Posts by rather be in hades

11

I'll never settle for vanilla again

by jeremiah18:5-10 in

jw
friends

as he stood in the ice cream parlor, johnny waas perplexed, dismayed, and somewhat irritated.

all his life he had only had vanilla ice cream.

his parents had never bought anything else, in fact they usually made it themself.

Why are atheists so intent on scorning "believers"?

by Chariklo in

jw
friends

until recently, i had never encountered this word "believers" used as it is being used on this board, to describe pejoratively a group of people.

it's not clear to me whether they scorn all who have a faith of some sort.

do they include buddhists, hindus, followers of the baha'i faith, followers of the cargo cult, native americans along with christians, or is it just christians who are honoured with this epithet?.

rather be in hades

i speak for no one but myself and i'm sure i'd be somewhere close to the top of the list of "scornful nonbelievers" even though i'm not exactly a nonbeliever.

i wonder, have believers considered they can be extremely disrespectful to nonbelievers? frankly, i'd say we have believers on here who are every bit, if not more insulting than nonbelievers. to add insult to injury, it doesn't help that said beliefs are not based on something concrete that we can all agree to.

we have believers who come on here claiming they have the "one true path", believers who call agnostics cowards, and christians who have no problem insulting non-christians.

we also live in a world dominated by believers of all sorts. believers who legislate their beliefs into society's laws which violate so many civil rights.

there's the issue of same sex marriage, abortion, contraceptives, and science. there's the issues of women's education, women's sexual health (that really needs to be highlighted because the things coming out of the religious right aren't just insulting, but harmful to society as a whole) and women's education among a whole host of other issues i'm either not aware of, or too lazy to type.

i'd point to people like rick "frothy mix" santorum who deserves every bit of the backlash he gets, if not more. he's openly advocating the stripping of the civil rights of people he doesn't like because of his beliefs.

or michelle bachmann who is /was stealing from the state for her bs "pray the gay away" type business. beyond insulting if you ask me.

then there's the todd akins, taliban members throwing acid on the faces of girls trying to go to school, the pastor terry joneses/westboro baptist church types and cults that kill people by not allowing them to have blood transfussions.

does anyone expect for atheists/nonbelievers to not push back on that?

pointing out flaws in logic is not scornful. neither is having a debate.

turning the tables on insults based on extremely flawed logic is not being scornful.

that said, i do understand why some would feel that way.

this is the internet, so much communication is lost when we're all sitting at a computer screen
if you walk into a thread and get blindsided by someone eviscerating a part of your identity (right or wrong, logical/illogical, it really doesn't matter) emotionally we're going to get riled up or hurt.
i think it's "easier" mentally to fight fire with fire. i would think we can all agree it's a lot harder to remain calm than it is to pop off.
sometimes we all tend to make the mistake of lumping people together. this thread is an example. not all atheists scorn believers. not all believers are insulting to atheists, not all believers are afraid of science, etc. thankfully, it seems as though believers are slowly but surely taking their beliefs out of secular law. biden, for instance, on the issue of abortion, or the thread on here...i want to say it was christ alone, but not positive, mentioning christians in SUPPORT of gay marriage. i find that encouraging.
this is a board based on religion. we all are in the process of/already have managed to wash off the disgusting stench of a fundamentalist cult. tensions will run high on all sides. some will remain believers, some will eventually decide belief is not for them. in my opinion, and it's really only my opinion, either choice is perfectly fine so long as we:

don't screw ourselves of living life to the fullest as this might be the only life we have to live
and

we don't screw others out of living life to the fullest.
until we can reach that compromise, i can't see how there's not going to be push and pull between those two sides.

38

On the road to becoming a crazy cat person

by wha happened? in

ok, now that my household has been over-run by two kittens.

two kittens that have me running to the pet shop almost daily, i'm becoming a crazy cat person.

be prepared for a plethora of cat links.

rather be in hades

i want a cat. i miss having one. the first one i "had" (she was in the family first and i think she knew it) used to go hunting for mice, snakes and birds in the backyard to bring me. sometimes alive. very disgusting, but i still had to give her her cat food and pet her as a thanks.

fancy feast or bust! lol.

29

I didn't take your advice and this is the result...

by MsGrowingGirl20 in

jw
friends

recently i told you all that i wanted to e-mail two friends some of the things i was struggling with in an effort to help them wake up or at least for them to understand me...97% of you all told me that it was a bad idea.

i still decided to do it.

so i e-mailed her sincerely asking questions on five points---1) health care flip flops 2) false prophecies 3) mediatorship of jesus 4) un 5)1918.. she replied about 8 hours after.

rather be in hades

he just showed up unannounced?

that's not cultish at all...

sorry you have to go through all this. it's hard breaking dubbies out of their stupor. people will wake up only when their mind/body tells them that they need to. i don't think it's something you can really force on them.

it took a lot for us to get involved. either we're born in, or we experienced something big/bad enough in our lives that we reach out for something, anything, to comfort us. i've yet to hear about a jw who became a jw as an adult just because.

if it takes all of that to suck us in, it's going to take a lot to pull someone out

114

Atheism->Deism->Theism

by sabastious in

jw
friends

i have noticed that there is a lot of angst directed towards believers and non believers so i thought i would make a thread explaining how it all works from my own perspective.

the reality is that neither believers nor unbelievers are right or wrong, they simply are, if that makes sense.

to better understand the perspective ideologies i have constructed a map so to speak of how it all works.. the fact is that we are all products of our environment, we cannot escape this at first, but we can eventually, but first we have to accept that we were first a product of our environment.

rather be in hades

again, you're mixing the "science" of back then with the science of today.

two COMPLETELY different things.

the science back then mixed religion and philosophy

science today has nothing to do with either one of those.

this goes back to learning about science and why people say that. you are arguing about something that has nothing to do with science.

you literally don't understand it and that's why you think there is some sort of logical fallacy.

there are strict rules to science. there are strict boundaries between theory and law. there is, as was pointed out, a difference between science and business.

People hearing voices was early science. They tested them with critical thinking just like Science tests their data today, but the people hearing voices were subject to the same corruption that Science is and therefore what we have today is a decayed entity of Religion AND a decayed entity of Science. In reality they are exactly the same kind of thinking at different stages of human development. Attaching money to these frameworks just expedites their corruption.

114

Atheism->Deism->Theism

by sabastious in

jw
friends

i have noticed that there is a lot of angst directed towards believers and non believers so i thought i would make a thread explaining how it all works from my own perspective.

the reality is that neither believers nor unbelievers are right or wrong, they simply are, if that makes sense.

to better understand the perspective ideologies i have constructed a map so to speak of how it all works.. the fact is that we are all products of our environment, we cannot escape this at first, but we can eventually, but first we have to accept that we were first a product of our environment.

rather be in hades

this goes back to the whole learn about it thing. no one is defending science at all costs. it just is.

there's no, "well it feels good to me so it is", either it adds up or it doesn't.

look, we can believe anything we want to believe, but projecting all the problems of religion onto science in an effort to uphold religion is just wrong and holding scientific advancement back as a whole.

most of the people who don't believe in evolution don't believe in it because they know nothing about it.plain and simple. they haven't bothered to learn the chemistry, math, anthropology and biology behind the proofs.

to put it bluntly, proverbs 3:5 is bs. "do not lean upon your own understanding"

well that's wise advice for sheepherders a few thousand years ago.

nowadays, we can all learn and verify for OURSELVES every single thing that is published. if the results don't add up, then the author was obviously wrong.

all it takes is a little effort, if you don't want to bother, so be it, but that doesn't take away from the reality of the proofs and the reality that anyone can prove it for themselves.

the proofs in science are all around you, in every barnes and noble, library and college bookstore near you.

the proofs in religion are...?

THAT is the fundamental difference between religion and science.

114

Atheism->Deism->Theism

by sabastious in

jw
friends

i have noticed that there is a lot of angst directed towards believers and non believers so i thought i would make a thread explaining how it all works from my own perspective.

the reality is that neither believers nor unbelievers are right or wrong, they simply are, if that makes sense.

to better understand the perspective ideologies i have constructed a map so to speak of how it all works.. the fact is that we are all products of our environment, we cannot escape this at first, but we can eventually, but first we have to accept that we were first a product of our environment.

rather be in hades

yes really

there's a difference between published fact and published theory. this is a very important distinction. just because something is published doesn't make it fact.

on top of that, when someone publishes corrupted data and someone else tries to replicate the results of that data and fails, guess what happens...

the truth comes to the surface. as you showed, doctors were bribed, data was hidden, the truth came out despite all of that.

when the data is exposed, the truth is exposed. when data is uncovered, the truth is uncovered.

ultimately, this isn't like religion where you can make stuff up as you go along and call it fact. it's ironic to science called a fairytale when there's books like the bible that speaks of miracles

or talk about corruption in science when there's people like:

or

in science, as i've stated numerous times, everyone can replicate the experiments to verify for themselves. EVERYONE. everyone on this discussion forum included. in lab, you can actually extract dna (link so that anyone can extract dna with a blender, meat tenderizer and rbbing alcohol), you can actually verify what equilibrium is (anyone who has owned a pool and balanced the chemicals has done this), you can see how everything you read in the textbooks works in reality.

very far cry from religion.

"there's a god!"

"seer stones"

"governing body"

"the bible says"

"i am the pope"

ok...where's the proof? how can i verify for myself? so far, we still have no evidence for verifying anything miraculous any religion says.

science:

"evolution" - genetics, fossil records

"big bang" - cosmic background radiation, universal expansion, math

all of this stuff can be studied and understood by anyone and everyone. all it takes is effort.

so is there corruption? there's corruption in everything. thankfully, corruption in science gets weeded out when people perform the experiments and collect data to verify the theory. or that the drug is actually working. it's unfortunate that people die because of the greed in pharmaceuticals. that doesn't take away from the fact that the theories and postulates put forth were fabricated.

the math didn't lie.the data was hidden so as to "prove" something that was OBVIOUSLY not true, like the safety of the drug

now please, show us the data and empirical evidence so that we can verify for ourselves that:

people go to heaven or hell

or that there will be a ressurection

or that there are angels

or that there are other lifes, etc

114

Atheism->Deism->Theism

by sabastious in

jw
friends

i have noticed that there is a lot of angst directed towards believers and non believers so i thought i would make a thread explaining how it all works from my own perspective.

the reality is that neither believers nor unbelievers are right or wrong, they simply are, if that makes sense.

to better understand the perspective ideologies i have constructed a map so to speak of how it all works.. the fact is that we are all products of our environment, we cannot escape this at first, but we can eventually, but first we have to accept that we were first a product of our environment.

rather be in hades

The flaw in the scientific method is in it's peer review process.

no, in science, we have to publish data as well. everything in science is replicable before it becomes law.

you can do what rutherford did

you can do what watson and crick did

you can do what darwin and all these other great scientists did.

if you're results are not replicable, you get called out on it. eventually the truth comes out. it always does bc someone is going to use/need/attempt whatever it is you published as either the endpoint or as a step to their own endpoint.

this is the difference between law and theory. laws are replicable. anyone can prove them if they learn about them.

yes there is corruption, but unlike religion, in science it will be called out

you're forgetting that anyone can do this stuff and anyone can prove it. not just the people at the top. you'd be surprised at how this is applied in business.

pharmaceutical company wants to design a new drug for diabetes. they decide to base their active ingredient on compound a which they believe will communicate with the proper receptor. so in order to make compound a which previously couldn't be made cheaply enough to bring to market, they decide to try out newly published method b which produces compound a as a reaction byproduct.

after several attempts at replicating the results, the chemical engineers and the chemists come to the conclusion they're being bs'd.

this happens a lot. go to any pharmaceutical company in san diego and walk around the offices. they have a never ending stream of publications from the geisel library at ucsd going back and forth because they are using newly published techniques/chemical compounds in their own businesses. sometimes, the scientists even publish their own work if they have the extra time when they find new chemical compounds that formed as byproducts in their work.

it's REPLICABLE.

i think you need to rethink you're understanding of the scientific method and peer review. you need to start with the realization that people publish theories and they publish facts. there is a difference between the two.

61

Obamas vs Romneys

by InquiryMan in

just a funny poll from a european perspective:.

in a major norwegian newspaper 84 percent voted barack obama best in the 2nd presidential debate,.

at the same time there was a poll on which dress was the most flattering to their wives they were both in pink.. michelle got the exact same vote as her husband, 84 per cent were in favor of her dress.. .

rather be in hades

lol

cbo says they're wrong - "cbo is activist and partisan!"

liberals say they're wrong - "liberalism is a mental disorder!" (just the fact michael weiner is one of the most listened to talk show hosts says a LOT about that party)

ppl they always agree with says they're wrong - "he's off his rocker!"

at some point, don't you have to wonder?

114

Atheism->Deism->Theism

by sabastious in

jw
friends

i have noticed that there is a lot of angst directed towards believers and non believers so i thought i would make a thread explaining how it all works from my own perspective.

the reality is that neither believers nor unbelievers are right or wrong, they simply are, if that makes sense.

to better understand the perspective ideologies i have constructed a map so to speak of how it all works.. the fact is that we are all products of our environment, we cannot escape this at first, but we can eventually, but first we have to accept that we were first a product of our environment.

rather be in hades

Would that concept of sphere and flat change if we discovered and moved into 4th, 5th, 6th or more dimensions?

no. those other dimensions are simply extensions of the previous ones.

1st dimension is the number line, aka the x-axis

2nd dimension is the cartesian plane which is nothing more than two number lines. one going left and right (the x-axis) and another going up and down (the y-axis)

3rd dimension is a cartesian plane which is nothing more than three number lines. one going left and right (the x-axis), another another going up and down (the y-axis), and one going from front to back (the z-axis) or into and out of the screen.

in each of these dimensions the plot points or the collections build on each other, but remain what they are in their own dimension.

1st - you either have a point, a collection of scattered points, or a collection of connected points(the line)

2nd - the integral of the point from the first dimension is a line in the second and that line in the first becomes and area (squre, circle) in the second. this does not take away the fact that when you take the derivative and go back to the 1st dimension, you are once again left with a point or a line.

3rd - the area becomes a volume (cube, sphere, etc)