my second chat with an elder focused on the lack of any archaeological evidence that the exodus happened.
quite simply it seems to me that a company of 3 million plus livestock could not possibly be sustained in the wilderness, and if they were there then there would definately be evidence.
one writer described the size of the crowd as - imagine 10 people stood side by side, well the line would be 120 miles long with a 3 million crowd.. the elder went through the insight book and discussed the organization of the crowd which has the encampment spread into divisions etc.
I had a similar moment when I met with the elders. They fought with me about 607 until I opened one of the older books in the library (something about Babylon, I forget the title), and added up the dates the WT gave for the Babylonian kings. When I showed them that it added up to 587, they were stupified. They literally had their mouths hanging open. After an uncomfortable silence they said that maybe I should write to the society.
Fat chance.
this morning (sunday) i was cooking breakfast, while.
the wife was sleeping (i'm a good husband).
two elders , didn't have time to talk my bacon was burning.. a question for those of you that is still active.
When I lived in a house they stopped by at least 6 times, all before 10AM on saturday. I just never answered the door. Such a lovely feeling being a home-but-hiding!
http://youtu.be/oartie7rkum.
apart from being generally sad i can't understand why they chose a song that was already quite pure!.
I couldn't make it past 30 seconds...
i happen to work with my father, and today we got into another debate about the origin of life.
during the debate, while rebutting a lot of creationist canards, he said that mutations are always harmful to an organism.. .
after he left i sent him a quick email with a link to talk origins on the subject of mutations.
I'm not nearly as well versed in this subject as some posters here, I only have a layperson's understanding. When I did bring up the bacteria evolving the ability to digest nylon, he accepted that, saying that it was adaptation. But when I said that was just a snapshot of evolution occuring in a brief amount of time compared to the millions of years it normally takes, he rejected it.
So they do seperate it into micro/macroevolution.
i happen to work with my father, and today we got into another debate about the origin of life.
during the debate, while rebutting a lot of creationist canards, he said that mutations are always harmful to an organism.. .
after he left i sent him a quick email with a link to talk origins on the subject of mutations.
DD-
According to that article, the dark colored moth is the mutation of the normally lighter moth. The point of the example was that prior to the industrial revolution, the mutation was harmful, in that it made the moth more visible to predators. During the IR, the dark moths were less visible against the sooty landscape than the normal lighter moths, so it became a beneficial mutation. Since pollution controls went into effect, the dark moths are again becoming rare due to being easier to spot once again. The thrust is that the mutation of dark coloring was itself neutral, and it was the surrounding environment that caused it to be beneficial or harmful.
Here's the article if you're interested- http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mutations.html
i happen to work with my father, and today we got into another debate about the origin of life.
during the debate, while rebutting a lot of creationist canards, he said that mutations are always harmful to an organism.. .
after he left i sent him a quick email with a link to talk origins on the subject of mutations.
DD- The elder said it, I believe it, that settles it! Haha
The point of that article I sent him was that mutations are in and of themselves neutral, and it's up to organism's environment as to whether they turn out to be harmful or beneficial.
The example they gave is spotted moths, before the industrial revolution, light moths were dominant, and during the revolution dark moths were dominant because of the soot coating the environment. The light moths were spotted easily against the soot and eaten by birds. Once pollution controls went into effect, the light moths again became dominant because the dark moths stuck out more and were eaten.
I'm sure cofty can swoop in and give us all a lot more detail!
i had a bunch of tiny little nags that always bothered me about the bible/god/etc.
that eventually led to me drifting away, but this was my personal, singular issue that no one could address.
i think i mentioned it before here, but, for summation again:.
For me, there were a lot of straws and a lot of broken backs.
The first pricking of conscious was learning about the flood and combinig it with what I knew about secular history, i.e. the Egyptians were building the pyramids at that time and show no evidence of catastrophe and reestablishment in their long, well documented history. Learning more about geology led me to cease believing in the worldwide flood for several years as a loyal JW. I started to get suspicious of the bible even though I still believed it was god's word.
The first straw was learning about 607. Seeing that they were fundamentally wrong and then deliberately misquoting archeologists and hiding evidence burst the bubble. I still thought they were sincere though, if misguided.
Learning about the UN was probably the biggest straw. I finally saw the incredible hypocrisy of the religion and abandoned any notion of them being decent and honest.
Learning about Lifton's criteria convinced me they were a cult. Around this time others found out about my doubts and the overnight evaporation of my circle of friends confirmed this. Being bullied by the elders in meetings convinced me they weren't really there to help me.
The contradictions in the bible convinced me it wasn't the word of god.
Learning about the Ugaritic texts and local religion contemporary to the early Israelites led to me abandoning Jehovah as the true god.
Examining all the arguments for the existence of a deity and finding them utterly vacuous, as well as really learning about evolution from reputable scientists led me to atheism.
There is so much more, every time I tell someone the story of my deconversion it is slightly different, simply because there were so many facets and so many things going through my mind at the time.
i happen to work with my father, and today we got into another debate about the origin of life.
during the debate, while rebutting a lot of creationist canards, he said that mutations are always harmful to an organism.. .
after he left i sent him a quick email with a link to talk origins on the subject of mutations.
I happen to work with my father, and today we got into another debate about the origin of life. During the debate, while rebutting a lot of creationist canards, he said that mutations are always harmful to an organism.
After he left I sent him a quick email with a link to talk origins on the subject of mutations. By coincidence he called me up to his cubicle about two minutes later to give me another assignment. While he was explaning the task to me, I glanced at his open inbox on the screen. I noticed the email I sent only two minutes prior was missing. I asked him if he had deleted the email. He replied, "Yes, because i've already seen that website before."
I shot him a look of contempt and walked out of his cube shaking my head in disgust. This experience has proven to me that there is no point to debating a JW or any creationist for that matter, because as soon as you supply the evidence they so desperately require, they will delete it if it doesn't follow their preconceived notions.
bible believers of the literalist persuasion like the wt and other weird fundies actually believe the bible stories and chronology and therefore believe that adam and eve were the first humans.. those of us of european ancestry all contain within our dna a percentage of neanderthal dna.
the neanderthals died out 30,000 years ago.. how will the wt and other bible literalists (an untenable position by the way) get around the facts ?.
i suppose by simply ignoring the facts, as with the flood of noah and a myriad other things ?.
This all puts the fact that genesis is a fairy story into sharp relief. What differentiates it from any other mythology's creation myth?
bible believers of the literalist persuasion like the wt and other weird fundies actually believe the bible stories and chronology and therefore believe that adam and eve were the first humans.. those of us of european ancestry all contain within our dna a percentage of neanderthal dna.
the neanderthals died out 30,000 years ago.. how will the wt and other bible literalists (an untenable position by the way) get around the facts ?.
i suppose by simply ignoring the facts, as with the flood of noah and a myriad other things ?.
When I used to argue with my father about these topics, he would always claim the dating methods were innacurate and that the neanderthals were deformed humans.
