A Ha

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Posts by A Ha

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  148

  There is science that prove God exists

  by HopeEverLasting in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  jehovahs witnesses think that just the bible is proof that god exists but they are wrong.

  there is another mode for how he exists.

  now we all know many scientists who are creationists now weren’t creationists until they examined the evidence for themselves.

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  A Ha

  HEL why do you say gravity and light must have been made. The only honest answer is you can't say that.
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  148

  There is science that prove God exists

  by HopeEverLasting in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  jehovahs witnesses think that just the bible is proof that god exists but they are wrong.

  there is another mode for how he exists.

  now we all know many scientists who are creationists now weren’t creationists until they examined the evidence for themselves.

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  A Ha

  if everything came from nothing, then what created the nothing? It's as old a question as the chicken and the egg.

  Well, it seems common sense that there is no need for "nothing" to be created, but the idea that "nothing isn't really nothing"*--at least to cosmologists--is gaining a lot of traction, so that wouldn't really answer your concern. But even if the question is valid for chickens and eggs doesn't mean it's valid for the universe as a whole.

  Why can't it come from nothing?: There is no logical or metaphysical reason that the Universe couldn't have come into existence, uncaused. It seems like it would need to, based on our experience of everyday things inside the universe, but that doesn't mean it's the case of the universe itself. The appearance of the universe could just be an uncaused event.

  Who says it isn't eternal?: Physicists are not at all convinced that the universe isn't eternal. (In fact, the most simple/best QM models are of an eternal universe, and it's what most cosmologists favor.)

  A common paper by a trio of physicists that is often misapplied by a particular apologist/debater concludes that the universe began to exist (and this is coupled with our common-sense notion that all things must begin to exist). But it doesn't really conclude that the universe began to exist, it basically assumes the universe began to exist. One of the two big assumptions of the paper is that the average expansion rate of the universe is greater than 0. If you make that assumption, than a beginning of the classical universe (the "Newtonian" universe we're all used to thinking about, not the Quantum Universe) must follow as a simple result of the math.

  But that doesn't mean the universe as a whole began to exist at the Big Bang. The Big Bang marks the expansion of the classical universe. This gets confusing, talking about the Quantum Universe vs the Classical Universe, but we have to keep in mind that Newtonian physics has severe limitations--especially at the high temp/gravity/energy state of the early universe. The Big Bang Model cannot touch the moment of the Big Bang or before it (if there was a before); that's when you need to explore QM.

  So, unfortunately, the answer to your question is "That's not a good question." It makes two big--and likely incorrect--assumptions that kind of push it toward a particular answer.

  Many physicists are talking now about the 'God particle,' subatomic anomalies that cannot be explained with current scientific models. They operate outside the known laws of physics and perhaps are doorways to other dimensions.

  "The God Particle" is the nickname given to the Higgs boson, a particle that gives all matter its mass. It was called that because it is extremely important to arriving at a complete model of reality, but it was very elusive. The Higgs boson was discovered in 2012.

  I think these "subatomic anomalies" you're talking about are fluctuations in vacuum energy, but they are explained by scientific models (however, they are unpredictable.) They don't operate outside the laws of physics and don't have anything to do with extra dimensions.

  They simply can't express that view publicly, as it would cause them to lose credibility in the scientific community.

  I know this is kind of a throwaway line, but it's a bit silly and rather offensive. If you're a good scientist, you'll have credibility. There are tons of scientists who are unabashed theists and it hasn't hurt their careers at all. This seems to me to be nothing more than propaganda started by theists to explain why most scientists (especially in the hard sciences) aren't believers. Kenneth Miller comes to mind as a scientist (biologist at Brown University) who is very vocal about his belief, and yet is very highly regarded as a biologist.

  * For a discussion of this, you can read A Universe From Nothing, by Lawrence Krauss, or look for his lectures by that name on YouTube
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  148

  There is science that prove God exists

  by HopeEverLasting in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  jehovahs witnesses think that just the bible is proof that god exists but they are wrong.

  there is another mode for how he exists.

  now we all know many scientists who are creationists now weren’t creationists until they examined the evidence for themselves.

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  A Ha

  Wait, so this proof that God exists is that some scientists were evolutionists then became creationists?

  You could change that criteria to scientists who have some sort of "doubt" about evolution, which would likely increase your numbers by several orders of magnitude, and you would still lose to Project Steve
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  26

  Can an atheist date jw?

  by concernCitizen in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  hey everyone!.

  first of all, i'm not a jw, in fact i'm an atheist, or if you really want to be technical about it i'm probably something like an agnostic atheist or something.. but, my girlfriend is a jw, she seems very rational about it though, it seems to me that she believes in a lot of it but not exactly all, for instance she does understands and believes in the scientific age of the earth and evolution.. when we started dating almost a year ago she made it clear she as religious person.

  i never saw that as a problem, it's not like i'm trying to convert her or she's trying to convert me.

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  A Ha

  bohm is spittin' hot fire in this thread. I also think OneEyedJoe's point bears repeating:

  Assuming you two end up together (let's say you get married), it is very, very common for big life events (death of a family member, birth of a child) to cause great emotional turmoil that leads people back to the religion. My sister-in-law "fell away" probably 35 years ago and recently started going back to meetings out of the blue.
  
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  532

  I conclude evolution is guided

  by KateWild in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  your qualifications are way above mine so i'd love to hear more about the specifics of what you have researched and how that supports the existence of a deity.

  k99, i am not really convinced that you're interested in my conclusions.

  in nature amino acids formed to then form dna.

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  A Ha

  I've been on a Quantum Mechanics kick lately, but this thread made me wonder about updates in origin of life investigation since I read Life Ascending a few years ago. I ordered The Vital Question yesterday.

  Edit: In fact, I think I first got Life Ascending because you had recommended it in a thread years ago, so thanks for the recommendation.
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  532

  I conclude evolution is guided

  by KateWild in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  your qualifications are way above mine so i'd love to hear more about the specifics of what you have researched and how that supports the existence of a deity.

  k99, i am not really convinced that you're interested in my conclusions.

  in nature amino acids formed to then form dna.

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  A Ha

  Like everyone else, I'm not quite sure what you're asking, but I'll post a couple of paragraphs from Life Ascending which might address your question. RNA WORLD: RNA --> DNA

  And so Martin and Koonin envisaged populations of cooperative RNAs emerging in mineral cells, each RNA encoding a handful of related genes. The drawback to this arrangement, of course, is that the RNA populations would be vulnerable to remixing into different, possibly ill-suited, combinations. A cell that managed to hold its 'genome' together, by converting a group of cooperative RNAs into a single DNA molecule, would retain all its advantages. Its replication would then be similar to a retrovirus, its DNA transcribed into a swarm of RNAs that infect adjacent cells, bestowing on them the same ability to deposit information back into a DNA bank. Each new flurry of RNAs would be freshly minted from the bank, and so less likely to be riddled with errors.
  How hard would it have been for mineral cells to 'invent' DNA in these circumstances? Not so hard, probably; much easier, in fact, than inventing a whole system for replicating DNA (rather than RNA). There are just two tiny chemical differences between RNA and DNA, but together they make an immense structural difference: the difference between coiled catalytic molecules of RNA, and the iconic double helix of DNA... Both of these tiny changes would be hard to stop taking place virtually spontaneously in vents. The first is the removal of a single oxygen atom from RNA (ribonucleic acid) to give deoxy-ribonucleic acid, or DNA. The mechanism today still involves involves the kind of reactive (technically free-radical) intermediates found in vents. The second difference is the addition of a 'methyl' group on to the letter uracil, to give thymine. Again, methyl groups are reactive free-radical splinters of methane gas, plentiful in alkaline vents.
  So making DNA could have been relatively easy: it would have formed as 'spontaneously' in the vents as RNA (I mean its formation from simple precursors would have been catalysed by minerals, nucleotides, amino acids, and so on). A slightly more difficult trick would have been to retain the coded message, which is to say, to make an exact copy of the sequence of letters in RNA in the form of DNA. Yet here too the void is not insuperable. To convert RNA to DNA requires just one enzyme: a reverse transcriptase, held in trust by retroviruses like HIV today...
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  532

  I conclude evolution is guided

  by KateWild in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  your qualifications are way above mine so i'd love to hear more about the specifics of what you have researched and how that supports the existence of a deity.

  k99, i am not really convinced that you're interested in my conclusions.

  in nature amino acids formed to then form dna.

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  A Ha

  I've asked 10 times for you to explain the catalyst, the biochemical "charge" and yes "charge" is used by plenty of professors so maybe you don't understand that word but they certainly do.
  I would ask one last time. What caused the biochemical event which made life and evolution even possible? Simple question but you've never even tried to answer it.

  I hate to pile on, but a number of people are reading this and I'm not sure anybody understands what you're saying. If I were to think about the phrase 'biochemical charge' I would probably imagine an electric charge, like an imbalance of protons and electrons, but that doesn't seem to be what you're referring to. Honestly, now you sound like you're talking about an elan vital or something, but this is the 21st Century, so that seems unlikely. Is that it? Do you mean the spark of life?

  You've been asked many times to clarify what you mean by "charge" and your only answer seems to be "you know... charge," so let's try this. Since plenty of professors use it, could you quote or paraphrase one of them using it in the way you are? I can only imagine a professor of biochemistry talking about ions and electrical charges, but that doesn't seem to fit the discussion.

  Asking for the cause of a biochemical event... um... the laws of physics? Ionic and covalent bonding? Probably not a very helpful answer.
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  54

  Complaining over post dislikes / downvotes

  by Simon in

  1. forum
  2. announcements

  let's be clear: people have the right to like or dislike what they want - that is why the option is there.

  as long as they are not doing it in a malicious way to retaliate or game the system, there is no policing the votes.

  if you get a down-vote, live with it.

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  A Ha

  Simon, I was a member here 15 years ago, under a different name, and see things haven't changed all that much. (Hi Farkel, Tina, Prisca.) When people realize they've been in a destructive cult they react in different ways, and sometimes it's not pretty.

  If I believed in Saints, I'd nominate you for canonization.

  
  

  [Edit: If anybody downvotes this, you'll be hearing from my lawyer.]
  
  
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  532

  I conclude evolution is guided

  by KateWild in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  your qualifications are way above mine so i'd love to hear more about the specifics of what you have researched and how that supports the existence of a deity.

  k99, i am not really convinced that you're interested in my conclusions.

  in nature amino acids formed to then form dna.

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  A Ha

  But I think Morris makes good points about convergence. Because if there is a plan there are still different ways of describing it. -- slimboyfat

  What points does Morris make? I don't think Morris ever gets around to saying why we should think convergence is intentional or guided by God. Newton came up with a theory of gravitation which explained (most of) planetary orbits, etc. If someone came along afterward and said, "Gravitational forces explain the orbits of Mars, Jupiter, Venus, etc., but it's possible Mercury is being pushed around the sun by Planet Pixies--and it just happens to be the same orbit as if it was caused by only gravity." That's not very compelling, or interesting to consider.

  
  
  
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  67

  Recent mistakes of the Governing Body contributing to the decline of JWs

  by slimboyfat in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  they have made so many strategical mistakes it's hard to keep track.

  some changes within the last decade or so that are contributing to declining numbers of jws:.

  1. elimination of book study groups, the most informal, enjoyable and sociable of the jw meetings, contributed to loss of sense of community among jws.. 2. policy of consolidating kingdom halls.

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  A Ha

  For those of you that think the WT will be around forever... will eventually produce a situation they cannot control, and that will force their demise, or at least force them to take on a likeness that no one would recognize as JW.
  

  Hate to be a wet blanket, but I think the WT will be around for a very long time. As you say, religions evolve and adapt to changing circumstances, and the WT will be no different. They're being more stubborn than some, and I doubt they'll "thrive" in the information age, but there will always be people who want and/or need religion, and so there will always be religions to give people what they want and/or need.

  I think your last sentence is key--they won't be recognizable as what we've known as JWs, but the current WT would be barely recognizable to those who first joined in the late 1800s. What modern religion would be recognizable to those who were there in its formative years?

  I wouldn't even be shocked if they adopted the Trinity, holidays... all of it. The only thing they really need to do to survive is to quietly drop all the Millennial stuff; become just another Christian group that's waiting for the Second Coming, without the hints that it's months-not-years away, and they'll survive.