Razziel

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Posts by Razziel

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  9

  Who actually decides that a person is chosen by God to be an elder?

  by brainwashed-from-birth in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  is there an interview?

  what sort of things do they look at, or expect out of the person?

  besides being a man.

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  Razziel

  I thought I read somewhere the GB doesn't vote on appointments anymore? That appointments are decided by the service department.
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  31

  Why Do Americans Live Shorter Lives Yet Spend So Much for Health Care ???

  by RubaDub in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  every time i see statistics comparing average lifespans amoung countries, why is the usa so far down the list???.

  with susposedly the best healthcare in the world (for those who can afford it), the last study i saw ranked the usa at number 38 in the world.

  yet, we spend 4, 5 or even 10 times more per person on health care than most others.. what gives ???.

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  Razziel

  In other developed countries, the market is also saturated with fast food and the population has a high proportion of overweight people. The epidemic of adult diabetes for instance is not just an american phenomena but affects almost 9% of the population of Europe. They still have a higher average life expectancy. Some would say its skewed even further because here in the US, drastic attempts to extend life are made even when quality of life is gone, whereas many european countries are more comfortable letting people go once quality of life is gone.

  I think the big difference in a socialized health care system is preventative care. Here in the U.S. a lot of preventative care is not covered by insurance. If you have a high deductible, or no insurance, you don't generally even go to the doctor unless you are seriously ill. We spend most of our resources trying to treat catastrophic health problems instead of preventing them in the first place, though we are getting better.

  That said, I don't see how socialized health care would work in the US without major system changes. It's an economic supply/demand issue. As big and clunky as our system is, it can hardly keep up with the patients it has now. Most adults I know have to wait at least a month (sometimes 2 or 3) to get an appointment scheduled. Opening up health care to all would result in the same thing that happened when the U.S. tried to regulate gas prices in the 1970's resulting in the oil crisis. Price fixing always results in shortages. The number of doctors and nurses in the US would have to grow dramatically before we could reasonably handles all the new patients in a reasonable amount of waiting time.
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  18

  would you date this guy???

  by highdose in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  about 2 weeks ago i met a guy online, we chatted on the phone one evening and had a good conversation and aranged to go on a date this friday coming.. since then i have heard almost nothing at all from him!

  i think about 2 texts and thats it!

  in one of the texts he hints that he would like to see a picture of me "wearing alot less".

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  Razziel

  He may have simply stopped when you didn't give him a scantily clad picture. But keep in mind...

  Getting the girl a little interested and then completely ignoring them is a common tactic guys use. It makes girls who are insecure with themselves think "what's wrong with me?" or "what did I do wrong to make him ignore me?" Then when they finally meet up again, the situation has changed from the guy trying to attract the girls interest, to the insecure girl trying to attract his interest, thereby making her more pliable to his advances.

  It doesn't work with self-confident women, but it's like shooting fish in a barrel with women who have low self-esteem.

  I've never done this, and I hate guys who do, but it's a pretty common thing for guys who are experienced at seducing women.
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  36

  What is Circular Reasoning?

  by God_Delusion in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i know what circular reasoning is because i wrote about it, so i know i'm right .

  http://www.jehovahswitnessblog.com/2010/01/what-is-circular-reasoning.html.

  carlos.

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  Razziel

  I do not know much about the relation between sedimentary layers and fossils contained therein beyond common sense and what's been posted in this thread. But from what's been posted, this doesn't look like circular logic to me. It looks like an unconstrained optimization problem, which on the surface, yes, looks like circular logic, but is not.

  I deal with these types of problems a lot in engineering. You know there is a relationship between variable A & B through several other variables. But you don't know what the values of A & B are, or rarely any of the other variables for that matter. And unfortunately, your job is to find out what the best values of A & B are. But you don't have a reference point to start from, so A & B can be an infinite number of values.

  I have to go to work and don't have time now to extrapolate on the math, but basically there are many valid ways to find the values of A & B. (The oldest probably being the golden-section search, and newton's method) They all involve initial guesses, and using that initial guess to recalculate the initial guess generally with an independent variable(s). Through several iterations, the calculated values for A & B will converge close to the real values of A & B.

  On the surface that looks like circular logic, since you used A to find B and B to find A, when you didn't know the true values for either. But it's not. It's using a mathematical relationship to identify maximal/minimal values which correspond to the true values you're looking for. In this case, I would infer the key/index fossils are those which are put into the unconstrained optimization equations. By using multiple fossils, the convergence of calculated values would be even closer to the true values.
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  70

  How many of you were baptised at a young age?

  by lepermessiah in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  one thing this site has made me reflect on the baptism practice in jw land.. many of us were raised in the religion, thus you were given the pressure early on to shoot for baptism as a goal.. i remember feeling bad because i waited until the ripe old age of 14 to take the plunge.. looking back, i realize that when i was 14, i didnt even know what my favorite color was, let alone have enough knowledge to make a life altering decision.

  yet, growing up in that climate, i would say anyone who waited past their early teens to get baptised was viewed with great suspicion and was likely to be viewed as "bad association".

  kids who took the dip at 8-9 years of age were viewed as "wise beyond their years" and the like.. how old were some of you when you were baptised, and what are your feelings on the matter?.

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  Razziel

  15. I was the last of my peer group as well. Was appointed an MS at 17. Later found out the first recommendation for MS was declined, and one of the reasons given was that I had waited so long to get baptised.
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  21

  J. W. Man charged in 8 rural Virginia shooting deaths

  by koolaid-man in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  http://www.twincities.com/ci_14236171?nclick_check=1.

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  Razziel

  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.
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  21

  The Probabilty of there being an Intelligent Designer part 2. (some responses)

  by hooberus in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  on 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:.

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  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.
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  21

  The Probabilty of there being an Intelligent Designer part 2. (some responses)

  by hooberus in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  on 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:.

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  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.
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  21

  The Probabilty of there being an Intelligent Designer part 2. (some responses)

  by hooberus in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  on 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:.

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  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.
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  49

  A Demon Experience?......This was/is very serious to me.

  by awildflower in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  so 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.

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  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.