i have had a couple of discussions about freewill lately but it seems as if i am talking to a brick wall.
here is my basic reasoning, perhaps you can point out what i am missing.. lets outline the 2 common assumptions normally associated with the debate concerning adam, god and freewill:.
2. god gave adam freewill to obey him or not to.
Gravedancer...as you may know I think both of the assumptions are false. The contemporary explanation of the Christian God is flawed in that God is Almighty or Omnipotent and the second assumption that the theorectial Adam had free will. Even though I believe in neither entity (Adam or God) the principle of the test can be challenged in the legal and moral sense.
An interesting discussion idea GD: Can God Have Freewill?
Skipper
what's the big deal about woman not wearing a skirt at the hall?
.
it really pisses the elders off big time to walk in pants.. this is just one question on my endless list of wacky wt beliefs...
Have any of you ever noticed the general trend in Watowerodium that is progressively working its way to radical conservatism when it comes to sexual issues?
At the current rate, we can expect women to start wearing complete body covering except for eye slots because the elders won't be able to constrain themselves sexually and will become horribly excited when looking at exposed flesh of a woman. I once actually hear a Circuit overbeer talking about how exposing female flesh above the knee was a sure sign of moral intentions. In fact, once a female outsider walked into our hall wearing a miniskirt and a brother offered his jacket to her to cover herself up so that she would not cause all the men in the congregation to be thinking about having sex with her during the meeting.
Is it just my guess...or are there lots of self righetous Jimmy Swaggerts out there in J-dub land that are right at this moment drooling over their porn collection?
Skipper
theres a report in the mail on sunday that states "new study shows how organ patients can take on traits of donors".
it goes on to report on a scientific study were people who recieved organs from dead people took on traits they nether had before but were traits of the donor.. "the doctors say that one explaination is that memory and learning is not restricted to the brain, and that other cells in the body have the ability to store information-so called cellular memory".
some examples are woman with heart lung transpant develops cravings for food she previously didn't like but donor did, 29 year old woman goes from gay to stright after having heart of teenage girl , 47 year old woman develops a giggle the same as 14 year old she recieved heart from.. now i don't know whether there findings are valid or not but if true i wonder whether jw will go back to beleiving the heart is the center of your personnality.. anyway there could be another explaination for this.. maybe the stucture of our organs causes our body to need or desire different things.so the desire is not actually in the organ but the organs stucture puts different demands on the body for nutriants etc, which in turn effect the brain and you desires.
lol @ Erich when he said...
This my writing is basing on official state of scientific knowledge in neurophysiology. You can proof it by yourself, if you want. Study a book about neurophysiology carefully, and you'll have the proof.Well it just so happens to be that I have a business that deals with college textbooks and I can find no cases of neuron-based information being stored through out the body in any of the college level books on neuroanatomy or neuropsychology. Our nervous system is actually part of our brain and does extend through our body and does send information to our brain, but the extended neural network does not itself process information in any sense of the word that gives it capablity of "thinking". We do have reflexes but when you tap my knee sharply, there is not an exchange of information being processed between neurons deciding should I swing my leg or not today.
If you look further the topic is about organ transplants, not neural transplants anyway. Do you really believe the nonsense that different organs in your body have "personality?" Even the Watchtower reluctantly changed their stance years ago when faced with massive evidence that the heart could not think nor effect behvioral changes when transplanted in other bodies. Or did you see this new light? Maybe something was lost in the language translation here, but if you have knowledge of peer reviewed scientific studies with references that show organs hold information and which can cause personality changes due to transplantation from causes other than a patients own self delusion please post them. I would be delighted to see this break through in scientific thinking. I seriously doubt if you have such information though.
Skipper
i have had a couple of discussions about freewill lately but it seems as if i am talking to a brick wall.
here is my basic reasoning, perhaps you can point out what i am missing.. lets outline the 2 common assumptions normally associated with the debate concerning adam, god and freewill:.
2. god gave adam freewill to obey him or not to.
Omnipotent is the word you are looking for Gravedancer. Is Almighty God so ominipotent that he can create a rock so big he can't lift it?...that is a classical arguement that shows the problem of God being the Watchtower God. There are way too many things that God can't do when push comes to shove. I guess life isn't as soft for God as it might appear on the surface.
In any case, when someone is arguing with me about the idea of "free will" (on the Biblical side of things) I point out that the arguement has some very big holes in it as well and the whole concept of the "big test" is balderdash. What do I mean? Well for starters free will only occurs in relevant circumstances. For instance, you have free will to hold your breath right now, and that is a concious decision but you will find that the longer you hold it, the less ability you have to accomplish that. If we think that we are immune from outside influences on us affecting our will, it is self deception. We do things for a variety of reasons that range from emotional, logical, and genetic or instinct based precursors. If our neurotransmitter balances are slighlty off, our choices for our actions can be considerably different than otherwise. So, if God is going to test you, is it before or after you take your Prozac? Is it before or after you are all stressed out from having a bad day? Who we are and the choices we make, as per our free will, change over time. You and I are not the same people we were 5 years ago even. We have the mental illusion we are, but we are changing. Thus the choices I made 6 years ago are perhaps different than I would make now. Is a big mean and desperate God going to murder me for this?
Let us not also forget that the whole test fantasy has other holes big enough to drive a semi through. Is the test really fair? After all the so called angels that got bored with planet making detail and lighting suns and whatever else angels do with their free time, were supposedly smart enough to know the Big Guy was there and have clear evidence of it by just taking a trip to see the big cheese. Now us humans ain't got jack. We got the ramblings of ancient old mystics who couldn't tell the difference between an earthquake and God being pissed and worse yet, we got a bunch of modern senile old men who make their publishing empire based on these writings and sell them as gospel truth. Well I say this is one hell of a bum deal. We should at least get one miracle a week to even things out don't you think?
And don't you think for one tiny moment that if a God really was thinking about how to design the human brain and the consequences of his design that he wouldn't have thought through all the potential problems that would have come up because of the shoddy design (yes shoddy because the brain is very inefficent in its design) and NOT know something was going to go wrong? Give me a break! Even A.I. scientists (artifical intelligence) know much more than this. Should we expect anything less from a God? This God would have to be schizo not to realize all the things that could go wrong with the brain (of course the fundies want to think these are all cases of demon possession like Jesus and the apostles did) and so the whole test bit is just another WTS doctrine they dreamed up when they got bored with trying to predict Armaggedon.
Skipper (big tests are for dummies class)
the other day, i was messaged by a young jw guy (using yahoo messenger, where i am breezyone2001; chat me up, gang!).
his opening line to me was, "why are you attacking the witnesses?
" i responded by asking him in what way i was attacking the witnesses, and he said that he saw my name in a yahoo club for ex-jw's.
Hi Tom
I want to start off by saying that I appreciate your interesting story and you are just as welcome to the board as anyone holding different beliefs. As I got into this thread late also, I don’t want to rehash everything that was discussed between Larc and yourself but I thought I would make the few points for the benefit of all.
First, I’m and atheist’s atheist. Essentially I believe there is enough scientific and logical evidence to satisfy ME personally (not everyone) that the existence of the JW type God is impossible. This doesn’t exclude some definitions of what God could be in my understanding, but again I reject completely the JW ideology of what they believe God to be both in terms of a corporeal being and the said personality characteristics of such an presumed entity. I won’t go into the evidence here as to why I feel that way, I just wanted to let you know that some atheists do indeed feel this way and their choice is made by investigation and research.
I would also like to say that I’ve had extensive personal contact with literally several hundred atheists (at one time I was a supporting member of American Atheists and routinely attended meetings and rallies) and I wanted to tell you that YES, there are many reasons why people become atheistic and quite often it is not a studied decision, and can in fact be based completely on emotional or circumstantial events. There are certainly many people who become atheist or agnostic for reasons of logical inquiry and an honest search for understanding. Quite often in the online world you will see passionate debates between atheists and Christians, and of course here on the board as well. This doesn’t mean that everyone is as zealous or confrontational any more than the same being true for each Christian or members of other belief systems. I just mention this because you might end up getting in a flame war sometime online and it is easy to think that when you are up to your ass in alligators that everyone wants to get a bite out of you. Actually in person you will find a lot of these same people to be warm and fuzzy, extra friendly but sometimes online we all seem to play to win, and that gets carried to extremes sometimes and leaves a bad taste in everyone’s mouth.
I thought you did a really good job of presenting yourself as reasonable in your posts and trying to clarify things. I wish we could all do a better job of this.
In closing I would like to make one final point for the benefit of both Christians and Atheists on this board. It is easy to hijack a thread and turn it into a battleground, especially when some or all parties either perceive sarcastic hits or outright attacks. It becomes very personal then and often just resorts to name-calling and degenerates from there. I don’t think anyone benefits at that point, and in the heat of passion we can often make ourselves look like fools just by being suckered into a confrontational fight. I therefore suggest to everyone that if there is a big issue that you want to debate, devoid of the emotionalism and personal attacks, and to do so in a fun way…then start a debate and label it as so. To see an example of this, you might want to look at the thread: Do JW's Deserve Respect—The Debate in which this topic was done in a “court room” setting where both sides had to play fair. It shows that we can have diverse ideas presented without beating up on each other.
Kind Regards,
Skipper
theres a report in the mail on sunday that states "new study shows how organ patients can take on traits of donors".
it goes on to report on a scientific study were people who recieved organs from dead people took on traits they nether had before but were traits of the donor.. "the doctors say that one explaination is that memory and learning is not restricted to the brain, and that other cells in the body have the ability to store information-so called cellular memory".
some examples are woman with heart lung transpant develops cravings for food she previously didn't like but donor did, 29 year old woman goes from gay to stright after having heart of teenage girl , 47 year old woman develops a giggle the same as 14 year old she recieved heart from.. now i don't know whether there findings are valid or not but if true i wonder whether jw will go back to beleiving the heart is the center of your personnality.. anyway there could be another explaination for this.. maybe the stucture of our organs causes our body to need or desire different things.so the desire is not actually in the organ but the organs stucture puts different demands on the body for nutriants etc, which in turn effect the brain and you desires.
It doesn't surprise me to see this type of sensationalism raise its ugly head again. Many newspapers and other media sources don't either have the time or skills to actually judge the validity of studies and when you consider the tremendous amount of spin and propaganda that we are swimming neck deep in these days, well the next thing you know we will be hearing along these lines is that demonz inhabit transplanted body parts.
Even if such a story had some basis in fact, it wouldn't take much to see that people have such immense powers of self deception that they believe something to be true regardless of the facts. For example, if you look at documented investigations of people who claim to speak in tongues (foreign languages that they did not know) quite offen their language is nothing but jibberish or they on a few occassions have tapped into an old childhood memory of something they heard in another language that they didn't understand, and just repeated it. Kind of like a radio broadcast from the past with no relevant application or information to the present. Heck, some people are absolutely convinced they have been abducted and sexually experimented with by aliens and give great detail to their stories.
Just goes to show then that the emotional trauma of their situation (getting the surgery and transplant) could be playing huge tricks with their mind.
Skipper
P.S. I did not write this post. A transplanted right finger is responsible for all this content. I refuse to take responsiblity for giving you the finger. lol
i thought a discussion about personal ads would be fun.
i have dated many women by many different methods.
except i have never looked for women at a bar.
I switched from catching babes on the dance floor (I was a hot shot dance instructor in college) to using personal ads in the mid 1980's. I've had fantastic success with it. I've actually had 3 of the personal ads I wrote for myself win awards for creative writing (from the singles magazines I used to put them in) and of course I now just use the Internet. The most response I ever got from an ad was about 180 woman writing to me, and the most actual dates I got from one ad was somewhere around 14. I have had nearly all my social interactivity in recent years from personal ads and have successfully used them to start relationships.
I've found what really works incredibly well is a combination of clever humor, honesty, and fantasy. The really nice thing about using email, IM, and other chat in talking to someone before you meet them in person is to find out what type of person they are inside. When I date f2f without doing this, I have other objectives in mind besides that, and it takes longer that way because of the uh...pleasant distractions.
Skipper
is the anyone, anyone, out there who has managed to turn a jw into an ex-jw?
i know there are lots of people who wanna know what it is that you did that worked--any (and every) suggestion is helpful!!!
i'll try anything at this point!!!
I was planning on making a post in the future about using psychological techniques and behavioral modification for the objectives of helping someone get out of the Borg. Like others here, I have helped several people to reason their way through things, which may or may not have been a critical factor in their leaving. I have gotten email from people who told me it made a big difference but then really, for the most part they were already searching for information.
Is it really possible to get to someone who is not already looking? I think it is but it won't be easy at all to get them to leave for a "rational" basis when they don't have good truth telling tools of their own and they have so much to lose by questioning things. Perhaps it is far easier to get someone to begin questioning things because of opening an emotional door than a logical one.
I remember a JW woman who knocked on my door one day about 8 years ago and it just happened to be one of those days when I felt like pushing JW buttons, and right in the middle of her presentation I launched into the JW mental illness coverup that happened after 1975 came and went with no big bang. To my surprise she just stopped talking completely and just stood there for a minute and then she told me that she had been in a mental hospital during that time also getting treatment for severe depression and that the elders had tried to talk her out of it! She had put it down to her own weaknesses and always felt ashamed about it. I believe something happened because of that as two weeks later a elder came to my door and wanted to find out who I was (I never admitted to her I was an ex-dub) and how I knew so much about the JW's.
So, unless you are prepared to do full scale deprograming and have the opportunity to spend several days to really tunnel through dub defenses you are best just left planting seeds and assisting those who are already looking.
Kind Regards,
Skipper
it seems nothing gets the good people in here so upset as lies.
we all seem to be extra sensitive to lies and damned lies because of being victimized by one of the biggest lairs around, the wts.. but have you ever really tested yourself to find out if you are really snow white yourself?
you got the guts to find out?
Did you know that it is rather easy to beat a lie-detector test with about 5 min of training? I won't go into the methods here outside of saying that they are rather simple and very effective. I have absolutely no confidence in them being able to catch a skillful lair and if you are the nervous type person and in a place or situation that makes you even more nervous, you should never take the test.
There is a new technology out that is almost 100% effective in determining truthfulness and you never verbally answer any questions at all. It is based on recoginizing certain patterns of brain waves that always result in certain situations. It will make a huge difference in the criminal justice system and is now challenging court convictions.
I would love to see the GB take a few of these tests.
Skipper
just lately i seem to be encountering the occasional jw partaking of a bevvy or two in my local pub.
so, i was wondering, what would i do if a dub came in for a pint of lunch and then, after noticing me, activated his implanted shun-the-apostate chip?
actually, i know exactly what i would do, i would tell him to eff off and use a different pub.. so it was, that on tuesday night, around about 9.
Englishman....I'm damned proud of you Sir for not bending over and grabbing your ankles when confronted by a dub (an American way of saying you are about to get screwed). I say you did one hell of good job in verbal offense and cut right to the chase. This approach may not work on someone's dub grandma but it sure looks like it did some good here.
Kind Regards,
Skipper
