King Solomon

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Posts by King Solomon

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  39

  Epimenides paradox: "Epimenides The Cretan Says, "All Cretans are Liars"

  by frankiespeakin in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  thomas fowler (1869) states the paradox as follows: "epimenides the cretan says, 'that all the cretans are liars,' but epimenides is himself a cretan; therefore he is himself a liar.

  but if he be a liar, what he says is untrue, and consequently the cretans are veracious; but epimenides is a cretan, and therefore what he says is true; saying the cretans are liars, epimenides is himself a liar, and what he says is untrue.

  thus we may go on alternately proving that epimenides and the cretans are truthful and untruthful."[1].

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  King Solomon

  Leolaia, only the Cosmic Wibble Cat knows this secret and she is not saying.

  Has anyone suggested putting Wibble Cat in a box with a vial of toxic gas in it, and threatening to look inside? Trust me: she'll talk if she knows what's good for her....
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  697

  Why aren't you an Atheist?

  by Bloody Hotdogs! in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  long time lurker, first time poster.. .

  i'm an ms (accounts servant) in a large congregation in canada.

  over the last several years i've faught a hard-won battle to rid my mind of all religous and supernatural beleifs.

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  King Solomon

  NC said:

  It's like saying it takes a lot of faith to believe that fairies aren't real.

  And THAT, in a nutshell, says it all.

  King Solomon said

  Even if you know it's false hope?

  when do you think i would know if my hopes are false?

  That would depend on how willing you were to dig deeper into the available evidence that has led many people before you to conclude that.

  But change the wording slightly to make it a hypothetical: i.e., "even if you knew it was a false hope?"
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  697

  Why aren't you an Atheist?

  by Bloody Hotdogs! in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  long time lurker, first time poster.. .

  i'm an ms (accounts servant) in a large congregation in canada.

  over the last several years i've faught a hard-won battle to rid my mind of all religous and supernatural beleifs.

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  King Solomon

  Cofty said:

  When I say there is no god or that theists are deluded please assume an unwritten, "subject to the infinitely small possibility of the future discovery of evidence to the contrary"

  Yup.

  And the problem with that approach is the theist will interpret that admission of uncertainty as a sign of WEAKNESS, saying , "well you really don't KNOW with certainty that....." to contrast with THEIR certainty that THEY are correct.

  That's why I say that some prefer impossibilities offered with certainty, that realistic probables offered with an honest assessment of risk (however slight).

  That phenomenon is demonstrated in this impromptu "debate" between Eric Hovind (son of Ken Hovind) and YT athiest Thunderf00t which occurred at the Reason Rally. The video is long, and Eric makes you want to pull your hair out by asking such mind-numbingly argumentative traps, such as asking, "Is a chemical reaction TRUE?" Huh?

  Note early on how Eric just simply CANNOT wrap his head around the idea of "assumptions", where you HAVE to temporarily suspend knowing with any amount of certainty in order to proceed with a debate. Eric repeatedly chimes in with, "but you don't KNOW...." Well no spit, Sparlie: that's the whole POINT of assumptions.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9BfsHsVGNg

  I'm thinking many theists are confusing their assumptions with certainties, and hence cannot even comprehend that there ARE uncertainties which exist.

  Ironically, they thus criticize scientists for THEIR expressions of uncertainty, since rationalists start from accepting ideas only as assumptions (AKA hypotheses) in order to test them, and only allow knowledge into the sacred Holiest of Holies of their belief system AFTER they've shown themselves to warrant admission by offering utility either via better fitting the raw data (i.e. being a better model) and offering greater predictive value. And once in, there is no guarantee or certainty: they can be modified or kicked out if evidence to the contrary arises.

  There's got to be an analogy to the New System to be made, but, meh....
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  80

  RE: What did God accomplish with the flood?

  by bioflex in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  was just going through a few topics and this caught my attention, and since that thread looks pretty much dead i thought i would create a new one to add my thoughts .. so i would start by replying to as much criticisms as i can okay.

  @jam: .

  the purpose of the flood, because man grieved him to.

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  King Solomon

  Bioflex said:

  I think it was to rid the world of sinners and alien/anglic human hybrids AKA "Nephlim".

  Soooo, then why does the Bible clearly state that there were Nephelim both before and AFTER the Flood?

  So either God failed at eliminating the "loop-hole" that allowed for fallen angels to mate with mortals (offspring being Nephelims), or that's not why he flooded the Earth, and there was another reason.

  (and there was: there's no reason to create wild hypotheses about God's motives, if only you read the account carefully; God gives his reason for the Flood quite clearly in the Genesis account).
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  39

  Epimenides paradox: "Epimenides The Cretan Says, "All Cretans are Liars"

  by frankiespeakin in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  thomas fowler (1869) states the paradox as follows: "epimenides the cretan says, 'that all the cretans are liars,' but epimenides is himself a cretan; therefore he is himself a liar.

  but if he be a liar, what he says is untrue, and consequently the cretans are veracious; but epimenides is a cretan, and therefore what he says is true; saying the cretans are liars, epimenides is himself a liar, and what he says is untrue.

  thus we may go on alternately proving that epimenides and the cretans are truthful and untruthful."[1].

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  King Solomon

  I like to have a week of non stop nooky. Some instincts good alot of good feelings behind them.

  Funny you mention that, as I was in a library the other day and a middle-aged woman was seated a few tables over, and at first I thought she was talking to someone on a cell phone (she wasn't). She was laughing as if someone would tell her a joke, or reading the text in a book and making accomplanying gestures, changing to a foreign language, throwing scriptural references in, etc. At times she was laughing like a giddy teen-aged girl, at others, on the verge of tears as if the person said something she didn't like.

  It was interesting at first, but annoying when it went on and on (this WAS a library, and her behavior not conducive to study). She's somewhere else now, still trapped in that world. That would be the concern: a week may be fine, as long as you wouldn't have to worry about the risk of a flashback decades later at an inopportune time, or it devolving into a drug-induced psychosis.

  I prefer not to tamper with the balance of neurotransmitters, when it's a tenuous balancing act for so many.
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  39

  Epimenides paradox: "Epimenides The Cretan Says, "All Cretans are Liars"

  by frankiespeakin in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  thomas fowler (1869) states the paradox as follows: "epimenides the cretan says, 'that all the cretans are liars,' but epimenides is himself a cretan; therefore he is himself a liar.

  but if he be a liar, what he says is untrue, and consequently the cretans are veracious; but epimenides is a cretan, and therefore what he says is true; saying the cretans are liars, epimenides is himself a liar, and what he says is untrue.

  thus we may go on alternately proving that epimenides and the cretans are truthful and untruthful."[1].

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  King Solomon

  What is it with running around naked after a great find?

  Same thing supposedly happened with George Smith, and Epic of Gilgamesh:

  Then, in 1872, George Smith, a British Museum curator, realized that the tablet he was reading contained a Flood myth similar to the one he knew from the Bible. Smith, of course, had stumbled on what we now know as the dialogue between Gilgamesh and Utnapishtim. Although he knew nothing else of the Gilgamesh story (because nobody did), Smith was immediately so overwhelmed by this discovery that he laid the tablet down on the table, stripped off, and ran, seemingly half-naked, around the room, much to the astonishment of his fellow-scholars.

  Not sure how well-documented that account is, but it sounds an awful lot like someone was having fun saying Smith acted like the wild-animal Enkidu before he was domesticated by Shamat, in a process any newlywed wife understands: after a week of sex, she made him bathe, wear clothes (covered his nakedness), eat proper human food AND taught him to drink beer (something to keep in mind, fellas, when wifey complains about the drinking: blame it on Shamat).
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  697

  Why aren't you an Atheist?

  by Bloody Hotdogs! in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  long time lurker, first time poster.. .

  i'm an ms (accounts servant) in a large congregation in canada.

  over the last several years i've faught a hard-won battle to rid my mind of all religous and supernatural beleifs.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  King Solomon

  The thing that's overlooked about the scientific method is that science ALWAYS deals in probabilities/statistical analysis, with a basic understanding amongst scientists that we NEVER have absolutes when interacting with the physical world: NEVER. Thus science deals in the techniques of statistical analysis: confidence intervals, standard deviations (from the mean), significant figures, etc. Science uses certain agreed-upon standards to say, "this much would be enough to prove/show/indicate a correlation exists", where correlation is expressed as a percentile. You NEVER get 100%, when you're dealing with real-life physical matter.

  As hinted at earlier, "proof" is a term from mathematics, where you CAN show that a theorem makes "perfect" sense if it can be assembled in a sequential manner, with assumptions arranged in a logically-harmonious fashion in order to demonstrate some idea. THAT'S how mathematicians speak of when saying they can prove something, but it can never translate into physical reality without some minor tolerances of error, since it's an idea, a series of thoughts, only: it's a thought experiment, existing only on paper and in the mind.

  I said earlier that courts use different standards for what constitutes proof, depending on the alleged crime: reasonable person, beyond a reasonable doubt, beyond a preponderance of the evidence, etc. The differences are often subtle, and a matter of opinion: hence, different people hearing the same evidence will reach a different verdict. However, a lack of 100% airtight incontrovertible proof is always lacking, as you cannot rule out the rare "black swan" event as a possibility. Does this lack of certainty mean we let everyone who's accused of a crime go free, since there's a minute possibility that we MIGHT be wrong? Of course not....

  Ironic that some people shy away from stating, or are are paralyzed from claiming they're 'atheists', although they're 99.999% sure there is no Abrahamic God for many different reasons; so they cling onto a title of 'agnostic' out of concern for the 0.001% chance they MAY be wrong (and more likely for the fear of being seen as arrogant or being biased, as if biased is ALWAYS a negative).

  Like I said it before, it would literally take closed-head trauma/TBI, forgetting everything I've learned in science and being left a dribbling fool, in order to believe in God; that's how convinced I am.

  Fact is, though, I don't want others to take MY word for it: there are no shortcuts here, so YOU'VE got to do the homework, the reading, the thinking. That's half the fun! At least it was for ME: I've always been the one who likes to think for myself, vs being fed pre-digested ideas, where the thinking has been done for me...
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  29

  Why does the Society allow women to speak in the congregations?

  by Badfish in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i know this sounds sexist, but you know what?

  the bible is sexist.. in order to establish that birthdays cannot be celebrated, the society references two obscure passages that mentions someone getting killed at a birthday celebration.

  however, nowhere in the scriptures does it say that birthdays are wrong.. but then, when the bible is very clear about something such as this:.

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  King Solomon

  The OT said that intentionally having sex with a women during menstruation was a grave sin, deserving of being cut off from the Nation (that would be killed, death penalty). Nowadays, the JWs call it a "conscience matter"? REALLY? A sin that was on the par with idolatry and murder is NOW considered a "conscience matter"? And people die for blood transfusions, which isn't even eating blood?

  Goofy stuff, these JWs.
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  39

  Epimenides paradox: "Epimenides The Cretan Says, "All Cretans are Liars"

  by frankiespeakin in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  thomas fowler (1869) states the paradox as follows: "epimenides the cretan says, 'that all the cretans are liars,' but epimenides is himself a cretan; therefore he is himself a liar.

  but if he be a liar, what he says is untrue, and consequently the cretans are veracious; but epimenides is a cretan, and therefore what he says is true; saying the cretans are liars, epimenides is himself a liar, and what he says is untrue.

  thus we may go on alternately proving that epimenides and the cretans are truthful and untruthful."[1].

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  King Solomon

  I love the Monty Hall Paradox, a door-picking paradox (which is counter-intuitive):

  

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem

  And to play it:

  http://math.ucsd.edu/~crypto/Monty/monty.html
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  77

  Obama ignores subpoena in CA- he is in now default

  by moshe in

  1. social
  2. current

  u.s. district court.

  central district of california.

  southern division.

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  King Solomon

  Here's a status on her case, Moshe:

  United States District Judge Carter has dismissed a lawsuit brought by attorney Orly Taitz on her own behalf and on behalf of several other plaintiffs, including an incarcerated felon who has run for President in several states. The lawsuit contained three general claims: RICO conspiracy by Obama, federal officials, a judge and election officials in several states; voter registration irregularities relating to Ms. Taitz own campaign for Senate; and libel claims against many media organizations and figures.
  
  Judge Carter noted that the plaintiffs had originally filed their case in California state court, but subsequently attempted to bring the case in federal court under the federal removal procedure. After citing several deficiencies in the plaintiffs' pleadings and noting that the removal procedure is not available to plaintiffs under the relevant statute, the judge determined that he had no jurisdiction to hear the case and that he was bound by the Rules of Civil Procedure to dismiss it.
  
  On her website, Ms. Taitz did not mention the dismissal, but she did announce that she will be refiling the non-state-related claims in federal court and that she will seek a stay of the certification of the general election until her evidence can be presented.

  I'm loving the comments on Orly at http://www.thefogbow.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=8248&start=1125

  Here's one:

  Over the years, I have repeatedly said that Orly's legal skills compare unfavorably with insane pro se prisoners.
  
  I have also repeatedly said that I am not just saying this to insult Orly, but that I am in fact, deadly serious about this and am saying it because it is literally true. Insane pro se prisoners, as a class, are vastly more competent at litigation than Orly.
  
  I note that this is one point of empirical data that supports my theory.
  
  Orly Taitz is so phenomenally incompetent that she makes insane pro se prisoners scrawling handwritten complaints look like Clarence Darrow in comparison to her own incompetence and idiocy.

  Edit: And lest you think I am mocking pro se prisoners, even insane ones, by mentioning handwritten petitions, I will note that one of the greatest Supreme Court decisions, Gideon v. Wainwright, which established the right to counsel for indigent criminal defendants, was prompted by a handwritten habeas.
  
  I'm not comparing Orly to every prisoner, though. I'm comparing her to the idiots. She's way worse than the idiots.