Posts by shepherdless

60

The problem of sex (or why I'm not an atheist)

by EdenOne in

as i write this under the shadow of the walls of saint jorge's castle in lisbon, two very bored jws are standing just five metres away from me with a literature cart .... in my journey away from jwism i accepted evolution as a fact.

i also became anti-religion, agnostic and apatheist.

and, while i lean towards the persuasion of the atheist arguments, there are a few reasons that make it difficult for me to completely discard the notion of an intelligent origin of life.

shepherdless

Vidqun starts with:

Think of DNA as a manual of how to build a cell/organism.

then goes on:

The manual, as information, cannot arise by itself, from organic or inorganic matter. You need someone to write the manual and its applications.

and

The manual needs to be written (programmed) for that. The question is: Who wrote the manual?

Wikipedia says:

To beg a question means to assume the conclusion of an argument—a type of circular reasoning. This is an informal fallacy, in which an arguer includes the conclusion to be proven within a premise of the argument, often in an indirect way such that its presence within the premise is hidden or at least not easily apparent.

Thanks for the practical example, Vidqun.

12

Sunday Tv - Jehovah's Witnesses Paedophilia in Australia

by berrygerry in

if only someone had listened back then!.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy8b22hs9me.

shepherdless

The date 23 August 2002 appears early on in the video. The host of Sunday (Jim Waley) in that episode left the show in December 2002.

Hence it aired somewhere between late Aug and Dec 2002.

57

How do we know JWs are wrong and how do we convince others JWs are wrong: logic versus persuasion

by slimboyfat in

we like to think we are logical and have good reasons for for our beliefs.

no more so than when it comes to our reasons for rejecting the truth claims of jws.

we reject their version of history, such as the date of the fall of jerusalem, because it doesn't agree with the historical evidence.

shepherdless

I have to agree with SBF on this. In a nutshell:

SBF: JWs will often only be convinced JWs are wrong when such a conclusion aligns with their own interests.

People make decisions far more on emotional and other non-intellectual bases than they realize. They then create an intellectual justification, afterwards. I understand that this has been proven by experimentation many times. Eg, google "Festinger and Carlsmith experiment". It tends to happen at a subconscious level, so after a while people don't realize it, and just remember the intellectual justification.

If you look at advertising and marketing, it is overwhelmingly about hooking you in emotionally, rather than intellectually. The advertising industry wouldn't do that, if it didn't work. Another example: I was told once that the Catholic Church had a major problem with priests leaving the priesthood once their respective mothers die.

I suspect that for every individual that leaves the cult for entirely intellectual reasons, at least another 50 leave partly or wholly for other reasons (too inconvenient, too boring, too unpleasant, etc). They then quickly find the intellectual justification to stay away, and there is plenty of intellectual justification available to choose from.

Unfortunately what that also means is that it is a lot harder to wake up a cult member than some people seem to think.

30

Why A Divine Being is Possible

by looter in

jw
friends

now we all have heard how the universe is composed of matter and space.

and we always here of how it had a beginning.

but really what could have begun it?

shepherdless

Now we all have heard how the universe is composed of matter and space. And we always here of how it had a beginning. But really what could have begun it?

In the following lecture, Lawrence Krauss, a respected physicist and cosmologist, gives a detailed answer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YSqCtbz5mc

14

Ex JW Reddit numbers going crazy

by Crazyguy in

jw
friends

i don't know what the membership increase is like here but over at reddit their getting 20 plus newbies daily if not more.

it's crazy how much thier growing 2000 or more since i signed up and that wasn't that long ago.

looks like the loyalty conventions didn't stem the tide.

shepherdless

It looks like typically 2 or 3 sign up a day, judging from the last few days. However, I don't think you can compare, because that site is for a different genre (less interested in any lengthy debates), and seems to have a lot more young people.

Some don't seem to post anything. I first signed up to this site years ago, with a cool username, and never posted a thing. (Someone else here, uses that username, now). It took me a while to have the courage to post anything.

Perhaps large numbers are signing up because Flodin recently warned about apostate websites. It would be interesting to see if it continues at that rate, because if 20 people are signing up per day, that is 7200 per year. And if only 1 in 10 people who visit the site, sign up, that would indicate potentially 1% of publishers around the planet are checking these sites out, in any given year. I suspect Simon would know more about what is going on, how many "hits" etc.

13

New Dutch Assembly Hall Swifterbant - 17 September 2016

by darkspilver in

jw
friends

a new 2,500 seater assembly hall in the netherlands - which expands to 3,500 seats for the annual conventions - is being dedicated on saturday 17 september 2016.. the existing hall on the site is converted into a venue for the wt schools - lecture room with ancillary accomodation - bedrooms, kitchen, canteen, study areas etc etc.

background information:.

https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/261089/big-jw-changes-netherlands-holland.

shepherdless

From the earlier thread, it looks like this expansion was planned over 3 years ago. It seems to me the money worries have mainly been since, in the last 18 months or so. I suspect that they wouldn't make a decision to commence such a project, these days.

19

Are the Jehovah's Witnesses really false prophets, perhaps being mentally manipulated by the Watchtower Corporation ? ?

by Finkelstein in

there is a lot of public scrutiny going on these days about the jw religion particularly on the inter - net.

one of the posed questions which gets debated and discussed quite often, are the jws false prophets instigated to preach a tainted commercialized gospel under the direction of the executive leaders of the watchtower corporation ?

these focused men who are responsible for creating the core doctrines of this organization.

shepherdless

I agree wholeheartedly with your first post, Dunedain. That pretty much sums up how I see it. However, I think the demise of the Borg will be a long slow drawn out affair.

Most religions that have folded ran out of members, not money. (Christian Science may be a partial exception.) However, Watchtower has (by my rough reckoning) a much larger central bureaucracy to support than other religions, when taking the number of rank and file into account. So perhaps Watchtower will be the exception.

218

Debating With Evolution Deniers is Just Like This

by cofty in

arguing with those who reject scientific evidence can be like arguing about football; just as angry and passionate, but the goalposts keep moving, and one team doesn't exist.. read more here....

shepherdless

The George Wald quote is from a Scientific American article in 1954. I can't locate a free copy of the article on the internet, but there are at least 2 people who apparently have read it ans say the quote is out of context. Here is one:

http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/quote_wald.html

Vid - Scientist needs to decipher and isolate DNA and gene sequences with algorithms, meaning DNA was constructed by means of algorithms.

That is like saying "Scientists need microscopes to view bacteria, meaning bacteria are created with microscopes."

41

New study - JWs by far the least educated religious group in Canada, Australia and New Zealand

by slimboyfat in

the religion of the educated classes revisited: new religions, the nonreligious, and educational levels - james r. lewis .

the measure lewis uses to compare religious groups is what percentage of members of the respective religions have graduated from college.

the findings are similar to the results of the pew survey in the united states.

shepherdless

SBF - But it would be really interesting to know the gender breakdown for different ages. Are men more likely to leave than women in their teens and twenties? If so this would corroborate the often heard complaint that there are not enough young JW men for young JW women to find husbands.

Below is some data from the 2011 census, in %ages, rather than raw numbers. I hope it is self explanatory. General observations: the gender breakdown is not as extreme as some think, or as reported by Pew in USA, 2014. A part of the explanation is that there are slightly more women than men in the population overall, especially in the later years (women statistically live a bit longer). In order to give a true and sanguine perspective, I include the figures for the overall population as well.

I apologize for not producing nice pretty charts, and being brief. I have a JW family milling around, potentially looking over my shoulder at any moment, even as I write this.

13

“The Jesus-followers’ first 200 years”

by Doug Mason in

the archaeologist digs and then sifts through remnants from the past, assembling the discoveries into patterns so that stories of the past may be brought back to life.. with almost 850 direct quotations from 50 books, my study sifts remnants from the first 200 years of christianity and sorts them into patterns that may help others to assemble a vessel that can hold ideas, or to form a skeleton where muscle and flesh, heart and mind, may be applied.

a comprehensive contents listing is provided at the rear of this study.. my study, “the jesus-followers’ first 200 years” is available at:.

http://www.jwstudies.com/the_jesus-followers__first_200_years.pdf .

shepherdless

I had a read through, and found it very interesting. Well done Doug!

It encouraged me to look up a translation of the Gospel of Thomas. It seems to be just a series of "wise" sayings by Jesus, some of which are familiar, and some very wacky zany stuff. For example, this translation of verse 114:

(114) Simon Peter said to him, "Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life." Jesus said, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven."