Posts by adamah

130

Questions on Evolution and the Existence of God and...

by ILoveTTATT in

jw
friends

i know this is one huge rant, but i want to put my own questions and doubts in writing.. i am a fading jw who has become agnostic... i still believe in "god" and "jesus," but i simply cannot explain to people why i believe in them.

i just do.. about the existence of god: it is an infinite regress.

"all things were created by someone"... well... who created god?

adamah

FWIW, I've been going over in my mind whether Lenski's experiment (which CLEARLY demonstrates evolution via adaptation), reflects "natural selection" or "artificial selection". I'm leaning more towards "natural selection" now, although that term implies changes that occur without influence of humans, but due to nature; in the experiment, scientists are obviously playing the role of God....

However, the team didn't actually select for those bacteria that could metabolize citrate, since that finding caught them off-guard (it was added as a culture media), so it's not an adaptation that arose via artificial selection.

The key is the term "selection": who's doing the selecting? If it's a result of changes in the environment, even those changes controlled or even caused by scientists, it's an adaptation that falls under the category of "natural selection".

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_difference_between_natural_and_artificial_selection

Natural selection is the result of natural factors, which favour certain variations. Artificial selection is the deliberate selection of certain traits (by humans), for example a Poodle is the result of artificial selection.

Natural selection occurs when a particular feature gives an organism a survival or mating advantage-- so for example, giraffes with longer necks were better able to feed themselves than those with shorter necks. Over time longer necked giraffes were better able to survive and breed. So longer necks were selected for naturallly.

Artificial selection is when humankind chooses certain traits and breeds organisms for that trait. Example-- the domestic dog. The original organism was the wolf. Humans chose certain traits, such as size or temprement and bred together those with the desired trait(s). Hence the various breeds we have today.

Natural selection is largely determined by environmental factors, where nature chooses organisms with the best traits for survival.

Tigers developed stripes so they could sneak up on their prey easier. The stripy tigers caught more prey, became healthier than tigers that have more trouble catching prey, and produced more stripy offspring.
For example, long-necked giraffes are chosen by nature because they're tall and can reach higher leaves, while shorter-necked giraffes can't reach as high and might starve to death.

Artificial selection is controlled by humans, where a person chooses which traits of the organism that he wants it to have.

Pug dogs have pug faces because people bred male dogs with pug-ish faces and female dogs with pug-ish faces to produce offspring with totally pug faces.
People choose the fat cows to breed more fat cows because they've more meat. This decreases the eventual number of skinnier cows.

116

if we don't all unite, we may win a few battles but Watchtower will win the WAR.

by excaliber in

jw
friends

to thank you for taking the time to read this, because i feel that it is extremely important.

over the years we have been waring against the watchtower, and our battle field has been the internet.and we have been very successful in establishing discussion forums and online resorces exposing false teachings and we have used youtube to further shed light on the watchtower, we have even written books to this end.. .

yes we have attacked watchtower at its weakest point, the internet and we have been able to do this as small groups and even individualy.

adamah

excaliber said-

We would come together as individuals for a common cause, to wage war on The Watchtower. Yes we will fight a billion dollar corporation with 7 million members and we will prevail. The larger the organization the harder it is to protect and the easier it is to attack, while trying to attack us would be like hearding cats.

Let me go out on a limb and just ask you a wild-ass question, I know, but have you recently been diagnosed with schizophrenia, or any mental condition which results in delusions of grandeur, paranoia, etc?

See, the thing is, all the stuff you mentioned above are actions which the GB defines as the actions of apostates, so how do you counter their prophetic message by living up to the stereotype of 'mentally-ill individuals' who are filled with hatred and rage who stop at NOTHING to counter Jehoover's Earthly organization?

Hint: you DON'T accomplish anything, but are actually working against your own goals, since it validates their words, and only drives JWs deeper inside after they see hateful acts and say, "See, the GB is RIGHT!". You should understand that: you're dealing with people who are legendary for their persecution complexes.

So unless you're just looking for an excuse to pull juvenile pranks, it's a guaranteed recipe for failure; but you're free to tilt at those windmills (that is, as long as you remain legal: cross THAT line by engaging in graffiti of KHs, though, and all bets are off, since you then make others here look bad by your selfish actions).

Adam

130

Questions on Evolution and the Existence of God and...

by ILoveTTATT in

jw
friends

i know this is one huge rant, but i want to put my own questions and doubts in writing.. i am a fading jw who has become agnostic... i still believe in "god" and "jesus," but i simply cannot explain to people why i believe in them.

i just do.. about the existence of god: it is an infinite regress.

"all things were created by someone"... well... who created god?

adamah

IluvTTATT said-

What could have made chemicals, which tend to a lower energy state and disorder, to have self-replication and to have this "survival mechanism" that needs energy and consistently changes, just to meet the need for self-propagation and self-preservation?

Think back to the examples of fullerenes (which you cited earlier), which although giving the appearance of being more 'ordered', are actually a more stable configuration overall, and hence an example where a lower energy state results in the greater stability AND lending the appearance of more order. In other words, lower energy states and disorder are not mutually-exclusive.

Same thing happens within strands of DNA, where the structure of the double-helix is stabilized due to intramolecular ' hydrogen bonding' (i.e. dipole-dipole attraction of hydrogen atoms to an adjacent electronegative atom). Hydrogen bonds are very weak forces, but there are thousands of these H-bonds within a DNA sequence which gives the structure great stability, overall.

The benefits of sexual reproduction are greater variability and exchange of genetic information within the gene pool (you asked about factors that influence the rate of evolution earlier: sexual reproduction is MUCH faster than asexual reproduction, and it increases variability by 'shuffling the deck' more often). We see rudimentary features of sex-like reproduction in bacteria (eg exchange of plasmids, pockets of genetic material which bacteria will swap), but the emergence of sexual reproduction is clearly a winner.

BTW, it's funny to me how those who most tout the "glory of God's creation" are often those who have spent the least amount of time learning and understanding "God's" creations. As long as I've been learning about how life actually operates, I'm still blown away by just how amazing the process of life truly is, and how it all works together as a system, with an interconnectedness that truly is mind-boggling.... Fascinating stuff! That's what Einstein was referring to as "cosmic religion", the sheer wonder and excitement of being given the privilege of living, yes, but of being given the possibility of studying it.

Adamah said- See, you missed that the study's FINDINGS need to be replicable:

Perry said- So according to your own tedious definition a study is separate from its findings, and only the findings need to be replicated for it to qualify as science?

That's not just my definition, Perry: that's the commonly-accepted usage of those terms within the scientific community, which anyone who's remotely interested in engaging in a meaningful discussion of scientific discussions SHOULD already know.

A 'study' IS the process of investigating, the process which leads TO 'findings', the results of the scientific investigation. The findings MUST be reproducible by others, since scientists don't accept 'one-offs', or accept a scientist's claims on faith ("Come on, fellas: you can trust me! It worked in MY lab, I promise it did!").

Now, if the subject is 'evolution on Earth', it's impossible to re-run the ENTIRE EXPERIMENT, starting with the primordial soup from which life first emerged. Hence why we run slightly-less ambitious experiments, such as Lensky has done, which demonstrate the same principles at work but which rely on indirect experimentation; there's been MANY such studies done, from many different angles, all pointing to the FACT of evolution.

Perry, do yourself a favor and check out this book from the library (my local branch has it, as should every public library in the World): "Evolution vs Creationism", written by Eugenie C Scott (she's head of NCSE). She's an excellent communicator, and explains it quite clearly.

Here's Chapter One (the first chapter is available for free reading, in PDF format):

http://ncse.com/files/pub/creationism/Evo%20vs.%20Creationism--2nd%20edition--Chapter%201.pdf

Adam

130

Questions on Evolution and the Existence of God and...

by ILoveTTATT in

jw
friends

i know this is one huge rant, but i want to put my own questions and doubts in writing.. i am a fading jw who has become agnostic... i still believe in "god" and "jesus," but i simply cannot explain to people why i believe in them.

i just do.. about the existence of god: it is an infinite regress.

"all things were created by someone"... well... who created god?

adamah

ILuvTTATT asked-

Did abiogenesis at one point "divide over zero" in that it violated the second law of thermo? (I am thinking no, since all life needs energy from some source, most get it from the sun, others even from minerals...)

Oh, do you mean "violated laws of thermodynamics", such as that required by postulating the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient being who was never created (so it didn't evolve to that highly-complex state), but always just existed in that perfect state? Kind of like that violation of the laws of thermodynamics?

Since there's different hypotheses of abiogenesis, it's hard to say broadly, other than to say all of the credible ones take into account the energy input required.

Interestingly, NASA astrobiologists have discovered an energy source on frozen Europa, due to flexure of gravity, which raises the possibilities for emergence of life (with effects on the Drake equation):

http://video.pbs.org/video/2157407032/

ILuvTTATT asked- I haven't examined this issue in depth, but just in terms of the chemistry and energy, is life fundamentally different? I know that calling chemicals organic or inorganic is not accurate since that was a term used to describe the apparent inability to sinthesize "organic" molecules... well that died when urea was sinthesized... (or soaps, depending on what you want to use as the first organic molecule sinthesized)...

Even though biological molecules are routinely synthesized (as you say), the two terms are still useful to distinguish between interactions of laregly carbon-based molecules which are commonly seen inside living matter, vs the interactions of matter outside the body...

116

if we don't all unite, we may win a few battles but Watchtower will win the WAR.

by excaliber in

jw
friends

to thank you for taking the time to read this, because i feel that it is extremely important.

over the years we have been waring against the watchtower, and our battle field has been the internet.and we have been very successful in establishing discussion forums and online resorces exposing false teachings and we have used youtube to further shed light on the watchtower, we have even written books to this end.. .

yes we have attacked watchtower at its weakest point, the internet and we have been able to do this as small groups and even individualy.

adamah

ekruks said-

Whatever truth there is on this forum (there are also allegations without fact), it won't help people unless they know it's there. People like to think that by posting here they have helped bring down the organisation, and that helps with depression. No one wants that bubble burst - we want to pretend we are winning, but we are not being realistic! Something like 99.99999999% of the people in the world have never seen this site, but they likely have seen a JW tract or magazine!

Who are you trying to help protect?

If the active JWs, there's a good REASON they're told by the GB NOT to get information off the internet: it fits into the BITE model of control cults use.

If the World population, MOST people possess the common sense NOT to join the JWs, since they couldn't give a rat's pattootie about JWs: that's what all those people who slammed the door on your face were actually saying, but they likely were too polite to say they thought you were a member of a cult.

People have to figure it out for themselves, stand on their own two feet, etc. As the old saying goes, you can lead horses to water, but you cannot force them to drink (without placing them in restraints and inserting IV solution into their veins). If you try, are you really doing them any favors? As others have said, if they fail to take control of their own decision-making faculties, they often only jump out of the frying pan and into the fire.

130

Questions on Evolution and the Existence of God and...

by ILoveTTATT in

jw
friends

i know this is one huge rant, but i want to put my own questions and doubts in writing.. i am a fading jw who has become agnostic... i still believe in "god" and "jesus," but i simply cannot explain to people why i believe in them.

i just do.. about the existence of god: it is an infinite regress.

"all things were created by someone"... well... who created god?

adamah

jgnat said-

There is no artificial selection in the experiment I quoted. The only controls are on the environment, and evolution has been steadily progressing through 58,000 generations now.

Nope. If the experimenters are controlling the environment (and they ARE), then it's not 'natural selection', but 'artificial selection', eg they've fed the population different nutrients (eg citrate) at different points in time, and that's the experimenters monkeying with the environment; it's NOT natural selection.

In fact, ANY experiment that attempts to control the environment is by definition NOT 'natural', but 'artificial'.

Unless the population the microbiologists were studying was found 'in the wild' and they observed it, only, without ANY attempts to intervene (i.e. they acted more like naturalists or animal behaviorists in the field studying mammals from afar), then it's not a study of 'natural selection'. They weren't trying to show natural selection, but attempting to demonstrate the SAME process that operates in natural selection: ADAPTATION, or changes in the frequency of alleles in the gene pool over time.

Adam

116

if we don't all unite, we may win a few battles but Watchtower will win the WAR.

by excaliber in

jw
friends

to thank you for taking the time to read this, because i feel that it is extremely important.

over the years we have been waring against the watchtower, and our battle field has been the internet.and we have been very successful in establishing discussion forums and online resorces exposing false teachings and we have used youtube to further shed light on the watchtower, we have even written books to this end.. .

yes we have attacked watchtower at its weakest point, the internet and we have been able to do this as small groups and even individualy.

adamah

LOL at Outlaw's GIF of cowboys attempting to round up the free-range kitties. Those kitties may look pretty docile, but you don't want to see them when their claws come out!

The only worse thing than trying to herd cats is using warfare analogies to characterize what is actually an individual decision that each person must make of their own accord (and often only after they're forced to see TTATT by being DFed).

The 'ultimate battle between good and evul (sic)' analogy is soooo JWesque, just like their perma-warning of impending Armageddon, so it's not surprising that some still harbor a persistent tendency to view their situation as 'Chicken Littles', trying to stir up others to tilt at windmills.

The problem is, countering and controlling the trait of hyper-excitability is part-and-parcel of what it means to leave the JW thinking behind, since it's only a slightly-different flavor of the same basic personality trait that allows individuals to be manipulated and controlled by others....

Fact is, we HAVE 'the truth' on our side, and simply sticking to the facts should suffice to convince those for whom reasoning (and not their emotional response) plays a major part of their decision-making processes. That's a problem, since many JWs like to THINK of themselves as logical and analytical thinkers, when they cannot see how WT message relies on playing their emotional responses like fiddles.

Adam

130

Questions on Evolution and the Existence of God and...

by ILoveTTATT in

jw
friends

i know this is one huge rant, but i want to put my own questions and doubts in writing.. i am a fading jw who has become agnostic... i still believe in "god" and "jesus," but i simply cannot explain to people why i believe in them.

i just do.. about the existence of god: it is an infinite regress.

"all things were created by someone"... well... who created god?

adamah

Perry said-

So just change the definition when it suits you? Information is not simply a tool to attack opponents so long as the end justifies the means. That's unacceptable, to me at least..

Perry, you really need to work on your reading comprehension skills, since you understand the definition you cite. You have weaknesses that are likely colored by your biases.

For example, you cite this:

UNDERSTANDING HOW SCIENCE REALLLY WORKS - UC Berkley

Scientists aim for their studies' findings to be replicable — so that, for example, an experiment testing ideas about the attraction between electrons and protons should yield the same results when repeated in different labs. This goal of replicability makes sense.

See, you missed that the study's FINDINGS need to be replicable: NOT the entire theory of evolution, since that's NOT what they're claiming to do. No scientist is going to be so ignorant as to title their study, "Conclusive Proof of Evolution for YEC". That's absurd to expect a single experiment to show, esp when dealing with events that have occurred billions of years ago, long after the lion's share of the physical evidence is erased (well, actually the evidence has been reabsorbed and re-purposed: nature doesn't waste anything. So it's a statistical likelihood that a few of the same atoms that made up a living dinosaur that walked in N. America are found in all of us, after having repeatedly re-entered the cycle of life via eating).

Instead, scientists are reporting their findings which are much-more limited in scope to only showing a much-more limited and testable hypothesis, which is what they often claim in the title of the study. Scientists work off the efforts of others, for if they had to reinvent the wheel everytime to verify what is already accepted as fact (and hence, which is why they cite other articles), science wouldn't get very far. The results of MANY SUCH STUDIES are consistent in pointing to the fact of evolution, with sources from diverse fields of endeavor all pointing towards to truth.

Adam

130

Questions on Evolution and the Existence of God and...

by ILoveTTATT in

jw
friends

i know this is one huge rant, but i want to put my own questions and doubts in writing.. i am a fading jw who has become agnostic... i still believe in "god" and "jesus," but i simply cannot explain to people why i believe in them.

i just do.. about the existence of god: it is an infinite regress.

"all things were created by someone"... well... who created god?

adamah

IluvTTATT asked- Do you think the Lenski experiment will have some other evolution in the next twenty years? Is there anything that can be done to "speed it up"? Or would that violate the "rules of the game" in that it wouldn't be "natural selection"?

Well, it's not "natural selection", since the scientists are controlling the environment, feeding some colonies different solutions of maltose, citrose, etc. 'Natural selection' is when no one other than 'nature' is controlling the process, so the experiment is more akin to 'artificial selection', except unlike dog breeding, they're likely not picking for certain traits.

I suppose they could, and you'd better believe that in the past there were germ warfare labs around the World where studies were done on weaponizing viruses and bacteria to make germ warfare a possibility, increasing virulence to make the critters easier to pass to others, but not so deadly that they kill off victims before they can infect others. That latency between exposure and onset of symptoms (leading to death) is important, since viruses that are too lethal (i.e. too fast-acting) end up wiping themselves out of existence by killing their hosts before they can pass on their viruses to other hosts. So in fact, there IS a limiting factor to virulence, namely, the need for a living host.

IluvTTATT asked- Also, are there different rates of evolution? Is there something that can accelerate it?

Sure: exposure to ionizing radiation, for one. There are also chemicals which are known as 'mutagens' which also chemically accelerate the rate of mutations by interfering with the replication process of cells (and many of these chemicals are also considered 'carcinogens', since as I said earlier, there's a connection between rates of mutations and rates of various types of cancer; asbestos is a carcinogen that causes lung cancers).

Even flying in the passanger compartment of a jet aircraft at altitude exposes individuals to higher levels of cancer-causing radiation, which likely accelerates mutations of the genes that matter for evolution (not the genes found in the cells of the body, as much as alterations in the genes of the gametes, the sperm-producing and egg-producing cells).

Adam

37

SO you turned your back on God

by maccauk11 in

ok so you had a bad experience and you stopped going to church which ever one that is.

but did you stop believing or are you that peeved you blame god etc.

i would encourage you to humble yourself before your messiah and seek him, he will let himself be found by you and come dwells within you.

adamah

It's impossible to know if I've turned my back on Him or not, since He hasn't shown any of us where He actually is....

Is he over there? No? Over here? Nope.... I don't see Him anywhere, so how can I say with any degree of certainty what my position and orientation is, relative to His?