i would like to better understand what richard dawkins is saying and would appreciate your help, views and opinions, including the implications:.
"far from being demeaning to human spiritual values, scientific rationalism is the crowning glory of the human spirit.
".
Where God once stood Dawkins has put in his place the human mind. Whereas once God was relied upon as the source of truth, Dawkins supports the current orthodoxy that says truth is determined by human rationality.
This is a good book on the metaphysical assumptions lying behind the modern belief that human rationality is the source of truth.
protesters shut down a trump rally.
massive numbers of people are out in chicago and have shut his event down.
there were scuffles inside the event.. despite his lame attempt to pretend the violence he instigates is nothing to do with him it's clear that it is as the cnn quotes during the last event showed only too well.. this doesn't happen at anyone else's events - candidates have even given up the stage to protesters, not called for them to be beaten and punched.. trump is an ugly person and this is just a small taste of what a future under his rule would be like.. shame on the gop for not kicking his ass out.
This is frightening and getting beyond a joke. Surely this madness will stop now. I think this is a tipping point.
Prediction: John Kasich will be the next president of the United States.
Reason: Rubio is finished because he can't even win Florida. Ted Cruz can only win in the south. Kasich will win Ohio, take Rubio's supporters when he drops out, and as votes peel away from Trump he'll pick up the remaining winner takes all primaries. Even if he doesn't get enough delegates to win outright he'll be supported by an anti-Trump alliance. Then in a match up against Hillary Clinton, Kasich has an excellent chance of winning.
however, i haven't found any evidence to support that belief.. have you?
if so please, show me the evidence that god exists, and i will believe along with you.. criteria:.
(1) you must specify which god you are talking about;.
when i look back into era when i conducted bible studies i recall several nice people, but also weird and strange.
my last bible study was with couple who were the new capitalists; people who earned a lot of money often by illegal means.
i am sure they were dangerous, but i have not perceived that way.
Ha ha what an appropriate thread topic. The only people I started Bible studies with were: a demented older woman and a young man who had a JW girlfriend and wanted to pretend to be interested.
the person may have prepared himself psychologically for an event that never eventuates, and, worse still, may have even made public his predictions about the event.
what happens when an important prophecy fails and dissonance is aroused between what was predicted and what actually occurred is described in the classic field study carried out by festinger, riecken and schachter (1956).
in the mid-1950s mrs marion keech, a suburban housewife, began to receive messages from outer space.
Good book on this topic: discusses Festinger, the theory, a few chapters on JWs, as well as other groups.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Expecting-Armageddon-Essential-Readings-Prophecy/dp/041592331X/
okay, they've posted their 2015 return - i am very confused.. http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/ebci/haip/srch/t3010form23-eng.action?b=119288918rr0001&fpe=2015-08-31&n=watch+tower+bible+and+tract+society+of+canada+%2f+la+tour+de+garde+soci%c3%a9t%c3%a9+de+bibles+et+de+tracts+du+canada&r=http%3a%2f%2fwww.cra-arc.gc.ca%3a80%2febci%2fhaip%2fsrch%2fbasicsearchresult-eng.action%3fk%3dwatch%2btower%26amp%3bs%3dregistered%26amp%3bp%3d1%26amp%3bb%3dtrue.
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/311690001/canada-branch-finances-whats-going-on?.
1. Maybe it is simply an error.
2. Maybe they've set up a new charity and transferred assets to that.
3. Maybe they've sent the money to the US for some reason.
Whatever the explanation, it would appear to be further evidence that they are experiencing some sort of difficulty. The drop in assets the previous year was huge already, now this.
one of my friends posted an inspirational picture on facebook this morning.
even before i checked i knew that it was a fictional quote.
it was written by somebody who has not grasped a basic fact about evolution.. darwin did not say this.... it is a common misunderstanding that evolution favours individuals who are able to adapt to their environment.
Ruby evolution seems to be a much more complicated and multifaceted phenomenon than many popular accounts present. I really enjoyed Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker and it was easy to understand especially for someone whose only exposure had been the blue Creation book. However it seems that Dawkins' tendency for reductionism results in a limited view of evolution focussing on selection at the level of genes. This necessarily involves excluding the role of adaption to environment and selection at different levels including group selection. Just as in a broader philosophical sense Dawkins also seeks to reduce reality to physical matter and nothing else. But reality rather appears to be, as Raymond Tallis says, irreducibly relational. Selection cannot be reduced to a single driving factor, and reality is a complex interaction of the physical and conscious experience. So it's interesting that it's his same tendency for reductionism that produces a view of evolution that has been criticised by evolutionary biologists such as Stephen Jay Gould as myopic that also produces Dawkins' strident materialism and atheism.
Yes Cofty in particular the following section that begins:
How Phenotypic Plasticity Contributes to Speciation
A remarkable claim is that phenotypic plasticity stimulates evolution and contributes to speciation. But how can environment-induced changes to the phenotypes of individuals influence evolution? Isn’t this Lamarckian, the assimilation of environmentally acquired traits into the genome? Surprisingly, phenotypic plasticity theory suggests that environment- induced changes to individuals can become absorbed into the genome (Jablonka et al. 1998, ten Cate 2000), but via traditional Medelian processes (West-Eberhard 2003, Schlichting 2004, Pigliucci et al. 2006). There are different hypothetical pathways for this to occur (e.g., Grether 2005, Rodríguez et al. 2007), but one possible pathway would be the following...
one of my friends posted an inspirational picture on facebook this morning.
even before i checked i knew that it was a fictional quote.
it was written by somebody who has not grasped a basic fact about evolution.. darwin did not say this.... it is a common misunderstanding that evolution favours individuals who are able to adapt to their environment.
It is a common misunderstanding that evolution favours individuals who are able to adapt to their environment.
Is it? Many plants and animals are able to adapt to their environment and it is a selective advantage for them.
Phenotypic plasticity, through its ecological effects, can facilitate evolutionary change and speciation. Plasticity is important because it is an encompassing model to understand life on earth, it can increase fitness, generate novelity, and facilitate evolution, it structures ecological communities, and it has numerous practical applications.
the wt’s teaching that humans will live forever on a paradise earth will necessitate that given that there will be no more death, then immortal humans will have to be relocated to other planets in order to prevent the earth from becoming overpopulated.. so how many habitable, earth-like planets are there?more and more habitable, earth-like planets would have to become available on a continuous, never-ending basis ad infinitum as mankind’s population grows given that there will be no more death.. the longevity/sustainability of life on these planets will be limited by the fact that the sun serving these planets will eventually die:https://shar.es/1cko6n.
http://www.space.com/22437-main-sequence-stars.html#sthash.ejbt1xrz.dpuf.
so immortal humans will have to keep moving from planet to planet.
I wrote a thread about this but I can't find it. If the Venus Project and the Methuselah Foundation join forces maybe they'll create JW style paradise between them.
when faced with awkward questions about the morality of god many christians respond by distancing themselves from the old testament and focusing on "gentle jesus meek and mild" of the new testament.. for bible-believing christians this is intellectually dishonest.. according to christian dogma jesus was the god of abraham isaac and jacob.
the logos, the alpha and omega who is "the same yesterday, today, and forever.".
he claimed that "he that has seen me has seen the father" and that "i and the father are one".. in short, christians assert that jesus is almighty god from all eternity.. it therefore follows that jesus was the god who ordered the nation of israel to take slaves as inheritable possessions.
