Posts by cognisonance

47

I'm at a loss at how to get thru to my parents. I fear they will die before they will stop shunning me.

by cognisonance in

all i want is this: for us to be a family, to spend time together enjoying life.

i don't wish to debate about their beliefs when together.

they can remain jws for all i care.

cognisonance

Thanks for all the comments everyone. As regards loving myself, I have taken care of that part. I have lots of friends now. Just the other day I drove through an area that I haven't lived in for over 7 years. I then reflected on my life back then and thought, my god I was depressed back then. Then I though, hmm... I didn't think of my self as being depressed when I lived here. While not quite the best articulation of thought, depression is the term I keep coming back to. While in the cult, I never felt happy. I had the guilt of never feeling like I was doing enough, guilt of being content with my life as is (not wanting to reach out more, something my ex always wanted to do), etc.

Now I have intellectual freedom and the lack of guilt. I can explore evolutionary biology to my hearts desire and it's so gratifying to me. Returning to university is a dream that I am now living. Life is wonderful. I say I was depressed when I was in the cult because I can compare how I feel now to how I felt then. I can compare what life is like on the outside.

I feel like Andy Dufresne free and enjoying life on the beach reflecting on my life and how much better it is compared to the Shawshank prison. Life is indeed good for me. I am so happy to be where I am today. Like Andy, I just hope to see my friend Red show up one day.

30

JW.org does partial U-turn over Awake! magazine Rama Singh misquote

by Watchtower-Free in

posted on april 19, 2015http://jwsurvey.org/cedars-blog/jw-org-does-partial-u-turn-over-awake-magazine-rama-singh-misquote

jw.org has removed their misquote of rama singh from digital versions of awake!

magazine.

cognisonance

The latest email on the EvolDir mailing list:

Jehovah's Witnesses Respond

Dear EvolDir,

In response to my letter (EvolDir, January 17, 2015) about the
misquotation of my work on evolution by Jehovah's Witnesses (JWs) in their
magazine Awake!, making me appear as if I support creationist view of
the origin of life, Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania,
the corporation that runs the magazine, has written to inform me that
they have removed the quote from the magazine as it appears on their
website and that the quote will not appear in copies of the magazine
that might be printed in the future.

After my letter appeared on EvolDir I received a large number of
enquiries from ex-Jehovah's Witnesses alerting me about the misquotation.
Ex-JWs have made use of my letter on their websites and internet talk
shows to rebut JWs' stand on creation vs. evolution.

Rama Singh

30

JW.org does partial U-turn over Awake! magazine Rama Singh misquote

by Watchtower-Free in

posted on april 19, 2015http://jwsurvey.org/cedars-blog/jw-org-does-partial-u-turn-over-awake-magazine-rama-singh-misquote

jw.org has removed their misquote of rama singh from digital versions of awake!

magazine.

cognisonance

In addition to the signed letter on the previous page, here is a link to the old version with the out of context quote:

http://www.jwnationwide.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/g_E_2015011.pdf

30

JW.org does partial U-turn over Awake! magazine Rama Singh misquote

by Watchtower-Free in

posted on april 19, 2015http://jwsurvey.org/cedars-blog/jw-org-does-partial-u-turn-over-awake-magazine-rama-singh-misquote

jw.org has removed their misquote of rama singh from digital versions of awake!

magazine.

cognisonance

Here is a signed copy of the letter:

36

Devouring the Forbidden Fruit - Higher Education

by cappytan in

jw
friends

well, i told my wife over the weekend i was going to go back school to finish my degree.

she is 100% supportive of it!

apparently she doesn't think higher education is so evil either.. since my former major was computer programming and that was in the late 1990's, i was told i'd have to retake a bunch of classes since times have changed.

cognisonance

Cappytan,

I too have found biology fascinating, specifically evolutionary biology. My purpose in part for going back is for learning more about the intersection of computer science and biology (plus statistics and mathematics): Bioinformatics.

You might find you are able to learn about biology and use your programming skills. It seems about half of those entering Bioinformatics are biologists, and the other half computer scientists.

82

Awake January 2015: How did life begin? - More misquotes

by Designer Stubble in

[quote]some might assume that a scientifically-minded person would pick evolution and that a religious person would pick creation.

but not always.. rama singh, professor of biology at canadas mcmaster university, says: the opposition to evolution goes beyond religious fundamentalism and includes a great many people from educated sections of the population.[/quote].

end-of-quote in awake.

cognisonance

I have a signed copy of Rama Singh's open letter if anyone needs to dispel doubts over the authenticity of this newsletter. It's just a print out of his receipt of the letter from the evoldir mailing list from which he originally submitted it to. He signed it for me. I didn't doubt he wrote the letter, but I suspect some JWs may question it. If anyone needs it just send me a message.

216

No One Should Be Made to Choose..LIES from July 09 Awake

by Hopscotch in

the following quote is taken from the article is it wrong to change your religion?

in the july 2009 awake p29:

no one should be forced to worship in a way that he finds unacceptable or be made to choose between his beliefs and his family.

cognisonance

Bumping for those new to this site.

Also, anyone have success with pointing this out to family members? Any accusations about quoting out of context (a valid concern since if out of context that poses a problem, something often complained about when it comes to the evolution vs. creation articles JWs publish). One might argue the context is written about the general public changing religions (among false religion to false religion, or false to true, but never true to false [or no religion]). Still, any such argument about out of context would only be an implied context, an unwritten meme amongst JWs. So saying it's out of context is a bit of a stretch. Also consider the article is written for the general public primarily and as such gives the impression JWs are open minded and reasonable (then bait and switch when one wants to leave...).

44

rama singh WHAT HE REALLY SAID, so you men can stop lying

by atheist_R_stupid in

"there have been repeated scientific challenges to the.

theory of evolution in the past, and the nonbelievers of evo-.

lution cite them as support for their case.

cognisonance

Atheist_R_stupid,

I believe you are the one being intellectually dishonest, as you are doing the same out of context quoting that JWs do. Here is the whole section you quote from. Please notice that the "challenges" to "darwinian evolution" are not challenges to the theory of evolutoion as a whole but rather just certain aspects, or the challenges were dropped as the evidence mounted. The Awake editors time and time again confuse any disagreement in science about evolution to look challenging scientists think evolution never happened, which as Singh said in his letter isn't even a minority of scientists that would think this.

Challenges to Darwinian evolution

There have been repeated scientific challenges to the theory of evolution in the past, and the nonbelievers of evolution cite them as support for their case. However, the scientific challenges to the theory of evolution were technical and of a very different kind.

The modern theory of evolution has enjoyed success by bringing together Mendelian genetics and Darwinian evolution; although the theory has faced many challenges from different corners, it has survived them all. These challenges have been of two kinds: those of scientific nature that question the adequacy of natural selection as sufficient explanation of change and those of general nature that question the truth of evolution on religious or other grounds.

Among the serious scientific challenges to the theory of evolution, the foremost has come from developmental biologists. Many developmental biologists felt Darwin’s natural selection theory was inadequate to explain the diversity of developmental complexity observed among organisms. Yet 150 years after Darwin, although our notions about the fine details of mutation, gene regulation, and selection mechanisms may have changed, no new forces of evolution have been added to the important forces of evolution, i.e., mutation and selection. Many developmental biologists rightly see the complexity of development less of a problem to the theory of evolution and more of a challenge to their field to explain it by natural selection (Bonner 1988).

Other similar but more technical challenges have come in the form of non-Darwinian evolution from molecular biologists (King and Jukes 1969), neutral evolution from molecular population geneticists (Kimura 1968), and from punctuated evolution or “evolution by burst” (Eldredge and Gould 1972; Gould 1977). As these challenges have broadened our horizons and have enriched Darwinian evolution, especially in terms of the ever-unfolding dynamics of mutational and genomic variation (Lynch 2007), these were not challenges to the theory itself but only to the details of the evolutionary mechanics, i.e., about role of selection and rate of change.

35

JAN 2015 Awake - Yet More Fallacies and Disingenuous Statements re Evolution/Creation

by konceptual99 in

so the new awake is up.. first question..... "how did life begin?.

how would you complete the following sentance?.

life is the result of..... a. evolution.

cognisonance

Another match for Gerard from his Undergrad alma mater:

Gerard D. Hertel ’65 writes that he is “teaching the Bible as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, getting to know my wife of 33 years, Bobbie, a little better, enjoying my four granddaughters, and teaching and doing research as an adjunct professor in the Department of Biology at West Chester [Pa.] University.” Retired after 35 years with the USDA Forest Service, Gerard works on African violet habitat descriptions and forest health monitoring.

7

The emptiness of science may explain the rise of fundamentalism...

by cognisonance in

neurophilosopher, thomas metzinger says in his book:.

the ego tunnel: thescience of the mind and the myth of the self.

the ego evolved as an instrument in social cognition, and one of its greatest functional advantages was that it allowed us to read the minds of other animals or conspecifics and then to deceive them.

cognisonance

The emptiness Metzinger is referring to is this as he goes on to say in the next paragraph:

Yes, the self-model made us intelligent, but it certainly is not an example of intelligent design. It is the seed of subjective suffering. If the process that created the biological Ego Machine had been initiated by a person, that person would have to be described as cruel, maybe even diabolic. We were never asked if we wanted to exist, and we will never be asked whether we want to die or whether we are ready to do so. In particular, we were never asked if we wanted to live with this combination of genes and this type of body. Finally, we were certainly never asked if we wanted to live with this kind of a brain including this specific type of conscious experience. It should be high time for rebellion. But everything we know points to a conclusion that is simple but hard to come to terms with: Evolution simply happened — foresightless, by chance, without goal. There is nobody to despise or rebel against — not even ourselves. And this is not some bizarre form of neurophilosophical nihilism but rather a point of intellectual honesty and great spiritual depth.

To a religious believer, especially a JW, the idea that we are here by chance, without goal, is empty. Of course meaning in life can come from within even if there is no inherent meaning in the universe.