Posts by A Ha

38

What novels have you been reading recently? Recommend any?

by LoveUniHateExams in

i've always been a bit of a reader - but only reading about topics i find interesting, e.g.

natural history, dinosaurs, etc.. recently i've started to select, buy and read novels.. this year i've bought and read frankenstein (mary shelly), dracula (bram stoker), the hound of the baskervilles (a. conan doyle), 'salem's lot (stephen king), jurassic park (michael crichton) and the firm (john grisham).. i have an inclination towards horrors and thrillers.. what fiction have you been reading?.

could you recommend anything?.

A Ha

Anything by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.

This. As a team or their solo novels, I gobble them all up. Aloysius Pendergast is the man.

Not in the genre mentioned by LUHE mentioned, but I read any- and everything written by Robin Hobb. She writes high fantasy, not Dungeons and Dragons type stuff. Her characters are pretty amazing, all the more so because they're pretty simple.

I recommend starting with Assassin's Apprentice. You'll either love it or hate it because of the way she tortures her main character. If you love it, you'll want to explore the other 12 or so books in her universe.

If I could cure cancer or guarantee a happy ending for Fitz and the Fool, I might have to flip a coin.

52

how can navigate if our desire is for absolute truth...

by Ruby456 in

jw
friends

or do we give in to social constructivism?

to relativity?

or is there a way to be real and then to say whats real that everyone agrees to?.

A Ha

Ruby, my thinking of cells, in regards to the modularity topic, was of them being the basic units of the larger whole. However, it is certainly feasible to look at cells as a larger whole, made up of cellular components, nucleus, organelles, membranes, etc. So in this sense I agree that the "modularity" can go both ways. So I stand corrected.

However, I don't think this has anything to do with your larger point--that of absolute truth. Scientists don't claim anything to be absolutely true. All truth (with only one or two exceptions) is provisional. Where scientists land in the metabolism vs replication vs it's-a-bad-question debate has nothing to do with absolutes.

30

Why is it so hurtful to be shunned? Why object to it?

by stuckinarut2 in

it seems like many feel hurt or saddened by the practice of shunning by witnesses.. yes, when ones who we were close to, perhaps family or ones we thought were close friends choose to follow the warped directions of the society, it may seem hurtful.. but really, our reaction is up to us.

the fact is, these ones have shown that in reality, their love for us was never real or genuine.

no, those relationships were superficial and lacking in substance.

A Ha

Everyone is saying that it's because we're social animals. This is not just a saying, and we can't overstate the importance of that. When talking about a topic like this, or morality, I usually say 'humans are intensely social animals.' Our identity in the group is immensely important to who we are and our overall well-being.

This is not something we can fix by saying "Get over it," or "Snap out of it."

Social isolation can be deadly

So many in the JW community suffer through this, and it's why we say it's far worse than just the WTS being meanies. It's abuse.

14

Caption Competition

by Tallon in

.

"my dear girl, there are some things that just aren't done, such as drinking dom perignon '53 above the temperature of 38 degrees fahrenheit.".

over to you ....

A Ha

"The water's cold! It's shrinkage!"

52

how can navigate if our desire is for absolute truth...

by Ruby456 in

jw
friends

or do we give in to social constructivism?

to relativity?

or is there a way to be real and then to say whats real that everyone agrees to?.

A Ha

Ruby-- not just religious groups - any boundary making exercise has the potential towards absolutism imo

Yes, I agree.

Dawkins is a biologist committed to studying how life originates from simple cells while in chemistry cells are an emergent property of modularity. so I guess in a sense chemistry questions some of the assumptions that biologists make because saying that cells are an emergent property questions the absoluteness of the boundaries that biologists adopt

But here I don't. For one thing, cells are things, they not properties. I have never read any biologist--or anybody--say cells (things) are emergent properties of modularity (a property of a larger system).

And biologists are scientists who acknowledge there are no absolutes. Even if cells are emergent (if they are, they're emergent of something more basic, like atoms), this is not even a tiny problem for biologists, who have absolutely no problem with the concept of emergence.

8

Looking at this video with Dr. Angel Fierro and I'm cringing.

by Island Man in

i'm cringing because the video is very empty in the way of presenting any credible evidence or logical reasoning for rejecting evolution in preference for creationism.

but it's not the only reason.the video wreaks of propagandistic manipulation.

first, angel gives very stereotypic reasons for why he accepted evolution in the past.

A Ha

Gotta love the "I didn't want to believe in God so I could do whatever I wanted," line. You never hear that from actual atheists, but apparently every "ex-atheist" in the world had that as their main motivation.

52

how can navigate if our desire is for absolute truth...

by Ruby456 in

jw
friends

or do we give in to social constructivism?

to relativity?

or is there a way to be real and then to say whats real that everyone agrees to?.

A Ha

Hiemere, I appreciate your overall theme--that believing we've found absolute truth, or that it's even possible to find it--likely isn't possible, but I do have a couple points of contention.

Why do Witnesses and some ex-Witnesses have this obsession with finding "the truth"? Nobody else has it.

I think there are many groups that have this obsession with finding absolute truth and think they've found it. You're describing pretty much every fundamentalist group in history. Groups like Westboro are outliers in how vocal and shamelessly offensive they are in proclaiming "the truth," not in thinking they've found it.

And to speak up for team atheist a bit... I know you weren't saying this, but I want to clarify that, while atheists can be vocal and strident, they don't claim to have found any absolute truth. In fact, I don't see any other group who are nearly as vocal in saying that knowledge is provisional.

I mean, if you were one who thought the religion of JWs was the truth, you don't have the best track record proving you can find and tell if you have "the truth" or not. "I was in a cult for several years and believed it was the truth, but now that I'm out, I'm a good judge of knowing what is true and not." I'm sorry, but how did you suddenly gain the capacity to judge such things objectively when you once failed at it so miserably?

This seems a pretty unfair ad hominem. Many (most) JWs were raised in their religion, and were never taught to think logically--in fact, were taught the opposite. This kind of mis-education from infancy can be extremely difficult to overcome. I think a case could be made that those who were able to overcome their brainwashing (and immense social pressures) actually show exceptional logical thinking abilities, since they had such a deep hole to climb out of.

52

how can navigate if our desire is for absolute truth...

by Ruby456 in

jw
friends

or do we give in to social constructivism?

to relativity?

or is there a way to be real and then to say whats real that everyone agrees to?.

A Ha

This for many is what it means for something to be alive. on the other hand a self organizing universe may not be considered to be viable proposition for engendering the start of life because this seems to suggest a sort of lifeless systems view without any method of passing on information.

Ugh. Who says a lifeless system can't pass on information? Varves in a mountain, tree rings, the light from distant stars... all carry information. If we get technical, black holes preserve information, and can even spit it back out (though I doubt we'd ever be able to interpret that information).

if we put both together - then can we say with absolute certainty that everything is mechanistic and deterministic - this doesn't seem very inviting either

We can't say this with "absolute certainty," but is has nothing to do with natural systems generating "information." There is almost nothing we can say with absolute certainty. It would be nice if we could, but I accept I could be living in The Matrix, then I do what any sane person would do--I chuckle and say i wish I'd thought of that movie--I'd be rich!--then I get on with life

54

where have the demons gone?

by aboveusonlysky in

jw
friends

does anybody remember some of the sensational demon stories jw's would tell back in the day?

i was a kid in the early 80's and i remember a few times hearing of people having real life encounters with demons.

for example, one sister claimed that before she became a jdub she would regularly talk to demons and they would even fix stuff like her washing machine!

A Ha

I have a demon story that I personally experienced. True story.

I was about 18 and I bought an electric typewriter. It was super fancy because it had a slot for a floppy disks, so it was almost like a computer! This was at the beginning of the PC revolution and they were still wildly expensive.

Anyway, I used it to type talks and stuff on it (and my original idea for a Star Trek book that I still think would have been awesome!) One night, when I was sound asleep, I was awakened by a loud clacking racket, like demons were throwing my TV around the room. I was too afraid even to open my eyes, because if I saw some red humanoid outline hovering over me, I don't know what I would have done. I don't even remember if I had the presence of mind to utter a coherent prayer. "Please, Jehovah, I'll stop making out with Sister Loose if you make this demon go away. Uh, in Jesus name. Amen." More likely I was just saying "Oh Jehovah, Oh Jehovah" over and over again.

So the demons left me alone pretty much by the time I was fully awake. The next morning I was surprisingly calm, I guess since the demons hadn't probed my nether regions or anything. I turned on my electric typewriter to work on my masterpiece, but when I flipped the switch, it turned it off. So I flipped it again to turn it on and it started this loud clacking racket as it centered the print head and all that stuff that modern printers do, except this was much louder.

The clock on my VCR (you kids don't know what those are... kind of like Blue Ray where you have to be very quick with the pause button if you want to catch the nip slip) was blinking. The power had gone out the night before, and when it came back on the typewriter started up.

54

where have the demons gone?

by aboveusonlysky in

jw
friends

does anybody remember some of the sensational demon stories jw's would tell back in the day?

i was a kid in the early 80's and i remember a few times hearing of people having real life encounters with demons.

for example, one sister claimed that before she became a jdub she would regularly talk to demons and they would even fix stuff like her washing machine!

A Ha

Yes, we were warned all the time against getting things at garage sales and thrift shops. I was told of someone who bought a piece of furniture at a garage sale which was home to some demons.* There were increasing supernatural events culminating in the dresser being in the basement raising a huge ruckus, going full Jumanji, when the faithful witness had the brilliant idea of writing "Jehovah" on paper plates and sailing them down the steps. That quieted those demons.

* Man, that would suck being a spirit creature; you're not tethered to a physical body, you should be able to go anywhere you want... down to the earth's core for a quick tan, soaring through the skies, zipping over to watch a star go supernova, then watch other stars being born.. but instead you're limited to living in a dresser.