Posts by cofty

8

Pope Francis condemns child sex abuse and Church cover-ups

by pleaseresearch in

this is good from the pope and really puts a lot of shame on our gb.

i could never see them doing this.. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-45249109.

pope francis has condemned the "atrocities" of child sex abuse and clerical cover-ups in a letter to the world's 1.2bn roman catholics.. the letter to "the people of god" calls for an end to the "culture of death" in the church, addresses failures to deal with abuse and asks for forgiveness.. last week a grand jury report detailed seven decades of abuse in pennsylvania.. the landmark investigation found more than 1,000 identifiable minors had been abused by 300 priests in the us state.. thousands more are thought to have fallen victim.

cofty

Empty words from the Pope. The Roman Catholic Church is rotten to the core. Not one single word from the Pope about what he is going to do about his pedophile Bishops and Priests. He has a long history of protecting abusers.

'Whereas transparency is typically advised, the church remains quiet about its investigations and disciplinary procedures. It does not release any data on the inquiries it has carried out. A proposed tribunal for judging bishops accused of negligence or coverup was quashed by the Vatican department that was supposed to help implement it. And, rather than being fired and publicly admonished, offending church leaders are typically allowed to resign without explanation...'

31

Evolution is a Fact #5 - Vitamin C

by cofty in

part 1 - protein functional redundancypart 2 - dna functional redundancypart 3 - ervspart 4 - smelly genes.

in part 4 we saw that roughly half of the 800 genes in the human genome that code for olfactory receptors are broken remnants of our evolutionary history.

they were vital to our distant ancestors but in humans, as in our primate cousins they have been allowed to fall into disuse as our eyes became more important to our survival than our nose.

cofty

Wouldn't a jw just rationalise this somehow as the gene was broken when eve and Adam sinned and it's part of our inherited imperfection?

That wouldn't work as the same gene is broken in exactly the same way in our nearest evolutionary relatives. Clearly the mutation happened in a common ancestor of humans and other primates. Look at the picture in the OP.

Imagine you are a teacher correcting the homework of a group of students. If they all wrote that the Battle of Hastings happened in 1066 that would only suggest they all properly read the same textbook. There is only one way to get the answer right but there are an infinite number of ways to get it wrong. If 3 pupils all said that the answer was 1977 then you would have very strong evidence of copying. If you found many such identical errors in the same 3 papers you have proof.

The broken vitamin C gene is that sort of evidence.

12

New JW.org Logo

by Not_Culty in

.

cofty

Excellent!

77

Creation, evolution, ???

by Freedom rocks in

was on the bus today and got into a discussion somehow with the driver and ok be ood his work colleagues about whether there's life in other planets, evolution and creation.

the driver believes there must be other life out there, i agree with him that life can't be unique to this planet out of the billions that exist.

his colleague who i think might be a jw by his attitude and reasoning skills thinks we're the only planet with life on it and it was made perfect and exact purposely for humans.

cofty

edited

Scruffy - Evolution is the most fascinating topic you could commit to learn about. It is the foundation of everything we know about life on earth.

Check out the links and let me know if you have questions.

77

Creation, evolution, ???

by Freedom rocks in

was on the bus today and got into a discussion somehow with the driver and ok be ood his work colleagues about whether there's life in other planets, evolution and creation.

the driver believes there must be other life out there, i agree with him that life can't be unique to this planet out of the billions that exist.

his colleague who i think might be a jw by his attitude and reasoning skills thinks we're the only planet with life on it and it was made perfect and exact purposely for humans.

cofty

Hi Scruffy.

1 - We didn't evolve from monkeys. That is not evolution

2 - Every living thing from humans to oak trees to bacteria evolved from a common ancestor by unguided evolution over million of years.

3 - There was no 'explosion'. The Big Bang was a rapid expansion of the universe. It has nothing to do with biological evolution.

4 - The origin of life is the subject of the scientific field of abiogenesis. The most promising ideas at the moment focus on bioenergetics. Life may have arisen in deep-sea Alkaline vents.

5 - The 'theory' of evolution is proven beyond all reasonable doubt. A theory in science does NOT mean the same thing as a hypothesis. Theories are the ultimate standard in science. They explain a whole collection of facts and observations.

6 - Opinions are worthless. The fact of evolution is about evidence.

You would benefit from reading some science textbooks on the basics of evolution.

Here are some threads that present some of the evidence...

77

Creation, evolution, ???

by Freedom rocks in

was on the bus today and got into a discussion somehow with the driver and ok be ood his work colleagues about whether there's life in other planets, evolution and creation.

the driver believes there must be other life out there, i agree with him that life can't be unique to this planet out of the billions that exist.

his colleague who i think might be a jw by his attitude and reasoning skills thinks we're the only planet with life on it and it was made perfect and exact purposely for humans.

cofty

But evolution seems silly to me too - scruff

Why?

77

Creation, evolution, ???

by Freedom rocks in

was on the bus today and got into a discussion somehow with the driver and ok be ood his work colleagues about whether there's life in other planets, evolution and creation.

the driver believes there must be other life out there, i agree with him that life can't be unique to this planet out of the billions that exist.

his colleague who i think might be a jw by his attitude and reasoning skills thinks we're the only planet with life on it and it was made perfect and exact purposely for humans.

cofty

[earth] was made perfect and exact purposely for humans

I would have challenged him on that. Got to go. Will add details later.

77

Creation, evolution, ???

by Freedom rocks in

was on the bus today and got into a discussion somehow with the driver and ok be ood his work colleagues about whether there's life in other planets, evolution and creation.

the driver believes there must be other life out there, i agree with him that life can't be unique to this planet out of the billions that exist.

his colleague who i think might be a jw by his attitude and reasoning skills thinks we're the only planet with life on it and it was made perfect and exact purposely for humans.

cofty

I believe that the discovery of life on other planets would be a real issue for JWs although they would publicly accommodate it.

I'm sure 'simple' prokaryotic life has evolved many times in the universe. Complex, multicellular, eukaryotic life (everything we can see with our eyes) might be very rare or even unique to earth. The circumstances that made it possible are astonishingly unlikely. But then the universe is a big place.

10

Is the blood doctrine idolatrous?

by Fred Franztone in

i'm not a god-fearing individual, but when i was still a believer, many suns ago, it occurred to me that the blood doctrine had an idolatrous foundation; it was one of the initial anti-wt thoughts in my mind that eventually led to me leaving the religion and ultimately (and somewhat ironically) to atheism.. the bible says that one should 'abstain from blood', and putting aside whether this is a mistranslation of bloodshed (which i've never bought), the wt are quite picky about which commandments they follow; they don't observe the sabbath, and they've even provided justifications for lying, so why the preoccupation with the blood commandment?

and why is it so serious a matter that it's a disfellowship-worthy offence?

the justification i was always given by elders was that blood is sacred, it's a symbol of life, and whilst the commandment to abstain from blood clearly meant that one shouldn't eat it, it's not unreasonable on the surface to extrapolate it to include transfusions (although some would disagree).. the problem with this reasoning of course is that by abstaining from blood transfusions, death from massive blood-loss is a possibility, unlike with abstaining from eating it.

cofty

jesus said it was ok to heal a man on the sabbath, breaking a direct law from god about “ working” on that day. - Morph

Jesus was meticulous about keeping the Law and taught his disciples that they must do likewise. He disagreed with the Pharisees on the interpretation of the Law.

The law on blood was more than a dietary restriction it was about respect for life. Since no life is surrendered in the donation of blood then transfusions do not contravene the law.

16

Their Last Message of Damnation

by new boy in

jw
friends

the leaders of the witnesses are preparing their flock for the day when they will have to give that last message of damnation.

they will soon be announcing how their loving god jehovah will soon becoming to kill off the vast majority of mankind.

billions of men women and children,.

cofty

The leaders of the Witnesses are preparing their flock for the day when they will have to give that last message of Damnation

Are there any recent signs of that move?

They will have to do that sooner or later but how long can they get away with it?