Posts by Vidqun

206

i am a regular pioneer in my cong reading crisis of conscience.here goes...

by MsGrowingGirl20 in

jw
friends

i'm on page 90 right now...the info is definitely new and gives me a totally diff view as to how i used to think of faithful and discreet slave.

i was thoroughly disgusted with the way the brothers handled the oral sex and leadership problem and the insight on the scriptures book...... still have alot of questions though.

Vidqun

Hello and welcome. I am also relatively new. There was a lot of niggly things that bothered me about the organization, e.g., shunning (even if you're not disfellowshipped), negative view of secular studies, the fact that they never apologized (even if they were wrong), etc. Recently I studied "the disgusting thing causing desolation" and "the beast ascending out of the sea", which point to the UN according to Watchtower Theology. To my utter amazement I had to find out that the Society had joined the UN as a NGO (non-governmental organization), giving them the same status with the UN as Christendom's churches. They would in fact ride the beast alongside Babylon the Great (1992-2002). To this day, charitable Witnesses organizations in different countries enjoy NGO status with the UN, e.g., Aid Afrique (France). This was my wake-up call. I hate hypocrisy, and this was hypocrisy to a superlative degree.

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Evolution disproved by 11 year old niece

by StopTheTears in

jw
friends

mary: what's evolution?.

me: well it's kinda complicated.

they think plasma gave birth to monkeys which gave birth to humans.

Vidqun

James and Tammy, as I have said before, I have an open mind. I will not be forced into any direction if I am not comfortable with that knowledge. My gut feeling says there is a God and that he cares. Here I take in consideration what I know of the natural world, human nature, the human body, Microbiology, the universe and the Bible. This might indeed be the remnants of Watchtower indoctrination, who knows? I believe that the answers will be forthcoming as time moves along. But to what extent God was involved in creation, I haven't worked out (for myself) as yet. But like you said James, is it that important? Is it necessary? What I do know, I am happy to be here, and enjoy learning and discussing these things. I am much more relaxed, and don't carry an overload of guilt anymore. So far so good.

48

i spoke with an elder about university

by MsGrowingGirl20 in

jw
friends

he always tells me that i've adopted him as a father...we're pretty close.

i spoke with him asking for some advice about whether or not to pursue my degree.he, to my surprise, couldn't give me his opinion.he told me that if he tells me how he really feels (he says he has some strong views on the matter) he may be disciplined for 'promoting higher education'....in effect he was telling me to go ahead and pursue my degree but not really saying it.

he asked me to promise him that i'll speak to the presiding overseer and the circuit overseer....i haven't as yet.

Vidqun

My father was not a Witness and he insisted that I attend university. Even though I don't utilize my degree now, I am eternally grateful that he forced me to go. I see now, it has to do with brain development, something that is essential for survival. I know that if I apply myself in whatever I do, I will make a success. However, be warned, if you do go to college or university, you will be treated as a leper in the congregation.

285

Evolution disproved by 11 year old niece

by StopTheTears in

jw
friends

mary: what's evolution?.

me: well it's kinda complicated.

they think plasma gave birth to monkeys which gave birth to humans.

Vidqun

Cofty, I tried to demonstrate with the laryngeal nerve that the design might not be faulty at all. That nerve doesn't only service the larynx. And it works. The same goes for the eye and bladder. Only when you lose those functions will you truly appreciate them. I agreed with you that you had a valid argument and that the process was a one way street, that's all.

Notice, I gave you current dictionary definitions. If you've got a problem with the terminology, don't take it out on me. Speak to the Webster team. If you believe abiogenesis and evolution should be separated, good for you. But I see it as Step 1: Abiogenesis; Step 2: Evolution, in logical order. In other words, abiogenesis as the origin of life would in turn lead to the process of evolution. Isn't that what the definitions imply? Anyway, that's how I understand it.

Qcmbr, very interesting experiment. Thanks for pointing it out to me. Yes, these change when no one intervenes. But when the E. coli mutate into a new, viable strain of bacteria, let me know. Then you have proved your point. While they remain E. coli, with many new and interesting characteristics, that proves adaptation. In the sewer E. coli also changes into new forms (of E. coli). But let me tell you what might change them into a new strain of bacteria? External stimuli, e.g., ultra violet, radiation, or carcinogens. So, for E. coli to turn into a new strain you need intervention, either human, divine or above mentioned stimuli.

So if God did intervene, to what extent did he intervene? I leave that question open for the time being. When man creates life, man becomes god. No need to look for a god then. Until then, a spiritual person will look for god. He cannot help it. It's a hereditary trait, part of the genes. But that's something that must be explained by the psychologists. Like I said before. I am watching certain prophecies. When these fall flat, I'll have to re-evaluate my beliefs. So for the time being I have to work God into the equation.

285

Evolution disproved by 11 year old niece

by StopTheTears in

jw
friends

mary: what's evolution?.

me: well it's kinda complicated.

they think plasma gave birth to monkeys which gave birth to humans.

Vidqun

Qcmbr,

No, you misunderstand me. I don't hate evolution as such. I call it adaptation: "a change, as of an organism's structure, to conform to environment" (Webster), leaving room for God, the Grand Designer (as an ET) to use it in a process of creation, i.e., terraforming. The latter is not too far off for man to do. But you need someone to do it. It won't happen if you leave it.

This is different from evolution: "development from a rudimentary to a more complex state; in modern use, the fact or doctrine of the descent of all living things from a few simple forms of life, or from a single form" (Webster). I equate evolution with spontaneous generation (or abiogenesis as it is nowadays called), a process that has not been demonstrated as yet.

Abiogenesis: "The doctrine that living matter may be produced by nonliving matter; spontaneous generation" (Webster). The day they demonstrate this in a lab, I'll be a believer. But then it must be demonstrated from A to Z, the whole caboodle, non-living matter (elements of the earth) > an independant living, procreating cell. By creating aminoacids or proteins (or even organelles) from inorganic matter are not going to do it for me. You must put the whole thing together, and it must work.... Until then, no go. Evolutionists say millions of years are needed for this to take place. I say, use modern technology in lew of the millions of years, and demonstrate it in a lab. Only then will I fall in with the evolutionists. Until then I will follow my gut feeling, as the evolutionists follow theirs (see article on p. 7 of this thread).

285

Evolution disproved by 11 year old niece

by StopTheTears in

jw
friends

mary: what's evolution?.

me: well it's kinda complicated.

they think plasma gave birth to monkeys which gave birth to humans.

Vidqun

This is a summary of the problem:

A little girl asked her father: “How did the human race appear?” The father answered, “Many years ago there were monkeys from which the human race evolved.”

Two days later the girl asked her mother the same question. The mother answered, “God made Adam and Eve; they had children; and so was all mankind made.”

The confused girl said to her mother “How is it possible that you told me the human race was created by God, and Dad said they developed from monkeys?”

The mother answered, “Well dear, it’s very simple. Your father told you about his side of the family and I told you about mine!”

285

Evolution disproved by 11 year old niece

by StopTheTears in

jw
friends

mary: what's evolution?.

me: well it's kinda complicated.

they think plasma gave birth to monkeys which gave birth to humans.

Vidqun

To Cofty and S&R:

What we have here is what I call "evolutionary speak". It's a unique language developed by evolutionists.

In my time anatomists, doctors, physiologists, etc., had huge respect for the human body, whether they believed in evolution (they would say “Mother Nature knows what she's doing”). The rest of us would say, the Creator knew what he was doing. If you give due deference to the human body, you will also treat your patients with respect. But watch out for the new wave. They are so clever. They can design the human body from scratch and their version would so much better and improved version. So I dare you, design a working model that would be a marked improvement on what we’ve got. Put your money where your mouth is.

The palmaris longus, a muscle in the forearm/hand for holding onto branches, we are in the process of losing it with 14% of humans missing this tendon. Tense your wrist and look for a big tendon in the middle of your wrist. (mines missing = less of an ape lol)

The process of losing it. I like your terminology. It’s very specific. It’s called “evolutionary speak". In Chinese populations there is a low rate of absence (6.4%). In Caucasian populations it is absent (12-24%). This proves that the 12-24% (without muscle) are more human than the rest of us (with the muscle). I am sure some will take exception with such incredible findings.

The reccurant laryngeal nerve supplies your voice box, but instead of going from your brain straight to the voice box, it very precariously travels down around your heart vasculature, then back up to your voice box. There is no need for it to travel so far away, it needs to only be a few inches in length. A designer would never do this, however when you put evolution in reverse, it fits exactly to the descending heart in embryology of our fish ancestors. The heart over millions of years decends into the thorax and the RL nerve has to lengthen with it and around it.

As the recurrent laryngeal nerve curves round the sub-clavian artery, or the arch of the aorta, it gives several cardiac filaments to the deep part of the cardiac plexus. As it ascends in the neck it gives branches, more numerous on the left than on the right hand side, to the mucous memrane and muscular coat of the oesophagus; branches to the mucous membrane and muscular fibres of the trachea and some filaments to the inferior constrictor (Grey’s Anatomy, 35 th edition, p. 1023).

There’s a good reason why they go that way. When you operate, just watch out for the cardiac branches. If you cut them off, you might do some extensive damage to the cardiac plexus of your patient.

The gland of the penis has a rear facing rim at its base (like a barb), this is to scrape out opposing male sperm during intercourse before ejaculation.

Method: Gallup’s approach to studying the design of the human penis is a perfect example of of “ reverse-engineering ” as it’s used in the field of evolutionary psychology. This is a logico-deductive investigative technique for uncovering the adaptive purpose or function of existing (or “extant”) physical traits, psychological processes, or cognitive biases. That is to say, if you start with what you see today—in this case, the oddly shaped penis, with its bulbous glans (the “head” in common parlance) , its long, rigid shaft, and the coronal ridge that forms a sort of umbrella-lip between these two parts—and work your way backward regarding how it came to look like that, the reverse-engineer is able to posit a set of function-based hypotheses derived from evolutionary theory. In the present case, we’re talking about penises, but the logic of reverse-engineering can be applied to just about anything organic, from the shape of our incisors, to the opposability of our thumbs, to the arch of our eyebrows. For the evolutionary psychologist, the pressing questions are, essentially, “why is it like that?” and “what is that for?” The answer isn’t always that it’s a biological adaptation—that it solved some evolutionary problem and therefore gave our ancestors a competitive edge in terms of their reproductive success. Sometimes a trait is just a “by-product” of other adaptations. Blood isn’t red, for example, because red worked better than green or yellow or blue, but only because it contains the red hemoglobin protein, which happens to be an excellent transporter of oxygen and carbon dioxide. But in the case of the human penis, it appears there’s a genuine adaptive reason that it looks the way it does (Scientific American).

It’s “glans” of penis, not “gland”. It has been suggested that the unique and unusual shape of the glans in humans has evolved to serve the function of "scooping" any remnant semen deposited by other rival males out of the deeper part of the vagina of a female who may have recently copulated, and thereby decreasing the chance of the rival male from impregnating the female. Other theoristssuggest that its distinctive shape evolved to heighten the sexual pleasure experienced by the female during vaginal intercourse. In this theory, the glans increases friction and tension at the mouth of the vagina by its additional girth and the dilating properties of its probe-like shape (Wikipedia).

I love the way they bandy about the term “reverse-engineering”. You need an engineer or computer programmer to do that. Anyway, their guesses are as good as mine.

And my all-time favourite:

The eye is shit, there is a terrible blind spot in the middle of our vision, requiring us to constantly shift our vision left to right (subconscious and fast) where the optic disc sits in our retina and no light is received. This has been avoided in other animals where a better design has evolved. Our night vision is crap, we have to look out of focus to see things, I.e. divert the light. Other animals eyes have evolved simple solutions. Obviously god got smarter.

I love my eyes. I think they are brill. Without them, I’d rather die. A few interesting facts mon the eye:

Photoreception is phylogenetically very old, with various theories of phylogenesis. Rod and cone cells in the retina allow conscious light perception and vision including color differentiation and the perception of depth. The human eye can distinguish about 10 million colors. The human eye's non-image-forming photosensitive ganglion cells in the retina receive the light signals which affect adjustment of the size of the pupil, regulation and suppression of the hormone melatonin and entrainment of the body clock.

The eye is shit? So why don’t you get rid of your shit, and replace it with a man-made eye. Oh, there is no man-made eye that can compare with the eye. Oops!

Apoptosis is programmed cell death, babies form from death not life, hands form by killing the cells between the fingers not growths of outward cells. We have the instructions in our DNA to build things we no longer use, tails, horns, muscles, enzymes etc. But we kill those cells off in growth.

Instructions from DNA: Where do those instructions come from?

In some cases the apoptotic stimuli comprise extrinsic signals such as the binding of death inducing ligands to cell surface receptors called death receptors . These ligands can either be soluble factors or can be expressed on the surface of cells such as cytotoxic T lymphocytes. The latter occurs when T-cells recognise damaged or virus infected cells and initiate apoptosis in order to prevent damaged cells from becoming neoplastic (cancerous) or virus-infected cells from spreading the infection. Apoptosis can also be induced by cytotoxic T-lymphocytes using the enzyme granzyme.

In other cases apoptosis can be initiated following intrinsic signals that are produced following cellular stress. Cellular stress may occur from exposure to radiation or chemicals or to viral infection. It might also be a consequence of growth factor deprivation or oxidative stress caused by free radicals. In general intrinsic signals initiate apoptosis via the involvement of the mitochondria. The relative ratios of the various bcl-2 proteins can often determine how much cellular stress is necessary to induce apoptosis.

Most humans have back ache, it's obvious why, back muscles travel horizontally all down our back because we are supposed to be on all 4's. Now we wander the planet upright, the muscles need to be vertical to cope with the load.

Yes, it is obviouys. Perhaps if you exercise more and sleep on a proper mattress, back-ache would not be such a problem.

Most humans have incontinence with age and have to learn bladder control as we are not born with it. Why? The bladder has evolved for an animal on all 4's. In an upright human,the bladder freely releases urine requiring unassociated pelvic muscle control to restrain it, not a problem for our ape ancestors who's bladder is ideal for them.

I am thankful for my bladder. Otherwise we would spray each other, like the monkeys.

Ill leave it there, but let's be honest if there was a god, his design skills wouldn't get him a job with apple! Seriously! What a coincidence evolution explains all these flaws and can be seen in the reversing of evolutionary stages.

I call our situation "human imperfection".

Yes, S&R, I think you should leave it there, otherwise you might just throw away your name completely.

285

Evolution disproved by 11 year old niece

by StopTheTears in

jw
friends

mary: what's evolution?.

me: well it's kinda complicated.

they think plasma gave birth to monkeys which gave birth to humans.

Vidqun

Yes, seems you're right, the domestication process only works one way. Interestingly, I see they've discovered a 33,000 year old dog skull in a Siberian cave.

This skull once belonged to somebody's pet, over 33,000 years ago. It's one of the earliest known examples of the domestication of dogs — and it might actually mean modern dogs aren't all related to each other after all. The skull, recently discovered in a Siberian mountain, dates to roughly the same time period as a skull previously discovered in Belgium. And that's problematic for the idea that dogs were only ever domesticated once. Though not impossible, it's questionable whether humans could have domesticated dogs from wolves in some central location and then spread out to the far east and west edges of the Eurasian landmass, all by 30,000 years ago.

Instead, this find may point to multiple domestication events for dogs, which might mean modern dog breeds don't actually represent a single species, which in turn might disprove the old evolutionary canard that a chihuahua could theoretically breed with a Great Dane. As University of Arizona researcher Greg Hodgins explains, this Siberian dog almost certainly represents a domestication event distinct from the one — or ones — that produced modern dogs:

"Both the Belgian find and the Siberian find are domesticated species based on morphological characteristics. Essentially, wolves have long thin snouts and their teeth are not crowded, and domestication results in this shortening of the snout and widening of the jaws and crowding of the teeth. The argument that it is domesticated is pretty solid. What's interesting is that it doesn't appear to be an ancestor of modern dogs."

Both the Belgian and Siberian skulls predate the peak of the most recent Ice Age, known as the Last Glacial Maximum. This event, which lasted from 26,000 to 19,000 years ago, severely disrupted Earth's ecosystems and drove many species extinct. Both the Siberian and Belgian dogs were likely among the species that didn't make it. But the fact that these represent two previously unknown domestication events suggest the evolution of modern dogs might be more complicated than we had anticipated. And, as Hodgins points out, this also means that dogs have been humanity's best friend for a long, long time:

"In terms of human history, before the last glacial maximum people were living with wolves or canid species in widely separated geographical areas of Euro-Asia, and had been living with them long enough that they were actually changing evolutionarily. And then climate change happened, human habitation patterns changed and those relationships with those particular lineages of animals apparently didn't survive...The dogs are not necessarily providing products or meat. They are probably providing protection, companionship and perhaps helping on the hunt. And it's really interesting that this appears to have happened first out of all human relationships with animals."

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