Posts by rawe

76

The Jehovah's Witness religion has gone for good !!!

by snare&racket in

jw
friends

i am not sure how you all feel as we all left at different times for different reasons.... but this new bible seems to have put some final nails into a coffin that was once my jw life.

the religion is so far and so different to the religion i grew up in that it has become something i feel no affiliation with anymore, no bond, no shared ideas or even sentimental views.

different teachings on when the end is coming.

rawe

Hi Snare x,

"The religion is so far and so different to the religion I grew up in that it has become something I feel no affiliation with anymore, no bond, no shared ideas or even sentimental views."

"Natura non facit saltus" is a latin phrase I first saw in Darwin's book Origin of Species. It means "nature does not make jumps" and is used to explain how evolution is a gradual process that operates over time. Eventually though a species must adapt to a new environment or face extinction. This appears to have happened to Jehovah's Witnesses. Even growth creates pressure on the organisim, since each new publications must be printed in ever increasing numbers. The emphasis on end-of-days prophesy inevitably creates increase pressure over time as such predictions are sure to not work out. The arival of new forms of communications such as internet calls out for adapation. Legal and media pressure has impact. The ease of communication among former members is not something the organization has faced in the past.

So... I agree, Witnesses in 2013 are a now a new species even since 2004 (or 2007 when I left). Since the late 1990s there has been much focus on reducing the cost of printing. Discouraging education has reaped a membership who need a simplified message. The organization started out as a group of intense Bible students, searching verse high and low for this or that prophetic pattern. Numeric information in the Bible was a source of endless facination for the group. Very bold and persistent in-your-face preaching has now given way to very passive forms, such as carts and tables left alone until someone walks up.

The phrase "fatherless child" replacing "fatherless boy" hits this point home for me. The old world of the Bible was male focused, wherein inheritance travelled from father to son. Stories of how women like Ruth and Naomi are set in this context, how they secure a future based on a male proxy. Thus the lowest most vunerable position OT writers could imagine was a "boy" without a father. But all that is swept aside in an effort to make a more palatable modern sounding message.

Cheers,

-Randy

17

Are we not overlooking the obvious?

by newbie2013 in

this is my first post.

however, i have been reading this board for some time (call it stalking or trolling...lol).

so, hello to all.. i have had time to reflect on the agm since yesterday and my thoughts are that indeed the nwt needed much revision.

rawe

Hi Newbie2013,

Welcome to the forum. I was one of Jehovah's Witnesses from childhood on, baptized in 1981 and left faith in 2007. I'm an atheist and no longer believe in Jehovah God. Nonetheless, I continue to have an interest in the Bible and the faith.

"The removal of several verses from the Gospel according to Mark and the account of the adulteress in my humble opinion is part of the universal cannon of Holy Scriptures." . . . "For more than a century (counting the time of the first Bible Students in the late 1800's till this past Friday), these scriptures have always served to be beneficial and teach each of us."

I don't have a copy of updated translation, but I assume you are referring to Mark 16:9, 20, Mark 16:8b and John 8:1-11. As far as I am aware for many decades, at least all the years I was a Witness, these verses were never viewed by Witnesses as truly part of the Bible and inspired. The story in John 8 of the adulteress caught in the act, wherein Jesus says, "Let the one of YOU that is sinless be the first to throw a stone at her" is of course well known and often quoted when someone wants to convey the idea we all fail and should not be quick to judge.

Since this portion was never viewed by Witnesses as inspired, I do believe you will not see it ever referenced in The Watchtower or Awake!, unless the reference is something about these being a later addition and not inspired.

So is the new committee justified in removing this text, rather than showing it in a smaller font with a disclaimer as the older NWT does? Maybe. But, it is tricky. First of course is the obvious intent of this translation is for use in the public ministry, where it is entirely possible for a publisher to encounter a householder familiar with the woman caught in the act of adultery story. Now the poor publisher won't have any reference to refer to, even to share what some later manuscripts contained for this text.

Then there is just this general idea of what should be included or excluded from the Bible canon and who gets to make that choice. The International Bible Students decided to use a non-Catholic protestant Bible hence no Judth, First and Second Maccabees, etc. No original manuscripts exist, so in general we rely on oldest available manuscript that tends to have wide agreement with others of its age. Not a bad approach, however some serious scholars are fairly certain some of the oldest Bible books must have had even older sources that were combined. They see the use of "God" in Genesis 1:1 to 2:3 with a sudden switch to "Jehovah" at Genesis 2:4 as one clear indication this must be the case. In other words getting back to original text may in fact be impossible.

If we use oldest is best approach, then might we be able to doubt the entire Gospel of John and book of Revelation, both of which are later? Can anyone today categorically say these sections of Mark and John do not reflect actual truthful accounts? Stories are not written all at once and it is not uncommon for authors to go back to original stories and add additional details.

As you know later Hebrew manuscripts replaced the divine name "Jehovah" with "Lord." Thus the NWT restored the name "Jehovah" based on this idea of oldest-is-best. But the exact opposite is the case with the Christian Greek Scriptures. Not a single extant Greek manuscript of the Christian Greek Scriptures contains the name "Jehovah" (please correct me if I'm wrong on this point). This would be so, because Christian writers would be using a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures that by their day had replaced "Jehovah" with "Lord." This apparently did not bother these writers. Although the NWT translators make references to a number of "J" (1 to 25) documents to justify this inclusion of "Jehovah", these are not that old really, and are themselves translations.

"I am in no way bad mouthing the GB or any of the members of the international brotherhood. I am merely stating my personal view on this topic after reading so many of yours."

Although I am not shy about being critical of the leadership on certain issues, especially in regards to shunning, I always try to be respectful. As for the brotherhood, that I continue to believe is populated mostly be sincere folks such as yourself, who only wish to worship in a way that pleases God. And the last bit is spot on! Why should it ever be a problem to express personal views? The problem with so many groups seems to be this desire to have everyone hold the same view, or if that cannot be achieved to pretend they do.

Take care,

-Randy

55

BUM WITNESSES

by The Searcher in

can anyone save me the stress of listening to the self-appointed faithful & discreet slave for 3 hours, and give a clue as to roughly at what point in the proceedings was the derogatory term 'bum witnesses used, and by whom?

i'd really love to extract that comment and send it to a weakening witness, to highlight the judgmental arrogance and name-calling being displayed.. many thanks in advance folks!.

rawe

Hi Stand For Pure Worship,

"Thank you Splash. As usual the peaNut gallery here at JWN are grasping for anything to discredit and criticize the GB. Or they're looking too far into something said from the platform or in the literature. Just like the 1975 self-victims. They read one little thing and all of a sudden they thought the end was coming in 75". Now they're doing it all over again. Bums."

One of the mistakes it seems some active Witnesses make is assuming all ex-JWs are the same. Or have some unified agenda to discredit the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses. However, that is not true. What does happen though is you get to see the unfiltered thoughts of folks who have left the faith and for what reasons. You also get to meet folks who really bought into what was emphasized in books like Life Everlasting in the Freedom of the Sons of God and how it affected them. If some just kept on doing their normal JW things they might view things a bit differently from those who sold their home so as to pioneer in the last remaining years (assumed to be less than 40 of course).

When you see criticism of the Governing Body here or elsewhere, there is no mandate you must believe it or even buy into the arguments. Indeed this thread shows that, folks trying to determine if the word "bum" was actually used by a Governing Body member (it appears so far -- that no it wasn't).

Cheers,

-Randy

19

Quantum Physics and philosophy about God

by rawe in

jw
friends

hi everyone,.

this new topic narrows a discussion in another thread: musings about different types of atheist!.

in the next post i'll pick up the discussion where it left off in regards to qm/qp (quantum mechanics / quantum physics) and how it relates to philosophy and belief or lack thereof in god.. cheers,.

rawe

Hi Bohm,

Please help me see if I understand this correctly. Perhaps the important qualifier in the Wikipedia sentence that contains the word "absurd" is "serious possibility?" I imagine this converstation between Alice who argues for objective reality based on classical physics and Bob who understand quantum physics, goes something like this...

Alice: Bob, are you telling me that all you can get out fo QM is probabilities?

Bob: Yes.

Alice: Okay, Bob, but when you make a measurement you get a specific number right?

Bob: Yes, but that is only because by taking the measurement I've caused the wave function to collaspe into a definite state.

Alice: What was the wave function before you took the measurement then?

Bob: All the possiblities existed at once, we call this quantum superposition.

Alice: How do you know that, if every time you measure you get a definite value?

Bob: Well certain measurements we can and have make show this must be true, but it is also the nature of linear equations we use.

Alice: Bob, that can't be right, if I put a cat in a box and arranged for a quantum event to trigger the death of the cat, you would have to say the cat was both alive and dead at the same time!

Bob: Alice, your argument is reductio ad absurbdum, but... (insert various explantions for why this is true in reality, or the paradox is avoided somehow)

Alice wants to complain that the act of measuring to resolve the alive or dead state of the cat must be wrong and that the cat in objective reality cannot be in both states simulteneously. You seem to be suggesting size and temperature matters in resolving the state? As well as the nature of QM tends to make big things appear classical even while not violating QM?

Cheers,

-Randy

19

Quantum Physics and philosophy about God

by rawe in

jw
friends

hi everyone,.

this new topic narrows a discussion in another thread: musings about different types of atheist!.

in the next post i'll pick up the discussion where it left off in regards to qm/qp (quantum mechanics / quantum physics) and how it relates to philosophy and belief or lack thereof in god.. cheers,.

rawe

Hi Yadda yadda 2 & Seraphim23,

I re-read my mini-essay this morning. I see lots of grammatical errors, sorry about that.

I don't have time at the moment to watch the entire video clip, but it makes a similar point I make about. Black holes might be nasty concepts to think about at first, but since General Relativity predicted they should exist, likely they do, and now we know they do. Yes, Seraphim23, I think posting back your original post about QM would add a bit more context to this thread -- otherwise it looks like this thread popped into existence out of nothing ;-)

Off-topic: The Chandler, AZ Ex-JW meetup is tonight at 7:00pm at the Hungry Monk in Chandler. If you're in the area, and would like to meet with fellow Ex-JWs feel free to come out!

Cheers, -Randy

19

Quantum Physics and philosophy about God

by rawe in

jw
friends

hi everyone,.

this new topic narrows a discussion in another thread: musings about different types of atheist!.

in the next post i'll pick up the discussion where it left off in regards to qm/qp (quantum mechanics / quantum physics) and how it relates to philosophy and belief or lack thereof in god.. cheers,.

rawe

Hi Everyone,

(sorry, this is a bit of long read...)

It is not uncommon for the publications of Jehovah's Witnesses to reprint pictures of stars and galaxies. The marvels of life and the universe are often highlighted to inspire awe and wonder. The implied conclusion is such things point to the existence of God.

Chapter two of Is There A Creator Who Cares for You?, opens with... "ASTRONAUTS thrill to photograph the earth as it looms large through the window of a spacecraft."

Does the city of London in the UK exist? I personally know that it does, because I have been there. Such a question is really not that mysterious. Does Jehovah God exist? When asked believers will propose many things, such as fulfilled prophesy, the existence of life implying a creator, answered prayers, etc. But direct testable and repeatable confirmation always seems just a bit of reach. But God has other special problems. He needs to exist before the universe, he also needs to be outside of it, hear prayers of the faithful in thousands of languages, even from deep inside mine shafts.

Thus there seems to be a desire to make a connection between the mysterious the comes up in scientific exploration and the mystery of God's existence. As if the two mysteries are a kindred spirit, perhaps even connected. While I can appreciate why such connections are made I think doing so is a mistake.

While I will argue for that position, I want to make it clear, these are merely my personal views. What I have found make sense to me. Many of my good friends hold different views and I sincerely like to engage the banter on these subjects, because inevitably as I babble along trying to explain myself and understand the view of others I find myself learning a great deal. The only view I caution against is the belief that someone has special access to knowledge no one else has, and they in turn demand unquestioned loyalty and obedience to their words. That is unhealthy and life-robbing!

The three keys to my argument are:

(1) Believe in what can be measured.
(2) Accept that some things resist measurement, creating a knowledge gap.
(3) Do not make big jumps where knowledge gaps exist.

Watch what the Creator book does...

Can experts now explain the origin of the universe? Many scientists, uncomfortable with the idea that the universe was created by a higher intelligence, speculate that by some mechanism it created itself out of nothing.

then in the next paragraph...

If experts cannot really explain either the origin or the early development of our universe, should we not look elsewhere for an explanation?

the book then goes on to argue on the basis of the anthropic principal. But make no mistake about it. Because experts admit to a knowledge gap, you should accept all the teachings of Jehovah's Witnesses as if they a channeling special knowledge from God. The idea the universe had a beginning is an implication of observational evidence -- namely red shift. How much observational evidence exists for the supernatural? Exactly zero! No one iota! That to me is significant, even if it is basically true that "absence of evidence is not evidence for absence" as they say.

Anyone who claims irrefutable evidence for the supernatural can have their claims tested by the James Randi Educational Foundation. JREF will pay $1 million dollars to anyone who can pass a controlled test.

What about the connection between Quantum Physics and evidence for God?

Almost everyone knows about E = mc^2. Even before Albert Einstein discovered equation that is known as "mass-energy equivalence", the equation that related to kinetic energy looks almost the same: E = 1/2mv^2

The "c" of course is the speed of light and "v" in the second equation is just plain old velocity. Nonetheless you can bet I've lectured my daughters many a time as they learn to drive, about the law of squaring energy as velocity increases. That a car traveling at 60 miles per hour is much more dangerous beast than if it was going just 30 miles per hour.

There is nonetheless a few things to notice about this simple equation. One is that it is smooth. Increase the mass by a bit and it will multiply by c and square that. But why ^2? We live in a universe with 3D volume. To cover some rectangular bit of the earth one will multiple length x width. The physics of the real world seem to demand such squaring will come up.

However, as explained in Quantum Physics for Dummies, measuring "black-body radiation spectrum" seems to have kill off our nice smooth equations. As I understand the text, heating a perfectly black object (i.e. one that absorbs all frequencies of light) would generate a spectrum of light. The object would start from black and then glow. The problem was coming up with an equation that explained the effect. Max Planck solved this problem by breaking away from a smooth effect towards the idea of discrete non-continuous packets of energy. As the book puts it...

E = nhv, where n = 0, 1, 2,...

Yuck! Who wants to deal with such integer sequences? Yet it worked! But look at this, the Raleigh-Jean's equation that was smooth and almost worked, had this bit in it: 8 x pi x v^2 and guess what.. even though Max Plank put his integer sequence in there, his equation also has 8 x pi x v^2. The existence of pi (ratio of circumference to diameter) is 3.14159... going on and on.

As I mentioned in another post, the success of Quantum Physics and an article on Loop Quantum Gravity convinced me that very small integers probably defined the universe. Indeed Plank's equation had 'h' as a constant of 6.626 x 10^-34 Joule seconds. That ^-34 makes h a very small value. Maybe this is the integer we are looking for? However, I am now convinced small integer digital universe is not the correct view. The existence of pi in these equations plus the limits of computer models for QM has for the moment convinced me that while QM works there is probably something deeper that is infinitely variable.

There is indeed a magical thing that seems to happen here. Max Plank is really just trying to solve a physics puzzle and when he does, what next? Who could imagine that plugging in these integer vectors would wind up having so many weird implications. I argue, that unless we are writing for Star Trek episode, we should be very careful to making unwarranted philosophical jumps based on these odd things. Yet, I do think it keeps tell us one important thing -- don't walk away from the math that works, even if it implies highly unintuitive things. Contrast that with how the Creator book attempts to dismiss "universe from nothing"...

Does that sound reasonable to you?

it asks. This is an appeal to hubris! As if somehow a person unschooled in cosmology should be able to discard such origin of the universe ideas because they don't "sound" reasonable! What is interesting is when a person actually takes the time to listen to why those who study such things use the word "nothing" the answer becomes an easy, "yes, it does sound reasonable!"

Under most circumstances we should reject the unreasonable. But should we in all cases? The challenge of quantum physics seems to orbit around our confidence in what the math implies. Consider the first crazy idea...

Quantum Superposition.

As per Wikipedia this principal holds that an electron exists in all its possible states at the same time! Yet, this is not the observation. When measured the electron gives the results of only one state.

Yuck! This seems to undermine the very first principal of my belief system -- believe only what you can measure. QSP seems to ask us to set that aside and instead believe in this truly unreasonable weirdness.

At this point, let me make a side trip into The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Catholicism. On page 184 they talk about Imagination and Prayer. Under the section "Air as Holy Spirit" it says...

"The very intake of breath is call inspiration -- or intake of Spirit. To be alive is to breathe, to be filled with God's presence in the Spirit. Today's quantum physics has added a new dimension to the understanding of air, and the presence of God or the Holy Spirit. Scientists have found that there is no such thing as a void. When they attempt to create one in the laboratory, it immediately fills with molecules that appear to bubble up out of nowhere and fill the space."

This is followed by more talk about God's Holy Spirit being everywhere, etc. Is such connections justified? I would argue it is not. Even though, QSP asks us to believe something that resists measurement. The reason is the equations behind QSP demand the reality of QSP be there. How so?

Wikipedia answers: Mathematically, it refers to a property of solutions to the Schrödinger equation; since the Schrödinger equation is linear, any linear combination of solutions to a particular equation will also be a solution of it.

At this point, I think one is justified in suggesting this may be true of the equation, but does not dictate a physical reality. But there it sits. Einstein suggested that an unstable pile of gunpowder could then be in a superposition of both sitting there and exploded -- how absurd! Schrödinger, then comes up with his alive/dead cat example. But the math doesn't budge. And guess what? Down the road we do get to observe this very thing. Clever experiments have put real life photons, beryllium ions and buckyballs into superpositions.

So at this point I will add this to my list:

(4) Believe what math equations suggest must be true, however hold such beliefs as tentative until experiments show them to be true.

The demands of the equations keep going, with perhaps the most spooky of all being:

Quantum Entanglement

I find it interesting the Einstein and his friends suggested QE as a reason why quantum mechanics was incomplete. A fundamental law of physics is nothing moves faster than light. Yet, the equations of Quantum Physics suggested that if two quantum systems were related in that they interacted with each other, information about both would be known by measuring just one system. This would occur no matter how far apart the systems happen to be. Is it really true that if you knew the "spin" of two entangled particles was opposite, you could measure one here on earth as "up" and know instantly the other one on the moon was "down"?

Indeed that appears to be true. Does that mean that God is everywhere? Or that the brains of ants on hills 100 miles apart are linked and communicating?

I think the best way to look at this is again, from what the equations demand and leave it at that. The equations don't speak to God or ants, just how information from QM flows in a counter-intuitive way. If I did have to build some intuition from this, I would probably go in a couple directions. First from what I know about programming.

In the normal course programs are made up of functions (also called procedures, subroutines or methods). The information passed from one function to another is usually done through a parameter list. It takes time to setup the list and discard it when the function is done. However a system can also have what are known as "global variables" wherein information can be transmitted between functions in nearly instantaneously. This happens because each function, no matter how far apart it is from another, is literally looking at the same area of computer memory, and either setting it to a value or reading the value.

On the other hand, we can be fairly certain the universe has spread out from a single point. Thus all the information in the universe was at one location at one time. Did the universe retain some background mesh that allows information to flow faster than light? Maybe. However, none of this needs to imply that a super being exists and is concerned about whether or not human males have retained or removed their foreskin.

Cheers,
-Randy

19

Quantum Physics and philosophy about God

by rawe in

jw
friends

hi everyone,.

this new topic narrows a discussion in another thread: musings about different types of atheist!.

in the next post i'll pick up the discussion where it left off in regards to qm/qp (quantum mechanics / quantum physics) and how it relates to philosophy and belief or lack thereof in god.. cheers,.

rawe

Hi Oubliette,

I wanted to start the new thread right away, out of respect for the request. Alas, I am not that fast with my thoughts and it will take me some time to parse through Seraphim23's post to respond in a way that make sense.

Cheers,

-Randy

19

Quantum Physics and philosophy about God

by rawe in

jw
friends

hi everyone,.

this new topic narrows a discussion in another thread: musings about different types of atheist!.

in the next post i'll pick up the discussion where it left off in regards to qm/qp (quantum mechanics / quantum physics) and how it relates to philosophy and belief or lack thereof in god.. cheers,.

rawe

Hi Seraphim23,

I guess I am wondering about the true nature of randomness because it seems like a paradox in logic. Digital verses randomness type of thing. To me this is key to why the universe makes sense. True, the implications of QM bothered Einstein and others who felt giving up complete predictability was basically a defeat. However, things like evolution depend on randomness to an extent, yet it still works out to be a predicable process. For example as per the theory of evolution any sufficiently advanced species that goes extinct will never again appear. By "never" I mean extremely improbable, since the accumulation of random events expressed in the species will never happen again. "I agree with you that the universe is not digital in this sense of non-computability but the nature of what is really going with randomness seems as far away as understanding what infinity is as with Pi. The measurement problem seems to have relevance here as well." Okay, my comment here is probably just nonsense... but after reading your comment I got thinking about infinity and how it is connected to zero and how that relates to "nothing." What exactly are we unable to divide by zero? I have sometimes asked my daughters math teachers that. The reason of course is as you divide by a smaller and smaller value you get a larger and large quotient. But one is not allowed to divide by zero to obtain an infinite quotient. You've raised some other good points I would like to comment on as well, alas, I will need to get back to this. Cheers, -Randy ps. Yes, I am an atheist, although I would say I don't feel it is possible to prove the non-existence of something.

19

Quantum Physics and philosophy about God

by rawe in

jw
friends

hi everyone,.

this new topic narrows a discussion in another thread: musings about different types of atheist!.

in the next post i'll pick up the discussion where it left off in regards to qm/qp (quantum mechanics / quantum physics) and how it relates to philosophy and belief or lack thereof in god.. cheers,.

rawe

Hi Everyone,

This new topic narrows a discussion in another thread: Musings about different types of atheist!

In the next post I'll pick up the discussion where it left off in regards to QM/QP (Quantum Mechanics / Quantum Physics) and how it relates to philosophy and belief or lack thereof in God.

Cheers,

-Randy

304

Musings about different types of atheist!

by Seraphim23 in

jw
friends

a thought that occurs to me is that if one has the belief that all that is real is only explicable in terms of particles and forces, and that nothing exists that is not one of these, then good and bad doesnt exist either, the same would be true for any concept for that matter.

or perhaps it is only true when reduced to the level of matter and forces, but without the moral force, meaning and purpose that such a materialist only description would entail.

after all, if death is forever, which is materialist view, then what does it matter if a seventy or seven year old enters the grave?

rawe

Hi Snare&Racket,

"Can you gutys debate quantum physics under a different thread so as to not confuse the issues for new readers please?"

Sure, no problem. I'll start one with the Title: Quantum Physics and philosophy about God.

Cheers,

-Randy