All Eight Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses members are now individually named on two New York Child Victims Act case documents

[AlanF]

Arauna said:

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    3 hours ago, AlanF said:

    Bible against my argument that logically, he cannot exist.

 

    
Note how Arauna completely sidesteps my argument:

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I can take you a bet you are not really good at math - and do not really understand the mechanisms within the cell and mutation.  If you really understood you would not make such a statement.   You are forgiven.

Ah, a sideways reference to the Argument from Design, which is really the Argument from Ignorance or the Argument from Personal Incredulity.

Obviously you don't understand a thing about the Theory of Evolution. Tell me, Mrs. Einstein: does that Theory include abiogenesis?

Lack of an answer means you don't know, which proves my point.

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I always watch Dawkins'  debates with Christian philosophers  and he has looked really silly on most of them- he is not really a deep thinker.  This is why he now only goes on shows where he talks only with other  atheists.

Your prejudice is showing. Prejudice created by your ignorance of Evolution created by knowing nothing but the misinformation found in Watchtower literature.

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The best he said was :  life was seeded by aliens.

Wrong. He never said that. The movie Expelled, which created that lie, has been thoroughly debunked.

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I don't waste my time on people who already think they have all the answers.

I do. Which is why I bother replying to you.

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If you hit the jackpot more than 10 times in a row to have a BIg positive outcome (to win a million to get on top of the pile) - you will start to wonder if the system was rigged in your favour......  Now imagine - you hit the jackpot with every small mutation (millions every second) for 500 billion years......

Totally ignorant statement. More Dunning-Kruger from you.

[Arauna]

57 minutes ago, AlanF said:

Totally ignorant statement. More Dunning-Kruger from you.

Too quick to call people names when you have no answer.  ..... Please prove the flaw in the bottom statement I made..... 

1 hour ago, Arauna said:

If you hit the jackpot more than 10 times in a row to have a BIg positive outcome (to win a million to get on top of the pile) - you will start to wonder if the system was rigged in your favour......  Now imagine - you hit the jackpot with every small mutation (millions every second) for 500 billion years....

 

57 minutes ago, AlanF said:

Wrong. He never said that. The movie Expelled, which created that lie, has been thoroughly debunked.

I never saw the movie 'expelled' but saw the actual debate wherein Dawkins said  that aliens seeded life on earth. This just proves that atheism is a religious cult because this is covered up by apologists

[AlanF]

Arauna said:

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    10 hours ago, AlanF said:

    many cases the context shows that blurring the distinction between "W" and "w" is deliberate. Old timers certainly know the difference.

Arguments about capital letters  - claiming it was calculated to mislead?   Again an accusation about motives....   

 

Still clueless. Do you even know the distinction between "Jehovah's witnesses" and "Jehovah's Witnesses"?

Arauna said:

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    1 hour ago, AlanF said:

    Totally ignorant statement. More Dunning-Kruger from you.

Too quick to call people names when you have no answer.  ..... Please prove the flaw in the bottom statement I made.....

 

First you answer all my questions you ignored.

Do you know the word for what you're doing? Demanding answers from me when you continue ignoring my rejoinders to you? Hint: it begins with "h".

 

[TrueTomHarley]

10 hours ago, AlanF said:

Have you been taking lessons from your idol Donald Trump?

It’s odd that this should be your latest insult. Once again you inject national politics before an apolitical audience to whom you know it will fall flat.

I have several times expressed the opinion that the 2016 election was a godsend for Witnesses, and it has nothing to do with who won or lost. It used to be that if you read 2 Timothy 3:1-5 and your householder did not agree that people are more fierce, implacable, backbiting, unhinged, and so forth, then in times past, there was not much you could do about it. Plainly the verse is subjective. 

It always will be, or course, but with Trump’s election most people will concede that the country has lost its mind, with rank and file persons of both sides screaming at each other day and night. To say 2 Timothy 3 is undergoing fulfillment increasingly comes across as a “Duh.”

Parallel events take place around the globe. Brexit is as crazy, if not more so, and 2 Timothy saves the day for JWs there also. Then there is the fact that major populations around the world are exploding in violence, even revolt—Hong Kong, France, Italy, several countries of Middle East, South America, several again of Africa—civil unrest has become the order of the day.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/with-nationwide-strike-colombia-joins-south-americas-season-of-protest/2019/11/21/2d3adf0e-0bef-11ea-8054-289aef6e38a3_story.html

In view of this, the most important thing we can do is debate whether Karl Klein reported Rutherford saying “I made an ass of myself” because he didn’t like him. It is not unlike when Tillerson supposedly called Trump a moron, and the media suspended interest in all other topics in order to determine whether he did or not. This continued even after Tillerson called a press conference to say: “Back where I come from, we don’t have time for this nonsense!” Incredibly, this did not chasten them! “Well......did you call him a moron or not?” they wanted to know.

You can’t call Trump a “bull in a china shop” because to do so you would have to accept the premise that the status quo of human government is a “china shop.” “Junkyard dog in a junkyard” is perhaps an analogy that works better.

In service this morning, my companion started some presentation around the theme of good government. The householder, initially reserved, responded that he is working hard to undo the damage he thought Trump was doing to the country. I thought it was well, due to his initial brusqueness, to explain that Jehovah’s Witnesses are well-known for being neutral, and that a person such as he might suppose that anyone serious enough about the Bible to come preaching it must be a Trump supporter, since born-agains fall all over him, but with us it is not so. This melted his reserve considerably and the end of the visit was far better than the beginning.

Had it been my door, I would have heard him out on just what he was doing to counter Trump as a quid pro quo—perhaps he would afterwards hear us out. But I am comfortable talking politics, as relatively few Witnesses are. My companion took it back to a more conventional path, from our point of view.

 

[Arauna]

17 hours ago, AlanF said:

giant squid

We ignore your dogmatic comment and go on to your idea that predators need to eat other creatures such as squid or plankton.  This is true.  But diet has nothing to do with the level of tameness of an animal or its  co-existence with others.

I have seen footage of animals which co-habit in the same home which were natural predators before. In Africa we have many examples of this. 

Not all animals are natural predators. Necessity and generations of "memory" is shared. Young leopards learn from their mothers how to hunt.

Some learned behaviours can be unlearned.  While I have seen a tiger kill a lion, I have also seen footage when a whole lot of different animals including tiger, lions etc. shared the same barn at night. 

 

 

 

48 minutes ago, AlanF said:

Demanding answers from me when you continue ignoring my rejoinders to yo

Well I ignore insults and look for substance, which I am sad to say I have not yet had evidence of.   Yes I do demand proof.....  If you claim to be so logical and scientific  then you must provide evidence...... You throw down the gauntlet and then make side-isues the main point .....  

I already know what your next rejoinder is going to be - ------  so don't bother.

[AlanF]

Arauna said:

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    1 hour ago, AlanF said:

    Totally ignorant statement. More Dunning-Kruger from you.

Too quick to call people names when you have no answer.  ..... Please prove the flaw in the bottom statement I made.....

 

First you answer all my questions you ignored.

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    1 hour ago, Arauna said:

    If you hit the jackpot more than 10 times in a row to have a BIg positive outcome (to win a million to get on top of the pile) - you will start to wonder if the system was rigged in your favour......  Now imagine - you hit the jackpot with every small mutation (millions every second) for 500 billion years....

 

Where is the question in all that?

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    1 hour ago, AlanF said:

    Wrong. He never said that. The movie Expelled, which created that lie, has been thoroughly debunked.

I never saw the movie 'expelled' but saw the actual debate wherein Dawkins said  that aliens seeded life on earth.

 

There was never a debate. What you saw was an excerpt from Expelled where the charlatan Ben Stein posed leading questions to Dawkins, along the lines of: "If we pose the possibility of intelligent design, how do you think that would work?" Dawkins replied that, IF intelligent design occurred, it would have to have been by some intelligence that evolved somewhere other than Earth and then engineered life on Earth. He clearly stated that he considered this hypothetical scenario unlikely. Stein later misrepresented the entire exchange between himself and Dawkins, and so did most creationists such as those in the so-called Intelligent Design community, leaving a completely false impression in the minds of ignorant, biased people like you.

Here is a representative video clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoncJBrrdQ8

A Wikipedia article describes Expelled:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expelled:_No_Intelligence_Allowed

Regarding Stein's interview with Dawkins, it states:

<< In Dawkins' interview, the director focused on Stein's question to Dawkins regarding a hypothetical scenario in which intelligent design could have occurred.[28] Dawkins responded that in the case of the "highly unlikely event that some such 'Directed Panspermia' was responsible for designing life on this planet, the alien beings would THEMSELVES have to have evolved, if not by Darwinian selection, by some equivalent 'crane' (to quote Dan Dennett)". He later described this as being similar to Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel's "semi tongue-in-cheek" example. >>

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This just proves that atheism is a religious cult because this is covered up by apologists

Nonsense. Google "expelled dawkins aliens" and such, and you'll find hundreds of discussions debunking Stein's lies.

The simple fact is that you do not have enough knowledge of evolution or any creation scenario to judge anything at all. This is the Dunning-Kruger effect in action.

As for my argument proving that the Bible God does not exist, let me put it in simple enough terms that even you should be able to understand:

The Bible says that its creator "God is love" and that he knows what is going on with every creature. 'Creation' proves that whatever creator there might be, he is far from loving. Both things cannot be true. Therefore the Bible God does not exist.

If you ignore this again, there is no point talking to you about anything.

[Arauna]

2 hours ago, AlanF said:

Your prejudice is showing. Prejudice created by your ignorance of Evolution created by knowing nothing but the misinformation found in Watchtower literature.

Again you make assumptions - not very logical reasoning from you. I get my information from science magazines. 

[Arauna]

9 minutes ago, AlanF said:

Dawkins regarding a hypothetical scenario in which intelligent design could have occurred.[28] Dawkins responded that in the case of the "highly unlikely event that some such 'Directed Panspermia' was responsible for designing life on this planet, the alien beings would THEMSELVES have to have evolved, if not by Darwinian selection, by some equivalent 'crane' (to quote Dan Dennett)". He later described this as being similar to Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel's "semi tongue-in-cheek" example. >>

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Do you not see that is what evolution is : hypothesis...... more and more hypothesis to run away from the thought of intelligent design......... until its arguments become ridiculous? Do you not see that if aliens evolved in some other universe hypothetically they would have to travel here to seed here?   This is the reason why string theory with its 23 universes came to be.....cosmologists are trying to run away from intelligent design.  They want to create  more universes where diversity could possibly create more opportunity for spontaneous life....... because they realize the math is not realistic for spontaneous life when one has only one universe.

 

[AlanF]

Arauna said:

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    17 hours ago, AlanF said:

    giant squid

We ignore your dogmatic comment

 

Ah yes:

<< I wonder what their non-existent God will do with sperm whales' proclivity to eat giant squid. And baleen whales' need to eat fish and krill. >>

You don't think sperm whales eat squid and baleen whales eat fish and krill?

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and go on to your idea that predators need to eat other creatures such as squid or plankton.  This is true.

Bingo! And they always have, and always will as long as they possess teeth and baleen and all manner of body structures explicitly adapted for predation. That was my point.

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But diet has nothing to do with the level of tameness of an animal or its  co-existence with others.

Irrelevant to anything discussed here.

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I have seen footage of animals which co-habit in the same home which were natural predators before.

Before what?

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In Africa we have many examples of this.

I've seen the occasional video where say, a lioness adopts a baby antelope in the wild. So what? Mostly they eat them.

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Not all animals are natural predators.

Like rabbits?

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Necessity and generations of "memory" is shared. Young leopards learn from their mothers how to hunt.

Only partly. They have built-in instincts such as the proclivity to chase running prey. And all manner of other predatory abilities that, using "intelligent design" concepts, could only exist by the Creator's design efforts.

What about snakes? Constrictors do their thing right out of the egg. So do venomous snakes. Snake venom comes in two basic types: a nerve toxin and one that breaks down muscle tissue. Are you claiming those things are not the Design of your Creator God?

How about spiders? Almost all are venomous and supreme hunters. Same goes for scorpions and lots of other critters. Design by a loving God? Or evolution?

Picture a black mamba chasing a fleeing banana. Or a jumping spider going after a floating dandelion seed.

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Some learned behaviours can be unlearned.

A ridiculous argument. Cats do not have the ability to synthesize a particular amino acid necessary for survival. They must get it from their prey. No choice. Same kind of thing goes for plenty of other animals.

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While I have seen a tiger kill a lion, I have also seen footage when a whole lot of different animals including tiger, lions etc. shared the same barn at night.  

So what? Lions and tigers are essentially the same animal, along with jaguars and others. Many animals, when raised together from infancy, change their behaviors and become friendly. I once saw a full grown tiger back down to a small female dog that had 'raised' the tiger from infancy. That's called imprinting, the same kind of thing that allows ducklings to imprint on people and act as if the humans were their mothers. The tiger viewed the dog as its mommy.

You error here is in focusing on the exceptions rather than the rules.

[Arauna]

23 minutes ago, AlanF said:

The simple fact is that you do not have enough knowledge of evolution or any creation scenario to judge anything at all. This is the Dunning-Kruger effect in action.

Now this is really a true case of OCD. Always  a repetition of insults. You do not know what I have read and studied. .... 

I did answer your previous question.  As usual you chose to ignore it. I indicated a flaw in your reasoning -   that you only considered 2 hypothesis ...... when there actually could be three....... but you ignored it then.... and now bring it up as deflection from my question above...... which is the question about the hitting of the jackpot billions of times every second. 

And it poses a question....which needs to be answered.   

 

[AlanF]

Arauna said:

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    2 hours ago, AlanF said:

    Your prejudice is showing. Prejudice created by your ignorance of Evolution created by knowing nothing but the misinformation found in Watchtower literature.

Again you make assumptions - not very logical reasoning from you. I get my information from science magazines.  

 

Which magazines? I'll bet you think that creationist rags are science magazines.

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    24 minutes ago, AlanF said:

    Dawkins regarding a hypothetical scenario in which intelligent design could have occurred.[28] Dawkins responded that in the case of the "highly unlikely event that some such 'Directed Panspermia' was responsible for designing life on this planet, the alien beings would THEMSELVES have to have evolved, if not by Darwinian selection, by some equivalent 'crane' (to quote Dan Dennett)". He later described this as being similar to Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel's "semi tongue-in-cheek" example. >>

 

    
Now let's watch Arauna again ignore my point and sidestep what actually happened in the Dawkins/Stein scenario.

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Do you not see that is what evolution is : hypothesis......

Wrong. The fossil record proves that evolution is a fact. Not the caricature of evolution given in Watchtower publications, but the real Theory of Evolution as stated by scientists. Of course, you know nothing of that real Theory because all you know is what you read in Watchtower and perhaps creationist publications. You obviously don't even know the difference between a scientific theory and a hypothesis.

You don't even seem to understand that plenty of evolutionists are theistic evolutionists, which means that they accept the fact of evolution but believe that some god, often the Bible God, used evolution to create life, or tweaked life forms over 3.5 billion years in such a way that mimics fully naturalistic evolution.

Ever heard of Tiktaalik? Look it up and tell me what you think about it.

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more and more hypothesis to run away from the thought of intelligent design.........

Intelligent Design proponents have all been shown to be charlatans and liars. Look up the 2005 Dover, Pennsylvania court case.

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until its arguments become ridiculous? Do you not see that if aliens evolved in some other universe hypothetically they would have to travel here to seed here?

Once again you fail to get the point: Ben Stein proposed that notion, and Richard Dawkins merely expounded on the logical necessities were that proposal the case.

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This is the reason why string theory with its 23 universes came to be.....cosmologists are trying to run away from intelligent design.

Completely clueless. That's straight out of creationist literature, except a little buggered.

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They want to create  more universes where diversity could possibly create more opportunity for spontaneous life....... because they realize the math is not realistic for spontaneous life when one has only one universe.

LOL! Dunning-Kruger yet again.

[Anna]

15 minutes ago, AlanF said:

The Bible says that its creator "God is love" and that he knows what is going on with every creature. 'Creation' proves that whatever creator there might be, he is far from loving. Both things cannot be true. Therefore the Bible God does not exist.

The Bible says that everything that God initially created was "good". Everything that Satan created was bad. The world then became a paradox of good and bad. The question arose whether the arbiter of what was good, was justified to decide what was bad. Obviously, since he was the supreme judge and arbiter of all things. On top of that, was he justified in destroying or removing what was bad. The answer has always been yes, because his love, together with justice dictates that this must be done. 

Creation; predators, eating other creatures is not bad, since the predator depends on the primary consumer for survival. My great grandmother kept rabbits for food. She loved them all and took good care of them, they all had names too. When it came time for Sunday dinner, she lovingly took one out of the pen and bopped it over the head. Benjamin had no idea what had hit him as he blacked out within a split second, was dead within a minute, and cooking in the pot within an hour. His buddies never even noticed he had gone missing. Was that an unloving thing my great grandma did? I suppose it depends on who you ask. But the one to decide whether this is unloving or not would be the creator. Humans have differing views, but the rightful arbiter is God.