Posts by GoodGuyGreg

41

Why is there Evil? Atheist why has Evolution not eliminated it?

by ÁrbolesdeArabia in

jw
friends

.

satanus, i though i did a double post on this same thread, sorry i tried to delete the wrong one!.

GoodGuyGreg

In my opinion, snare&racket summed it up pretty nicely, but I'd like to add a few thoughts:

Humans are not the only species with altruistic behavior. As others have stated, it has more to do with survival than with concepts of good and evil. What differentiates us from most if not all other species, is that we have the capaciy to analyze our actions and rationalize them. This means that we can take our natural reactions, and choose to obey them or fight them, depending on what we personally feel is the right (or most beneficial) thing to do.

Most social animals are altruistic within their flock, hive or herd. We are pretty unique in that we can choose our group arbitrarily, not only based on family, but on virtual constructs like religion or what bike we ride. The western world's reaction to the Thailand tsunami a few years ago shows the processes very clearly: people pretty much ignored all other victims of this catastrophe than the Thai population. For a few weeks, they actually pretty much ignored most of the problems in the world except those of a small part of the Thai population. In essence, they associated with this relatively small group of people as if they were part of the same group, and distanced themselves from other victims of bad things that happened concurrently in other parts of the world.

Richard Dawkins put it nicely in his book The Magic of Reality. It's really a children's book, but it's an enjoyable read. He summed the suffering problem up with the words "bad things happen because things happen". In essence, the universe isn't out to get us - that would count as evil. But sometimes things happen that we might be tempted to take personally, while they're simply the result of random processes or statistical chance. It's important to see the difference between, say, a person choosing to rob others under gunpoint, and someone developing pancreatic cancer for no other reason than that they've lived long enough for the odds to stack up against them. The second example simply can't be attributed to evil, even if you'd be hard pressed to find someone who thinks it's fair.

427

If man evolved?

by tornapart in

i know anyone who believes in evolution is going to say that there is no 'if' about it.

however.... if man evolved over hundreds of thousands of years ago, why were there only about 200-300 million people alive 2,000 years ago?

surely there'd have been many billions by then?.

GoodGuyGreg

@jgnat: I hope you're not offended; I was just pointing out the specific fact that melt layers in ice isn't the same kind of layers that are widely accepted as annual layers, since it was important for the argument regarding the Lost Squadron.

The difference in structure in annual layers of ice cores, has a lot to do with the difference in texture due to evaporation (which while superficially similar in effect isn't really the same as melting) between the cold winter months and the warmer summer months. Also it's possible to analyze different parts of the cores for the ratio of 16O to 18O, etc, but since we've lost the good mr Brown already, I can save the details for another round later on. :-)

427

If man evolved?

by tornapart in

i know anyone who believes in evolution is going to say that there is no 'if' about it.

however.... if man evolved over hundreds of thousands of years ago, why were there only about 200-300 million people alive 2,000 years ago?

surely there'd have been many billions by then?.

GoodGuyGreg

Regarding the "lost squadron":

The planes landed near the coast, where snow accumulation is fast - about 2 m (>6 ft) per year. Allow for compacting due to its own weight, and the depth at which they were found is pretty much accounted for. Add to this that the planes where found in a moving glacier and were found about 2 km (1.25 miles) from where they actually landed.

Also, due to the low altitude and the proximity to the Atlantic, ice melt happens regularly, several times per year, in the area, creating "layers" which have little to do with the annual layers found in ice cores such as GISP2, which was drilled much further from the coast, where melting (contrary to what has been claimed earlier in this thread) is an extremely rare event - it happens a couple of times per century, and looks completely different from the actual annual layers in the cores.

So again, you have a case of with people using a "clock" in the wrong way and claiming it doesn't work. And again, I say that this is fraudulent on their part, since the right way to use it is thoroughly documented and can be checked and double-checked by independent teams of experts (who'd each, by the way, love to prove the other teams wrong).

427

If man evolved?

by tornapart in

i know anyone who believes in evolution is going to say that there is no 'if' about it.

however.... if man evolved over hundreds of thousands of years ago, why were there only about 200-300 million people alive 2,000 years ago?

surely there'd have been many billions by then?.

GoodGuyGreg

@James Brown:

Regarding radiometric dating, I believe I can explain the problem with the counterclaims for you in a pretty simple way.

Imagine you have a fancy watch, a certified chronometer, with indicators for everything from tenths of seconds up to phase of the moon. Now a friend of yours borrows it to time a quarter mile drag race. A day later he returns your watch and says it's completely useless: according to it, a ninish-second race took 14 hours. Also, he's gathered quite a following among his friends with his claim, and now many of them go around talking about how bad your watch is to anyone who will listen.

But when you ask him about his method of timing the drag race, it turns out he was using the phase of the moon indicator to time the race, completely ignoring the second- and tenths-of-second hands. He saw a tiny movement in the phase of the moon, measured that angular movement, and used that to measure the amount of time the race took..

Imagine radiometric dating as an extremely fancy - and certified - clock which has indicators ("hands" if you prefer) for any amount of time from fractions of seconds up to billions of years.

The Mount Helen "inconsistency" was based in knowingly using the "hundreds of thousands of years" hand to measure something a year- or at most decade indicator should have been used for, and then the entire "clock" was widely panned by the team due to what can only amount to "operator error": the limitations for each test are stated right in the "manual", so there's really no excuse for making a big fuss about a bad result if the fault lies in using the wrong kind of test for the type of sample. Actually, I would call this entire episode a school example of either willful ignorance or actual intellectual dishonesty on the part of the team that had the sample tested.

32

Are atheists afraid of archaeology?

by Xanthippe in

larsinger thinks we are.

i have to answer this because it makes my blood boil.

this is one of the key things that trapped me in a religion for the first 30 years of my life.. we were told the archaeologists have found ur of the chaldeans, babylon, nineveh and evidence for the existence of the hittites.therefore the other things in the bible must be true.. archaeologsts have also found troy in modern day turkey.

GoodGuyGreg

I discussed a similar issue on another forum a while back.

The thing with Biblical accuracy is this: The data put forth on writing a segment of the Bible needed to be accurate if it was easily verifiable. The acceptance of the Bible by the contemporary intended audience hinged on that. This is one of the reasons why archaeologists during the 19th and 20th centuries could find likely excavation sites using the old testament and a map and compass. This is also one of the reasons why sometimes biblical characters otherwise forgotten have suddenly reappeared on a tablet or stele in the area where they would have been active.

But as almost everyone in this thread has already agreed, this isn't proof that the Bible is divinely inspired, or for that matter that there is anything divine that could've inspired it. On the contrary, just to mention one example, The Bible Unearthed by Silberman and Finkelstein (also available in electronic formats) points to some very interesting anachronisms in the texts, which rather show how archaeology casts a huge shadow of doubt over the divine origins of the old testament (and therefore, of course, over the entire Bible).

25

Weird rumor I heard - JWs in Sweden

by sir82 in

jw
friends

i heard this from a "friend of a friend of a friend...." at least 3 or 4 intermediate steps before i heard it.. so it is likely distorted, but i'll throw it out there in case someone in or near sweden can clarify it.. .

i heard that the wts branch in sweden instructed all jws there to "get rid of" all (empahasized all) of their printed literature, and rely exclusively on the content of jw.org for their literature.. .

that's the entire extent of it - i also got a few speculations about "what it might mean" (the society is expecting persecution!

GoodGuyGreg

Nope. Not true. I believe as Londo111 says, that it was a (local or, more likely, individual) misinterpretation of the letter about cleaning out old literature.

20

The scientific hypocrisy of Jehovah's Witnesses

by jwfacts in

i have been involved in an email exchange with a jw regarding my article on noah's flood, and whether it was global.

it got me really worked up, as i find the watchtower mentality totally hypocritical.

here is part of the conversation.. .

GoodGuyGreg

It's easy (and fun) to get worked up, but as others wrote, it also easily escalates into a flame war. It would be interesting to write something like an anti-Reasoning book, with suggestions on how to handle rhetorical fallacies and common fundamentalist claims with a few short sentences and (where applicable) quotes.

21

Wow, I seem to have made it out alright..

by GoodGuyGreg in

hi, new member here, but i've lurked for a while.. for obvious reasons, i won't give too many details about myself, but i thought i'd share my story of what might in the end have been the easiest fade in recorded history.

it's going to be a wall of text, and i'm writing it mostly for myself to get it out of my system, but it is, of course, a pretty open forum, so any comments and most questions are welcome.. here goes:.

what made me realize ttatt was legalism.

GoodGuyGreg

@Finally awake: Yeah, I think being a bit less active for a while is a good thing, but I don't think you need to be very careful about the fade per se, as long as you're not a confrontational kind of person. If you are, the elders can't avoid feeling that they have to enforce the "cleanness" of the congregation, and that's bound to cause some fallout.

21

Wow, I seem to have made it out alright..

by GoodGuyGreg in

hi, new member here, but i've lurked for a while.. for obvious reasons, i won't give too many details about myself, but i thought i'd share my story of what might in the end have been the easiest fade in recorded history.

it's going to be a wall of text, and i'm writing it mostly for myself to get it out of my system, but it is, of course, a pretty open forum, so any comments and most questions are welcome.. here goes:.

what made me realize ttatt was legalism.

GoodGuyGreg

@open mind: Yeah, it's funny how some facial hair can get peoples knickers all bunched up. :-)

21

Wow, I seem to have made it out alright..

by GoodGuyGreg in

hi, new member here, but i've lurked for a while.. for obvious reasons, i won't give too many details about myself, but i thought i'd share my story of what might in the end have been the easiest fade in recorded history.

it's going to be a wall of text, and i'm writing it mostly for myself to get it out of my system, but it is, of course, a pretty open forum, so any comments and most questions are welcome.. here goes:.

what made me realize ttatt was legalism.

GoodGuyGreg

@Problemaddict: Nice to hear from a fellow rebel. :-)

I still have people I consider friends in the congregation, but we've drifted apart a lot for various reasons, not only my fading: we all got families the last few years, which of course makes you re-prioritize your life - and I wasn't very social to begin with (I need a few true friends, not a bunch of acquaintances). Also, I believe much of my luck is based on a biblical (!) principle: Not being overly careful about the rules that didn't make sense, I got similar-minded friends and eventually a similar-minded wife. As I said, she's a believer, but she too sneers at legalism and hypocrisy - and listens to metal and watches R-rated movies with me. ;-)

But I've got neighbors, colleagues and other people around me whom I enjoy spending time with, so I'm not really worried about the social thing - it'll work out. And my wife is loved by pretty much everybody who's gotten to know her, so she gets her share of attention both within and outside of the congregation.