Posts by bohm

15

Watchtower HATES being compared to Catholic Church - but if the shoe fits...

by Zoos in

remember this?.

.

well how about this?.

bohm

Where is the last picture from? is that before or after a convention?!

212

Why Do You No Longer Believe in God?

by Tenacious in

i know this question has popped up from time to time but i really would like to know how you guys, those that no longer believe, came to that conclusion?

was it the wts and all its crap?

was it something you read?

Here is another way to look at it. Suppose a person accept evolution. In that case she accepts that evolution is a very powerful way to optimize organisms, that is, change the information in their DNA in order to make them more fit, and that person would predict that if we implemented evolution on a computer it should be able to optimize computer programs efficiently. As it turns out, this is true. Evolution works and works damn well.

212

Why Do You No Longer Believe in God?

by Tenacious in

i know this question has popped up from time to time but i really would like to know how you guys, those that no longer believe, came to that conclusion?

was it the wts and all its crap?

was it something you read?

bohm

Cofty: DNA is not a programme, it has no information or instructions of any kind.

I agree with you on nearly anything related to evolution, but I have to disagree with you on this. That DNA is said to carry information or instructions is widely accepted vocabulary in genetics, check out a graduate genetics textbook. You are right that DNA just "does it's thing" (i.e. interact with the other cellular machinery), however the same can be said about a computer program (which is just magnetic anomalies on a spinning plate interacting with other parts of a computer) and this does not prevent us from saying the computer program contains information. "Intention" is not at this point a useful term and not well-defined.

212

Why Do You No Longer Believe in God?

by Tenacious in

i know this question has popped up from time to time but i really would like to know how you guys, those that no longer believe, came to that conclusion?

was it the wts and all its crap?

was it something you read?

bohm

EOM: Computer programs absolutely can evolve!
VIV: Awesome, name a computer program that evolved on it's own.

This is fairly easy. You can find many examples of evolving computer program within the field of evolutionary computing. To start you can go to google scholar and search for "genetic algorithm" (1.9mio hits), or if you prefer an ordering by application domain and specific programs check out the list on wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genetic_algorithm_applications

if you prefer a single current example you can check out evolino, an application where neural architechtures are evolved for control tasks: http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/evolino.html

I notice you appended "on it's own" to EOM's statement. This would (strictly speaking!) make your statement true since a computer program "on it's own" presumably would be a computer program without a medium to run it, however this would clearly also be a strawman.

155

Headline: "Islamic Invasion: Europe now scrambles for guns." How true is this?

by cappytan in

jw
friends

a year to a year and a half ago, i would have taken this article at face value and believed it.. now, i realize this article comes from a dubious source.

world news daily has a die-hard right-wing bias.

so, in an effort to get real information, i'm asking my european exjw's, is this article all true?

bohm

Not true at all. I have only seen the islamic invasion narrative on the net.

5

The machines helping to build China's vast network of high speed rail

by fulltimestudent in

high speed rail (in china, anyway) is a railway that travels faster than 200 km/hour.

while other countries in europe and japan have developed high speed rail, china now has the largest network in the world, with both mainlines and connecting links often providing 300km/hour travel.

the network now comprises more than 16,000 km of dedicated track and another approx.

bohm

"So if they go around a tightly curved platform the middle bit will scrape on the platform edge. It's simple physics."

lol, the mental imagery is hilarious. Imagine being the guy who first got the idea to check this, talk about awkward :-).

212

Why Do You No Longer Believe in God?

by Tenacious in

i know this question has popped up from time to time but i really would like to know how you guys, those that no longer believe, came to that conclusion?

was it the wts and all its crap?

was it something you read?

bohm

stuffwotifink:
All knowledge and facts are beliefs, the rub lies in the justification

bingo! I think it is possible to give an endless list of reasons to reject the claims about the (literal) christian God depicted in the bible (evolution being a particular rich source), however the reason i feel very confident this conclusion is true is consistency. For instance, to accept what the bible has to say about Jesus as literal truth, I would have to lower my standard of evidence to such a degree I would have to accept all sorts of things which are incompatible and which I consider absurd, for instance the inspiration of the book of Mormon which is much better attested historically. Or to accept the various cosmological arguments for gods existence I would have to lower my standard of evidence by such an amount I would have to accept a number of incompatible (and thus mostly false) physical theories.

32

Yearbook - will they drop figures that show a decline?

by freddo in

do you think the yearbooks will stop showing negative information as the numbers stagnate or even drop?

bohm

I think they will keep publishing numbers as long as the org grows overall which it no doubt will continue to do in the coming years. A possible stagnation in the western world will be there but simply not highlighted.

If the overall growth do go in red at some point who knows? My guess is the way the numbers are recorded will change and they will simply not be highlighted, rather they will focus on building projects, new renovations, etc. and report that as a measure of progress. Scientology (and the mormons?) have been shrinking for a long time and it does not seem to affect them too much.

26

Why doesn't God need a creator, while the Universe does?

by Bloody Hotdogs! in

i asked this question of a jw that called on me yesterday: "if the universe requires a creator, why doesn't god?

if the universe must have a beginning, why doesn't god?

he claims to have an answer, but it must wait for next time he calls.. i'm hoping you guys can give me a heads-up as to what he will say.

bohm

Bloody hotdogs!:

Great question! I agree with everyone on this page the argument he present will be special pleading, however you should be aware there are ways to postpone the special pleading which he may pursue.

If you are interested in this type of stuff, you should really check out the christian philosopher William Lane Craig who has done much to popularize this type of argument. The way he would answer the argument would properly be: "Because God is eternal, so it does not make sense to ask where he came from anymore than it makes sense to ask for a square circle".

Now, this does not really answer the underlying point your question raised: "If god can exist eternally why can't the universe (or some other reality)?" and this is in my opinion too a fatal flaw.For this reason the argument is typically presented so as to first establish the universe *is not* eternal but must have had a prior cause -- which can then be god. Notice this shifts the discussion to discussing cosmology and specifically what *cannot* be the case in cosmology rather than presenting a positive argument that god is eternal and created the universe. This is a nearly universal tactic in modern apologetic and I imagine your elder is going to go down that route.

The arguments that the universe is *in fact* not eternal are based on bad physics (a miss-application of the Borde Guth Villenkin theorem or the second law of thermodynamics), bad math (miss-application of transfinite mathematics) or quote-mining (the big bang is often said to be the beginning of the universe so this proves the universe began to exist). Notice these are rhetorically *very* effective arguments and you should be well-prepared to what he might say.

The best way to counter these arguments is that whenever he present and argument why the universe cannot be eternal you must turn it around and ask yourself (and eventually him) how *theism* solves this problem. For instance, he might say the universe cannot be eternal because it would then have to contain an eternal chain of cause and effect and such an actual infinite chain cannot exist because it would be absurd (his reason to think this is absurd does not matter at this point). However if this is absurd, supposedly god has existed for infinitely long time, and thought an infinite number of thoughts, so why does this argument not just rule out God?

At this point even William Lane Craig resorts to special pleading: Because time works different for god than for our universe.

50

The NEW "Bible Teach" book

by Oubliette in

the new "bible teach" book is out!

thetruthbr has posted links for this and several other of the new publications.

as an educator, i am very interested in where the society is heading with their alleged "bible education" program.

bohm

For the Europeans, 5th grade in the US school system corresponds to 10-11 year olds, lol.

Oubliette: What site did you use? It might be fun to rip the entire text and calculate it's score.