"the conscious intelligence that engineered life on Earth"
"Sire, je n'ai pas eu besoin de cette hypothèse." - Pierre-Simon Laplace
Posts by cofty
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92There is no such thing as Agnosticism. Agnostics do not exist!
by nicolaou inmany here seem to believe that the position of agnosticism is somehow more reasonable than theism or atheism.
nonsense!
it is a misconception to believe that belief or non-belief in the existence of god/s are the two extremes which glare at each other over the fence of agnosticism.
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cofty
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92
There is no such thing as Agnosticism. Agnostics do not exist!
by nicolaou inmany here seem to believe that the position of agnosticism is somehow more reasonable than theism or atheism.
nonsense!
it is a misconception to believe that belief or non-belief in the existence of god/s are the two extremes which glare at each other over the fence of agnosticism.
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cofty
A humanistic rational approach cannot disprove apophatic conceptions of God
You define god as something that does exist AND also doesn't exist and then expect intelligent people to take you seriously.
It is literally ridiculous.
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92
There is no such thing as Agnosticism. Agnostics do not exist!
by nicolaou inmany here seem to believe that the position of agnosticism is somehow more reasonable than theism or atheism.
nonsense!
it is a misconception to believe that belief or non-belief in the existence of god/s are the two extremes which glare at each other over the fence of agnosticism.
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cofty
You are absolutely wrong. Take Cofty for example, he is 100% convinced no god or no intelligent life or creator for our origins of life. For him all by chance, no chance of anything behind it. He is atheist. - EOM
Yes I am an atheist but I don't much care for the word. Why should not believing in something deserve a label?
I am FOR rational thinking, an evidence-based worldview, humanism, secular morality and much more. Not believing in the god of christian theism is simply a corollary of that.
On the other hand when somebody says they are an atheist that tells us very little about them. I know of atheists who believe in all sorts of irrational woo.
An agnostic is just somebody who needs to do a bit more thinking as EOM demonstrated above.
I am totally convinced that it can be proven beyond all reasonable doubt that the god of Jesus does not exist. Same goes for the god of the pedophile prophet of Islam. Same goes for any specific god you want to discuss.
When people say that you can't prove there is no god they can only say that by being as vague as possible about the words "prove" and "god". Define "god" and of course we can prove it is nothing but a human construct.
As for the vacuous waffle we just saw above from SBF it is not worth wasting a single heartbeat even contemplating.
God can exist and not-exist, or neither, without being bound by definitions. When I think of God I think of God in these terms, or not in these terms, as the case may be.
It is unmitigated mental masturbation and I wish he would do it in private.
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60
The problem of sex (or why I'm not an atheist)
by EdenOne inas i write this under the shadow of the walls of saint jorge's castle in lisbon, two very bored jws are standing just five metres away from me with a literature cart .... in my journey away from jwism i accepted evolution as a fact.
i also became anti-religion, agnostic and apatheist.
and, while i lean towards the persuasion of the atheist arguments, there are a few reasons that make it difficult for me to completely discard the notion of an intelligent origin of life.
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12
Sunday Tv - Jehovah's Witnesses Paedophilia in Australia
by berrygerry inif only someone had listened back then!.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy8b22hs9me.
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cofty
At about 10:00 the former WT lawyer suggests what a lot of us are wondering about.
He says that the WT would not hesitate to turn in a murderer or other criminal but not a pedophile. He says it "suggests there is something they are protecting ... or protecting child abusers".
I personally suspect there are or have been child abusers at the highest level of the cult.
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Sunday Tv - Jehovah's Witnesses Paedophilia in Australia
by berrygerry inif only someone had listened back then!.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy8b22hs9me.
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cofty
Thanks berrygerry. Do you know when this was made?
I'm listening to it now, really uncompromising stuff so far...
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60
The problem of sex (or why I'm not an atheist)
by EdenOne inas i write this under the shadow of the walls of saint jorge's castle in lisbon, two very bored jws are standing just five metres away from me with a literature cart .... in my journey away from jwism i accepted evolution as a fact.
i also became anti-religion, agnostic and apatheist.
and, while i lean towards the persuasion of the atheist arguments, there are a few reasons that make it difficult for me to completely discard the notion of an intelligent origin of life.
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cofty
how certain is science regarding this process you describe? - Sanchy
Its a great question. I think the most honest answer would assign a slightly different certainty value to different parts of the process. The age of life on earth is really certain as is the appearance of complex cells 2 billion years later.
The event that made complex cells - eukaryotic - possible was called endosymbiosis. This was when a bacteria became engulfed by an archaea. Lynn Margulis argued for this explanation for a long time before sufficient evidence proved it was true. It was a good example of how science works. It has now moved from hypothesis to "theory" in the scientific sense of the word. Unfortunately she continued to press her ideas to argue for "serial endosymbiosis" but the field of phylogenetics has proven her to be wrong on that.
The three steps to sexual reproduction is not really controversial. Each of them are very well known features of bacterial life. The genius was explaining the advent of meiosis from mitosis as described by Tom Cavalier-Smith.
All of these ideas are subjects of many scientific papers that you could access online. Thankfully writers like Nick Lane make the technical details more accessible to the rest of us via popular science books.
What I have described is the beginning of sex without sexes. It was a relatively simple operation that involved cells swapping genomes and mixing up their genes. In a world of high mutation rates and strong selection pressures this made it possible for useful combinations to "find each other" and others to be discarded from the gene pool.
One of the challenges to sexual reproduction resulted from the presence of mitochondria. These eventually gave up more than 99% of their genome to the nucleus of the cell but retained a few critical genes to do with controlling the rate of respiration. In this way they can respond quickly to changing demands of the cell on a local level. The problem is that the two genomes must work together very precisely. Mitochondrial DNA is not recombined, it is passed on through cell division in the same way as their bacterial ancestors.
It is for this reason that two sexes are the norm in sexually reproducing species. One larger gamete also includes the mitochondria while the other smaller more motile gamete contains just nuclear DNA. The former is by definition female and the latter male.
All the features of sex in multicellular organisms such as genitalia are much later inventions of evolution by gradual Darwinian evolution. Many of these stages of development can be observed in extant species. Consider the difference between mammalian sex and external fertilisation as practised by fish for example.
In modern complex multicellular beings like us most female gametes fail the test of the ability of the mitochondria to sync with nuclear genes for respiration. Female embryos have about 7 million oocytes by the fifth month of development. This number has reduced to around 2 million by birth. By the age of 40 there are only around 25,000 left. Only a few hundred of that original 7 million will ever mature and have a chance of reproduction. The majority of fertilised eggs spontaneously abort at a very early stage before the woman is even aware of being pregnant. It is thought that these are due to failures of cellular respiration.
Sex certainly makes successful reproduction much more difficult but far more advantageous for the cells that manage it. There are even a number of species that reproduce quickly via non-sexually but resort to sexual reproduction occasionally in response to availability of resources.
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57
How do we know JWs are wrong and how do we convince others JWs are wrong: logic versus persuasion
by slimboyfat inwe like to think we are logical and have good reasons for for our beliefs.
no more so than when it comes to our reasons for rejecting the truth claims of jws.
we reject their version of history, such as the date of the fall of jerusalem, because it doesn't agree with the historical evidence.
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cofty
First I decided entirely of my own volition and 100% for reasons of facts and doctrine that the Watchtower was wrong. THEN I went looking for a local group who respected the authority of the bible. There was one available locally. If there were no local bible-believing churches it would have made no difference.
none of us seem to understand what motivates us very well or why we make the decisions we do
I understand very clearly why I left the cult.
As someone who respects expert opinion and academic consensus you could maybe look into it if you are interested
I am the expert on why I left the cult.
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How do we know JWs are wrong and how do we convince others JWs are wrong: logic versus persuasion
by slimboyfat inwe like to think we are logical and have good reasons for for our beliefs.
no more so than when it comes to our reasons for rejecting the truth claims of jws.
we reject their version of history, such as the date of the fall of jerusalem, because it doesn't agree with the historical evidence.
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cofty
Was there no friend, no workmate, no family member, no person on the bus, in the gym, or at the local shop, who said anything to you to indicate that leaving JWs might be a good idea and that there was a better alternative that others have chosen? - SBF
No not one.
They changed their doctrine. I was uncomfortable with their explanation. I did all my own research in the bible. I decided they were wrong. Therefore it was not the truth, therefore I left. Simple.
I think none of us know ourselves very well
I am absolutely certain I know me a hell of a lot better than you know me.
Your previous comment was staggeringly arrogant.
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60
The problem of sex (or why I'm not an atheist)
by EdenOne inas i write this under the shadow of the walls of saint jorge's castle in lisbon, two very bored jws are standing just five metres away from me with a literature cart .... in my journey away from jwism i accepted evolution as a fact.
i also became anti-religion, agnostic and apatheist.
and, while i lean towards the persuasion of the atheist arguments, there are a few reasons that make it difficult for me to completely discard the notion of an intelligent origin of life.
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cofty
Cofty how tiring is it to have to go over this stuff like every day - ttdtt
Very.
I am starting to think there is a balance to be struck between being helpful and encouraging laziness.