by badboy 52 Replies latest jw friends
When I was a JW, I didn't think about the things I didn't think about. Simple as that.
Exactly. Fossils left a question mark in my mind, but a JW is trained not to take a question to its logical conclusion. I swallowed the JW reasoning, carbon dating must be wrong, the fossils are incomplete, scientists lie, etc.
Fossils made me doubt.
Chronology made me doubt.
The blood thing made me doubt.
Shunning made me doubt
The obvious lack of love made me doubt.
The hypcrisy made me doubt.
The backstabbing and gossip made me doubt.
The political grandstanding of the elders made me doubt.
The us against them mentality made me doubt.
The lack of respect for education made me doubt.
But I stayed anyway.
Sigh.
I remember my father running the statistics for any humans evolving from any thing mentioned. It was so obscure and miniscule it was an impossibility.
Aha, this is an example of the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy:
http://wiki.cotch.net/index.php/Texas_Sharpshooter_Fallacy
Let me give a simple example. Let's say a 32-year-old woman mother of 3 who works as an 8th grade teacher of mathematics and is married to 40-year-old civil engineer from Florida won the California lottery. Now, let's also say that the odds of winning the lottery is 1 in 18 million. It was extraordinarily unlikely that she would win the lottery; the odds of dying by being struck by lightning is only 1 in 30,000. But now let's say, what were the odds that the person who won the lottery would be not just a purchaser of a ticket (since the 1 in 18 million odds apply equally to all lottery ticket buyers), but would also be (1) a woman (as opposed to being a man), (2) a mother with (3) 3 children who (4) happens to work as a teacher of (5) mathematics (as opposed to some other subject) to (6) 8th graders (as opposed to some other grade level), who (7) happens to be married (as opposed to being divorced, widowed, or a single parent) to (8) a Floridian who (9) works as a civil engineer, and that (10) the winner would be 32 years old while her (11) husband is 40 years old? The odds that the lottery winner would end up fulfilling all these criteria would assuredly be impossibly infinitisimal. And yet she won the lottery. It wasn't impossible that she won the lottery, for there has to be a winner each time. Rather, those criteria played no role in selecting her as the winner. It wasn't as if the lottery balls seeked out a winner with those criteria. It could have been anyone, but it had to end up being someone who has their own unique combination of what could be regarded after the fact to be dozens or even hundreds or thousands of personal criteria. With this fallacy, you could basically claim that it is impossible for anything to happen to anyone.
Like chance phenomena such as the lottery, evolution is not driven towards a goal of producing a specific result in advance. It is guided towards some result by selective factors (and thus is not purely random), just as the lottery will result in a winner each time. But it is a mistake to calcaulate the odds "for humans evolving" (e.g. presuming the result) and then conclude that those are impossible odds for the event happening. To give another example, let's say a psychic is asked to guess exactly where you will be at 10:42:09am on September 22, 2007, e.g. exact geographical position in terms of millimeters and the exact position and stance of the body. Now, for a person to calculate that a year in advance would certainly be impossible odds (unless he or she kidnaps you or manipulates you to make it happen). But assuming that you are still alive and well in a year's time, it is 100% certain you will be somewhere at that moment in time. And wherever you end up being at 10:42:09am on that day, the odds would have been impossibly small that you would be there at that time.
From as young as 10 years old I new something was terribly off about the WT spin on Creationism. The dinosaur in the cover of the green Bible was too much for even a child like me. I had posters with donosaurs and new they had died long long ago. These thoughts I quietly accomodated for years with some personal version of the WT line. Just before getting baptised I made the mistake of telling the PO that I had questions about evolution. He made me immediately defensive and conceal any hint of doubts. I was even used in a D.C. talk of his, as the anonymous youth who nearly lost his way to the satanic teaching of evolution. It really teed me off inside to have to act dumb. I read at the public library back in the dark rows of books so as to not be seen reading about science. Its all really very sad how the mind has to be supressed to be part of a community. My wife tells me she had similar experiences.
From as young as 10 years old I new something was terribly off about the WT spin on Creationism. The dinosaur in the cover of the green Bible was too much for even a child like me. I had posters with donosaurs and new they had died long long ago. These thoughts I quietly accomodated for years with some personal version of the WT line. Just before getting baptised I made the mistake of telling the PO that I had questions about evolution. He made me immediately defensive and conceal any hint of doubts. I was even used in a D.C. talk of his, as the anonymous youth who nearly lost his way to the satanic teaching of evolution. It really teed me off inside to have to act dumb. I read at the public library back in the dark rows of books so as to not be seen reading about science. Its all really very sad how the mind has to be supressed to be part of a community. My wife tells me she had similar experiences.
Leolaia,
Well I'm glad you won the lottery in the brains department. You are obviously extremely intelligent and have won the odds.
Apparently the chimps in your background were of a superior gene pool. Too bad the rest of the human race who believe they have evolved from some sort of ape, or amphibian did not desend from the same line.
I am impressed.
r.
Actually, YES! It was one of the first things that lead to my mind being freed.
Like most JW's, I just assumed science had it wrong and really had no idea how to date things correctly. Being scientifically minded, I decided to research it a bit. I found that radiometric dating is INSANELY accurate. So this lead me to realize the WTS could make mistakes when it comes to scientific things. That lead me to examine other things just in case they were wrong.. lo and behold, the whole wall of faith in the org came crumbling down.
Evolution happens; that's a fact. Religion will either incorporate evolution into its belief system or it will die out. Same thing happened with the radical ideas of a spherical earth and heliocentric solar system. Religion fought against it for a while but finally succumbed.
INTERESTINGLY ON THE CARBON DATING THING,ITS SEEM THEY WORKED OUT THAT THINGS ARE ACTUALLY OLDER THAN THEY THOUGHT!
Carbon dating is only useful for objects up to 50,000 years old. You can see therefore that most fossils are not dated using carbon dating.
| Like chance phenomena such as the lottery, evolution is not driven towards a goal of producing a specific result in advance. It is guided towards some result by selective factors (and thus is not purely random), just as the lottery will result in a winner each time. But it is a mistake to calcaulate the odds "for humans evolving" (e.g. presuming the result) and then conclude that those are impossible odds for the event happening. To give another example, let's say a psychic is asked to guess exactly where you will be at 10:42:09am on September 22, 2007, e.g. exact geographical position in terms of millimeters and the exact position and stance of the body. Now, for a person to calculate that a year in advance would certainly be impossible odds (unless he or she kidnaps you or manipulates you to make it happen). But assuming that you are still alive and well in a year's time, it is 100% certain you will be somewhere at that moment in time. And wherever you end up being at 10:42:09am on that day, the odds would have been impossibly small that you would be there at that time. |
Good point.
It's like pulling a card from a deck.
Each card when pulled might think... these are magical thinking cards... "Wow! It was unlikely I would get pulled, there must be something special about me!"
Is the card right to think this? Of course not.
