If there is a clear statement in the Watchtower that the ransom was paid to Jehovah I'd like to see it.
slimboyfat
JoinedPosts by slimboyfat
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44
Please explain the Watchtower's "Ransom" for me
by Doug Mason inaccording to the watchtower:.
who received the ransom payment?.
why did the ransomer need to be paid?.
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44
Please explain the Watchtower's "Ransom" for me
by Doug Mason inaccording to the watchtower:.
who received the ransom payment?.
why did the ransomer need to be paid?.
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slimboyfat
The problem with saying the ransom is paid to "divine justice" is that it makes God subject to a law greater than himself. He is not fully sovereign or almighty. But maybe the Christian God is not almighty. The JW view of God is certainly weaker than traditional Christianity in a number of respects: he is not omnipresent, he does not foresee or foreordain everything, there is (I think) even some question in JW theology about whether Jehovah created time or acts inside it.
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142
Panpsychism - a philosophy with a future
by slimboyfat inat one time scientists believed that living things and non-living things were made of different material, accounting for the unique properties of living things.
this idea is called vitalism and is no longer popular.
what does remain popular (in fact is still the dominant view) is a similar idea that things that experience the world (humans, frogs, mice) are different from things that don't experience the world (potatoes, rocks, snowflakes).
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slimboyfat
Yes it's also possble that we don't perceive the world as it really is. I should have included this possibility, which is equally mind blowing when you think about it. It would mean there is no rational basis on which to dismiss the faith of mystics in a God beyond understanding. Because why assume that the human mind is capable of understanding the logic of arguments for or against God or other significant philosophical concerns? If we are the result of evolution from non-living matter, which in turn appeared from nothing at the Big Bang, and there is no God, then there is no reason to suppose that this process should enable humans, of all beings in the universe, to accurately perceive the world as it really is. In fact it seems rather unlikely. In which case it seems hopelessly optimistic to assume we can ask and answer questions that indicate accurate or truthful perception of reality.
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Please explain the Watchtower's "Ransom" for me
by Doug Mason inaccording to the watchtower:.
who received the ransom payment?.
why did the ransomer need to be paid?.
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slimboyfat
Has the Watchtower ever given a straight answer to the question: who was the Ransom paid to? I think they've said it wasn't paid to the devil, but stopped short of saying it was paid to Jehovah.
If it was paid to Jehovah, didn't he pay his own ransom? How can that make sense? It's as bad as the mind-bending overlapping generation when you really think about it.
Makes me want to be Unitarian!
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142
Panpsychism - a philosophy with a future
by slimboyfat inat one time scientists believed that living things and non-living things were made of different material, accounting for the unique properties of living things.
this idea is called vitalism and is no longer popular.
what does remain popular (in fact is still the dominant view) is a similar idea that things that experience the world (humans, frogs, mice) are different from things that don't experience the world (potatoes, rocks, snowflakes).
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slimboyfat
I skimmed a book that argued octopuses may be as, or nearly, or differently but equally intelligent as humans.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Other-Minds-Octopus-Evolution-Intelligent/dp/0008226296/
I thought the Philosophy Now article on panpsychism was pretty good. If it doesn't convince you fair enough.
What I meant to say is that the idea that consciousness arises from unconscious matter is just as unprovable as panpsychism. This may be difficult to grasp because reductive materialism is pretty much taken for granted in our culture. But just because it's taken for granted doesn't mean it's true, or that it should be let off the hook in terms of requiring evidence.
Some of the resistance to panpsychism may be a suspicion that it aims to create a space for God or the supernatural. But there is no reason panpsychism should necessitate belief in God. In fact, in some sense materialism's "hard problem" of consciousness is one of the best arguments for God, and panpsychism tends to defuse that problem. So it's not entirely clear what the implications of panpsychism are for God or the supernatural.
All I know is that reality appears increasingly mysterious to me. And as Krauthammer once quipped, atheism appears to be the most unlikely of the theologies on offer. There is a deep mystery at the heart of existence. Why is there something rather than nothing? Why are we uniquely equipped to perceive the world as it really is? Reductive materialism offers no answer to these questions. In fact it doesn't make much sense as a view of reality when all its perameters, including the mystery of existence and consciousness, are taken into account.
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142
Panpsychism - a philosophy with a future
by slimboyfat inat one time scientists believed that living things and non-living things were made of different material, accounting for the unique properties of living things.
this idea is called vitalism and is no longer popular.
what does remain popular (in fact is still the dominant view) is a similar idea that things that experience the world (humans, frogs, mice) are different from things that don't experience the world (potatoes, rocks, snowflakes).
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slimboyfat
Support for panpsychism continues to grow.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/121/The_Case_For_Panpsychism
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142
Panpsychism - a philosophy with a future
by slimboyfat inat one time scientists believed that living things and non-living things were made of different material, accounting for the unique properties of living things.
this idea is called vitalism and is no longer popular.
what does remain popular (in fact is still the dominant view) is a similar idea that things that experience the world (humans, frogs, mice) are different from things that don't experience the world (potatoes, rocks, snowflakes).
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slimboyfat
A basic argument for panpsychism, as Strawson presents it, is that we know we are personally conscious. It's the one thing in the world we can be absolutely sure about. If we also agree that we are made of matter, and that we are conscious as material beings, without the aid of "spirit", then the question arises as to how consciousness comes about from our corporeal bodies. Logically there seems to be two possible explanations: 1) at a certain level of complexity consciousness "radically emerges" from matter where previously there was nothing, or 2) awareness is already a property of matter itself to begin with, so that consciousness does not "radically emerge" at a certain point of complexity, but is the extreme end of a continuum of awareness.
If you say there is no evidence for option 2, it's fair to point out that there is no evidence for option 1 either. It's commonly taken for granted that awareness is a special property of some beings, and it's postulated this property somehow emerges from dull matter. There is no prooof for these assertions either.
Some scientists are now devising ways of testing panpsychism, including David Chalmers. Sam Harris seems to find his ideas more compelling that those of Daniel Dennett who once argued that "consciousness is an illusion". They comment that Dennett seems to have modified that extreme position. They talk about panpsychism at around 45 minutes.
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stupid questions
by road to nowhere inparagraph 4 today: "what are we gonna consider?
" maybe that is the article title?
the other is: "what will we consider next week?
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slimboyfat
Next week we're going to consider the lilies of the field. As if.
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2018 Memorial and Special Talk Speculation
by SplaneThisToMe inso we all know that the special talk titled "who really is jesus christ?
" will be given before the memorial next year which is very new.
also new this year is that the special talk will be prerecorded and given by a branch committee member rather than a brother from the local congregation.
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slimboyfat
I reserve judgment on whether they will publish the partaker number, or the rest of the statistics in full online, as promised.
The GB always seem to take the easy way out. When faced with disconfirmation over the "generation", instead of having a fundamental reevaluation, they came up with the most ridiculous fudge.
Dropping the literal 144,000 teaching would be the brave but rational thing to do. But my guess is they'll go with an easier option. They may simply stop publishing the number and assert that the "real" anointed are declining in number without giving specifics. They've demonstrated they can tell JWs just about anything and they'll take it. JWs might not like it, but what are they going to do? Not much they can do. They have no power. They can shut up and accept it, or else speak out and be shunned. That's the rules of the game among JWs, as currently constituted.
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142
Panpsychism - a philosophy with a future
by slimboyfat inat one time scientists believed that living things and non-living things were made of different material, accounting for the unique properties of living things.
this idea is called vitalism and is no longer popular.
what does remain popular (in fact is still the dominant view) is a similar idea that things that experience the world (humans, frogs, mice) are different from things that don't experience the world (potatoes, rocks, snowflakes).
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slimboyfat
As I understand it, panpsychists don't typically argue that "rocks are conscious". Galen Strawson, for example says it's a misconception that he "thinks the chair is conscious".
Rather what we're talking about is whether matter is experiential in some sense, so that awareness is a continuum rather than a special property of some beings.
So for example we can agree that humans are conscious. And most can probably agree that cats and dogs possess some form of consciousness. Probably the same with mice. But where do you draw the line? Are spiders and flies conscious? We might say they probably have a very low level of awarenss, but not consciousness as such. What about tad poles? Single cell animals? Plants? They are not conscious but do they have any level of awareness? And obviously when we talk about plants or even rocks having "awareness" we are not talking about high order "thinking". The basic point is that awareness is a property of all matter, not that all matter has the same level of awareness. Like how a candle and the sun are both combusting, but the gulf between the two is unimaginably huge. This might illustrate the difference in awareness between a human and an ant. The gulf between an ant and a rock may be larger still. But the point is that consciousness isn't something that arises magically when matter reaches a certain order of complexity. Rather awareness is a property which is already present in matter to begin with, so that the potential for consciousness is already there, and we need not invoke mysterious notions of "spirit" as in dualism, or "radical emergence" as in materialism.