A Ha

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Posts by A Ha

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  37

  Why are there still so many of humanity that are immersed onto the lies, ignorance and delusions of religion ?

  by Finkelstein in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  all religions under critical examination has been recognized inherently as formative lies devised to appeal to human emotions and as a means to cultivate power and control for a select propagating few.

  knowledge acquired through scientific inquiry and evaluation has proven that all religious adherence was mostly drawn out human ignorance targeted toward the emotions and consciousness of people.

  here we are in the 21 century and people like the jws are still adhering to the lies of christianity and how this religion developed over time.

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  A Ha

  Well the atom being orbited by elections and the pictures they used to describe them are all fictional and simply vision tools to explain something we don't have camera equipment(electron microscope), that will ever be able to view things at a quantum level, just physics trying to explain things with visual illustrations with no visual proof.
  Could that be considered different fiction? or what about we are in a computer simulation I think that is a much more harmless fiction?

  Well I'm not a sociologist, but it seems the things you're describing are starting on the road to advanced thought, but they wouldn't qualify as the fictions I was talking about. Other animals are capable of this type of representational thought, but H. sapiens seems to be the only animal capable of, for example, carving a figuring with the body of a man and the head of a lion (e.g., the Stadel lion-man carved about 40,000 years ago), and telling--and convincing--others that this lion-man is our tribal guardian who will help us on our hunts.

  The computer simulation would probably be a fiction in this context. Another, used in the book, is that of an L.L.C.(limited liability corporation). It doesn't exist as a physical thing, but if we pay a lawyer to write some magical words on a page, everyone will act as if this thing really exists. We refer to it as a thing, sue it if it harms us, etc... "Human rights" is another fiction that benefits us to treat as if they're real.

  Neanderthals and Homo erectus were capable of abstract thought in the sense that they could make tools, seeing the arrowhead in the piece of flint. But H. erectus lived for two million years after inventing tools, and didn't progress beyond that. Neanderthals had language that probably included some more advanced concepts--we know they buried their dead, cared for the sick, made tools, and decorated themselves, but despite having larger brains than H. sapiens they don't seem to have developed the ability to create fictions, which if true, held them back from growing beyond small groups of a few dozen.
  
  
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  37

  Why are there still so many of humanity that are immersed onto the lies, ignorance and delusions of religion ?

  by Finkelstein in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  all religions under critical examination has been recognized inherently as formative lies devised to appeal to human emotions and as a means to cultivate power and control for a select propagating few.

  knowledge acquired through scientific inquiry and evaluation has proven that all religious adherence was mostly drawn out human ignorance targeted toward the emotions and consciousness of people.

  here we are in the 21 century and people like the jws are still adhering to the lies of christianity and how this religion developed over time.

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  A Ha

  I think there are two related things at work. 1. We have evolved to detect agency. The brain has been called a pattern-recognition machine. The brain that interprets measured footfalls and snapping twigs as a potential predator lives while the brain that thinks it's the wind ends up as someone's lunch. 2. We alone have evolved the ability to invent, talk about, and believe in fictions.

  The following is cribbed from Yuval Harari's book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, though I'm paraphrasing and maybe doing some editorializing.

  Between 70,000 and 30,000 years ago, Homo sapiens underwent the single greatest change in our history--the Cognitive Revolution. During that period we learned to think--and more importantly--express ourselves differently, with immensely more variety and fluidity of information transmission.

  Without this breakthrough, archaic Homo sapiens would likely have not been able to sustain groups much larger than 150 because that's the limit to how many relationships we can keep track of, and this is vital to such intensely social animals.. Most chimpanzee troupes max out at about 50, and Neanderthals would have probably been somewhere in between the two numbers.

  The ability to think and speak abstractly--to invent fictions, 'imagined realities' or 'social constructs'--is what allowed us to work collectively in very large groups. It is interesting to note that other fictions besides religion--art, social stratification (governments), commerce--all appeared at roughly the same time.

  To answer the question, so many humans are still immersed in religion because it's at the core of who we are. In a very real way, it was religion that allowed us to expand beyond small hunter-gatherer groups and take control of our environment.

  Personally, what I would like to see happen is for a different fiction to overtake and replace religion--that of worldwide community and balance with the environment. But I don't think that will ever happen. I think religion is with us until the end. Ironically, the same thing that played such a large part in our success may also be what eventually dooms us as a species, though perhaps that's not fair, since what's at play in religious strife is in-group out-group thinking, and if we didn't have religion we would find another reason to hate the "other."
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  97

  BIG news Trump...His lewd conversation leaks.

  by James Mixon in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  if he get pass this, america deserve him...... conversation 10 years ago..

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  A Ha

  The phrase "you've made your bed, now lie in it" springs to mind. Wankers.

  Counterpoint: Brexit
  
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  54

  If a JW Came To Your Door How Would You Handle It?

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  jehovah's witnesses have never come to my door but they have come to my girlfriends door.

  i have coached her as to what to say or ask but it appears that they always seem to come when she's not there.

  .....just curious would you get into it with a jehovah's witness at your door especially if it was someone you did not know?.

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  A Ha

  I tell them I don't believe in God and they say, "But look at the trees!"
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  97

  BIG news Trump...His lewd conversation leaks.

  by James Mixon in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  if he get pass this, america deserve him...... conversation 10 years ago..

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  A Ha

  No, they released it after the polls were no longer close, when Clinton had pulled back out to a 7 pt lead or so.

  I have no doubt that the person who sent the tape to the Times did it to hurt Trump, just as I have no doubt that the Russians who hacked the DNC did it to hurt Clinton. And, yes, the State Department is confident it was the Russians, and yes, Trump did know about this before the first debate--he had received the intelligence briefings. When he claimed there was no reason to think it was the Russians during both debates, he was flat-out lying.

  the Clinton foundation/clinton campaign/etc paid a lot for it.

  The Clinton Foundation is not the Clinton campaign. You're thinking of Trump who uses money from his foundation to purchase personal things for himself and to settle leagal bills and to bribe Florida officials.
  
  
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  97

  BIG news Trump...His lewd conversation leaks.

  by James Mixon in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  if he get pass this, america deserve him...... conversation 10 years ago..

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  A Ha

  why did this tape of Trump saying those things surface now?
  Its 11 years old.
  I am amazed that the news pundits are worrying about the what (the tape)
  and not the why (the timing)

  There's no mystery there. Someone who doesn't like Trump sent the tape to the NY Times. The Times sat on it for five days while their lawyers considered their legal exposure (Trump knew he was being recorded, but he is famously litigious--he's been a part of 3000 lawsuits, roughly half as plaintiff and half as defendant). The source got tired of the delay by the Times so they sent it to the Washington Post. WaPo spent five hours vetting the tape and released it.
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  97

  BIG news Trump...His lewd conversation leaks.

  by James Mixon in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  if he get pass this, america deserve him...... conversation 10 years ago..

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  A Ha

  A source close to "The Apprentice" producers is saying there is more on the way. One issue similar to the pussy-grab, and one "much worse." Speculation is Donald is caught on tape uttering the N-word.
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  17

  Can't think how they will respond

  by Giles Gray in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i've been chatting to the jws the past couple of weeks.the last time they called they showed me a video about a scientist who claimed that she had once been an atheist, but after studying with the jws she had changed her mind and now believed in an intelligent creator.

  what had convinced her was the process that activates the functioning of the lungs just after a baby has been born.after we had watched the video, the jws said that there are many people who believe that creation indicates an intelligent designer.in reply i asked them what they thought about the 'unintelligent' aspects of creation and i went into a few examples.at first they tried to write things off to imperfection due to adamic sin, but as the conversation went on they slowly realised that arguing 'imperfection' wasn't an adequate explanation for the points i was making.to cut a long story short, i ended up sending them a video via email where professor dawkins comments on an autopsy that highlights the impracticality of the laryngeal nerve in giraffes.i also sent them evidence of vestigial limbs in whales and a short article about biological atavism.in addition, i sent them an article that coincidentally was on the bbc news a few days ago about a boy in india who had a 7 inch vestigial tail removed.

  here is the article i sent them:-http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3823461/the-teenager-7-inch-tail-18-year-old-finally-growth-removed-painful-sit-sleep.htmli'm really looking forward to seeing what they will come back with.

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  A Ha

  but as the conversation went on they slowly realised that arguing 'imperfection' wasn't an adequate explanation for the points I was making.

  You have already enjoyed much more success in the conversation than you could have ever hoped for.
  
  
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  5

  Faith healing?

  by Knowsnothing in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i haven't been on for quite some time, but i was wondering if you could dispel this for me.

  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a5nd2x8erz0.

  there's also video of him in which a woman claims to have been visually impaired and was healed.

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  A Ha

  I don't know anything about this guy specifically, but he looks exactly like every other faith healer out there who preys on people. People with nebulous issues like "chronic back pain" can gain significant relief just from the placebo effect, only for the pain to return days later. For the more serious cases--people confined to wheelchairs or needing crutches--they're usually (always?) fakes planted in the crowd.

  Charlatans like Benny Hinn can get caught defrauding people then turn up a year later and still rake in millions of dollars.

  Show me a faith healer who can restore an amputated limb and I'll be impressed.
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  97

  BIG news Trump...His lewd conversation leaks.

  by James Mixon in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  if he get pass this, america deserve him...... conversation 10 years ago..

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  A Ha

  Pence is abhorrent. He was one of the leaders of the government shutdown, which cost billions of dollars--a tantrum because they lost the ACA vote. He signed a law requiring women to hold funerals for aborted fetuses. He's a science/evolution/climate denier who says smoking isn't harmful.

  More Drumpf Twitter lols.

  https://twitter.com/SweetPeaPatsy/status/784851509351559168/photo/1