Disillusioned JW

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Posts by Disillusioned JW

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  86

  Is most of the promotion of creationism, not just that by the WT, charlatanism?

  by Disillusioned JW in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  is most of the promotion of creationism, not just that by the wt, charlatanism?.

  https://www.fullmoon.nu/sources.bak/chapter%2010/part%202/gish%20exposed.html [which has an article called "creationism: bad science or immoral pseudoscience?

  - (an expose of creationist dr. duane gish)"] says the following.. 'a look at the "scientific" creationist movement and a close examination of the tactics of a well-known and influential creationist will reveal that the creation "science" movement gains much of its strength through the use of distortion and scientifically unethical tactics.. .... with the facts explained and the lawsuits won, scientists declared victory and returned to their labs and offices.

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  Disillusioned JW

  Is that which is called "scientific creationism" and/or "creation science" really science? Well consider that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_science says the following.

  "The overwhelming consensus of the scientific community is that creation science fails to qualify as scientific because it lacks empirical support, supplies no testable hypotheses, and resolves to describe natural history in terms of scientifically untestable supernatural causes.[10][11] Courts, most often in the United States where the question has been asked in the context of teaching the subject in public schools, have consistently ruled since the 1980s that creation science is a religious view rather than a scientific one. Historians,[12] philosophers of science and skeptics have described creation science as a pseudoscientific attempt to map the Bible into scientific facts.[13][14][15][16][17] Professional biologists have criticized creation science for being unscholarly,[18] and even as a dishonest and misguided sham, with extremely harmful educational consequences.[19] "

  The article also says the following.

  'A summary of the objections to creation science by scientists follows:

  • Creation science is not falsifiable: An idea or hypothesis is generally not considered to be in the realm of science unless it can be potentially disproved with certain experiments, this is the concept of falsifiability in science.[84] The act of creation as defined in creation science is not falsifiable because no testable bounds can be imposed on the creator. In creation science, the creator is defined as limitless, with the capacity to create (or not), through fiat alone, infinite universes, not just one, and endow each one with its own unique, unimaginable and incomparable character. It is impossible to disprove a claim when that claim as defined encompasses every conceivable contingency.[85]
  • Creation science violates the principle of parsimony: Parsimony favours those explanations which rely on the fewest assumptions.[citation needed][86] Scientists prefer explanations that are consistent with known and supported facts and evidence and require the fewest assumptions to fill the remaining gaps. Many of the alternative claims made in creation science retreat from simpler scientific explanations and introduce more complications and conjecture into the equation.[87]
  • Creation science is not, and cannot be, empirically or experimentally tested: Creationism posits supernatural causes which lie outside the realm of methodological naturalism and scientific experiment. Science can only test empirical, natural claims.
  • Creation science is not correctable, dynamic, tentative or progressive: Creation science adheres to a fixed and unchanging premise or "absolute truth," the "word of God," which is not open to change. Any evidence that runs contrary to that truth must be disregarded.[88] In science, all claims are tentative, they are forever open to challenge, and must be discarded or adjusted when the weight of evidence demands it.

  By invoking claims of "abrupt appearance" of species as a miraculous act, creation science is unsuited for the tools and methods demanded by science, and it cannot be considered scientific in the way that the term "science" is currently defined.[89] Scientists and science writers commonly characterize creation science as a pseudoscience.[14][15][90][91] '
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  173

  Is the tide turning against covid vaccines?

  by slimboyfat in

  1. social
  2. current

  have you seen this video about the covid vaccines?

  have you got any views on the information?

  i find it worrying at least.

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  Disillusioned JW

  I delayed for months in getting a second booster shot of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine, but last Thursday I obtained the Moderna Bi-Valent Covid-19 vaccine booster shot. On Friday I read the article located at https://www.aier.org/article/which-last-longer-spike-proteins-or-cdc-facts/ . Partly as a result of reading that I have decided to avoid getting any more mRNA based Covid-19 vaccines.

  As far as I can tell I never had any symptoms of Covid-19 other than occasional coughs, but I don't think my coughs (which don't happen while lying down) were caused by Covid-19.

  For more than two years I have been taking a multivitamin-mutimineral pill nearly every day and an occasional high dose Vitamin D pill (or capsule). The Vitamin D might have been protecting me from Covid-19. For the past two years I have also been doing intermittent fasting on nearly every workday, and that appears to be a main reason why my A1C blood sugar is now solidly in the normal range instead of at the border of pre-diabetic range (or in the low end of pre-diabetic, depending upon what definition is used for blood sugar range of pre-diabetic). That is also might be protecting me from Covid-19.
  
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  99

  If not the WT/JW relgion where else are 'we' to go? Why not atheistic/scientific philosophical naturalism?

  by Disillusioned JW in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  sometimes jws wonder if the wt/jw is not the truth, 'then where else are we to go?

  ' i say 'why not atheistic/scientific philosophical naturalism and why not a secular philosophy which teaches a way of life?

  ' what do you folks say?.

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  Disillusioned JW

  The review at https://philosophycompass.wordpress.com/2012/03/12/the-atheists-guide-to-reality/ of Rosenberg's book is very unsettling to me in some respects. Some of what it says are ideas I have read elsewhere, but other ideas it says go beyond what I have elsewhere. As a result, I might not would have liked reading Rosenburg's book. As to whether some of the most unsettling ideas are true or false, I don't know which is the case.
  
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  99

  If not the WT/JW relgion where else are 'we' to go? Why not atheistic/scientific philosophical naturalism?

  by Disillusioned JW in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  sometimes jws wonder if the wt/jw is not the truth, 'then where else are we to go?

  ' i say 'why not atheistic/scientific philosophical naturalism and why not a secular philosophy which teaches a way of life?

  ' what do you folks say?.

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  Disillusioned JW

  Folks at the book sale at the local library where I purchased the science book by Krauss and the science book by Simpson I also purchased the following two books which are quite informative and beneficial for those embracing an atheistic secular way of life.
  

  - Living the Secular Life: New Answers To Old Questions, by Phil Zuckerman. The book is copyright 2014. The dust jacket says the author "is a professor of sociology and secular studies" and the author of Faith No More and Society Without God.
  

  - The Happy Atheist, by PZ Myers. The book is copyright 2013. The outside back cover of the paperback says the following. "On his popular science blog, Pharyngula, PZ Meyers has entertained millions of readers with his infectious love of evolutionary science and his equally infectious disdain for creationism, biblical literalism, intelligent design theory, and other products of godly illogic. This funny and fearless book collects and expands on some of his most popular writings, giving the religious fanaticism of our times the gleeful disrespect it deserves by skewering the apocalyptic fantasies, magical thinking, hypocrisies, an pseudoscientific theories advanced by religious fundamentalists of all stripes."

  In the chapter "One Nation Free of Gods" Meyers says that if people do not question God, do not question America, and they mix the two ideas together, then "you've got a lovely recipe for blind obedience." He then says the following two paragraphs.

  'I usually complain about religion, but I have to add another target: patriotism. It's the same thing, opening a door to unthinking authoritarianism, and it always leads to oppression. Quite contrary to the claims of fanatical Christians, the heart of a thriving democracy has to be constant questioning of the operation of the government. To marry religion to our government would be antithetical to its founding principles, and even to regard those founding principles as inviolate and somehow imbued with godly authority would be a betrayal.

  When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, defenders of the status quo threw around a common slogan: "My country, right or wrong." Even at my young age, that always seemed insane. If my country is wrong, shouldn't I want to change it?'

  Those stated ideas of PZ Meyers are definitely true! That is well said, PZ Meyers!

  Also at the book sale was the atheistic book called The Atheist's Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life Without Illusions, by Alexander Rosenberg. I didn't notice that book until a beautiful female (of about age 18-20) picked it up in order to buy it. I wished I had found it first since the book seems (based upon its tile) very good. I think she said she found it in the self-help section; it was not in the religious section. An atheistic approach to thinking and to life can be thrilling and joyful!

  A moment ago I found the following description (on Amazon's website) about the book.

  'A book for nonbelievers who embrace the reality-driven life.

  We can't avoid the persistent questions about the meaning of life-and the nature of reality. Philosopher Alex Rosenberg maintains that science is the only thing that can really answer them--all of them. His bracing and ultimately upbeat book takes physics seriously as the complete description of reality and accepts all its consequences. He shows how physics makes Darwinian natural selection the only way life can emerge, and how that deprives nature of purpose, and human action of meaning, while it exposes conscious illusions such as free will and the self. The science that makes us nonbelievers provides the insight into the real difference between right and wrong, the nature of the mind, even the direction of human history. The Atheist's Guide to Reality draws powerful implications for the ethical and political issues that roil contemporary life. The result is nice nihilism, a surprisingly sanguine perspective atheists can happily embrace.'
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  99

  If not the WT/JW relgion where else are 'we' to go? Why not atheistic/scientific philosophical naturalism?

  by Disillusioned JW in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  sometimes jws wonder if the wt/jw is not the truth, 'then where else are we to go?

  ' i say 'why not atheistic/scientific philosophical naturalism and why not a secular philosophy which teaches a way of life?

  ' what do you folks say?.

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  Disillusioned JW

  There is a very fascinating recent science news article called "Dead fish breathes new life into the evolutionary origin of fins and limbs" located at https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/09/220928113007.htm . It says in part the following.

  'Corresponding author Professor Donoghue said: "Tujiaaspis breathes new life into a century old hypothesis for the evolution of paired fins, through differentiation of pectoral (arms) and pelvic (legs) fins over evolutionary time from a continuous head-to-tail fin precursor.

  "This 'fin-fold' hypothesis has been very popular but it has lacked any supporting evidence until now. The discovery to Tujiaaspis resurrects the fin-fold hypothesis and reconciles it with contemporary data on the genetic controls on the embryonic development of fins in living vertebrates."

  Corresponding author Min Zhu of VPP, Beijing, added "Tujiaaspis shows the primitive condition for paired fins first evolved. Later groups, like the jawless osteostracans show the first evidence for the separation of muscular pectoral fins, retaining long pelvic fins that reduced to the short muscular fins in jawed vertebrates, such as in groups like placoderms and sharks. Nevertheless, we can see vestiges of elongate fin-folds in the embryos of living jawed fishes, which can be experimentally manipulated to reproduce them. The key question is why did fins first evolve in this way?" '

  The recent science news article called "Revealing the genome of the common ancestor of all mammals" located at https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/09/220928094821.htm says in part the following.

  'Every modern mammal, from a platypus to a blue whale, is descended from a common ancestor that lived about 180 million years ago. We don't know a great deal about this animal, but the organization of its genome has now been computationally reconstructed by an international team of scientists.

  ... The scientists found nine whole chromosomes, or chromosome fragments in the mammal ancestor whose order of genes is the same in modern birds' chromosomes.

  "This remarkable finding shows the evolutionary stability of the order and orientation of genes on chromosomes over an extended evolutionary timeframe of more than 320 million years," Lewin says. In contrast, regions between these conserved blocks contained more repetitive sequences and were more prone to breakages, rearrangements and sequence duplications, which are major drivers of genome evolution.'
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  99

  If not the WT/JW relgion where else are 'we' to go? Why not atheistic/scientific philosophical naturalism?

  by Disillusioned JW in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  sometimes jws wonder if the wt/jw is not the truth, 'then where else are we to go?

  ' i say 'why not atheistic/scientific philosophical naturalism and why not a secular philosophy which teaches a way of life?

  ' what do you folks say?.

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  Disillusioned JW

  Regarding Sea Breeze's comment of "science that disproves evolution" there is no such science. There is no science which disproves evolution. There is some science which has disproved some specific former hypotheses of evolution, but evolution itself has not been disproved. Some web sites and books of creationists (including of intelligent design) have articles which purport to disprove evolution (and Sea Breeze quotes from a number of them) but none of them actually disprove evolution. At best, they point out a flaws with some specific claim made by some evolutionist scientists about some aspect of evolution (such as some interpretations of some specific fossils).
  
  If there actually were some "science which disproves evolution" great attention to it would be proclaimed by the mainstream media, and there would be articles in mainstream science journals and popular magazines of science which would proclaim such. But such has not been proclaimed in such sources.
  
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  24

  'In Search of Christian Freedom'

  by riblah in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  i cross-posted this on reddit:.

  i would love to have a hard copy of this book.

  does anyone know about how to go about persuading the person who has the rights to print a batch?.

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  Disillusioned JW

  Thanks Beth Sarim for clarifying. I obtained a copy of the Finished Mystery about 15 years ago and from eBay auctions I obtained copies of two different editions the Harp of God. After I analyzed them I decided I had no further need for them. I thus later sold them on eBay at a profit. I do however still have a copy of the book called Deliverance.
  
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  99

  If not the WT/JW relgion where else are 'we' to go? Why not atheistic/scientific philosophical naturalism?

  by Disillusioned JW in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  sometimes jws wonder if the wt/jw is not the truth, 'then where else are we to go?

  ' i say 'why not atheistic/scientific philosophical naturalism and why not a secular philosophy which teaches a way of life?

  ' what do you folks say?.

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  Disillusioned JW

  How can people see numerous fossils (including of skulls) of multiple species of Australopithecus and numerous fossils (especially of skulls) of more than one species of Homo and not see definite proof of evolution of Homo sapiens from a prior species of humans and from earlier non-human hominids? I can understand how people might not conclude such proof back in the year 1980 when the fossil collection of such was much smaller than now, but now the collection is very large and diverse. We now have a range of hominid skulls which show transitional features. The skulls of Homo ergaster and Homo erectus have features intermediate between early Australopithecines and of Homo sapiens. Likewise, some skulls have features which are intermediate between that of early Australopithecines and that of both Homo ergaster and Homo erectus.
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  99

  If not the WT/JW relgion where else are 'we' to go? Why not atheistic/scientific philosophical naturalism?

  by Disillusioned JW in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  sometimes jws wonder if the wt/jw is not the truth, 'then where else are we to go?

  ' i say 'why not atheistic/scientific philosophical naturalism and why not a secular philosophy which teaches a way of life?

  ' what do you folks say?.

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  Disillusioned JW

  I notice that Sea Breeze said the following. "I think a lot of folks are opposed to science that disproves evolution based upon principle, not the evidence. They then segregate their thinking according to their a priori commitment to atheism. I think that is what you are doing." I am astonished that Sea Breeze would think that about me (and about so many others who are convinced of evolution). Becoming convinced of evolution due to the scientific evidence for it is what has convinced a great many Christians to become atheists. For a great many people their atheism did not come before the conviction of evolution. Furthermore, a great many liberal Christians are convinced of evolution (believing that God played a role in it, such as in starting the process).
  

  In a number of posts I mentioned that even before I became baptized as a JW (I got baptized while I was a teenager) there were points in time when I thought that evolution might be true. I even sometimes thought such before I was a teenager as a result of scientific literature about evolution which I read, and likewise even years later while I was ministerial servant. It was also because I knew that most scientists (including Christian ones) were convinced of evolution. Shortly before I got baptized I began a subscription to the magazine called "Science 80" (of which the magazine in subsequent years was called "Science 81", "Science 82", etc.). Reading some of the articles (including ones about punctuated equilibrium and about the fossil called "Lucy") in those issues made me think that biological evolution might be true. Those articles made me think there was a strong possibility evolution was true. Likewise there was an article in the Science 80 magazine about chemical evolution, including about life evolving from non-life. That article made me think that life might have evolved from non-living chemicals. For years I saved my copy of those articles. But sadly, the WT's young biosphere creationist literature led me astray from becoming convinced of evolution (and even from seeking out books about evolution) until much later in life.
  

  While I was an independent minded Christian (after I "faded" from being a JW) I learned about the idea of theistic evolution and I learned more about evolution (from science shows on PBS television and from news articles on the internet about evolution). One of the shows I watched (after I stopped regular attendance at JW meetings in the Kingdom Hall) was a documentary miniseries called "Evolution" which first aired in the year 2001 [see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_(TV_series) ]. I thus concluded that maybe Jehovah God used evolution to create various kinds of life. years later while I was still a Christian (but no longer a believing JW) who believed in the Bible and Jehovah God and Jesus Christ I learned some information about geology which convinced me that the Genesis chapter one creation account is false. That then convinced me that the creation account is thus uninspired of Jehovah God, since I learned that geology very clearly reveals (without any doubt) that the earliest birds came after the earliest land animals (even if birds did not evolve from non-avian dinosaurs) - the opposite as Genesis says. After I learned that and that geology shows that the account in Genesis account of the flood of 'Noah's day' (whether viewed as a global flood or a local flood) is false, I thus stopped believing in Jehovah and then I no longer had any reason to reject evolution. Notice that it was the learning of scientific evidence which caused me to stop believing in Jehovah God (and also Jesus Christ, for that matter) and the Bible as inspired by God. Beginning a few years later (and lasting for several years) I began looking up a great number of quotes (and their contexts) which the WT made of scientists pertaining to evolution. I also now own books by scientists which which both prove evolution and also disprove the claims of so-called "scientific creationists"! I also read books by scientists (including Christian ones) who disproved conclusively the claims of intelligent design. I now own some of those books as well. As a result of that great amount of research I saw enormous evidence of proof of biological evolution and I thus concluded that there is no way at all that non-evolutionary creationism could be true.
  
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  99

  If not the WT/JW relgion where else are 'we' to go? Why not atheistic/scientific philosophical naturalism?

  by Disillusioned JW in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  sometimes jws wonder if the wt/jw is not the truth, 'then where else are we to go?

  ' i say 'why not atheistic/scientific philosophical naturalism and why not a secular philosophy which teaches a way of life?

  ' what do you folks say?.

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  Disillusioned JW

  What secular forms of philosophy of how to live one's life are the best? Is one of the various forms of humanism the best? Atheists, is secular humanism too liberal in some respects? By what principles, including ethical principles, should we atheists and agnostics live our lives? By what means can we atheists and agnostics determine which possible actions are moral or immoral, just of unjust, wise or foolish? What do you think about what Friedrich Nietzsche said about morality?