Posts by JonathanH

46

God: the central question

by ixthis in

of all the issues affecting every person's picture of reality, nothing is more fundamental than questions about god.. is there one god, creator and sovereign of all?could there be more than one god?

or no god at all?if there is a god (or gods), then what is that god (or gods) like?nothing determines your worldview-and the course of your life-more than how you answer those questions.

yet some atheists like to make light of the god question.

JonathanH

God literally does not matter because a world with god is apparently identical to a world without god.

The universe appears to be a cold, deterministic, ammoral place. 99.99999999.....% of it is cold, lifeless, uninhabitable and desolate. The remaining tiny portion that has life, has life that depends on violence, disease, death, pain, and fear in order to exist on a small sphere that is constantly attempting to kill the things living on it. Theologians and philosophers have spent centuries trying to explain why god wants the universe to be like that. The atheists of society have for centuries said of course that's the way the universe looks, there is no purpose in it. A universe with god, apparently is identical to a universe without god.

Morality with god, is the same as morality without god. That is to say (as mentioned above) it seems to keep in lock step with the prejudices of society. During the slave era of the USA, the bible was used to both promote and denounce slavery. In Modern times the bible is used to both promote tolerance of homosexuality and condemn it. The bible gives permission to stone, and the command to forgive. As studies have shown, people believe that god wants whatever they want. God is a tool for justifying one's prejudices. And as other studies have shown, an individuals morals and concience are pliable based on social pressure. Without god morality would be set by society, with god people's view of the bible changes with society. Morality with a god looks exactly the same as morality without god.

So why does god matter? Because when you die, blah blah blah. It's a sad pascals wager, which doesn't work.

A more interesting question is "If there is a god, why does he work so hard to make us doubt it?" Now that is a topic for conversation.

17

Any new directions about Facebook at the summer conventions?

by awaken2004 in

jw
friends

just wondering because a few of my jw friends have "left the building".

i really hope so because i am totally regretting having a few fb pals.

hope more leave soon.

JonathanH

At this point trying to ban facebook is like trying to ban telephones. It's just part of modern technology, modern culture.

15

Awake! Watching the World: Noah's gonna need a bigger boat...

by unshackled in

this is from the august awake!

- watching the world:.

the amazon river basin is one of the.

JonathanH

Actually Book, they kind of backpedaled on that stance in their more recent "special magazines" on evolution. It's either "Was Life Created" or "What Is the Origin Of Life", I can't remember which one. But they state that the bible doesn't specifiy what a "kind" is, but we can be assured that whatever a kind is, that's what god created.

6

Is Jehovah a killer...like...O.J. Simpson...or Jeffery Dahmer?

by Joliette in

jw
friends

was just thinking about this, and just wondering...if jehovah doesnt do what he wants me to do, i'm gonna get oj'ed right?.

JonathanH

There is actually an interesting and well done Japanese drama about that subject. It's a detective story called "DeathNote", and it's essentially an allegory about god and justice.

It's about a japanese high school student with a strong sense of justice who finds the notebook of a grim reaper laying on the ground. All he has to do is write a name in it while thinking of a person's face and that person dies of either a heart attack, or whatever cause you write in the book. The student realizing what he has decides that he will make the world a better place by killing rapists, murderers, and the most disgusting elements of human society. He thinks it's a perfect crime because nobody will know he's doing it, the DeathNote leaves no traces, no evidence. But a brilliant detective, who only goes by the moniker "L" and is never seen in public, begins to pick up on the possibility that this sudden rash of deaths of prison inmates, and society's dregs may be connected. What ensues is a fantastic and interesting game of cat and mouse between a serial killer (for justice) that leaves no traces or evidence and a detective who nobody knows by name or face try to track each other down without being found out themselves.

Essentially it's an allegory with lots of biblical symbolism, it deals with the inherent problems of a single individual entity being able to decide what is moral/immoral and having absolute power in meding out punishment, and the detective "L" essentially plays devils advocate insisting that man has the ability to decide for themself without morals being imposed on them. It's interesting because it isn't arguing whether or not such a being exists, but rather would we really want a being such as that interacting with humanity? And would that being be right to do so? When the student tells his plan of making the world a better place to the grim reaper, the reaper says with a chuckle "I guess if you do that, the only wicked person left on earth will be you". It becomes a complicated question as the student begins to have an impact on society and things like crime, war, dishonest business practices begin to melt away, but at what cost?

I recomend it, it's on Netflix instant watch and on DVD if anybody is interested.

111

FAITH, the biggest excuse for IGNORANCE.

by nicolaou in

when you claim that some impossible account from the bible is true are you doing so because of evidence and honest reasons or simply because you want it to be true?

if the evidence your claim is based upon ends up being proven false would you stop making the claim?.

if your claim is based only on wishful thinking then you are being dishonest with yourself.

JonathanH

@ 1975

If you want to go down the road of solipsism and epistimological nihilism (which is essentially to detonate the nuclear option of debate), and declare that believing that we exist is the same kind of belief as belief in invisible deities, then you are free to do so. But it is not a particularly pragmatic approach. Essentially to take it to ad absurdum the fact that I believe I exist means it is also perfectly rational to accept that there is a purple toad that lives in the center of the earth and controls world events (including weather). Both are faith based positions right? If you are willing to declare that the Yahweh is on the same grounds as my purple toad, and the probability of either is equal then sure.

111

FAITH, the biggest excuse for IGNORANCE.

by nicolaou in

when you claim that some impossible account from the bible is true are you doing so because of evidence and honest reasons or simply because you want it to be true?

if the evidence your claim is based upon ends up being proven false would you stop making the claim?.

if your claim is based only on wishful thinking then you are being dishonest with yourself.

JonathanH

sorry, I've been gone for a while. This conversation seems to have gone cold, but I didn't want to leave without a reply in case sacramento decides to check it at some point, I don't want him to think I ignored him.

I already answered all of your questions even if they haven't sunk in, or you refuse to accept them. Science would be unable to say anything about a deistic god, one that has no interaction with our universe, merely started it and then disappeared forever. A theistic god that affects the natural world, has specific desires, goals, and feelings would be fully within the realm of science as Elijah provides a hypothetical example of. If god was completely imperceptible to human senses then that would only mean we would not be able to describe what god is made of, it would not mean we could not say anything scientifically about his existence, or interactions with our universe. I already showed both an example from the bible, and a modern hypothetical example of how one could test for god's existence and which god it is. And I also described a working definition of what it is to be demonstrated. The existence of an entity that created the human race for a specific purpose that inspired or directed the writing of specific "holy" books, an entity possessing whatever capabilities that would befit it such as foreknowledge or the power to create worlds, life, and manipulate nature in incredibly advanced ways. An entity that you could point to and say "that's who the bible was talking about". That would be perfectly within the realm of science regardless of if said entity existed in our universe or some abstract "spirit" universe, as even Elijah attests to.

The real question you should be asking yourself isn't "can science detect god?" For it certainly could if he were real. But rather "Why does god insist on hiding from mankind? Why did he create and set up a system that would look exactly the same if he existed or not?"

15

Awake! Watching the World: Noah's gonna need a bigger boat...

by unshackled in

this is from the august awake!

- watching the world:.

the amazon river basin is one of the.

JonathanH

The problem with saying that noah only took "kinds" onto the ark is that there is no actual definition of what a kind is. That's not just a witness problem, biblical literalists in general have not been able to come up with a consistent definition of "kind". At what point does it cease to be variation within a kind and become evolution? Is it at the level of Family, or Order? Couldn't be genus (way to many genera), and once you start getting to things like class on the taxonomic scale it simply becomes meaningless. Noah brough two mammals on the ark and then variation produced every mammal in 4000 years? No that certainly doesn't work.

And furthermore what defines a kind genetically? What is the dog part of the dog gene that is unchangeable and defines it as the "dog kind"? If you wrote out the dog's genetic code could you circle the sections that make it a dog? That ever piece of genetic code outside of those are changeable by mutation and selection, but nothing in the circled areas can change or it's no longer a dog but something else? If you could, what would those genetic parts transcribe to physically that are so characteristic of a dog that it would cease to be a dog if it didn't have those traits? Furthermore what is the mechanism that prevents those genes from ever changing, whilst everything else is subject to mutation and selection?

There are no answers to those questions because the notions of special creation and noah's ark are absurd. That's just a tiny sampling of what is wrong with it biologically. I don't even mention the problems of massive genetic bottlenecks which would be detectable in all life (but are detectable in certain animals such as cheetah's that did recently undergo a genetic bottleneck), or the ecological problems of wiping out every ecosystem and then it being perfectly rebuilt by letting everything off the boat on Mt Ararat, or the lack of evidence that Mt Ararat has a vastly higher than average biological diversity that you would expect from it being the locus of all life on earth. The fairy tale makes no sense at all and has no relation to reality.

3

CNN: Bible grossly mistranslated and the Chronicle Project

by truthseeker in

jw
friends

anyone have opinions on these articles?.

http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/doc-611844.

report .

JonathanH

I admit I know little to nothing on this topic, but I find the claims to be unlikely to dubious. Let me get this straight, they are claiming that people had been translating series of symbols into words, but in reality each symbol was a word unto itself? And what they thought were full words were in fact full sentences? If that was the case then ancient hebrew was not mistranslated by scholars, it was made up entirely by scholars. I must not be understanding it right, because that notion seems completely insane.

111

FAITH, the biggest excuse for IGNORANCE.

by nicolaou in

when you claim that some impossible account from the bible is true are you doing so because of evidence and honest reasons or simply because you want it to be true?

if the evidence your claim is based upon ends up being proven false would you stop making the claim?.

if your claim is based only on wishful thinking then you are being dishonest with yourself.

JonathanH

5 minutes before bed. Just a quick note on "circle of the earth."

The ancient babylonians and egyptions thought this was the earth (They are ancient maps, the bottom is a translated replica of an ancient egyptian map).

Notice, They are circles. Because they believed the earth was a flat circle. So you have the hypothesis that the hebrews were inspired to innaccurately, but sort of close to right describe the true shape of the earth, imperfectly calling it a circle rather than a ball. Or that the neighboring cultures had a degree of information exchange through war and slavery that the hebrews would share their concept of a flat circular earth. Which is the more sensible explanation?

Also, on the "innocent until proven guilty", it is completely irrellevant if it doesn't always work in an imperfect court system. In a debate of reason you do not assume something is true until it is disproven for the reasons already discussed. The a priori assumption of something being true before it is demonstrated such, and then demanding that it is to be assumed true until shown it is not, is a big logical no no.

4

from a Yahoo e-mail group Proof positive and logical to boot that Jehovah is the top dog (er) god

by therevealer in

under the heading of "where did god come from".

a brother once said something profound to me about this subject.. .

he said: if someone created god, who?

JonathanH

Do not assume the existence of more entities than necessary, which is occam's razor (though it's usually translated as "the simplest explanation is the most likely to be true" or more accurately "the most parsimonious answer is likely to be the most correct").

Infinite regress by that standard would be the most insane answer possible. But saying the buck stops somewhere is also less likely to be true because it is still assuming too many entities to start things off. If one must assign a special property to something like "eternal" then why not just say the universe always existed in some format (that is to say not static for obvious reasons) and cut out all extra entities? The universe always existing is a simpler answer than an extra entity always existing and then creating another entity, which then creates the universe, and is simpler still than an entity always existed and then created the universe. Cut out the fat and you are more likely to be correct.