(i am still a serving elder.
i have no idea how much longer i can stomach it.
timing is terrible for stepping down right now, though.
In the meantime I'll read Ayn Rand novels in secret
You do realize that Ayn Rand's ideas, Objectivism, and the often intersecting romanticizing of free-markets share a lot of cult-like properties.
Instead of reading Ayn Rand, why don't you read the works of Noam Chomsky, who exposes the TTATT regarding other important topics that also have massive impacts on the lives of people.
For example here is one recent interview with him.
i thought about sending you a pm but it might make an interesting open discussion.
i've seen you express the lack of good pro-god ex-witnesses to engage with.
i don't know about ex-witnesses, but there are a few witnesses who've written on these issues.
Impressed isn't the word I'd use. I find his paper dizzying trying to read and follow. Weaving arguments together, no mater how elegant one might appear in doing so, if built on the same fundamental premises (the flood, C14 dating unreliable, in particular) becomes problematic if the premise is false or the arguments fallacious (kind of like how JWs argue about some much from a foundation of just a few incorrect premises). To discuss arguments made in this paper would require focusing on just one of them and not jumping around to all kinds of other arguments. It reminds me of this graphic:
i thought about sending you a pm but it might make an interesting open discussion.
i've seen you express the lack of good pro-god ex-witnesses to engage with.
i don't know about ex-witnesses, but there are a few witnesses who've written on these issues.
i thought about sending you a pm but it might make an interesting open discussion.
i've seen you express the lack of good pro-god ex-witnesses to engage with.
i don't know about ex-witnesses, but there are a few witnesses who've written on these issues.
slimboyfat,
I updated my previous post in the last 30 minutes. You might want to (re)read it. Also please at least check out the last link and the one about Motivated Reasoning.
i thought about sending you a pm but it might make an interesting open discussion.
i've seen you express the lack of good pro-god ex-witnesses to engage with.
i don't know about ex-witnesses, but there are a few witnesses who've written on these issues.
I read the abstract to the dating the flood pdf. I'll ask one question:
Why bother trying to date an event that has little (if any) evidence for its existence? If the evidence is the bible, well we have a circular problem (evidence for an event is the source claiming the event happened). For such an extraordinary claim, the existence of flood myth stories is nowhere near being extraordinary evidence (and is also subject to circular reasoning). Due to a faulty (or weak) premise (assuming a global flood was real), attacking C14 dating thus makes little sense without first establishing the claimed event actually happened. A much better approach would be to examine geological evidence to see if there is any that supports a global deluge.
Examining the evidence showing evolution happened and that no global flood existed was the key to me leaving the Jehovah's Witnesses. I read a lot of material on the topic of scientific dating, the flood, and evolution. The latter interested me more and I remember that topic more compared to a global flood, but I do have the general impression that the evidence for a global flood was severely underwhelming, nonexistent even. Of course the two topics are related and the evidence for evolution is so strong that it alone shows the idea of a global flood to be nonsense. For the relationship between the two I'd highly suggest reading the book Why Evolution is True, by Jerry Coyne (page 88-96 regarding biogeography in particular).
The JW's incompetence at research at best, or lies at worst, showed they could not be trusted. They argued about topics like a global flood and against Evolution from a perspective not of intellectual honesty, but one of Motivated Reasoning. Gertoux is doing the same thing.
I would suggest that instead of searching out material that confirms your own beliefs that you critically analyze the evidence for a global flood and evolution yourself. Beware of self-deception (or self-bias depending if you are pedantic academically). I talked about the problem here on this forum.
i googled my childhood best friend that i grew up with in the cult.
he's my age and has shunned me for the past 4 years despite my efforts to reach out to him.today, i noticed a listing online that states he is a director of his congregation.
i suppose only elders can fill this position (he wasn't an elder when i was a jw).
i googled my childhood best friend that i grew up with in the cult.
he's my age and has shunned me for the past 4 years despite my efforts to reach out to him.today, i noticed a listing online that states he is a director of his congregation.
i suppose only elders can fill this position (he wasn't an elder when i was a jw).
i sometimes look at articles still to see what my parents are learning and how that frames their view of me (former member, atheist, computational evolutionary researcher).. anyway for the proof using propositional logic:.
p = information.
q = attributed to intelligence and not mindless processes..
I would simply say that while it is true people often attribute information to intelligence when we are taking about archeological digs or possible messages from space, it isn't the case that people will always attribute information to intelligence in other situations, for example, snowflakes, tree rings, sand on the ocean floor, ice core samples, and so on. What is happening here is the Awake is making an hasty generalization, which simply is wrong (like so many other types of over generalizations [think about racism]). It's easy to disprove by simply providing a counter example[s].
i sometimes look at articles still to see what my parents are learning and how that frames their view of me (former member, atheist, computational evolutionary researcher).. anyway for the proof using propositional logic:.
p = information.
q = attributed to intelligence and not mindless processes..
Funny, since most of the "information" in DNA is apparently "junk", i.e. gibberish.
Most of my current research is on "junk dna." Science is showing that a great deal of the non-protein-coding sections of dna are highly conserved, such as sections that involve transposable elements (TEs). For example, about 20% of the junk dna in the mustard plant are TEs.
I bring this up because that assertion is not a good one to use in argumentation regarding creationist claims.
i sometimes look at articles still to see what my parents are learning and how that frames their view of me (former member, atheist, computational evolutionary researcher).. anyway for the proof using propositional logic:.
p = information.
q = attributed to intelligence and not mindless processes..
From 2015 Awake, bold for emphasis:
As is often the case, when scientists explain one mystery, they open a door to another. That was true regarding the discovery of DNA. When it was understood that DNA contains coded information, thoughtful people asked, ‘How did the information get there?’ Of course, no human observed the formation of the first DNA molecule. So we have to draw our own conclusions. Even so, these conclusions need not be speculative. Consider the following comparisons.
The point? People attribute information to intelligence, whether that information is in the form of symbols on clay or signals from space. They do not need to see the information being created to draw that conclusion. Yet, when the most sophisticated code known to man—the chemical code of life—was discovered, many shoved that logic aside, attributing DNA to mindless processes. Is that reasonable? Is it consistent? Is it scientific?
In 1999, fragments of very ancient pottery with unusual markings, or symbols, were found in Pakistan. The marks still remain undeciphered. Nevertheless, they are considered man-made.
A few years after Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA, two physicists proposed searching for coded radio signals from space. Thus began the modern-day search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
