Posts by adamah

41

Bill Nye/Ken Ham Creation-Evolution Debate Here: V

by mind blown in

.

in case some are interested and can't find it...... http://debatelive.org.

~mb.

adamah

Yeah, Finkelstein, the old saying is that the smarter someone is, the more facile they are at coming up with elaborate excuses to support their beliefs. Rings pretty true, IME.

That said, I was surprised to learn that Bill Nye holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell, so he's not a life sciences guy (the rates of grads who believe in evolution are typically higher in the life sciences than in the physical sciences, since evolution is more-directly related to the life sciences (like biology); engineers are grouped into the physical sciences, and they don't get exposed to principles of evolution in more than a general biology course, since it's not relevant to engineering work).

Of course, Bill obviously made up for his lack of exposure to biology and geology in his undergrad studies via the 'Science Guy' gig he did for years. In contrast, Ken Ham earned a bachelor's in environmental science. We had a Xian creationist in my upper-division level course on evolution (which you don't formally take until your Junior year as a bio major, since you need tons of prerequisites in order for it to make any sense), and it was interesting to watch the guy struggle with examining evidence which he really didn't want to see, since he didn't want to believe evolution was true. Defo cognitive blinders on....

Here's evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne's take on the debate:

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116478/bill-nye-ken-ham-debate-creationism-and-evolution-science-wins

71

Theism Makes Science Impossible

by cofty in

it is not impossible to be a great scientist and a theist - kenneth miller and francis collins are good examples.. however, science depends on methodological naturalism - a working assumption that there are natural causes for observed effects.

please note that methodological naturalism is not the same as ontological naturalism.

in other words scientists may believe in a spirit world or not as long as god is never invoked as an answer.. contrast this with theism which, unlike deism, declares god to be immanent and active in the world.. consider a scientist who is also a theist doing research into the efficacy of a new drug that cures heart disease.

adamah

Seraphim said- Even though agnosticism is probably and arguably the most rational of all positions!

Maybe. I'd broadly describe myself as an agnostic, except for Abrahamic God of the Bible: I've seen enough evidence from multiple lines of investigation to be convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that He doesn't exist, but is merely the work of clever men.

TERRY, I don't know if you saw the debate last night between Ham and Nye, but I was impressed by how they kept it cordial and didn't get into the agro "mine's bigger than yours" thing typically seen in on-line forums (so annoying, since the real goal of a debate should be to uncover truths thru challenging thoughts, and not be a free-for-all bar brawl).

41

Bill Nye/Ken Ham Creation-Evolution Debate Here: V

by mind blown in

.

in case some are interested and can't find it...... http://debatelive.org.

~mb.

adamah

I dare say most believers who watched the "debate" would say Ham won, since he spoke words that were familiar to the audience, having heard them spoken by their pastors before. Thanks to confirmation biases, people tend to believe the familiar, and not necessarily the true.

Bill Nye's unfamiliarity with the Bible meant he couldn't attack on theological grounds (he's not familiar with theology, but science), so couldn't engage on the silliness of YEC literal beliefs and pointing to contradictions in the Bible (eg he missed the opportunity to point out that Genesis 1 IS written as ancient Hebrew poetry, which came up in the debate when Ham said he'd interpret Psalms differently than the Genesis accounts, where Genesis 2 is narrative).

In the end, Ham had to try to create a false equivalency between science and religious beliefs by dragging out "were you there?" type arguments, and he did; he won by being allowed to dodge rather than address weaknesses. If I didn't know what I know about science and theology, I'd say Ham won, as the burden of proof needed to convince people of what they're primed to believe is low (and the cartoon at the beginning of the debate pumping the Ark Encounter and Creation Museum was absolutely shameless).

33

Live debate tonight: Bill Nye (evolution) vs Ken Ham (creationism)

by EndofMysteries in

i thought i'd share since i figured some on this forum would be interested being that the same topic has been debated numerous times here.

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2014/02/03/why-im-debating-the-science-guy-about-creationism/?hpt=hp_t2.

i wish i was able to see it but i'm assuming i'll be able to catch it on youtube or transcripts.

adamah

Yeah, Laika, it's the same reason Richard Dawkins (a professor of biology) refuses to debate uneducated Xian apologetists like Ray Comfort: it looks good on their resume, and by giving them credibility by creating a false equivalency, but does little for the scientist's cred...

Matt Dilahunty was talking about this debate a few weeks back on the Atheist Experience Show, and he and Martin had similar reservations about how it's a 'win' for Ken Ham, right off the bat (an opportunity for Ken Ham to pull off a Gish Gallop):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_2S3JMM19Q

(The comments on Bill Nye debate start at the 47:00 mark)

29

What If the Soul Sleeping Doctrine is False?

by Cold Steel in

when god breathed life into adam, adam became a living soul.

moments before he had been only a concept...an idea; a lump of clay if youre a literalist.

now he was a complex living and breathing being.

adamah

PON, thanks for pointing out how CS self-refutes his own claims: I don't suppose CS can accuse himself of straw-manning himself, can he? Sounds like something CS should do in private!

It's always nice when someone torpedos their own arguments like that, as it saves alot of work of rebuttal for the other side (who needs only to highlight their own internal contradictions for those readers who cannot remember what the person just said, only a sentence or two back, and fails to detect the logical flip-flops).

So much meat on dem' bones, so it's a target-rich environment, but on this:

CS said- The Greeks knew through experimentation that something was causing the breakdown of both fruit and flesh. But they could see nothing, so they theorized that the breakdown was being caused by something so small that they couldn’t see it.

Greeks knew TONS MORE about basic science which Jesus didn't know: that's kind of the point.

In 30CE thanks to prior experiments conducted by Alcmaeon of Croton (circa 500BC), a minority of Greeks knew it was the brain, and not the heart, that was the center of thinking and cognition. That fact had been known for over 500 years in 30 CE!

Unfortunately, Jesus was not an educated Greek citizen as the son of an elite, but an uneducated (home-schooled) male Jewish child who typically was taught the family trade by the patriarch (where Jewish tradition demanded as much), raised in backwater Palestine (a territorial conquest of the Roman Empire). Hence Jesus didn't know much about biology or human anatomy, which he'd likely known if he'd been the son of a Greek physician.

Believers want Jesus to be both Divine origins (i.e. present at creation, and privy to details that only the "intelligent Designer" could know) AND an uninspired mortal to excuse his obvious ignorance of fundamentals of human anatomy that any modern child knows today (ask a kid to point to where they think, and they point to their skull, NOT the torso; Jesus would point to his heart, as all but a few educated elites outside of the medical colleges of Greeks knew at the time). It's called flip-flopping, and you're doing it again....

91

NEW BOE LETTER - It just got exponentially harder to "fade"

by sir82 in

jw
friends

here is the text of the letter:.

february 2, 2014. .

your brothers,.

adamah

lrkr said- I see this as a relaxing of standards.

Interesting, as I see it as the exact opposite: it's setting an impossibly-high demand on all the elders that allows higher-ups to play the power game and target underlings on trumped-up charges 'for neglecting the flock'.

And since part of the letter alleviates the need for documentation of all such sheparding visits (presumably under the pretenses of 'lightening the load' on the elders), the elder under inquisition is unlikely to have any records of what efforts he engaged in to point to as his defense.

But even beyond exercising control at the local level, I smell a rat in the "don't document" advice: I suspect it's an intentional effort by the WTBTS to increase the distance between the activities and decisions of the individual congregations and the "Mother Ship", trying to cut down on the sheer bulk of 'smoking guns' that potentially serves as incriminating evidence showing the level of local control exerted by "Mother".

That factor can play into civil cases, where plaintiffs are looking for any evidence to present to a jury that shows the level of local control exerted by the deep-pocketed WTBTS from afar esp on cases of DFed members. I suspect the "don't record" advice as a liability shield designed to protect the Mother, more than anything...

20

Has anyone used this question on a JW? How might they respond?

by BU2B in

jw
friends

as i was laying in bed i thought of a question to ask my wife.

"when the wt has an article on the next change in teaching or new light, just guessing, what do you think it might be?".

it does not need to be phrased just like that, but i thought it might be a powerful question since it would make the jw subconsciously question all of the current teachings, something they are not taught to do.

adamah

If they know their own teachings, they'd say such questions are idle speculation, discouraged by the Borg; they cannot entertain such thoughts or they risk getting ahead of Jehovah's chariot.

29

What If the Soul Sleeping Doctrine is False?

by Cold Steel in

when god breathed life into adam, adam became a living soul.

moments before he had been only a concept...an idea; a lump of clay if youre a literalist.

now he was a complex living and breathing being.

adamah

Cold Steel said- At one time, no one believed in germs; and when they couldn't deny it, they argued they were far too small to harm the human body. People were booted out of the medical profession for requiring their hospital staff to wash their hands!

Yeah, you know who ELSE poo-poohed the value of washing hands (as well as standard sanitary practices like washing dishes/pots/pans, utensils)? Jesus.

You know who else didn't believe in germs, either? Jesus thought he was curing via forgiveness of sins, since Jesus lived in the age LONG before Pasteur's 'germ theory of disease', and that's what all humans believed.

The thing is, the person who makes the claim of something existing has to PROVE it's existence. In Pasteur's case, he was able to tell skeptics to look into his microscope and see the wiggly things which were taken from the sick, and the wiggly things could be administered to the healthy and they'd become ill, too. Louis had tangible evidence, AKA PROOF. His work lead to development of antibiotics, which have cured literally hundreds of million-fold more disease than Jesus could dream of healing.

Cold Steel said- Much of astrophysics today is founded on a belief in dark matter, though evidence that it exists is sadly lacking. The same thing used to be true of black holes. Even though they were theoretically possible, Stephen Hawking said years ago, he doubted whether any would be found. Before the ink was dry, however, astronomers had begun to find them; not that they actually saw them, but they were able to prove they existed and determine where they were. Now we know they're all over the place.

Einstein doubted black holes existed (even though his theory of relativity predicted their existence). Astronomers have PROOF they exist now, so black holes are no longer hypothesized to exist, but are PROVEN to exist.

So when you say this:

Cold Steel said- To say there is no evidence of God, or a Creator, is a pretty huge leap.

See what you did there? You had the concept with Pasteur and Hawking, but then you forgot it when it came to God. YOU claim God exists, so YOU have to present existence of God to convince skeptics. It's called "burden of proof", and believers bear it if they claim God exists.

Until then, God concept remains an unproven hypothesis (and that's being generous, since evolution explains life much more effectively than "God Dun It!" does).

Cold Steel said- And the more we learn, the more we realize we don't know.

No, that's a mindless nonsensical meme.

The more we learn, the more we know.

Granted, each new discovery raises two more exciting questions, but it's simply absurd to deny the advancement of human knowledge.

Cold Steel said- The complexity of genetic codes, order and beauty of the universe, the witnesses throughout time, many of the prophets have stated that all things denote there is a God.

That's an "appeal to personal incredulity", saying that your personal ignorance of the topics is somehow the benchmark by which everyone should decide on God. Narcissistic much? Paul used that argument with the Greeks 2,000 yrs ago, and it didn't work on them to convince them of proof of God's existence. You can't offer anything better after 2,000 yrs practice? Given the advancement of knowledge in the past 2,000 yrs, it's not getting any more convincing with the passage of time.

Cold Steel said- I've found that many of the near death experiences I've read to be very compelling, regardless of their religious and cultural backgrounds.

If there's one uncontested finding on NDEs amongst NDE researchers, it's that people see the Gods of their personal beliefs, i.e. Hindus see Shiva, Islamists see Allah, Shintoists see their deities, etc. Is everyone right, or do people see what they want to see?

29

What If the Soul Sleeping Doctrine is False?

by Cold Steel in

when god breathed life into adam, adam became a living soul.

moments before he had been only a concept...an idea; a lump of clay if youre a literalist.

now he was a complex living and breathing being.

adamah

FHN said- Honestly, from what I've read, including books about near death experiences and death bed visions by Melvin Morse MD, an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Washington, JWs are just going to be happy. After you die, there's no wondering. I highly recommend reading Melvin Morse's books. He was once a huge skeptic about NDEs, believing the same kind of things that JWs teach about NDEs. I've read some other interesting books on the subject.

Yeah, pediatrician Melvin Morse apparently has some emotional issues and highly-suspect motives, apparently out to use his past credentials as a doctor to sell books (which ex-door-to-door book and magazine pushers should understand). His license to practice medicine has been suspended after he was accused of "waterboarding" his wife's children (four counts of child endangerment, AKA child abuse). Marvin's case is currently being heard in court:

http://nhne-pulse.org/dr-melvin-morse-arrested/

Here's his mumbo-jumbo website:

http://spiritualscientific.com/

Hey, he's been on Oprah: nuff said?

285

Dead pregnant woman forced to stay on life support, due to TX State law

by adamah in

there's an interesting medicolegal issue arising out of tx, a pregnant women who suffered a pulmonary embolism in november and died (when she was 14 weeks pregnant).. however, the body has been kept on life-support all this time (against her and her husband's wishes), due to an ambiguous tx state law (tex hs.

code ann.

166.049) which actually blocks the ability of the patient and family to decide:.

adamah

AS JT pointed out earlier in the thread, if they wanted clarity, JPS could've sought out clarification from the court without forcing the paramedic Erick to take them to court and increase the family's suffering (esp over holidays).

JPS seemingly was looking to "run down the clock" and buy time for the fetus until viability could be assessed, but they didn't count on the fetus being malformed and likely brain-damaged. What an ugly episode that didn't have to happen....