Posts by Pyramid God

8

Virtue makes you beautiful: Mormon 1D parody

by stuckinlimbo in

jw
friends

http://youtu.be/oartie7rkum.

apart from being generally sad i can't understand why they chose a song that was already quite pure!.

A startling example of a JW ignoring evidence

by Pyramid God in

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.

18

A startling example of a JW ignoring evidence

by Pyramid God in

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.

Pyramid God

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

18

A startling example of a JW ignoring evidence

by Pyramid God in

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.

Pyramid God

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!

35

What was the "logical straw" that broke your camel's back?

by Pacopoolio in

jw
friends

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:.

Pyramid God

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.

18

A startling example of a JW ignoring evidence

by Pyramid God in

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.

Pyramid God

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.

18

How do Bible believers get around this question.... ??

by Phizzy in

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 ?.

Pyramid God

This all puts the fact that genesis is a fairy story into sharp relief. What differentiates it from any other mythology's creation myth?

18

How do Bible believers get around this question.... ??

by Phizzy in

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 ?.

Pyramid God

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.

39

What are the feelings/thoughts within 24-48 hours of exposure to an undeniably true (for you) TATT?

by NeverKnew in

many of us know where we were during 9/11 or when john kennedy and martin luther king were killed.. it seems that when faced with ttatt, real truth is dismissed as "ol' light" or "an imperfect group of men" but from what i gather, many of you, at some point, were hit with a component of ttatt that shattered all of those cliches that allowed you to brush off the obvious reality that something was very wrong.

some of you may remember the hours following your earliest exposures to an undeniably true tatt.

did you zone completely out?

Pyramid God

I was crushed, I felt like I had tunnel vision. It was like this black fog had enveloped me. I felt cold, alone and afraid. i honestly had no idea what I was going to do, I felt like my whole life had been derailed.

If anyone has seen the movie 500 Days of Summer, the scene where he realizes that Summer is not getting back together with him and is instead marrying another guy is the perfect visualization for what it was like. When he walks outside and the whole cityscape is erased around him like a drawing is the perfect representation for how I felt.

10

Anyone see 12 Years A Slave?

by BU2B in

has anyone here seen best picture winner 12 years a slave?

it was tough to watch at times, and made me tear up a couple times.

it was a very well written well acted film with great cinematography, and was extremely moving.. i think it was a deserving winner..

Pyramid God

lisaBObeesa- That's exactly what I mean when I said it made it intimate. By telling an individual's story it forces us to confront the horrors personally and gives us someone to empathize with. It makes you think about how you would react if put into that situation. A stroke of genius.