulation by the Society, I'm pretty confident most do what I initially did when leaving, which is the basic "fight or flight" survival mechanism. You may initially think you're going to "fight" it, but once there seems to be no way to realistically "fight", we got away as fast and as far as we could. The mind further protects us by refusing to think about or dwell on the past. (Though that's hard at first if your family and friends refuse to speak with you.)
That survival mechanism works the same way while you're still in the organization, and it isn't just because the Society conditioned us to think that way. Once we make such a life-altering (and at the time, a seemingly carefully considered) decision to join up, our brain tends to bias or ignore anything contrary to our decision. On top of that is the Society's direction to ignore the "fight" when it comes to apostasy and fleeing from it. It's very hard to get past that, but not impossible.
If I were going to put up a billboard, (particulary if I wanted to direct people to a website), it would not relate to anything doctrinal or a known controversial JW subject like blood and dying kids. It would be a statement that is borderline unbelievable, such that it gets someone's attention (possibly makes them laugh), and stays in their mind long after they drive by, hopefully telling their friends and aquaintences about it.
Something a little too over-the-top would be: (Jehovah's Witnesses EAT BABIES!) theotherwhitemeat.org
I know that sounds crass, but with todays blitz of media and advertising, it really takes something outrageous to get people's attention. Especially if they're trained to ignore it. Once to a website, anything presented has to be as some of the other posters mentioned. Primarily a list of facts and experiences. Let people draw their own conclusions. You get a lot further in persuasion if the other fellow thinks he came up with the conclusion on his own instead of trying to cram it down his throat.
More ideas later, gotta go work.