slimboyfat

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Posts by slimboyfat

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  62

  Probability of Earth and life being how it is

  by ballistic in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  there are some things we don't know about existence and whether the earth is a simulation or even a creation.

  but we can do some statistical analysis on it.. the probability of a planet like earth existing in the goldilocks zone and having a moon that perfectly eclipses the sun is extremely low, but it's not impossible.

  the habitable zone (or goldilocks zone) around a star is the region where a planet could potentially support liquid water on its surface.

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  slimboyfat

  The moon thing is interesting but I’m not at this point convinced it tells us anything really. If the moon didn’t happen to eclipse the sun would we miss it? It’s just one of those things that could be or could not be. I don’t think we’d be sitting on an earth without the moon thinking we really ought to have a moon that eclipses the sun but since we don’t there’s clearly no design.

  I can’t get my head round the idea that the laws of nature are perfectly calibrated. (The so-called fine tuning argument) Maybe it makes sense or maybe it doesn’t, I just have no intuition on the matter. I heard an interesting take from a woman philosopher that reality is by necessity the way it is and it is not rational to talk about it possibly being otherwise. That seems as plausible to me as fine tuning, but I don’t know either way.

  For me existence itself points to there being a ground of being or God along the lines of Aquinas’ five ways. Natural selection, if it’s true also indicates to me that reality is set up in such a way to produce rational creatures. (As argued by Alvin Plantinga) Again this points to there being a God. Plus the existence of consciousness, I think, is not properly explained on a physical basis and points to mental and spiritual reality beyond the physical.

  For me these are good reasons for believing in God. The moon thing is interesting though and I’d be interested to know more about it. I wouldn’t trust AI for calculations however, because it still gets stuff wrong all the time and the only way to tell a wrong answer from a right answer is if you already know the answer. So it’s pretty useless.
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  71

  Did the Fred Franz style of writing cease after he died?

  by SydBarrett in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i was completely out by 1991 and 1989 would have been the last time i had to attend regularly.

  that over the top franz writing style was still there in the 1980's although i've heard he wasn't actually doing much writing by then.

  but his style was definitely picked up and imitated for many years beyond its wacky, outlandish peak of the the 50's - 70's.

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  slimboyfat

  How did a question about Fred Franz, Watchtowers' pretend Greek Scholar and 1st year college drop out, become a discussion about the Catholic Church???

  Because aqwebot123 …
  
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  71

  Did the Fred Franz style of writing cease after he died?

  by SydBarrett in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i was completely out by 1991 and 1989 would have been the last time i had to attend regularly.

  that over the top franz writing style was still there in the 1980's although i've heard he wasn't actually doing much writing by then.

  but his style was definitely picked up and imitated for many years beyond its wacky, outlandish peak of the the 50's - 70's.

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  slimboyfat

  Second, you say that you "read" Hislop’s book "like a historian." Nonsense. Any serious historian — Catholic, Protestant, or secular — recognizes that Alexander Hislop’s The Two Babylons is a work of fantasy, not credible historical scholarship.

  You are so disagreeable, you’re constantly looking for disagreement even where there is none. I think it’s clear vienne meant she reads Hyslop critically as a historian should. But you pretend she meant the opposite and reads it uncritically in order to justify yet another AI generated rant designed to demonstrate how wrong everybody is who’s not a Catholic.
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  71

  Did the Fred Franz style of writing cease after he died?

  by SydBarrett in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i was completely out by 1991 and 1989 would have been the last time i had to attend regularly.

  that over the top franz writing style was still there in the 1980's although i've heard he wasn't actually doing much writing by then.

  but his style was definitely picked up and imitated for many years beyond its wacky, outlandish peak of the the 50's - 70's.

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  slimboyfat

  I don’t know, Fred Franz seems more likeable than Rutherford to me. Nobody seemed to be sad to see Rutherford go whereas at least some apparently liked and admired Fred Franz. He may have got cantankerous with age, and defensive and more eccentric as a mechanism for coping with the 1975 failure for which he was largely responsible.

  If I recall correctly, Albert Schroeder was critical of Fred Franz over 1975 but he also delivered a sincere eulogy at his funeral. (Available on YouTube) And wasn’t Rutherford even worse over 1925 than Franz on 1975?
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  71

  Did the Fred Franz style of writing cease after he died?

  by SydBarrett in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i was completely out by 1991 and 1989 would have been the last time i had to attend regularly.

  that over the top franz writing style was still there in the 1980's although i've heard he wasn't actually doing much writing by then.

  but his style was definitely picked up and imitated for many years beyond its wacky, outlandish peak of the the 50's - 70's.

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  slimboyfat

  The generation change was a big wake up call for me too. But apparently not too big a wake up call considering I got baptised two years later!

  The generation change impacted a lot of people including, or perhaps especially very long term members that were hit hard with the realisation that Armageddon was no longer predicted in their lifetime.

  Having said that, it’s sobering to realise that much more than half the current JWs joined the religion or were baptised after 1995. So for most current JWs the generation change had already been made before they decided to commit to the religion. In other words its impact may be receding as (with some irony) on generation now replaces another.
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  13

  Loyalty to the Governing Body? Timeline to Change

  by blondie in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  https://jwfacts.com/watchtower/governing-body.php .

  here is an example how the wts has "adjusted" scripture.

  the governing body has gone as far as to change the text of micah 6:8 in their 2013 new world translation of the holy scriptures (nwt) in order to be able to demand loyalty.

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  slimboyfat

  I think they changed “loving kindness” to “loyal love” throughout the Hebrew Bible, it was not peculiar to this verse. Personally I liked “loving kindness” better but maybe that is just because of familiarity. It was in the kingdom songs and everything: “his loving kindness will follow me”, and so on. I guess they’ve probably changed the lyrics to the songs too.

  What I never realised as a JW is that the phrase “loving kindness” is very prominent in Buddhism. I don’t know if the GB is aware of that or if it played any part in dropping the phrase. Probably not. It seems just an attempt to replace a particlar idiosyncratic translation of Fred Franz with something that is more understandable and perhaps closer to the original meaning.
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  71

  Did the Fred Franz style of writing cease after he died?

  by SydBarrett in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i was completely out by 1991 and 1989 would have been the last time i had to attend regularly.

  that over the top franz writing style was still there in the 1980's although i've heard he wasn't actually doing much writing by then.

  but his style was definitely picked up and imitated for many years beyond its wacky, outlandish peak of the the 50's - 70's.

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  slimboyfat

  Have you been to a Christadelphian meeting Wing Commander?
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  71

  Did the Fred Franz style of writing cease after he died?

  by SydBarrett in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i was completely out by 1991 and 1989 would have been the last time i had to attend regularly.

  that over the top franz writing style was still there in the 1980's although i've heard he wasn't actually doing much writing by then.

  but his style was definitely picked up and imitated for many years beyond its wacky, outlandish peak of the the 50's - 70's.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
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  slimboyfat

  I doubt Fred Franz left a lot of written material because he was blind for the last 10 years or so and I think there was already a shift away from his style in the 1980s while he was still alive. He could still dictate and write things when he was blind but it seems unlikely he was building up a lot of written material at that stage and with those problems.

  His style probably still influenced the green Survival book in 1984 which was full of types and anti-types, although the actual writing was perhaps done by others.

  I seem to recall somebody saying that the Trinity brochure was the last publication Franz wrote himself or had major input on. It would make sense considering his long-standing interest in refuting the Trinity. That was published in 1989 just a couple of years before he died.
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  71

  Did the Fred Franz style of writing cease after he died?

  by SydBarrett in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i was completely out by 1991 and 1989 would have been the last time i had to attend regularly.

  that over the top franz writing style was still there in the 1980's although i've heard he wasn't actually doing much writing by then.

  but his style was definitely picked up and imitated for many years beyond its wacky, outlandish peak of the the 50's - 70's.

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  2. 
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  slimboyfat

  Yes, that would be excellent! Also settle the issue of what Maria Russell wrote in the early days too.
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  71

  Did the Fred Franz style of writing cease after he died?

  by SydBarrett in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i was completely out by 1991 and 1989 would have been the last time i had to attend regularly.

  that over the top franz writing style was still there in the 1980's although i've heard he wasn't actually doing much writing by then.

  but his style was definitely picked up and imitated for many years beyond its wacky, outlandish peak of the the 50's - 70's.

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  2. 
  3. 
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  slimboyfat

  Balaam, Fred Franz was certainly weird and he got weirder as he got older, people who knew him seem to agree on that. But are you sure about the gay angle? I’ve heard from others that Franz had a sort of girlfriend in the French branch and Barbara Harrison says she got on with him and reckons he flirted with her when she was a young secretary in the 1950s. Others have said he was apparently asexual. Knorr on the other hand, more people seem to agree was probably gay, whether he acted on it or suppressed it. A few years ago it was claimed AI could predict sexual orientation from the shape of a person’s face. I wouldn’t be surprised if it can do that now because orientation does seem to have a genetic component and openly gay people do seem to have a difficult to define “look” that AI may be able to tease out by leveraging big data. Maybe it could be possible to answer such questions, shortly before AI kills us all. 🤯