Knowsnothing

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Posts by Knowsnothing

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  84

  Spirit Channeling at Wallkill's Bethel

  by Marie33 in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  look what an ex-bethelite has to say about the spirit channeling he saw first hand up at wallkill:.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfmqnzbyrko.

  now i believe rayven's story of horror at brooklyn bethel:.

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  Knowsnothing

  jp1692,

  That's very dismissive of you. Did you even read the articles? The Brazilian mediums were of sound mental health.

  deegee, I will take a look at those books, thanks.
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  84

  Spirit Channeling at Wallkill's Bethel

  by Marie33 in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  look what an ex-bethelite has to say about the spirit channeling he saw first hand up at wallkill:.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfmqnzbyrko.

  now i believe rayven's story of horror at brooklyn bethel:.

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  Knowsnothing

  Hi deegee, yes, I did. In fact, is also like to link this article which I believe as more detail of just what the actual experiment consisted of.

  http://www.patheos.com/blogs/scienceonreligion/2013/06/the-neurology-of-spirit-writing/

  The mediums with less experience had different brain activities than those mediums with more experience. That much I gathered. Also, there was a paradoxical effect because the mediums with more experience showed decreased brain activity in areas associated with higher level cognitive functions usually required for those writing tasks. It's possible the experienced mediums simply have more experience and are able to sit down these areas of their brain. I believe there is more to it than just experience.

  I'd like to know what conclusion you've arrived at.
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  84

  Spirit Channeling at Wallkill's Bethel

  by Marie33 in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  look what an ex-bethelite has to say about the spirit channeling he saw first hand up at wallkill:.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfmqnzbyrko.

  now i believe rayven's story of horror at brooklyn bethel:.

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  Knowsnothing

  deegee, great articles. Thanks for posting. I'm not sure what your point is though. The studies didn't prove or disprove anything.

  For example, let me write from the psychology today article:

  To put this another way, the low level of activity in the experienced mediums' frontal lobes should have resulted in vague, unfocused, obtuse garble. Instead, it resulted in more complex writing samples than they were able to produce while not entranced.

  Why? No one's sure.---

  Also a quote from the Atlantic article:

  To take his scans, Newburg uses functional magnetic resonance (fMRI), and single-photon emission computerized tomography (SPECT) imaging. The book Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience, lists their technological limitations. The authors, Drs. Sally Satel and Scott Lilienfeld, write that one limitation of brain imaging is that researchers can’t make a neat map of the brain centers for different activities like phrenologists once did. Even if most people process language expression in one particular area, this processing is highly dependent on connections to other brain activities. The brain is also plastic, so if the usual area for speech is damaged, other areas in the brain may reorganize and take over the function.---

  Heads up, you can be of sound mind and still believe in spirits. That was another take away from the psychology today article:

  The mediums ranged from 15 to 47 years of automatic writing experience, performing up to 18 psychographies per month. All were right-handed, in good mental health, and not currently using any psychiatric drugs. All reported that during the study they were able to reach their usual trance-like state during the psychography task and were in their regular state of consciousness during the control task.
  
  
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  84

  Spirit Channeling at Wallkill's Bethel

  by Marie33 in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  look what an ex-bethelite has to say about the spirit channeling he saw first hand up at wallkill:.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfmqnzbyrko.

  now i believe rayven's story of horror at brooklyn bethel:.

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  Knowsnothing

  How, exactly, does an immaterial spirit interact with a brain and body of matter?

  What force or causal influence does it exert, and by what mechanism?

  Wish I knew deegee. What I can tell you is that spirits are real, from personal experience.
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  84

  Spirit Channeling at Wallkill's Bethel

  by Marie33 in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  look what an ex-bethelite has to say about the spirit channeling he saw first hand up at wallkill:.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfmqnzbyrko.

  now i believe rayven's story of horror at brooklyn bethel:.

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  Knowsnothing

  Cold Steel, here is the gist of it.

  The guy in the video, Marcus, said he lived in Wallkill Bethel. He's talking about an allegation that in the Brooklyn Bethel tunnels, some brothers and sisters were channeling spirits.

  In the Bethel family Watchtower study, he personally met a young man scribbling and drawing things in a notebook. Marcus, considering himself a spiritual man rebuked the scribbling fellow. The fellow gives him The following scripture:

  Jacob 28:10-19

  They meet up after, and the scribbling fellow invited him to his house. There Marcus meets scribbling fellow along with fellow's brother and sister-in-law. Fellow explains he's been channeling spirits for a while (using the text as justification). Also used Saul channeling through the witch of Endorsement as an excuse. Fellow also explains Russell did just that, he channeled spirits that told him to study the pyramid. He also goes on to say the Bible students that broke off still use Russell's Studies in the Scriptures. Marcus freaks out, fellow gives him 4 notebooks full of writings. Marcus says he's still got them but has never peered into them.

  It's a little bit hard having the patience to sit through it, but it was worth it. BTW, from personal experience, channeling is very real. Don't try it. You'll open a bad gateway. Go only to Christ.
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  5

  Faith healing?

  by Knowsnothing in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i haven't been on for quite some time, but i was wondering if you could dispel this for me.

  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a5nd2x8erz0.

  there's also video of him in which a woman claims to have been visually impaired and was healed.

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  Knowsnothing

  I haven't been on for quite some time, but I was wondering if you could dispel this for me.

  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A5Nd2x8eRz0
  

  There's also video of him in which a woman claims to have been visually impaired and was healed.

  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vJE4lV19dXY

  Now, have any of you had experiences with faith healers? Does anybody have any additional info on this guy? I'm genuinely curious.
  
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  87

  Evolution Gap - Where's the Fur?

  by shadow in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  evolution paints human ancestors covered with fur.

  fur has several benefits as stated by britannica "the pelts of fur-bearing animals are called true furs when they consist of two elements: a dense undercoat, called ground hair, and longer hairs, extending beyond that layer, called guard hair.

  the principal function of ground hair is to maintain the animal’s body temperature; that of guard hair is to protect the underlying fur and skin and to shed rain or snow.".

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  Knowsnothing

  Shadow, the same argument would apply to special creation. Why didn't Jehovah create us with fur if it offers us advantages?

  And if God did design us why didn't he, for example, design us with the ability to produce vitamin c?
  
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  2596

  The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

  by cofty in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

  we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

  they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

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  Knowsnothing

  Christians also believe in the spiritual realm which was also created as well. In this 'nature', there is no suffering, yet there is still choice. Satan rebeled and would be cast from God's presence, but there is no inherent suffering in that realm. So why would god even create this physical realm, full of suffering and 'natural evil'?

  Thanks for this thread cofty, great stuff!
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  89

  Boeing 747s and Other Misunderstandings about Evolution

  by cofty in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  perhaps the most common misunderstanding that prevents people from grasping evolution is complexity.. we see it almost daily on the forum where people mention dna or the eye or any of a multititude of examples and ask how it could have arose "by blind chance"?.

  whenever you see a reference to chance and complexity it is obvious the person hasn't yet grasped the basics of the theory.

  chance is only one part of the process.

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  Knowsnothing

  To add to this great thread, here is the Lenski experiment (with the accompaning creationist fiasco), and how it's going so far. Here is another article on how it's going so far.

  I just want to thank cofty for his patience on teaching this subject. It is difficult and unbelievable to grasp at first, but if you are really thirsty for knowledge, you will keep searching and find the answers.

  As for the typewriter or computer analogy, perhaps there is a better illustration. I don't intend to say one, because of the limitations of analogies. All you have to remember is the accumulation of mutations that are sustained, sometimes because of fitness, sometimes random, always because of natural selection. The monkeys are typing away without any purpose in mind. The typewriter and the paper don't have a purpose either. But imagine this weird scenario. For the sake of comparing it to biological systems, imagine the paper gives 'birth' to a typewriter, and that the mutation that the paper first gained is now passed along to the typewriter, so that a key originally had is replaced with the 'mutation'. This 'mutation' is but a replica of another key. As an example, imagine your very own keyboard with which you write to communicate on this forum. The next keyboard that is replicated has a mutation, and your 'r' key is now a 'w'. Your keyboard now has 2 w's, and the monkey is now more likely to hit that w that will help complete the phrase you are looking for (the outside, non-participant observer). While you are looking on the outside, even though you look for a desired outcome, the process is random, and repeats itself multiple times. The outside observer in this case is the scientist, observing the experiment and looking to see how such complexity could have come about. The monkeys type away, the keyboards press upon the papers, the papers then 'spawn' the mutated keyboards which the monkeys type away at, again and again, some accumulating the mutation you, the non-participant observer, are looking for. Some generations of paper accumulate the mutations you are looking for, others do not. In fact, some harmful mutations prevent the keyboards from typing at all, and so all the accumulation of mutations for that particular keyboard end with that keyboard.

  Tying it in with the Lenski experiment, which I highly recommend you read about, as it introduces novel complexity through beneficial mutation accumulation, and once and for all trumps the 'irreducible complexity' argument, the keyboards finally are able to produce the sentence "Methinks it is like a weasel" on a paper. Many typewriters came and went, and so did many papers, but at the end, this particular 'strain' of keyboard/paper accumulated what was once thought irreducibly complex. They key (pun intended) is that each successive generation successful of reproduction passed on this beneficial mutation, and then the other one added another beneficial mutation, culminating in the final product.

  I could go on, but see how the analogy start to break down after a certain point? Even so, just because the analogies fail to grasp the total reality, they get us a little bit closer to understanding this seemingly complex process, to the point where you can see that, indeed, the accumulation of mutations. The important thing to understand is this is real life. Lenski mapped this process out from beggining to end. The e. coli bacteria had no way of metabolizing citrate before these mutations accumulated in its DNA. Then, all the right 'ingredients' came to together in one generation and, wham! The bacteria population that was now able to feed on citrate, on top of on meager doses of glucose, blew up to enormous proportions, compared to other strains only feeding on glucose. This bacteria had a selective advantage in now have two sources of energy with which it could continue to survive on and reproduce. These genes were passed on, and here is an experiment showing evolution before our very eyes, much to the chagrin of stubborn creationists.

  Mutations don't immediately produce Boeing 747's, but they eventually produce all the novel complexity and diversity we see in the natural world.
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  50

  How Jehovah's Witnesses benefit those humble enough to study the Bible with them.

  by Stand for Pure Worship in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  excellent material can be found within the reasoning book, page 328, para.2, 3. occasionally, i see posters make presumptuous comments like, "all you need is the bible", or, "i'm born-again, so there's no need for spiritual assistance from another christian", or,"i'm saved", or my favorite, "jesus talks to me directly.

  " on one hand, i can't be overly critical of such ones because they do attempt to read and understand the bible on their own.

  (acts 17:11) not to mention they're generally peaceable folks, just self-misguided when erroneously believing that they can go it alone.

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  Knowsnothing

  SFPW, you come here and proselytize, not really giving weight to other's commentaries. I don't think you are being fair. Care to engage in discussion, or are you only interested in your side and version of things?

  For example, you said:

  Apparently, when they were exposed to the teachings taken directly from the Bible as discussed with Scriptural supplements in the form of books like, What Does the Bible Really Teach, or brochures such as, Who Are Doing Jehovah's Will Today?, or the tract being featured in a current campaign, Can the Dead Really Live Again?, they realized that some if not all of their major beliefs were false. Thankfully, they were humble enough to accept truth according to the Scriptures and adapt their mindset.

  What is the truth according to the Scriptures?