Posts by bohm

15

A Paradox for JWs and other religious people

by NutFlush in

i was raised a jw and left nearly 15 years ago before/when i went away to college.

since then, i have had nothing to do with organized religion (or non-organized religion, for that matter).

in my experiences, fervent religious belief has not correlated well with things such as critical reasoning ability or secular success as measured by profession, level of education, income, etc.. i was browsing the blog of a semi-well-known guy who has worked in some of the same fields as me and came upon the following passage:.

bohm

snotrag: I made a long response my wireless just ate. DAMMIT. Well, the long and the short is that in order to calculate the odds, you need to know the mechanisms, otherwise we are just arguing from our own ignorance ('i dont understand how rare earth metal X came around, therefore God must have put it there'). Secondly, where it all came from - the laws, the matter and spacetime, that is indeed a mystery. But i dont see endowing the mechanism that caused it to be with intentions make the explanation more plausible.

Well we are getting bit off-topic, but i would like to reply at more length in another thread.

15

A Paradox for JWs and other religious people

by NutFlush in

i was raised a jw and left nearly 15 years ago before/when i went away to college.

since then, i have had nothing to do with organized religion (or non-organized religion, for that matter).

in my experiences, fervent religious belief has not correlated well with things such as critical reasoning ability or secular success as measured by profession, level of education, income, etc.. i was browsing the blog of a semi-well-known guy who has worked in some of the same fields as me and came upon the following passage:.

bohm

snotrag: pray tell how you would calculate these odds when you do not know the possible mechanisms? I work with statistics every day and i must admit i have no clue.

159

CHOICE may be a mere illusion. FREE WILL a trick of the mind's ego

by Terry in

jw
friends

things are what they are.. everything acts according to its nature.. nothing escapes its own nature.. we cannot be other than what we are and our "choices" follow our nature.. consequently, can we not say correctly that free choice is merely our ignorance of the fact that all our actions and choices are predetermined by our nature?.

1. if you are offered either a handful of dog poop or a cold dove bar---is your "choice" really much of a choice?

2. offer a heterosexual male a night with a hot chick or a hot dude...is the outcome really "choice"?

bohm

Terry, I am no sure how much you have read up on QM, but randomness and indetermination give very physical effects in QM. For example, Heisenbergers uncertainty principle will break apart the lattice in frozen He4 under the right preasure (the point can be calculated!), and like JWoods said, Bells theorem (and experimental verification in quantum optics! read it it is right out of star trek!) put some very, very rash constraints on a 'deterministic' theory, iirc it would have to be a 'global variable theory' which would be pretty nasty...

Personally, I think the point is pretty moot: I think we are just the chemistry in the brain, so choice is just whatever that chemistry does. if the chemistry is deterministic or not will not give me a fuzzy feeling :-).

159

CHOICE may be a mere illusion. FREE WILL a trick of the mind's ego

by Terry in

jw
friends

things are what they are.. everything acts according to its nature.. nothing escapes its own nature.. we cannot be other than what we are and our "choices" follow our nature.. consequently, can we not say correctly that free choice is merely our ignorance of the fact that all our actions and choices are predetermined by our nature?.

1. if you are offered either a handful of dog poop or a cold dove bar---is your "choice" really much of a choice?

2. offer a heterosexual male a night with a hot chick or a hot dude...is the outcome really "choice"?

bohm

Terry: Regarding randomness in nature: im not sure i follow you. Do you mean that quantum mechanics may seem random, but really is not, it is just us that does not know if the particles are 'breaking in some new shoes'? ;-)

15

A Paradox for JWs and other religious people

by NutFlush in

i was raised a jw and left nearly 15 years ago before/when i went away to college.

since then, i have had nothing to do with organized religion (or non-organized religion, for that matter).

in my experiences, fervent religious belief has not correlated well with things such as critical reasoning ability or secular success as measured by profession, level of education, income, etc.. i was browsing the blog of a semi-well-known guy who has worked in some of the same fields as me and came upon the following passage:.

bohm

hey and welcome! i hope you stick around.

Im not really the target audience, but its a good question. When i have asked similar questions, they have usually been countered by personal experience: "When i pray/read the bible, i feel it is the inspired word of God, therefore i have faith that it is true".

159

CHOICE may be a mere illusion. FREE WILL a trick of the mind's ego

by Terry in

jw
friends

things are what they are.. everything acts according to its nature.. nothing escapes its own nature.. we cannot be other than what we are and our "choices" follow our nature.. consequently, can we not say correctly that free choice is merely our ignorance of the fact that all our actions and choices are predetermined by our nature?.

1. if you are offered either a handful of dog poop or a cold dove bar---is your "choice" really much of a choice?

2. offer a heterosexual male a night with a hot chick or a hot dude...is the outcome really "choice"?

bohm

Interesting post... A small nit-pick:

Mathematicians will tell you there really is no such things as "random".

You cannot program a computer to generate an actual "random" number.

There is always an algorithm underlying it.

Randomness is our ignorance of the nature of inevitable consequent events.

Its true that no algorithm can produce random numbers (duh!), but randomness is certainly found in quantum mechanics, and chaos theory tells us that in many natural systems with feedback mechanisms these (totally random and indeterministic) changes will make the macroscopic state of eg. the brain behave in a random manner. That is, even if i knew exactly how your neurons was wired and the cells behaved, and i could control every last photon that came to your eyes or electron in the spinal cord, i could only predict your behaviour for a very short time.

Now if this actually correspond to choice is something else entirely, but since there is no theory of how consciousness actually work it is hard to have an oppinion on an undefineable concept :-).

Speaking in a practical sence, i am quite convinced that most things that feel like choices are actually our rationalization of what the 'autopilot' do when we are not thinking.
To cite some emperical work on this front, I have done extensive experiments on driving bicyles intoxicated, and it is certainly possible to deside to run red lights, drive on the walkway, stear into bushes etc. even though you are not aware of it untill afterwards.

30

Introducing myself

by crazy2try in

jw
friends

hi all, i am new to the forum and recently left the witnesses.

i was excited to see this site and enjoyed reading a lot of the posts.

it is nice to read so many of the same thoughts and feelings that i have had over the years.

bohm

Welcome!

Its great that your husband and you left at the same time, and you have something to build on post-borg.
If you feel like it, please dont hesitate from writing your story about why you left at a later point.

35

Here's my story! (Long one!)

by its_me! in

jw
friends

here is a quick version of my life in the org.

i was born and raised in it.

my father was physically and mentally abusive to my siblings and i. he was inactive from the meetings and service for much of my life.

bohm

Hello Its_me! I have send you a personal message - click on the envelope at the top-right corner to see it. You may get an error the first time, then just try again (The forum is like that). Have a nice day!

21

How would you answer?

by Is this it? in

this is my first post, though have been lurking here for some time.

maybe will share my story at some point...... i have been discussing the blood doctrine with a family member.

we discussed the principle behind the law to abstain from blood was to recognise the sanctity of life and god as the life giver when a life was taken and should not apply to transfusions when no life is taken but aim is to preserve life.

bohm

ITI: Welcome! As someone said, check out http://www.ajwrb.org/ . Also check out jwfacts blood article, http://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/blood-transfusions.php . If your family is willing to do it, show them some of the old applications of the relevant scriptures to organ donations and vaccines.

For fun, you may want to read up on how albumine is extracted from stored blood on wikipedia.

11

How might one today countermand Jehovah's word?

by wannabe in

" {isaiah 43:10 niv}.

"{isaiah 44:8 niv}.

"{isaiah 64:4 niv}.

bohm

"The Biblical Mthyology you speak about is the inspired word of Jehovah God and absolutely no myth. It's actual fact!"

That is what we are trying to determine.

Certainly during the period of the flood this World was covered with water. That has been scientifically proven,

That is new to me. Can you provide some of the scientific evidence you build that conclusion upon?

but who needs science to back up what Jehovah tells us?

I believe it was Odin who gave us the Eddas, according to the Norse mythology, but i doubt you would accept his word as a proof the earth is flat?

If he tells us and he does, that it actually occured, well take it to the Bank, it did.

See above

He's told us many other things that occured, and checking them all out you learn that they did occur. Take the destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70Ad for instance.

We are getting off-topic. Your topic was one could sow doubt about the truth of a litteral reading of the bible. What i proposed was that one could look at the scientific predictions the bible made regarding the flood and then compare them to facts. Thats all i proposed, and what i asked about (notice i made no conclusions regarding the validity of the bible!), and all i asked was if you agreed that comparing some of the bibles claims regarding noahs ark to facts, for example by looking at geology, was a valid way to test its truth-value. I hope you agree with that?

The biggest problem with people today, is they don't want to see what's staring them right in the face, because they KNOW the Bible is right on the money and it scaring hell out of them. So easy for them to stick their head in a bag, and act like they don't see anything. Hopefully at some point they'll all get rid of that bag, and open wide their eyes. Wannabe

Well, i dont want to be mean to you (WELCOME TO THE BOARD ANYWAY!), so i hope you believe me when i say i write this with no bad intentions, and with no bad will towards you or that you has so deep faith in the bible:

"The biggest problem with people today, is they don't want to see what's staring them right in the face, because they KNOW the Bible is right ... So easy for them to stick their head in a bag, and act like they don't see anything. Hopefully at some point they'll all get rid of that bag, and open wide their eyes."

(SORRY! could not resist!)