The coefficient of static friction is greater than the coefficient of moving friction. This means that if you have to push a couch, it takes more force to get it moving than to keep it moving. Religion (re-ligere, I bind again, or other similar etymologies; it's not perfectly determined) had a perfect role in collecting and galvanizing "just enough" tithes or tax money or able-bodies to do a thing that had a high barrier to entry, that is, had a high coefficient of static friction. Like, laying down basic economic processes of barter, debt, interest. Laying down basic law. Laying down basic knowledge of agriculture/horticulture, animal husbandry. Laying down rudiments of technology, wheels, iron tools, stone working, architecture. Laying down crafts like weaving, clothing, vessels for transportation, things that expanded the human habitat. You will be hard pressed to find a prehistoric / neolithic culture that does not have clear totems to a deity or more. These couches are all moving along now. It takes a lot of effort to sustain the motion. The motion can stop due to a number of unthinkable events. But for the most part, and in view of basic probabilities, the heavy burdens are moving.
Posts by rmt1
-
62The Bible and it's promise of Heaven and various other things
by confusedandalone innow in no way am i trying to discredit anyones beliefs or make fun, but once you get to heaven what is the plan once you get there.. of course, we always overlay extremely physical things upon the experience of heaven... milk and honey... ruiling over the earth etc... truthful the whole idea sounds so boring / mundane /monotonous.
spending all of eternity serving god by carry messages here and there?.
watching humans... i guess spending time with family that are also there and reminiscing.
-
-
-
18
i regret not getting disfellowshipped/da'd
by Django_Unchained ini'd particularly like to stick it to the woman who gave birth to me by sending a da letter to her congregation, though admittedly i wasn't part of hers when i stopped going.. say i were to send the letter to her cult hall, would the letter be read during the announcement?
how does that work?.
-
-
rmt1
For what it's worth, I think of my biological family still in the cult as having already died. I am a complete orphan in this context and I owe nothing to the cult in terms of future family arrangements or what have you. I know I owe nothing because I know for a fact that JWs will appropriate, manipulate, extort, misrepresent, abuse or in any way milk every last drop of guilt, blame, accusation, etc, ad nauseum, from any future interaction of any kind whatsoever. So, my mother is dead, my four brothers are dead, my uncles, aunts, cousins - all dead. Dead and rotting in the ground. They had their chance at this temporary thing called conscious existence on a small blue dot in the middle of a completely oblivious entropic and thermodynamic process of impersonal strong, weak, electromagnetic and gravitational forces. They're dead.
>>>BUT!!!!<<<
Once in a while a thinking person, all the better if it is a young person, pulls their head out of the sand and says, Uh, something doesn't add up. That person is alive.
-
20
Rewriting the dictionary
by rebel8 ini got a really lengthy pm from a poster i don't know, scolding me for saying there is a difference between rape and religious abuse.
i recently had a conversation with someone who says eating oysters is vegetarian.
when i pointed out it isn't, the person said we all have different definitions of vegetarian.
-
-
rmt1
Disregard.
-
21
Oh I thought JWs were just a "normal" religion
by fresh prince of ohio ini have found that, since leaving jws, that few "wordly" people seem interested in hearing my escape story (although some certainly have shown great interest).
when i've mentioned that i used to be a jw and that i left, the reaction i've gotten on more than one occasion is a "oh i thought they were just a normal religion", and not only that, it's like they just weren't at all even open to the idea that jws could be a really strange and cultish group.
on these occasions, i felt a little lost for words trying to explain to people just how crazy jwism is, because there's so much crazy to tell about, where do you even start?.
-
-
rmt1
Phizzy
-
21
Oh I thought JWs were just a "normal" religion
by fresh prince of ohio ini have found that, since leaving jws, that few "wordly" people seem interested in hearing my escape story (although some certainly have shown great interest).
when i've mentioned that i used to be a jw and that i left, the reaction i've gotten on more than one occasion is a "oh i thought they were just a normal religion", and not only that, it's like they just weren't at all even open to the idea that jws could be a really strange and cultish group.
on these occasions, i felt a little lost for words trying to explain to people just how crazy jwism is, because there's so much crazy to tell about, where do you even start?.
-
-
rmt1
At least where I've come to roost now, here in Tucson, I can't get anyone to give a rat's ass that I came from JW's, or that JW's are a cult guilty of negligent manslaughter. The JWs are such a non-entity as far as the real world goes. They toot their horn about stinging messages, but, uh, no. Nobody that's real gives a crap, Brooklyn.
-
20
Rewriting the dictionary
by rebel8 ini got a really lengthy pm from a poster i don't know, scolding me for saying there is a difference between rape and religious abuse.
i recently had a conversation with someone who says eating oysters is vegetarian.
when i pointed out it isn't, the person said we all have different definitions of vegetarian.
-
-
rmt1
The operative concept is 'to seize'. That covers what TWS does to its young.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=rape
- rape (v.)
- late 14c., "seize prey; abduct, take by force," from rape (n.) and from Anglo-French raper (Old French rapir ) "to seize, abduct," a legal term, probably from past participle of Latin rapere "seize, carry off by force, abduct" (see rapid).
Latin rapere was used for "sexually violate," but only very rarely; the usual Latin word being stuprare "to defile, ravish, violate," related to stuprum (n.), literally "disgrace." Meaning "to abduct (a woman), ravish;" also "seduce (a man)" is from early 15c. in English. Related: Raped ; raping . Uncertain connection to Low German and Dutch rapen in the same sense. - rape (n.1)
- early 14c., "booty, prey;" mid-14c., "forceful seizure; plundering, robbery, extortion," from Anglo-French rap , rape , and directly from Latin rapere "seize" (see rape (v.)). Meaning "act of abducting a woman or sexually violating her or both" is from early 15c., but perhaps late 13c. in Anglo-Latin.
- rape (v.)
-
13
Create ten laws
by enigma1863 ina new country is being formed and you are given the task to make only ten official rules or laws the people of this country have to follow.
what are the ten laws?.
-
-
rmt1
If your child cannot point on a map to the major nations of the world, or major geographical features, such as oceans, continents, mountain ranges, rivers, and the major cities of the world, take him to the city gates and stone him and yourself.
Trimester abortions of new television shows should be reviewed by a panel of viewers comprising no less than one tenth the target market audience in order that cancellation of shows is afforded a modicum of checks and balances.
One near-term, realistic, non-exploitation space exploration film shall be made per year.
All police officers in every role and of every rank will be recorded during their dispatch of public duties. If an off-duty officer commenses public operations, he will have such equipment that automatically begins recording the event under every circumstance, no exceptions.
-
10
God's good for "$66 dollars"
by Separation of Powers inlast week's watchtower study related an experience of a sister who prayed that god would help her with her rent.
she needed $66 dollars.
she went to her waitressing job on an off night and would you believe?
-
-
rmt1
A rudimentary comprehension of statistics and probability, particularly a Gaussian normal distribution with its sigma or standard deviation, is probably tantamount to apostate thinking. It would be apostate because WTS is crafting a mode of high significance from an outlier of low significance. But in the real world, like say science, you frequently have to 'sigma clip', or disregard outliers above a pre-selected sigma. What is more, for equal populations of good and bad people, statistically equivalent numbers of 'acts of god' will occur to each. Does the WTS mention the apostate who accidentally came by an extra $66? Did Jehovah let that slip? Was it part of Jehovah's active, mindful, purposeful plan? If it was not, and Jehovah simply allows (sort of like an ambivalent or groovy Deist deity) a normalized Gaussian distribution of $66 dollars to be awarded to a random sampling of good and bad people, why does WTS treat it as special?
-
-
-
rmt1
I cannot think of a pressure of the world that the JWs have not converted into a reverse pressure of twice the magnitude.
The pressure of conformity would be sustainable if you had excellent arguments for it.
The pressure of maintaining physical endurance in the face of adversity, ditto.
The pressure of hourly active self-denial, or anti-disillusionment, or enduring cognitive dissonance, when you don't have excellent arguments for it is probably worse than anything physical.
-
44
Interesting experience while protesting at district conventions
by theron ware infor three weekends this summer, a friend and i protested outside district assemblies being held in the tucson convention center.
our approach was very low key and completely non-confrontational: we just held our posters and smiled.
this was our experience at the first two assemblies (for the third assembly, see the next paragraph).
-
-
rmt1
I just realized you said Tucson. I've lived in Tucson for 12 years now. Moved in from Central PA, HBG/Dauphin/Middletown/Swatara congs. Even had the notion to go see how JWs do things here. I'm going to suppose this was a heavily Latino crowd, and a lot less uptight than crowds of the northeast.
