Posts by Sanchy

59

Cognitive Dissonace on full display at JWtalk over evolution research

by Sanchy in

jw
friends

a user over on the jwtalk forum recently shared a warning over his research on evolution in preparation for an assigned talk.

after detailing a couple of the tidbits that he learned of during his research, he went on to say:.

this i found to be useful especially when talking ot others in the ministry.. but and it is a big but.....

Sanchy

Another response, this time from Bobby the apologist:

Evolution is allegedly about survival, right?
Our alleged animal ancestors had been "surviving" for millions of years without the ability to reason, without music, art, advanced intelligence, etc and so on. In fact, those traits and abilities are really totally unnecessary for survival, as all animals today are surviving quite well without any of the abilities we have as humans.
It just lends more credence to the Bible's account that we are a special creation, made in the image of God.

The typical "Where did art and music evolve from?" argument. Said argument does nothing to discredit the theory of evolution and natural selection. Having said that, a simple google search provides interesting answers. For instance, I easily found the following regarding art and evolution from LINK:

Along those lines, the visual arts stimulate and promote human cognitive abilities in numerous ways. To start, physiologically, the eye captures physical data from a chromatic surface and, through a cascade of transductions, converts this data into the language of the brain—namely, electrical impulses, which travel to the brain and its visual cortices. Subsequently and progressively, “…a mental object, an inner representation of a painting or object, will take shape”7. These mental objects can be manipulated in the mind’s eye, a real-time mental workstation used for manipulating spatial and visual information. This quality of mental flexibility would have made the visual arts advantageous to our primitive ancestors, for the ability to simulate an event mentally and visually before it occurred would have led to better planned and calculated approaches to a variety of situations. For the first time in our species’ history, the cosmos could be framed in a painting for the viewer to contemplate. “For prehistoric man, the use of images probably testifies to a reflected vision of shapes in which the viewer is confronted with an organized image of his universe, an image of a relationship to objects that come into his field of perception”7. The creation of images reflects a method of organizing sensory data with the purpose of acting on the dangerous world of nature and defending man from all his threats3, a sort of rehearsal for strategic action in the hostile environment in which our ancestors lived.

59

Cognitive Dissonace on full display at JWtalk over evolution research

by Sanchy in

jw
friends

a user over on the jwtalk forum recently shared a warning over his research on evolution in preparation for an assigned talk.

after detailing a couple of the tidbits that he learned of during his research, he went on to say:.

this i found to be useful especially when talking ot others in the ministry.. but and it is a big but.....

Sanchy

Doubter, are you an active JW?

EDIT: NVM, I remember you now. Apologist indeed.

59

Cognitive Dissonace on full display at JWtalk over evolution research

by Sanchy in

jw
friends

a user over on the jwtalk forum recently shared a warning over his research on evolution in preparation for an assigned talk.

after detailing a couple of the tidbits that he learned of during his research, he went on to say:.

this i found to be useful especially when talking ot others in the ministry.. but and it is a big but.....

Sanchy

Speaking of dumbed down, if you read above where I copy/pasted some of the responses from that post, you will find that one of the comments claims that "good science" must be "easy to understand". Ironically the comment comes from a user named "ScholarJW"

59

Cognitive Dissonace on full display at JWtalk over evolution research

by Sanchy in

jw
friends

a user over on the jwtalk forum recently shared a warning over his research on evolution in preparation for an assigned talk.

after detailing a couple of the tidbits that he learned of during his research, he went on to say:.

this i found to be useful especially when talking ot others in the ministry.. but and it is a big but.....

Sanchy

Here are some of the responses thus far:

From ScholarJW: The beauty of our publications especially those that deal with Evolution is the simplicity of the argument and its presentation and that is what you need in good science is that it should and must be Simple-easily understood by the 'man/woman' in the street. Most if not all modern-day textbooks on Evolution abound with complex mathematics/statistics designed to prove Evolution and mystify the laymen.

So science needs to be easily understood or else it isn't true?

The OP responded: I have had similar feelings in my long past when trying to reason from the scriptures with a Seventh Day Adventist. My inexperience led me and a fellow young pioneer, to exhaust our fund of scriptures only to realise later (after that empty feeling of frustration) that he was never going to be reasonable and accept the scriptures alone. Those feeling are not nice.

Ironic coming from someone that just confessed that he is "never going to be reasonable and accept" the evidence for evolution.

EccentricM wrote: He (Darwin) made the huge assumption adaptations lead to macro species changes and then made the guess that all things came from one cell and each species along the way birthed the other. When later fossil research was done, they found layers, and could piece together the order of apperance of life, but no mid-species transitions were ever found, only full species. As such they made the erronous claim that "certain species were the missing links"(?) despite having no evidence that was even the case, but said it was anyway.
Later with genetics they found.. oh, all life shares DNA, and so they say "aha, that confirms it, it's all true". What they did not consider is that we are all simply made.. from the same materials, hence, DNA (ingrediants) being the same, but no "lineage" like in direct human ancestry has ever been detected or studied.
If you bring up the current state of "statis of evolution" as well as living fossils as an argument, they shall say "not all life forms evolve if they don’t need to, hence why we have “living fossils”, life forms that have not changed at all for billions of years, and we have many of them". This idea I think seems to contradict evolution. Why? Because something does not change if it does not need to, it only adapts to it’s needs to survive.

So… why evolve in the first place? Was the first micro-organism in danger? Could it not survive in the sea by staying at it was? Evolving means to adapt and change in accordance to one’s enviroment, but if all life came from a single cell, which includes said enviroment, that means there was nothing to adapt or respond to in the first place, which should incur stasis.

Pjdriver wrote: how does something with no intelligent maker make extremely complex changes because it “needs” to? Who told it it needs to? How does it know it needs to?

Anyone wanna take a stab at answering?

59

Cognitive Dissonace on full display at JWtalk over evolution research

by Sanchy in

jw
friends

a user over on the jwtalk forum recently shared a warning over his research on evolution in preparation for an assigned talk.

after detailing a couple of the tidbits that he learned of during his research, he went on to say:.

this i found to be useful especially when talking ot others in the ministry.. but and it is a big but.....

Sanchy

Sir82,

Don't you know that you can sprinkle divine magic over any ordinarily impossible biblical event and it conveniently becomes possible? The story might still be incredibly silly, making out God to be irrational, primitive, foolish, inefficient, violent, cruel (ex the flood), but nevertheless, it's all possible.

59

Cognitive Dissonace on full display at JWtalk over evolution research

by Sanchy in

jw
friends

a user over on the jwtalk forum recently shared a warning over his research on evolution in preparation for an assigned talk.

after detailing a couple of the tidbits that he learned of during his research, he went on to say:.

this i found to be useful especially when talking ot others in the ministry.. but and it is a big but.....

Sanchy

A user over on the JWTalk forum recently shared a warning over his research on evolution in preparation for an assigned talk. After detailing a couple of the tidbits that he learned of during his research, he went on to say:

This I found to be useful especially when talking ot others in the ministry.. BUT and it is a big BUT.....

I found the encyclopedic amount of information on the different types of theory to be bewildering and depressing. All this effort to explain something from a wrong view point - there is no creator and you have to force an explanation of theory/theories.

I have learned one thing though that looking material outside of the organisation's material can be double edged.. If you read it enough you 'could' become convinced that the impossible can be explained or so depressing that you feel for the 'victims' of it. In my case i found it depressing.. I will not bother looking into this kind of thing again, not because I have doubts about our creator:

(Revelation 4:11) 11 “You are worthy, Jehovah our God, to receive the glory and the honor and the power, because you created all things, and because of your will they came into existence and were created.”

But that it really left me feeling flat. I am guessing also that any deeper research of things we know is run by Satan is going to give you similar feelings. I found it to be too dangerous for me. I won't do it again, on this or any other peripheral ideology.

Following some proper prayer I feel a lot better and more settled now. I have been warned.

So now you know. If you run across some evidence for a belief contradicting your own, make sure to follow up with some "proper prayer" and it should take care of that pesky CD.

85

Newspaper reports: Dutch government will initiate inquiry into child abuse within JW community

by Anders Andersen in

today a dutch newspaper published an in-depth follow-up item on jw abuse issues.. the most interesting part of the article is this:.

the politicians also let themselves be heard.

a month ago the house of representatives voted unanimously in favor of a motion to enforce an independent inquiry into abuse within the jehovah's witnesses, as the organization refuses to initiate it.

Sanchy

Reminds me — how many people said the earth was the center of the universe? Nearly all contemporary scientists? They had “proof” too; the Sun moved and the earth did not appear to be moving.

Ironic coming from someone that still believes in biblical fairy tales.

85

Newspaper reports: Dutch government will initiate inquiry into child abuse within JW community

by Anders Andersen in

today a dutch newspaper published an in-depth follow-up item on jw abuse issues.. the most interesting part of the article is this:.

the politicians also let themselves be heard.

a month ago the house of representatives voted unanimously in favor of a motion to enforce an independent inquiry into abuse within the jehovah's witnesses, as the organization refuses to initiate it.

Sanchy

Here were your exact words:

So as far as a “legitimate” request is concerned, it’s illegitimate to request an independent investigation based on the words of former members.

So, "obviously" you claim that because it comes from former members, it would be an illegitimate request on WT. In reality, this is the crux of the reason why you and WT leaders are so reluctant to give any credibility to RV. They are exJWs... to give them any credibility would be unthinkable.. Jehoober would never allow that.

Again, facts ARE NOT determined by popular vote.

A straw-man that adds nothing to your argument. Your obsession with only accepting "facts" from a "court of law" is strange and deflective. Before anything goes to court there needs to be an investigation. That's what we would have here.

85

Newspaper reports: Dutch government will initiate inquiry into child abuse within JW community

by Anders Andersen in

today a dutch newspaper published an in-depth follow-up item on jw abuse issues.. the most interesting part of the article is this:.

the politicians also let themselves be heard.

a month ago the house of representatives voted unanimously in favor of a motion to enforce an independent inquiry into abuse within the jehovah's witnesses, as the organization refuses to initiate it.

Sanchy

oh, right. It was a request based on the words of former members, so it could never be legitimate. God forbid (pun intended) a "mentally diseased" apostate have any legitimacy. ....

85

Newspaper reports: Dutch government will initiate inquiry into child abuse within JW community

by Anders Andersen in

today a dutch newspaper published an in-depth follow-up item on jw abuse issues.. the most interesting part of the article is this:.

the politicians also let themselves be heard.

a month ago the house of representatives voted unanimously in favor of a motion to enforce an independent inquiry into abuse within the jehovah's witnesses, as the organization refuses to initiate it.

Sanchy

The principle Jesus taught, that of being willing to carry out legitimate requests, is valid not only for governmental requirements but also in everyday human relations. It may be, for instance, that a person with authority over you asks you to do something that you would prefer not to do but that is not contrary to God’s law [...]The solution? Do as Jesus recommended—go the second mile. Do not only what is asked of you but even more than what is asked. Do it willingly.

Doubter, read, then re-read your own religious leader's words.