Posts by shepherdless

40

What Religious Trajectory Are The JWs Following?

by millie210 in

i was reading another thread and the comments got me thinking.... https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/5656910430732288/pictures-tell-thousand-words.

comments such as oldskools: more like digital colonialism channeled through one of the weaker and less important institutions western society has to offer.. .

some have compared the orgs future path to the world wide church of gods.

shepherdless

millie210 - For me, I am seeing the Org looking more and more like a little baby Catholic Church.

No, I just can't see it that way. I tend to agree with David Jay. Perhaps the Roman Catholic church 100 years ago was more JW like in that it was stricter, more rule bound and more controlling, but comparing the 2 religions as they behave today is ridiculous.

Whilst there are many valid criticisms of the Roman Catholic church, they do allow an internal divergence of views on all sorts of issues, including theological issues, and tolerate upward feedback from it adherents. On the other hand, Watchtower tolerates no dissent (or even doubt) whatsoever. The views of the"rank and file" are plain not welcome. Also, contrary to the trash you might read in Washtowel, the pope does not have absolute authority, in the way the GB has.

I think the real question is whether Watchtower will become a more moderate religion. I think if history is any recent guide, the answer is no. If anything, they are getting worse, with their "bunker" and "shunning" videos.

Watchtower could have also secured its future with a bit of pragmatism. For example Seventh Day Adventists and the Exclusive Bretheren (both arguably nuttier religions than JWism) are doing okay because they have started and maintained profitable business.

I can't see Watchtower making a WCG type apology. That was an almost unique event in the history of religion.

I think that the most likely future for Watchtower is a parallel of Church of Christ, Scientist. By that I mean that the membership will start to decline as they get old and die off. There are already some stats showing the average JW age is increasing. Also, I note that when Church of Christ, Scientist had financial problems in the 1980's, the rate of membership decline increased. Hopefully there will be a parallel there, as well.

12

A philosophical question

by Coded Logic in

on the internet i keep bumping into people who are extremely insistent that our universe could be a simulation.

while i think it may, in the future, be possible to simulate a high fidelity universe - i don’t think we should confuse the ability to model a universe with the ability to actually build a universe.. .

for example, we can model weather patterns inside a computer.

shepherdless

I have not read such a thing. My thoughts are:

If the universe was a "simulation", then how can an individual in the universe say, "I think, therefore I am"? Put another way, if a simulated universe is able to have individuals who actually can say, "I think, therefore I am", then how does that differ from a real universe?

I can get the concept of the universe being created by some intelligent being setting the 4 fundamental forces of physics and watching the whole universe unpack from nothing (and there are serious problems with that). But to go one step further and say the universe does not even exist beyond a simulation created by a mathematical model, well surely that would be an explanation looking for a question to explain.

Sounds like some people out there have been playing too many computer games.

147

Challenge to Creationists

by cofty in

in response to the 37 threads in my evolution is a fact series - see bottom of op for links - perry posted a link to an article "44 reasons why evolution isn't true".. i offered him a challenge on the thread and by pm.

predictably he is totally ignoring it, so i am offering the challenge to any evolution-denier who thinks they have evidence to support their position.. please present one specific piece of evidence for creationism.. my task will be to refute it with evidence within 24 hours.. then i will present one piece of evidence for evolution and your challenge will be the same.. all posts must be as succinct as reasonably possible.

entirely in your own words, without copy-paste, videos or links.. please post your interest to take part and we will set it up before the first actual post in the exchange.

shepherdless

cantleave: The Earth is not a closed system so the 2nd Law is irrelevant

Spot on.

Prologs: May be I did misunderstand... Any system dead or alive, will grow in such a way to decrease entropy, and it will do that by favouring the increasing of shedding of excess heat, like an elephant growing bigger ears to have more air flowing over the veins carrying the evaporation - cooled blood. This growth of the right area is a build - in mechanism in nature, dead or alive. It is in the nature of things. or?

The article is not well written, and is confusing. I doubt the scientist wrote it himself; I suspect some journalist dumbed it down. A living thing in a closed system will eventually die, because of second law of thermodynamics. The article suggests abiogenesis could arise in an "open" system because, as every first year chemistry student knows, the second law of thermodynamics would not apply. It is not about a dissipation of excess heat, per se.

147

Challenge to Creationists

by cofty in

in response to the 37 threads in my evolution is a fact series - see bottom of op for links - perry posted a link to an article "44 reasons why evolution isn't true".. i offered him a challenge on the thread and by pm.

predictably he is totally ignoring it, so i am offering the challenge to any evolution-denier who thinks they have evidence to support their position.. please present one specific piece of evidence for creationism.. my task will be to refute it with evidence within 24 hours.. then i will present one piece of evidence for evolution and your challenge will be the same.. all posts must be as succinct as reasonably possible.

entirely in your own words, without copy-paste, videos or links.. please post your interest to take part and we will set it up before the first actual post in the exchange.

shepherdless

Sanchy: All the evidence needed.

Sanchy, the second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of a closed system increases with time. The girl in the photo, like every other living creature, eats and breathes.

It is fundamentally flawed to apply the second law of thermodynamics to a living thing or a collection of living things that have an external source of energy (ie that eat and breathe).

If you have a system that has an external source of energy, you have to apply the first law of thermodynamics; something creationists never mention.

147

Challenge to Creationists

by cofty in

in response to the 37 threads in my evolution is a fact series - see bottom of op for links - perry posted a link to an article "44 reasons why evolution isn't true".. i offered him a challenge on the thread and by pm.

predictably he is totally ignoring it, so i am offering the challenge to any evolution-denier who thinks they have evidence to support their position.. please present one specific piece of evidence for creationism.. my task will be to refute it with evidence within 24 hours.. then i will present one piece of evidence for evolution and your challenge will be the same.. all posts must be as succinct as reasonably possible.

entirely in your own words, without copy-paste, videos or links.. please post your interest to take part and we will set it up before the first actual post in the exchange.

shepherdless

Vidqun: Scientific method starts with the postulation of a theory or hypothesis. The process would include observation and accumulation of evidence. From these a theory or hypothesis could either be proved or rejected.

Actually, the scientific method starts with an observation, not a postulation. Step 2 is coming up with as many hypotheses as possible. Step 3 is the process of elimination hypotheses by testing and further observation, etc.

I mention that, because if you start with one "postulation", then you are vulnerable to carrying out an exercise in confirmation bias, not the scientific method, because (human nature being what it is) you tend to just gather the evidence in support of your postulation, and you ignore the rest.

On a separate note, perhaps the debate should be re-framed as evolution vs "intelligent design", rather than evolution v creation, to eliminate the abiogenesis red herring.

147

Challenge to Creationists

by cofty in

in response to the 37 threads in my evolution is a fact series - see bottom of op for links - perry posted a link to an article "44 reasons why evolution isn't true".. i offered him a challenge on the thread and by pm.

predictably he is totally ignoring it, so i am offering the challenge to any evolution-denier who thinks they have evidence to support their position.. please present one specific piece of evidence for creationism.. my task will be to refute it with evidence within 24 hours.. then i will present one piece of evidence for evolution and your challenge will be the same.. all posts must be as succinct as reasonably possible.

entirely in your own words, without copy-paste, videos or links.. please post your interest to take part and we will set it up before the first actual post in the exchange.

shepherdless

Cofty: Please post your interest to take part and we will set it up before the first actual post in the exchange.

I am certainly not a creationist, but I can think of an argument. Am I eligible to take up your challenge?

71

Confusing Opinions with Facts

by cofty in

in a discussion about the best flavour of ice cream everybody's opinion is equally valid.. in a discussion about the shape of the earth or the origin of species everybody's opinion is equally irrelevant.

only objective facts and evidence matter.. confusing these two categories is a common feature of conversations in this forum.

people deserve respect, errors do not..

shepherdless

Fisherman: small g( F sub g) is directly proportional to:

Yes, that makes it correct.

71

Confusing Opinions with Facts

by cofty in

in a discussion about the best flavour of ice cream everybody's opinion is equally valid.. in a discussion about the shape of the earth or the origin of species everybody's opinion is equally irrelevant.

only objective facts and evidence matter.. confusing these two categories is a common feature of conversations in this forum.

people deserve respect, errors do not..

shepherdless

Fisherman: The way we learned it though was : G= m1*m2/d squared (d being the distance between the centers of each object and G in Newtons, if I recall ancient history)

Your memory is close to correct. Your formula has an error, but there is more than one way of expressing it correctly, and I don't know which you were taught. G is the universal gravitational constant, 6.674×10−11 N · (m/kg)2. "d" and "r" mean the same thing in both equations.

I otherwise, on this rare occasion, agree with you.

71

Confusing Opinions with Facts

by cofty in

in a discussion about the best flavour of ice cream everybody's opinion is equally valid.. in a discussion about the shape of the earth or the origin of species everybody's opinion is equally irrelevant.

only objective facts and evidence matter.. confusing these two categories is a common feature of conversations in this forum.

people deserve respect, errors do not..

shepherdless

little Socrates: Calling evolution a fact is like calling the law/theory of gravity a fact.

In science, laws are essentially equations, and theories are explanations. There is both a law of gravity:

(Newton's law of universal gravitation),

and a theory of gravity, published by Albert Einstein in 1915.

I wonder whether little Socrates confuses "theory" with "hypothesis".

Using the word "fact" in its ordinary everyday meaning, both the law of gravity and the theory of gravity are facts, as they have both been demonstrated to be true by numerous observations.

little Socrates: if you really get to questioning an honest physicist they will tell you they have no idea actually what gravity is or how it works

Not quite. Gravity is the only remaining one of the 4 fundamental forces that has yet to be explained by the principles of quantum mechanics. This is essentially because, in simple terms, it is an incredibly complicated mathematical problem to solve. But thanks to Einstein we have known for a century pretty much what gravity is, and how it works.

One can argue back and forth forever about whether God or Jehovah exists, but one can't realistically argue whether evolution occurs. The evidence is overwhelming. Evolution is a "fact" within the ordinary meaning of the word. It why a disease becomes resistant to an antibiotic. It is why a bug becomes resistant to a pesticide. I haven't read half of Cofty's posts, but some of the ones I have read are compelling, and I have yet to see a sensible response to any of them.

50

How long before The Watchtower goes bankrupt and vanishes?

by VM44 in

how long before the watchtower goes bankrupt and goes away?.

does anyone know how the watchtower is doing financially?.

.

shepherdless

We know neither the day nor the hour, but eventually this evil cult will die.

My 2c worth: Up until recently, there seemed to be a steady stream of reports of kingdom halls and other buildings being sold off. Then a couple of months ago, Watchtower sold its Columbia Heights headquarters, for a few hundred million (Was it $300 million? I can't remember exact amount, now). Since that sale, I haven't seen a report of a Kingdom Hall being sold.

Perhaps after a year or two, Watchtower will have burnt through that pile of cash, and will start selling other assets again and making further cutbacks. That will be sign of the last days.