seattleniceguy

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Posts by seattleniceguy

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  149

  Watchtower Observer site goes down

  by Norm in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  hey folks,.

  an era in the ex-jw history is over.

  kent steinhaug's site http://watchtower.observer.org is being shut down.. it was the first of it's kind, and to this day probably still the largest anti wt site on the net.

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  seattleniceguy

  Kent needs to retain the "observer.org" domain for himself because of business reasons. He explained this in one of his posts on this thread.

  That's fine - surely he doesn't need the watchtower subdomain for work. As Simon pointed out, he should be able to point that domain to the new site. By all means, we ought to keep the original domain name. It's like an established brand. It will be much, much easier to get traffic to the site if we stay with the existing domain name.

  ITSupport:

  Chinese hosting companies are easy to find. Since we'll probably be using pretty mainstream technologies (perhaps as basic as XHTML and CSS on the hosted server), I think we can defer discussio of potential hosting companies until after we have the site basically put together.

  SNG

  (Waves at WT lawyers - you know you guys are working for the dark side, don't you?)
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  149

  Watchtower Observer site goes down

  by Norm in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  hey folks,.

  an era in the ex-jw history is over.

  kent steinhaug's site http://watchtower.observer.org is being shut down.. it was the first of it's kind, and to this day probably still the largest anti wt site on the net.

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  seattleniceguy

  Sorry, I guess I missed it a while back (and I'm feeling kind of lazy right now...) - did we lose control of the observer.org domain? Why can't we keep watchtower.observer.org? That's a really good domain name! And besides the simple fact that it has a snappy name, that's the pointer that is being linked to by other sites, search engines, etc. By all means, we need to try to keep the domain if possible. Of if it's out of our control, can we at least get the people to put in a redirect to the new domain?

  SNG
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  19

  Hospital's test of new blood worries JWs

  by funkyderek in

  1. watchtower
  2. medical

  .

  not sure if this has already been posted.. http://pennlive.com/news/patriotnews/index.ssf?/base/news/1105698159238130.xml.

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  seattleniceguy

  "There are several hundred Jehovah's Witnesses in Cumberland County, all of whom I feel certain would refuse this type of transfusion," Grifford said.

  Talk about living in a state of unreality.

  SNG
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  149

  Watchtower Observer site goes down

  by Norm in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  hey folks,.

  an era in the ex-jw history is over.

  kent steinhaug's site http://watchtower.observer.org is being shut down.. it was the first of it's kind, and to this day probably still the largest anti wt site on the net.

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  seattleniceguy

  Kent, please post your PayPal account email address so we can send you the money.

  With regard to hosting, what about hosting in China or Tonga or someplace not likely to care about letters from the WT?

  Pole:

  I have experience in Java-XML-MySQL processing, so I can write an app which will allow us to move the content of the site to MySQL. Then it can be exported in any text-based format (or to another RDB), depending on what you would want to use at the DB tier of the new site.

  I also have experience with XML and MySQL, but my experience with Java is limited. Like Euphemism, I have a lot of experience in .NET, C# specifically. I've also written many applications in PHP, but after working in .NET it's kind of hard to go back to that. Currently I work in MS SQL extensively, so I'd be up for that too.

  SNG
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  72

  Judge orders removal of "evolution disclaimer" stickers in Georgia, USA

  by seattleniceguy in

  1. social
  2. current

  thank goodness, a judge with some sense!.

  http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2005/01/13/national1134est0530.dtl.

  here's a quote:but the judge disagreed: "while evolution is subject to criticism, particularly with respect to the mechanism by which it occurred, the sticker misleads students regarding the significance and value of evolution in the scientific community.

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  seattleniceguy

  Hi confused,

  I think what's happening right now is, you're like a college student who wants to understand calculus without first learning arithmetic and algebra. Calculus is real and useful, but students without the proper grounding will not be able to see its significance.

  I don't think you're going to get satisfying answers to your heart-hole questions until first you have a more basic understanding of evolutionary processes. You can't get to the hard stuff without first having a solid understanding of the underlying principles.

  Just a thought. This thread has given you a lot of good places to start. Cheers, and good luck!

  SNG
• 
  72

  Judge orders removal of "evolution disclaimer" stickers in Georgia, USA

  by seattleniceguy in

  1. social
  2. current

  thank goodness, a judge with some sense!.

  http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2005/01/13/national1134est0530.dtl.

  here's a quote:but the judge disagreed: "while evolution is subject to criticism, particularly with respect to the mechanism by which it occurred, the sticker misleads students regarding the significance and value of evolution in the scientific community.

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  seattleniceguy

  confused:

  Doesn't this support my point not yours?

  I quoted Behe to give you the crux of his argument, in his words, not to support my argument. Behe invented this concept as a supposed problem with evolution, but, as the link I provided points out, there are many problems with his concept. You might want to take a look at the resource.

  With regard to the cow example, yes, it's true that a cow can exist without its tail. Now let's think of a scenario in which a cow would not be able to survive effectively without its tail. Let's say that a new population of flies begins taking over the Midwest of the United States. These flies like to eat cow feces, and if possible, they try to get it straight from the source - hot off the press, if you will.

  Unfortunately for our bovine friends, these flies carry a powerful poison that kills a large percentage of the cows it affects. Suddenly, the environment favors cows that have strong, nimble tails, since they can effectively fight off the flies. The cows with weak tails die off. After thousands of generations, the tails have adapted to where they are remarkably good at fending off the fly attacks. Take away a cow's tail, and she's as good as dead.

  So now what we have is a feature which was not originally "designed" for a purpose, becoming co-opted for that purpose. Then, later, when it became a survival matter, it was honed toward that new purpose. Suddenly, the cow has a feature that it absolutely cannot live without!

  To take this a step further, imagine that these cows are so good at defending their rumps that the poisonous flies die off. Now the tails are no longer necessary for survival. Humans come along and discover the tails and wonder why cows are so incredibly good at fending off stupid houseflies. Surely, God must have designed the cow with this marvelous feature as a convenience to the cow. Right?

  Obviously, this is just a fictional example, but I think it illustrates how changing needs can create features that a creature "cannot live without." Hope that helps.

  SNG
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  72

  Judge orders removal of "evolution disclaimer" stickers in Georgia, USA

  by seattleniceguy in

  1. social
  2. current

  thank goodness, a judge with some sense!.

  http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2005/01/13/national1134est0530.dtl.

  here's a quote:but the judge disagreed: "while evolution is subject to criticism, particularly with respect to the mechanism by which it occurred, the sticker misleads students regarding the significance and value of evolution in the scientific community.

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  seattleniceguy

  TD:

  Very interesting points. I never thought of it in specifically that way, but the implications are very interesting. I mean, everyone recognizes that in the past there lived millions of animals that no longer exist today. So, either evolution is true, or the earth started with a butt-load of animals, and the ranks have merely been thinning over the years.

  Of course, there are other problems with choice two, such as the fact that there is no evidence that many present species existed in the distant past. But that is an interesting point - how does someone who does not accept evolution deal with the continual arisal of new species throughout geologic time?

  DY:

  Actually, creation does not qualify as a scientific theory. In science, this word has a specific meaning. Check out this link:
  http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.html

  SNG
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  72

  Judge orders removal of "evolution disclaimer" stickers in Georgia, USA

  by seattleniceguy in

  1. social
  2. current

  thank goodness, a judge with some sense!.

  http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2005/01/13/national1134est0530.dtl.

  here's a quote:but the judge disagreed: "while evolution is subject to criticism, particularly with respect to the mechanism by which it occurred, the sticker misleads students regarding the significance and value of evolution in the scientific community.

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  seattleniceguy

  confused:

  I agree completely - but would consider this adaptation - not evolution.

  Biological adaptation is evolution. We humans love to impose walls on the natural world. As a Witness, I was willing to say something could change a little bit, but not a lot. What is the difference?

  With regard to the hole in the heart thing, it sounds like you're going down the path of irreducible complexity. Michael Behe introduced this concept in 1996. It says that:

  An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly (that is, by continuously improving the initial function, which continues to work by the same mechanism)
  by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional.

  You may remember this in an Awake several years ago. There are many problems with this concept, not the least of which is that Behe does not consider that the individudal "parts" in any system are also subject to change. There's a lot of good info on this page:

  http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/icdmyst/ICDmyst.html

  One of the most important things to understand about evolution is that the present function of a part is not necessarily the reason it evolved. For example, the page above discusses cow tails. Cows use their tails today for the purpose of swatting flies. Did their tails evolve for that purpose? Or is the cow merely using a pre-evolved feature for a different use? (More on the linked page.)

  SNG
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  72

  Judge orders removal of "evolution disclaimer" stickers in Georgia, USA

  by seattleniceguy in

  1. social
  2. current

  thank goodness, a judge with some sense!.

  http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2005/01/13/national1134est0530.dtl.

  here's a quote:but the judge disagreed: "while evolution is subject to criticism, particularly with respect to the mechanism by which it occurred, the sticker misleads students regarding the significance and value of evolution in the scientific community.

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  seattleniceguy

  Hey, confused.

  I don't have a lot of time at the moment, but I just wanted to respond to the "engineer" argument.

  Even you talk about evolution as "tweaking" and doing - almost as if it were a living design engineer.

  Evolution is much different than an intelligent engineer. An intelligent engineer can sit down and plan something out - think of all the repercussions of the design, consider how the design might work in various circumstances, and so on. Evolution is based on the simple fact that children are never exactly like their parents. It's only in this respect that they are "tweaked."

  The selection part comes from the outside environment. A new batch of puppies is born, each with a slightly different set of genes - features, abilities, tendencies. The outside world crushes those that are unfit to survive. And if the environment is harsh enough (say, there is only enough food for two or three to survive), then the most fit will out-vie the less fit, even if those less fit would have been able to survive in other conditions. In this way, successful features get reinforced. But not by an intelligent force. They get reinforced by a very cold, uncaring fact of nature.

  It's amazing, really: once you get a population of reproducing organisms in a hostile environment, they cannot not evolve. The facts that the enivironment is harsh, and that the organisms must compete to survive, ensure that successful traits will be reinforced and passed on, while unsuccessful ones are weeded out. The competition of the natural world may seem cold, but it actually pushes life upward.

  I'll think about the other part of your question today....

  SNG
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  72

  Judge orders removal of "evolution disclaimer" stickers in Georgia, USA

  by seattleniceguy in

  1. social
  2. current

  thank goodness, a judge with some sense!.

  http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2005/01/13/national1134est0530.dtl.

  here's a quote:but the judge disagreed: "while evolution is subject to criticism, particularly with respect to the mechanism by which it occurred, the sticker misleads students regarding the significance and value of evolution in the scientific community.

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  seattleniceguy

  Euph:

  Otherwise, Cobb County would probably just remove the pages on evolution from the textbook, which is what they've done in the past.

  OMG. That is so incredibly...1984...thank God I was raised in a more open-minded environment...oh, wait a minute...

  confused:

  Okay, I'll take a stab. Evolution doesn't design with an end goal in mind. It's like a tinkerer that can think only one move in advance. The "intelligence" comes from the outside environment. The tinkerer tries a million different combinations of "chicken" and some are better equipped to survive than others. That doesn't necessarily mean that they're better chickens, according to some model of the perfect chicken. It just means that the current environment favors some better than others. If it is a very cold climate, the chickens without much body fat and feathers will likely not make it. But if dinosaur poop releases enough CO2 that the atmosphere heats up 20%, now the lightweight, nimble chicken might be more likely to survive.

  Evolution takes all sorts of twists and turns. As you might expect, this produces very strange designs in nature - designs that an engineer would never come up with on purpose. Here's a page on evidence for jury-rigged design in nature:
  http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/jury-rigged.html

  I don't know the specifics of heart evolution in humans, but the "miracle" of the heart-hole closing up doesn't seem so miraculous when it doesn't happen. Those children simply die. So what we have here is a jury-rigged design that works most of the time. That fact is guaranteed because people born with a gene configuration that does not cause the heart-hole to close die without passing such genes on.

  Another example is the dual-use pipe for air and food in humans. We have a "remarkable" flap that covers the entrance to our trachea when we are swallowing. But it's not really that remarkable when you consider that it's only there because it absolutely has to be there or we would die. A better design would have been to have independant tubes. Lots of humans die every year because of choking on food. It's a poor design which required some jury-rigged solution. I think the heart-hole is probably the same thing.

  Sorry I don't have any specific information on hearts. I'm interested in this topic, though, so I'll let you know if I find anything.

  SNG