I think balance is best; those ultra-tidy racks would also win prizes in a contest for Obsessive Compulsives. Of course, maybe they are in the avionics bay of the space shuttle and need to be zipped down... or maybe they have bad infestation of those naughty server-room elves...
Somewhere in the fricking middle is best; don't zip-tie stuff that makes re-working twice the tsak it need be. Unlss your GOAL is to make re-wroking twice the task it should be...
"The crux of Darwinism is precisely that evolution is undirected, stemming from *random* mutations."
Nope. It's directed by selection, and selection is determined by environment and genotype. Mutation introduces changes in the genotype. Of those with non-lethal changes, some will fare as well as their parents, some do better in the original environment than their parents, some will find adjacent environments where they may compete successfully for resources not exploited by its parents, and if the environment changes, some will have the change of genotype that best aids survival in the new environment.
"Those who say there is a purpose and pattern to evolution are no longer in the Darwinist paradigm. Whether they want to or not, they are advocating Intelligent Design. Since purpose, direction, and non-random order can be observed everywhere in nature, perhaps they will eventually inspire a scientific revolution."
Wrong. See above. With respect, you need to understand evolution better. Also, think about it logically; you are asserting that there is some kind of meta-knowledge in the system.
For example, a fish in a hot country. The pools it inhabits sometimes dry-up. Most of the fish dies before the rain came. Occasionally one fish would 'tough it out', having genetic change that better resisted de-hydration or air-blood oxygen exchange, or increased the chance of getting to a deeper pool of watter.
As the ONLY fish that survived in such situations would have those characteristics, you have what is known as run-away evolution. There is a super-selection going on, far more stringent that classic 'Lions and Antelope'.
No one or thing 'says' at the onset of the pool-shrinkage 'right-o chaps, we need to evolve into something that can also breathe air, with a thicker skin, and limb-like fins, that's the way to survive'. But that is what ends up evolving, as those are the characteristics required to survive. It's pure chance they arose, and just as the water in the above pools fit the depression in the ground they are in very well, they fit their environment very well.
As if they were made for it.
But the randomness of the process goes away that it is totally non-randomised by the fact all those fish without those characteristics died.
You are seeing 'something' in the process guiding it by not understanding phenotype fit their environment as all the other ones died - all those genotypes without a phenotype that could survived died out.
"Some people use the controversy over Intelligent Design to warn about "fundamentalists" who want to reverse modern science and take us back to the Dark Ages. This is The overheated reaction- including purges of scientists who doubt Darwinism,..."
I suggest you research 'the Wedge strategy'; try Wikipedia. More about 'purges' below.
"He shows how scientists develop "paradigms," or explanatory models, the terms of which they use to organize their findings and interpret their research... "
Indeed so; paradigm shifts attract resistance from those impacted by the shift. Thing is the ones you mentioned were contrived explanations of what was observed which didn't work perfectly. When they were challenged by new paradigms, as the old ones were contrived, even if those with a vested interest in them resisted, eventually the new paradigm won as it had facts on it side. Flat Earth - Globe, Earth centric - Solar centric, etc..
With virtualisation potentially allowing Windows in a Window under OS X, Apple can market their computers as luxury options with a bespoke OS free of many Windows niggles, and complete compatibility with Windows software there is not a better Apple alternative for.
If they made a non-Apple HW OS-C version, they can allow all Windows users the same option.
This could be very good, but Apple have demonstrated a great ability to pluck defeat from the jaws of victory...
E-Mail, surfing, writing letters, making digital pictures look better, editing digital video footage together, burning off CDs or DVDs, connecting new peripherals... all of these are easier for novices and oldies in OS X. The entire OS is more user friendly.
XP's okay, but more obtuse unless you're aclimated. OS X is more intuitive; I'd far rather my dad had a Mac box than an XP box.
And I can't belive you mentioned Linux. If I got my dad Linux he'd die of shock the first time something unexpected happened and be able to do NOTHING about it. I have better things to do with my life than trouble shoot Linux over the phone to my dad. Reality check dude...!
Oh, and I don't have a Mac, use XP everyday, and work in an environment managing people supporting Wintel users using video editing packages, and with a major intenet security company who decribe their efforts to make their boxes simple to use as 'Mac Feel'.
I have to agree it's an awful term and is a misconception.
Transitional species are difficult to find and classify for very good reasons.
As there are geographically transitional species alive today we can see this and apply the knowledge to chronologically transitional species.
Geographic transitionals are called 'Ring Species'.
A classic example is the Herring and Lesser black-backed gull.
In Europe these exist as non-interbreeding separate species. Go East and you find the niche exclusively occupied by black-backs... go far enough East and they start getting lighter in colour. By the time you're in North America they are Herring Gulls. It is ONE species that has become TWO species through a geographical transition to the extent when one end of the creature's range reaches the other end, circling the globe, it no longer interbreeds.
Where does it stop being a Herring gull and start becoming a black-backed? There IS no transitional species, as at each geographical locus a gull is capable of breeding with gulls from the next few adjacent loci.
Chronological transitionals are just the same in time as geographical are in distance. The 'where' becomes a 'when' and is equally unanswerable.
Er, doesn't that assume all RF is equally damaging? Which it isn't, purely in terms of physics let alone biology (i.e. delivered energy vs. sensitivity of tissue to RF).
Well, obviously it's interesting they can make a tetrapod walker, but its tactical applications at this stage are pretty obviously jack shit.
A mark I Mule is still better; they have been used extensively in war before. You can all find this shit yourself as you all can type, but here's an example;
They're quieter and have far greater range than Big Dog, are easier to service in the theatre of operations, are cheaper, They are also duel-use (although Mule don't taste good it's better than steel). Sort out decent power for Big Dog and maybe you have a better solution, but I just have images of Jihadi's hiding behind rocks making jokes as the 31st Foot & Mouth come by on a search and destroy operation as covert as teenage boys on mopeds doing wheelies in a car park...... and when you do get better power sources, the cost factor will still be a little icky; mules will always be an order, if not several orders of magnitiude cheaper.
But as war has always been a damn fine way for 'the man' to make money (even the 'just' wars), I can see it happening eventually. I can see now the Joint Committe on Rough Terrain Transport spending $160 million to 'prove' the superiority of a fuel-cell tetrapod walker over 'traditional organic transports', and kinda missing that a mule costs $ hundreds and the fuel-cell walker would probably come out at $ hundred thousand... or 'missing it' as the factory was somewhere a good buddy needed votes.
Nah, ostriches aren't big birds. Big bird is a big bird. Ostriches are ostriches.
The clue is one is yellow and talks and one is either brown or black and white (depending upon gender) and doesn't talk.
For some reason in Holland, Big Bird is blue and is call Pimoo - I don't know why it's not called Grote Vogel (the direct translation), and the difference is colour... maybe it's a sub-species of Big Bird... Tantus pennipotenti nederlandus?
Every time I flew with my fiancé I found it most amusing she'd get on board with at least one 6" long hair spike keeping her ass-length hair in a bun, whilst people had nail clippers with unusable blades confiscated, LOL.
One has to realize that all a lot of that bull is to make people FEEL BETTER... a trained man with a bone or wooden sharp point is more-or-less as lethal as one with a sharp metal edge, and a hell of a lot more effective than one with NAIL SCISSORS. Unless there's a form of Martial Art I don't know about... nail-scissor ninjas perchance?
But everyone was scared and ineffective and costly 'safety' measures that make the ickle baa-lambs feel happy in cattle class (okay, sheep ain't cattle, but you know what I mean) are the order of the day.
It's exactly the same psychology as puts a life jacket under seats... wanna know how many people have been saved by life-jackets under seats outside of sight of land, in all of commercial aviation history??? LOL. They're there to make you FEEL BETTER.
So, people's biggest risk in orbit will be a hang-nail... wooo...
I should probably look this up, but I don't the conductivity of carbon nanotubes will be a problem. And if it was, the conductor doesn't have to provide the structural strength, does it?
If the radiative qualities of the conductor (no reason it couldn't have cooling wings) were tweaked then maybe radiative losses would outweigh conductive gains from the atmosphere, so that the conductor would get down to super conducting temperatures.
And I WILL go do a search on the pd question, as I recall the Shuttle doing som such experiment (not saying it would power the entire thing, maybe just the hazard lights;-)
Actually, I think we may be over-complicating it. Trains run on rails and pick their power up from another rail. If you can streach one cable to g-sync orbit, you can streach several. If the cable and orbital-station can 'stay-up' when stuff gors up or down the cable, why not have permenant stations?
Until some effective "power-beam", or practically-sized self-contained power source (maybe fusion one day) is developed, you can power capsules using good-old power-rail systems, with repeater generation stations along the length of the cable (or other adjacent cables) to off-ser power losses due to the resitance of the "power line".
And, if I am grokking this correctly, this line would be the temperature of geo-stationary orbit, or at least damn cold, and therefore super-conductors would be effective in slashing the need for repeater statations.
I wonder if there would be a pd between the top of the cable and the bottom? Free power, cool...
Arther C. CLarke wrote the definative "hard" sci-fi book on the subject, "The Fountains of Paradise" I think it was called...
I'm European, but I have a lot of contact with the 'States, and yes, maybe that's why you don't see what I see. I do agree that despite the political status quo in the USA, things continue. Especially in other parts of the world, although in the US also.
But look at WHO oppose certain research, or try to have Creationism taught in classrooms.
They are the _literalistic_ religionists.
In the past, Christianity for example, was far more literal. Now many people see many parts of the Bible as metaphors. They don't believe that god made the world in 6 x 24 hour days, for example.
It is how locked-in to the surce texts a religion is that determines its liklihood of suppressing advancement. Now, yes, the European Christian church had LOADS of opportunities to supress science at the time it was literalistic. And it did. In the examples I know of, where other religions had the opportunity to suppress science, they did not. Not surpising considering Mohammed said 'teaching science is like praying'. The prevailing religious superstision regarding lunar eclispses died out in India when a scientific theory was developed, and no one got burnt or threatened with excommunication. Thus I feel Christianity as expressed by the society of the time was proportionately more scientifically repressive. Look how recently psychiatric opinions about homosexuality were shaped by the religion of Western society.
Funnily enough NOW there are Islamic Creationists with their literal beliefs from the Qu'ran and Hindu Creationists with theirs from the Vedic scriptures.
However their beliefs are not really interfering with scientific progress in the way similar beliefs influenece research in the USA.
Maybe this literalistic religious belief is something that is seen most sharply when the society that holds a belief is threatened with change. A theory of eclipses didn't change Indian soceity one jot.
But letting go of a literal belief in the Bible (or any other holy book) means a whole load. If it is literally true, you follow the rules and you're gonna be okay. You can explain the world around you. You have the answers you need. Certainty.
If it isn't literally true, then anyone's interpretation of it within broad bounds is as likely to be correct as anyone else's.
Maybe Jesus was just a guy with some good ideas who got nailed to a tree for using a metaphor amongst literalistic people (son of god)?
Maybe Jesus' message was just humanitarianism and it was wrapped up in religious mummary because of the times it occured in.
Back to letting go of literal beliefs. Once you start, look what happens. Look at European society and the change it has undergone in the past 50 years with increasing secularisation. Obviously people go to school, work, marry, have kids... nothing much has changed. But the way even the religious people see the world has changed dramatically.
Not so with many in the USA. And they are scared of the changes they do see in other societies. Multiculturalism, religious equality, equal rights to people with different sexualities. The big changes Europe has and is seeing and still isn't collapsing. They see this as the end of the world as they know it. And it is. Despite the fact the world did change like that for most Europeans, and rather noticably didn't end.
So they cling to literalism to like some sort of lucky charm. It helps them maintain their world view and makes them feel they are right despite all the evidence agianst it.
I gather you're Christian, but equally guage you're not in this catagory!
... and like you say, god is all in the definiton really.
I am an humanist, but I feel a humanist feels the same way, essentially, about beauty in nature or unwarranted kindness in humans.
I might not attribute it to Vishu, Thor, Yahweh, Allah or Mithras. It might motivate me to do different things.
But the feeling in our 'hearts' is the same. We just experience it and rationalise it differently.
Martin Luther King once said 'The slow curve of humanity it towards justice'. I feel that religon was and is part of that curve, for all it's flaws, but that humnanism (which is like simplified Christianity (be nice to each other)without any Jesus) is equally a part of this.
Where we differ however, is that you are part of an existing religious traditon, with beliefs stemming from that, whilst I see the future in extending human rights and decreasing the dreadful disparities in wealth and opportunity.
I see this as our job. We can all do a bit, staring off with fair-trade coffee and working outwards from there, LOL!
Now, as long as people with religious beliefs don't try to restrict the _lawful_ (i.e. living life without harming others) pursuit of life, liberty and happiness of people who might (to give a silly example) want to eat fish on Fridays, when their religion doesn't hold with that, I'm fine with people beleiving what they want.
Whatever the afterlife is or isn't, if we try and make the world a better place NOW (which is something theists and non-theists can both do), then we'll sort out the after-life if/when we get to it. Being nice just because being nice is nice isn't a bad thing. Quite the opposite - and 'good works' are seen as important by many religions as well as humanists (I actually hate that term, but have none better as calling myself an atheist would be like an adult calling themselves an asantaist; they're not going to define themselves by something they don't believe exists, are they?).
The danger is SOME (not Mormons) beliefs are adventist (whether they're Christian or not) and expect the world will end. Soon. Around 30% of American's believe in the Rapture!!! And most of those believe they will float up to heaven in their lifetimes and all the bad people will be left on earth!!
Now, quite frankly, having grown-up in an adventist cult, where the end was going to come 'in this generation' (but where the term 'generation' keep on being changed as previous definitons became invalid), I know the danger of this.
It means people are distracted from making the world better NOW. They expect god to come and kiss it better, so why bother? This can extend from what importance a career has to the attitude to world affairs.
It is interesting to note the 'live for today' attitude to the environment that is actually American policy at this time is from a country with a high proportion of people who feel god is going to bring an end to things in some way with a few decades at most. It contrasts wildly with the attitude of Europe, which is pretty secular now.
Whether that's a causal link or not, I don't know.
Mmmm... well we might degree over the phrasing but up until September 30, 1978, non-white Mormon's did not have quite the same status; I quote from the presentation by President N. Eldon Tanner;
"Accordingly, all worthy male members of the Church may be ordained to the priesthood without regard for race or color."
This was not the case before that date.
I also know from growing up in a cult that the further away you are from headquarters the more different it is, and can well believe that Mormon Society in Utah has some problems from the high concentration that you would not experience as a UK follower.
And yes, this has been an encouragingly open and friendly discussion, I've enjoyed it as well. Keep your head screwed on your shoulders and develop a PERSONAL realtionship with god as you see him.
Well said; and if anyone breaks their rules, they are shunned.
As JW's are encouraged not to have any friends who are NOT JW's, this typically means the threat of having no friends in the world who will talk to you if you break the rules is a very strong control mechanism - one of the identifiers of a cult or high-control group.
You can bet is they had political clout they would be equally nasty in their use of it. Hell, they backed Falwel in a tax case for Christ's sake and were a UNited Nations NGO at the same time as saying the UN was the 'whore of Babylon' in the Bible!
I mention JW's and someone goes into apologist mode, I mention Joe Smith and someone links to lds resources - I have to say I preferred the tone of your post though.
When we talk about the validation of religious belief by internalised experience we enter an area where there is less and less useful data.
I can take you, a Christian friend of mine, someone from the local Spirtualist Church, a UFO abductee, a Jehovah's Witness, a Voodoo practitoner, assorted other animists, a Buddhist, a Scientologist...... and they will all likely claim internal religious experiences that validate their belief structure.
The curious thing is that some of these experiences will be anathematic to others. Some will interpret others religious experience as possesion by evil spirits, or body thetans. Others will view them as forms of self-dellusion.
Now either all of these people are right, and they are tapping into something Universal and then wrapping it up in the referentials of their enculturation, or one of these people is right and the rest of us are doomed! doomed I tell you, or they are all wrong.
Autosuggestion seems the most probable answer to me.
If there is some Universal force they are experiencing it's strange that this leads to denial of others similar experiences as being authentic or from god. If only one 'way' assures us of a good outcome, then god is biased and is not fit for the 'job', as one's religious way is almost always a result of our place and family of birth and the idea of an unfair god damning people in ignorance is just offensive.
Thus the experiences being belief-mediated internal self-validation is the simplest explanation.
I am afraid that no matter how nice a Mormon you might be, your internal valdidations are of no more weight than a Papuan Anamist with a bone through his nose.
The Mormons actually have a pretty good record regarding science. Some doctrinal points are nonsensical on points of fact; the tribe of Israelites journying to the New World, which has as little archaelogical evidence as the 40-years-in-the-wilderness of the Jews.
But they actually build and run good Universities and have steadily distanced themselves from more extreme doctrines like polygamy, the second-class status of black people, and now it is hard to get a Mormon to discuss the doctrines which state the most exemplary Mormons become a 'god' in their own right and will dwell on a planet somewhere and have lots of spirit babies with many wives who will be sent to fill the bodies of intelligent being being born somewhere else in the Universe. (To those who've not studided comparative religions, I shit you not).
But having been born in a religious cult, I have severe misgivings about the use of shunning to punish church members who go astray. Although the Mormons are not as bad as some groups, the use of shunning is a crude control technique.
Effectively it means if you don't do what the local church says you should do, they will stop all of the people you know from that religion talking to you - even family. As many religions who use shunning encourage people to limit relationships with outsiders, this means if someone leaves such a high-control group they effectively have no friends, family or support circle to turn to. This keeps them in.
Of course, I know more about Mormonism as it is practised in the USA, where shunning is a problem and something a lot of ex-Mormons feel very bitter about. Have a look on line for the support groups if you don't believe me. The UK may be more liberal. It's curious, you're the second Mormon from the UK I have met oline in a few months.
That might have something to do with you not seeing it in context to what I was replying to.
The contention was "religion stifles advancement"
In response to examples of Christian scientific repression, Mahou argued "ancient geeks were free to test and invent only so long as the results agreed with the beliefs of people in power. during those times some 'religious' people happened to be in power." and argued that the previous post #12869301 was anti-Christian as it didn't give examples from other religions.
I was pointing out there were not nearly the same number of examples from other religions. Rather than proving this wrong by providing examples, ya know, like we were having a real discussion and all, you whine and miss the point.
If you'd bothered to read the post properly I actually say "So the original post seems to be fair in its focus on Christianity as a bad example of established power structures fighting progress with dogma.". My point was there for you if you were courteous enough to read it before posting.
Any other threads you need explaining to you, feel free to ask me...
"Interestingly, most Roman Catholic politicians in the US seem to disagree, or at least not let it interfere with their policy-making. Try fitting that into your theory."
As I am talking about Vatican policy, y0u know the people who run the RC Church, Pope Fester and all that, rather than religious people in politics, it does fit rather nicely, thank you.
If you pay me I can even tell you what logicsal fallacy you just tried to use. You seem to have got a bumper box of sarcasm and no idea where to use it.
"Only for themselves. They won't stop you getting a transfusion."
As per my other comments on Jehovah's Witnesses, it is the mental attitude revealed by such doctrines that supports the original contention, that "Religion stifles advancement in our species". I suspect you didn't read them and just skimmed looking for bits you could poke at. BAD IDEA. It just makes you look like you've not bothered to read a thread you've responded to or have a problem with reading comprehension.
"That's only because Christianity is the biggest religion in your neighbourhood."
The entire point being made is historically Christianity HAS been more opposed to scientific progress than any other major religion. I am sorry you missed it. Start at the top and try again.
Of course, if you have evidence of _similar_ Hindu, Muslim, Seikh, Buddhist, Confucianist, Taoist, Anamist, secular or Jewish scientific suppression, this is the point you can roll it out. Go on then.
"Your problem is that you can't see Sturgeon's Law underneath all of this. Basically, most people suck. Christians happen to be the largest group of people that you can see, so you point to them and say "they suck more than everyone else"."
I am not nearly as ignorant as you'd like to think. Your apologism is ill-informed. I actually study this shit. Thus I make it my business to develop an objective view, not just one based on the happenchance of my place of birth and enculturation.
Whilst everyone sucks, historically there is no religion which has a comparable track-record of scientific repression and opposition to Christianity.
Please feel free to rebutt this statement with evidence. So far evidence has been produced about Christian scientific oppression, and comparisons made with liberal attitudes to science in other religions. No one's bought one shred of evidence that other religons have the same record of scientific oppression over history, although it's obvious many people have a knee-jerk reaction to criticsm of Christianity.
Fortunately Christianity in the developed world (apart from America) rarely has this characteristic anymore due to increasing secularisation. In America you are still likely to find people who will believe the creation myth of a bronze-age goatherd as a literal revelation from god.
I'm sorry, you're wrong. For a start. the James Ossuary is a bone box, not a headstone. And secondly and rather imprtantly it has now been shown to be a forgery.
graphicsguy talks sense.
If you look at the Biblical account, Adam-Abraham were monotheists, Abraham made a covenant with god, later his descendants entered into the Mosaic (nothing to do with early web-browsers) Law. It is either from the covenant with Abraham (ancestor of the Israelites) or from the Mosiac Law that one can date Judaism.
Christianity is based on the belief that a man called Jesus was the Messiach (sp?), the Hebrew term for a saviour prophecied about in the Bible.
One can say 'ooo, it most be true, the prophecies were fufilled it says so in the Bible'.
One can also say that it is easy for someone to write a story about someone who came and detail how they fufilled the prophecies that made identify them as the Messiah, and for that person to actually not have done any or all of what the story says they did.
If one views the simlarities between the Jesus story and the Buddha story, or the Vedic traditons about Krishna, then Jesus actually existing as he is described becomes more doubtful. Buddha was born of a virgin and had 12 disciples, for example.
http://www.rastafarispeaks.com/forum/storeroom/con fig.pl?noframes%3Bread=49229http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jckr.htm
There is a very strong case for Jesus being a wholey or largely mythical person who was deliberatley invented or whose life was elaborated on and fictionalised to form the basis of a religion, blending other stories that were known at the time about various other god-men in other religious traditon.
Thus Christianity's claim to pre-date Jesus is as dubious as Islam's claim that Jesus was JUST a prohet and Mohammed was the final messenger, and the similar claims made by Mormon's about Joseph Smith.
This is what I call the green hat paradox. Some religionists maintain that it is impossible the complexicty around arose without a designer. They cannot answer the question of where the complexity represented by that designer arose.
It is like a man with a green hat saying you can't belive what someone is saying as they are wearing a green hat. The very insistance on a designer for complex systems invalidates their own belif as they cannot provide a designer for the complex ssytem that is their 'start conditon'.
Political manuevering has resulted in the spawning of Intelligent Design. If anything ever cralwd out of the abortion bucket, it is ID. Talk about a oxymoron; it's a self-falsifying theory.
"2. The accuracy of the biblical record"
Like saying there was Global Flood when there is no evidence for it and direct evidence against it?
"3. The evidence of the changed lives of the people who knew Jesus personally 4. The evidence of the way that my relationship with Jesus Christ has changed my life."
These claims are not unique, they are made by believers in the paranormal, by scientologists, by alien abductees, by healthfood fanatics, by reformed addicts, by other religonists outside of the Christian traditon. They just change who they give credit to.
As for any internal proof, I'd recommend you learn more about auto-suggestion and dwell on the fact the shaman of a tribe of neolithic hunter-gatherers ALSO believes he is right because of his internalised experiences with the spirit being he believes in.
You seem to base your opposition to abortion on the loss of POTENTIAL. What about the loss of potential for a woman who is not in a postion to raise a child? What about the loss of potential to children born in developing countries or to disadvantaged familes? How come the minute a baby is born all this talk about loss of potential goes away? The stance you have is niot consistant unless you take step to ensure the loss of potential is also prevented from happening once a child is born.
However, unless you are able to counter evidence I presented in my other post to you (that there is no Biblical prohibition against abortion even though logically there would be if the writer had wanted there to be one), all you are doing is supporting a Pharasitical elaboration of Biblical law, and I'm sure you know what Jeus thought of the Pharasees.
You say you are doing gods will, but I see no evidenece for it in this respect, so that even if one accepts the existence of god all you're doing is expressing a personal opinion you've copied of someone else, not a law that can be shown to be divinely inspired. I think the main problem with the abortion debate (other than it being approached from two different paradigms whose arguments are largely meaningless to each other) is that at 12 weeks gestation, whilst a baby is a tiny 2" long human being in appearance, that is where the similarity ends. In terms of neurologica complexity (the thing that arguably makes us human), there is no comparison.
If cats had scales and long flicky tongues people would like them far less. They are cute and cuddly, even if they are totally self-centred couch parasites. Likewise, if 12 week-old fetuses had scales, or were still an amphorus blob, there just would not be the issue.
Because it LOOKS like a tiny little human being, people think it is. But it isn't, not in any meaninful fashion, even when compared to a new-born.
JW's, along with a few other similar Christian adventist belief systems, have a rather poor history when it comes to medical science.
At one point JW's opposed vaccinations. This was not on any genuine scientific ground but on the grounds of religious superstition. I can validate this satement with quotations fom their literature if you wish. Often JW's or their apologists are totally unaware of their beliefs previous doctrinal revisons. They later revised that teaching.
Similarly they opposed organ transplants until the mid 1980's. They actually believed (for example) that a person's personality would change after a heart transplant, again, due to religious superstition. They later revised that teaching. Again, I can prove the thoroughly muddled thinking behind the dogma (which had only the lightest of claimed Biblical backing, as with the vaccination prohibiton) by quoting from their literature at the time.
Their prohibiton against blood is another religious superstition. If you actually study the devlopment of the doctrine you can see it bears no relation to science what-so-ever.
For example, they oppose the transfusion of whole blood even if death is the likely outcome of this. However, the dogma is not consistant with science.
If they had an internaly logical objections based upon their religious beliefs one could accept it. Like not eating pork. That's simple. Don't eat pig flesh.
However, JW's leaders have progressively fiddled with the doctrine. For example, you cannot have a transfusion of blood plasma; this is 99% water. You can however have treatment using blood fractions that are 100% derived from red blood cells. It is like saying don't eat pork, and then disallowing bacon-flavoured crisps (potato chips to Americans), but allowing the consumption of small pork cocktail sauceges.
The reason that I site them as an example of an attitude is that rather than trying to interface their religious beliefs with the real world in some comprenhensible, logical, consistant manner, they set non-medical church leaders to make pronouncements they do not have the understanding to make, with the resultant illogicities.
They suspend reason in favour of dogma, which is exactly the atitude of some religionists that stifle science.
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I think balance is best; those ultra-tidy racks would also win prizes in a contest for Obsessive Compulsives. Of course, maybe they are in the avionics bay of the space shuttle and need to be zipped down... or maybe they have bad infestation of those naughty server-room elves...
Somewhere in the fricking middle is best; don't zip-tie stuff that makes re-working twice the tsak it need be. Unlss your GOAL is to make re-wroking twice the task it should be...
"The crux of Darwinism is precisely that evolution is undirected, stemming from *random* mutations."
Nope. It's directed by selection, and selection is determined by environment and genotype. Mutation introduces changes in the genotype. Of those with non-lethal changes, some will fare as well as their parents, some do better in the original environment than their parents, some will find adjacent environments where they may compete successfully for resources not exploited by its parents, and if the environment changes, some will have the change of genotype that best aids survival in the new environment.
"Those who say there is a purpose and pattern to evolution are no longer in the Darwinist paradigm. Whether they want to or not, they are advocating Intelligent Design. Since purpose, direction, and non-random order can be observed everywhere in nature, perhaps they will eventually inspire a scientific revolution."
Wrong. See above. With respect, you need to understand evolution better. Also, think about it logically; you are asserting that there is some kind of meta-knowledge in the system.
For example, a fish in a hot country. The pools it inhabits sometimes dry-up. Most of the fish dies before the rain came. Occasionally one fish would 'tough it out', having genetic change that better resisted de-hydration or air-blood oxygen exchange, or increased the chance of getting to a deeper pool of watter.
As the ONLY fish that survived in such situations would have those characteristics, you have what is known as run-away evolution. There is a super-selection going on, far more stringent that classic 'Lions and Antelope'.
No one or thing 'says' at the onset of the pool-shrinkage 'right-o chaps, we need to evolve into something that can also breathe air, with a thicker skin, and limb-like fins, that's the way to survive'. But that is what ends up evolving, as those are the characteristics required to survive. It's pure chance they arose, and just as the water in the above pools fit the depression in the ground they are in very well, they fit their environment very well.
As if they were made for it.
But the randomness of the process goes away that it is totally non-randomised by the fact all those fish without those characteristics died.
You are seeing 'something' in the process guiding it by not understanding phenotype fit their environment as all the other ones died - all those genotypes without a phenotype that could survived died out.
"Some people use the controversy over Intelligent Design to warn about "fundamentalists" who want to reverse modern science and take us back to the Dark Ages. This is The overheated reaction- including purges of scientists who doubt Darwinism,..."
I suggest you research 'the Wedge strategy'; try Wikipedia. More about 'purges' below.
"He shows how scientists develop "paradigms," or explanatory models, the terms of which they use to organize their findings and interpret their research... "
Indeed so; paradigm shifts attract resistance from those impacted by the shift. Thing is the ones you mentioned were contrived explanations of what was observed which didn't work perfectly. When they were challenged by new paradigms, as the old ones were contrived, even if those with a vested interest in them resisted, eventually the new paradigm won as it had facts on it side. Flat Earth - Globe, Earth centric - Solar centric, etc..
Because history is written by the winners?
... if this is like a force field then a chain saw is like a light sabre
With virtualisation potentially allowing Windows in a Window under OS X, Apple can market their computers as luxury options with a bespoke OS free of many Windows niggles, and complete compatibility with Windows software there is not a better Apple alternative for.
If they made a non-Apple HW OS-C version, they can allow all Windows users the same option.
This could be very good, but Apple have demonstrated a great ability to pluck defeat from the jaws of victory...
E-Mail, surfing, writing letters, making digital pictures look better, editing digital video footage together, burning off CDs or DVDs, connecting new peripherals... all of these are easier for novices and oldies in OS X. The entire OS is more user friendly.
XP's okay, but more obtuse unless you're aclimated. OS X is more intuitive; I'd far rather my dad had a Mac box than an XP box.
And I can't belive you mentioned Linux. If I got my dad Linux he'd die of shock the first time something unexpected happened and be able to do NOTHING about it. I have better things to do with my life than trouble shoot Linux over the phone to my dad. Reality check dude...!
Oh, and I don't have a Mac, use XP everyday, and work in an environment managing people supporting Wintel users using video editing packages, and with a major intenet security company who decribe their efforts to make their boxes simple to use as 'Mac Feel'.
I have to agree it's an awful term and is a misconception.
Transitional species are difficult to find and classify for very good reasons.
As there are geographically transitional species alive today we can see this and apply the knowledge to chronologically transitional species.
Geographic transitionals are called 'Ring Species'.
A classic example is the Herring and Lesser black-backed gull.
In Europe these exist as non-interbreeding separate species. Go East and you find the niche exclusively occupied by black-backs... go far enough East and they start getting lighter in colour. By the time you're in North America they are Herring Gulls. It is ONE species that has become TWO species through a geographical transition to the extent when one end of the creature's range reaches the other end, circling the globe, it no longer interbreeds.
Where does it stop being a Herring gull and start becoming a black-backed? There IS no transitional species, as at each geographical locus a gull is capable of breeding with gulls from the next few adjacent loci.
Chronological transitionals are just the same in time as geographical are in distance. The 'where' becomes a 'when' and is equally unanswerable.
Er, doesn't that assume all RF is equally damaging? Which it isn't, purely in terms of physics let alone biology (i.e. delivered energy vs. sensitivity of tissue to RF).
Well, obviously it's interesting they can make a tetrapod walker, but its tactical applications at this stage are pretty obviously jack shit.
r s.htm
... and when you do get better power sources, the cost factor will still be a little icky; mules will always be an order, if not several orders of magnitiude cheaper.
A mark I Mule is still better; they have been used extensively in war before. You can all find this shit yourself as you all can type, but here's an example;
http://www.qmmuseum.lee.army.mil/WWII/mules_of_ma
They're quieter and have far greater range than Big Dog, are easier to service in the theatre of operations, are cheaper, They are also duel-use (although Mule don't taste good it's better than steel). Sort out decent power for Big Dog and maybe you have a better solution, but I just have images of Jihadi's hiding behind rocks making jokes as the 31st Foot & Mouth come by on a search and destroy operation as covert as teenage boys on mopeds doing wheelies in a car park...
But as war has always been a damn fine way for 'the man' to make money (even the 'just' wars), I can see it happening eventually. I can see now the Joint Committe on Rough Terrain Transport spending $160 million to 'prove' the superiority of a fuel-cell tetrapod walker over 'traditional organic transports', and kinda missing that a mule costs $ hundreds and the fuel-cell walker would probably come out at $ hundred thousand... or 'missing it' as the factory was somewhere a good buddy needed votes.
Oh this tangled web we weave...
Nah, ostriches aren't big birds. Big bird is a big bird. Ostriches are ostriches.
The clue is one is yellow and talks and one is either brown or black and white (depending upon gender) and doesn't talk.
For some reason in Holland, Big Bird is blue and is call Pimoo - I don't know why it's not called Grote Vogel (the direct translation), and the difference is colour... maybe it's a sub-species of Big Bird... Tantus pennipotenti nederlandus?
Every time I flew with my fiancé I found it most amusing she'd get on board with at least one 6" long hair spike keeping her ass-length hair in a bun, whilst people had nail clippers with unusable blades confiscated, LOL.
One has to realize that all a lot of that bull is to make people FEEL BETTER... a trained man with a bone or wooden sharp point is more-or-less as lethal as one with a sharp metal edge, and a hell of a lot more effective than one with NAIL SCISSORS.
Unless there's a form of Martial Art I don't know about... nail-scissor ninjas perchance?
But everyone was scared and ineffective and costly 'safety' measures that make the ickle baa-lambs feel happy in cattle class (okay, sheep ain't cattle, but you know what I mean) are the order of the day.
It's exactly the same psychology as puts a life jacket under seats... wanna know how many people have been saved by life-jackets under seats outside of sight of land, in all of commercial aviation history??? LOL. They're there to make you FEEL BETTER.
So, people's biggest risk in orbit will be a hang-nail... wooo...
I should probably look this up, but I don't the conductivity of carbon nanotubes will be a problem. And if it was, the conductor doesn't have to provide the structural strength, does it?
;-)
If the radiative qualities of the conductor (no reason it couldn't have cooling wings) were tweaked then maybe radiative losses would outweigh conductive gains from the atmosphere, so that the conductor would get down to super conducting temperatures.
And I WILL go do a search on the pd question, as I recall the Shuttle doing som such experiment (not saying it would power the entire thing, maybe just the hazard lights
Cheers for the input though!
Actually, I think we may be over-complicating it. Trains run on rails and pick their power up from another rail. If you can streach one cable to g-sync orbit, you can streach several. If the cable and orbital-station can 'stay-up' when stuff gors up or down the cable, why not have permenant stations?
Until some effective "power-beam", or practically-sized self-contained power source (maybe fusion one day) is developed, you can power capsules using good-old power-rail systems, with repeater generation stations along the length of the cable (or other adjacent cables) to off-ser power losses due to the resitance of the "power line".
And, if I am grokking this correctly, this line would be the temperature of geo-stationary orbit, or at least damn cold, and therefore super-conductors would be effective in slashing the need for repeater statations.
I wonder if there would be a pd between the top of the cable and the bottom? Free power, cool...
Arther C. CLarke wrote the definative "hard" sci-fi book on the subject, "The Fountains of Paradise" I think it was called...
That's becaue it's escape velocity. Good-bye to Earth's gravity, hello Solar System.
Very true, but you'd be taking up more than you took down, at least until we actually started exploiting resources in the solar system.
I'm European, but I have a lot of contact with the 'States, and yes, maybe that's why you don't see what I see. I do agree that despite the political status quo in the USA, things continue. Especially in other parts of the world, although in the US also.
But look at WHO oppose certain research, or try to have Creationism taught in classrooms.
They are the _literalistic_ religionists.
In the past, Christianity for example, was far more literal. Now many people see many parts of the Bible as metaphors. They don't believe that god made the world in 6 x 24 hour days, for example.
It is how locked-in to the surce texts a religion is that determines its liklihood of suppressing advancement. Now, yes, the European Christian church had LOADS of opportunities to supress science at the time it was literalistic. And it did. In the examples I know of, where other religions had the opportunity to suppress science, they did not. Not surpising considering Mohammed said 'teaching science is like praying'. The prevailing religious superstision regarding lunar eclispses died out in India when a scientific theory was developed, and no one got burnt or threatened with excommunication. Thus I feel Christianity as expressed by the society of the time was proportionately more scientifically repressive. Look how recently psychiatric opinions about homosexuality were shaped by the religion of Western society.
Funnily enough NOW there are Islamic Creationists with their literal beliefs from the Qu'ran and Hindu Creationists with theirs from the Vedic scriptures.
However their beliefs are not really interfering with scientific progress in the way similar beliefs influenece research in the USA.
Maybe this literalistic religious belief is something that is seen most sharply when the society that holds a belief is threatened with change. A theory of eclipses didn't change Indian soceity one jot.
But letting go of a literal belief in the Bible (or any other holy book) means a whole load. If it is literally true, you follow the rules and you're gonna be okay. You can explain the world around you. You have the answers you need. Certainty.
If it isn't literally true, then anyone's interpretation of it within broad bounds is as likely to be correct as anyone else's.
Maybe Jesus was just a guy with some good ideas who got nailed to a tree for using a metaphor amongst literalistic people (son of god)?
Maybe Jesus' message was just humanitarianism and it was wrapped up in religious mummary because of the times it occured in.
Back to letting go of literal beliefs. Once you start, look what happens. Look at European society and the change it has undergone in the past 50 years with increasing secularisation. Obviously people go to school, work, marry, have kids... nothing much has changed. But the way even the religious people see the world has changed dramatically.
Not so with many in the USA. And they are scared of the changes they do see in other societies. Multiculturalism, religious equality, equal rights to people with different sexualities. The big changes Europe has and is seeing and still isn't collapsing. They see this as the end of the world as they know it. And it is. Despite the fact the world did change like that for most Europeans, and rather noticably didn't end.
So they cling to literalism to like some sort of lucky charm. It helps them maintain their world view and makes them feel they are right despite all the evidence agianst it.
I gather you're Christian, but equally guage you're not in this catagory!
... and like you say, god is all in the definiton really.
I am an humanist, but I feel a humanist feels the same way, essentially, about beauty in nature or unwarranted kindness in humans.
I might not attribute it to Vishu, Thor, Yahweh, Allah or Mithras. It might motivate me to do different things.
But the feeling in our 'hearts' is the same. We just experience it and rationalise it differently.
Martin Luther King once said 'The slow curve of humanity it towards justice'. I feel that religon was and is part of that curve, for all it's flaws, but that humnanism (which is like simplified Christianity (be nice to each other)without any Jesus) is equally a part of this.
Where we differ however, is that you are part of an existing religious traditon, with beliefs stemming from that, whilst I see the future in extending human rights and decreasing the dreadful disparities in wealth and opportunity.
I see this as our job. We can all do a bit, staring off with fair-trade coffee and working outwards from there, LOL!
Now, as long as people with religious beliefs don't try to restrict the _lawful_ (i.e. living life without harming others) pursuit of life, liberty and happiness of people who might (to give a silly example) want to eat fish on Fridays, when their religion doesn't hold with that, I'm fine with people beleiving what they want.
Whatever the afterlife is or isn't, if we try and make the world a better place NOW (which is something theists and non-theists can both do), then we'll sort out the after-life if/when we get to it. Being nice just because being nice is nice isn't a bad thing. Quite the opposite - and 'good works' are seen as important by many religions as well as humanists (I actually hate that term, but have none better as calling myself an atheist would be like an adult calling themselves an asantaist; they're not going to define themselves by something they don't believe exists, are they?).
The danger is SOME (not Mormons) beliefs are adventist (whether they're Christian or not) and expect the world will end. Soon. Around 30% of American's believe in the Rapture!!! And most of those believe they will float up to heaven in their lifetimes and all the bad people will be left on earth!!
Now, quite frankly, having grown-up in an adventist cult, where the end was going to come 'in this generation' (but where the term 'generation' keep on being changed as previous definitons became invalid), I know the danger of this.
It means people are distracted from making the world better NOW. They expect god to come and kiss it better, so why bother? This can extend from what importance a career has to the attitude to world affairs.
It is interesting to note the 'live for today' attitude to the environment that is actually American policy at this time is from a country with a high proportion of people who feel god is going to bring an end to things in some way with a few decades at most. It contrasts wildly with the attitude of Europe, which is pretty secular now.
Whether that's a causal link or not, I don't know.
Take care!
Mmmm... well we might degree over the phrasing but up until September 30, 1978, non-white Mormon's did not have quite the same status; I quote from the presentation by President N. Eldon Tanner; "Accordingly, all worthy male members of the Church may be ordained to the priesthood without regard for race or color." This was not the case before that date. I also know from growing up in a cult that the further away you are from headquarters the more different it is, and can well believe that Mormon Society in Utah has some problems from the high concentration that you would not experience as a UK follower. And yes, this has been an encouragingly open and friendly discussion, I've enjoyed it as well. Keep your head screwed on your shoulders and develop a PERSONAL realtionship with god as you see him.
Well said; and if anyone breaks their rules, they are shunned.
As JW's are encouraged not to have any friends who are NOT JW's, this typically means the threat of having no friends in the world who will talk to you if you break the rules is a very strong control mechanism - one of the identifiers of a cult or high-control group.
You can bet is they had political clout they would be equally nasty in their use of it. Hell, they backed Falwel in a tax case for Christ's sake and were a UNited Nations NGO at the same time as saying the UN was the 'whore of Babylon' in the Bible!
Sam...
... and they will all likely claim internal religious experiences that validate their belief structure.
I mention JW's and someone goes into apologist mode, I mention Joe Smith and someone links to lds resources - I have to say I preferred the tone of your post though.
When we talk about the validation of religious belief by internalised experience we enter an area where there is less and less useful data.
I can take you, a Christian friend of mine, someone from the local Spirtualist Church, a UFO abductee, a Jehovah's Witness, a Voodoo practitoner, assorted other animists, a Buddhist, a Scientologist...
The curious thing is that some of these experiences will be anathematic to others. Some will interpret others religious experience as possesion by evil spirits, or body thetans. Others will view them as forms of self-dellusion.
Now either all of these people are right, and they are tapping into something Universal and then wrapping it up in the referentials of their enculturation, or one of these people is right and the rest of us are doomed! doomed I tell you, or they are all wrong.
Autosuggestion seems the most probable answer to me.
If there is some Universal force they are experiencing it's strange that this leads to denial of others similar experiences as being authentic or from god. If only one 'way' assures us of a good outcome, then god is biased and is not fit for the 'job', as one's religious way is almost always a result of our place and family of birth and the idea of an unfair god damning people in ignorance is just offensive.
Thus the experiences being belief-mediated internal self-validation is the simplest explanation.
I am afraid that no matter how nice a Mormon you might be, your internal valdidations are of no more weight than a Papuan Anamist with a bone through his nose.
The Mormons actually have a pretty good record regarding science. Some doctrinal points are nonsensical on points of fact; the tribe of Israelites journying to the New World, which has as little archaelogical evidence as the 40-years-in-the-wilderness of the Jews.
But they actually build and run good Universities and have steadily distanced themselves from more extreme doctrines like polygamy, the second-class status of black people, and now it is hard to get a Mormon to discuss the doctrines which state the most exemplary Mormons become a 'god' in their own right and will dwell on a planet somewhere and have lots of spirit babies with many wives who will be sent to fill the bodies of intelligent being being born somewhere else in the Universe. (To those who've not studided comparative religions, I shit you not).
But having been born in a religious cult, I have severe misgivings about the use of shunning to punish church members who go astray. Although the Mormons are not as bad as some groups, the use of shunning is a crude control technique.
Effectively it means if you don't do what the local church says you should do, they will stop all of the people you know from that religion talking to you - even family. As many religions who use shunning encourage people to limit relationships with outsiders, this means if someone leaves such a high-control group they effectively have no friends, family or support circle to turn to. This keeps them in.
Of course, I know more about Mormonism as it is practised in the USA, where shunning is a problem and something a lot of ex-Mormons feel very bitter about. Have a look on line for the support groups if you don't believe me. The UK may be more liberal. It's curious, you're the second Mormon from the UK I have met oline in a few months.
"I fail to see your point."
That might have something to do with you not seeing it in context to what I was replying to.
The contention was "religion stifles advancement"
In response to examples of Christian scientific repression, Mahou argued "ancient geeks were free to test and invent only so long as the results agreed with the beliefs of people in power. during those times some 'religious' people happened to be in power." and argued that the previous post #12869301 was anti-Christian as it didn't give examples from other religions.
I was pointing out there were not nearly the same number of examples from other religions. Rather than proving this wrong by providing examples, ya know, like we were having a real discussion and all, you whine and miss the point.
If you'd bothered to read the post properly I actually say "So the original post seems to be fair in its focus on Christianity as a bad example of established power structures fighting progress with dogma.". My point was there for you if you were courteous enough to read it before posting.
Any other threads you need explaining to you, feel free to ask me...
"Interestingly, most Roman Catholic politicians in the US seem to disagree, or at least not let it interfere with their policy-making. Try fitting that into your theory."
As I am talking about Vatican policy, y0u know the people who run the RC Church, Pope Fester and all that, rather than religious people in politics, it does fit rather nicely, thank you.
If you pay me I can even tell you what logicsal fallacy you just tried to use. You seem to have got a bumper box of sarcasm and no idea where to use it.
"Only for themselves. They won't stop you getting a transfusion."
As per my other comments on Jehovah's Witnesses, it is the mental attitude revealed by such doctrines that supports the original contention, that "Religion stifles advancement in our species". I suspect you didn't read them and just skimmed looking for bits you could poke at. BAD IDEA. It just makes you look like you've not bothered to read a thread you've responded to or have a problem with reading comprehension.
"That's only because Christianity is the biggest religion in your neighbourhood."
The entire point being made is historically Christianity HAS been more opposed to scientific progress than any other major religion. I am sorry you missed it. Start at the top and try again.
Of course, if you have evidence of _similar_ Hindu, Muslim, Seikh, Buddhist, Confucianist, Taoist, Anamist, secular or Jewish scientific suppression, this is the point you can roll it out. Go on then.
"Your problem is that you can't see Sturgeon's Law underneath all of this. Basically, most people suck. Christians happen to be the largest group of people that you can see, so you point to them and say "they suck more than everyone else"."
I am not nearly as ignorant as you'd like to think. Your apologism is ill-informed. I actually study this shit. Thus I make it my business to develop an objective view, not just one based on the happenchance of my place of birth and enculturation.
Whilst everyone sucks, historically there is no religion which has a comparable track-record of scientific repression and opposition to Christianity.
Please feel free to rebutt this statement with evidence. So far evidence has been produced about Christian scientific oppression, and comparisons made with liberal attitudes to science in other religions. No one's bought one shred of evidence that other religons have the same record of scientific oppression over history, although it's obvious many people have a knee-jerk reaction to criticsm of Christianity.
Fortunately Christianity in the developed world (apart from America) rarely has this characteristic anymore due to increasing secularisation. In America you are still likely to find people who will believe the creation myth of a bronze-age goatherd as a literal revelation from god.
I'm sorry, you're wrong. For a start. the James Ossuary is a bone box, not a headstone. And secondly and rather imprtantly it has now been shown to be a forgery.
graphicsguy talks sense. If you look at the Biblical account, Adam-Abraham were monotheists, Abraham made a covenant with god, later his descendants entered into the Mosaic (nothing to do with early web-browsers) Law. It is either from the covenant with Abraham (ancestor of the Israelites) or from the Mosiac Law that one can date Judaism. Christianity is based on the belief that a man called Jesus was the Messiach (sp?), the Hebrew term for a saviour prophecied about in the Bible. One can say 'ooo, it most be true, the prophecies were fufilled it says so in the Bible'. One can also say that it is easy for someone to write a story about someone who came and detail how they fufilled the prophecies that made identify them as the Messiah, and for that person to actually not have done any or all of what the story says they did. If one views the simlarities between the Jesus story and the Buddha story, or the Vedic traditons about Krishna, then Jesus actually existing as he is described becomes more doubtful. Buddha was born of a virgin and had 12 disciples, for example. http://www.rastafarispeaks.com/forum/storeroom/con fig.pl?noframes%3Bread=49229
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jckr.htm
There is a very strong case for Jesus being a wholey or largely mythical person who was deliberatley invented or whose life was elaborated on and fictionalised to form the basis of a religion, blending other stories that were known at the time about various other god-men in other religious traditon.
Thus Christianity's claim to pre-date Jesus is as dubious as Islam's claim that Jesus was JUST a prohet and Mohammed was the final messenger, and the similar claims made by Mormon's about Joseph Smith.
As you're getting into this;
"1. The existence and complexity of the universe"
This is what I call the green hat paradox. Some religionists maintain that it is impossible the complexicty around arose without a designer. They cannot answer the question of where the complexity represented by that designer arose.
It is like a man with a green hat saying you can't belive what someone is saying as they are wearing a green hat. The very insistance on a designer for complex systems invalidates their own belif as they cannot provide a designer for the complex ssytem that is their 'start conditon'.
Political manuevering has resulted in the spawning of Intelligent Design. If anything ever cralwd out of the abortion bucket, it is ID. Talk about a oxymoron; it's a self-falsifying theory.
"2. The accuracy of the biblical record"
Like saying there was Global Flood when there is no evidence for it and direct evidence against it?
"3. The evidence of the changed lives of the people who knew Jesus personally
4. The evidence of the way that my relationship with Jesus Christ has changed my life."
These claims are not unique, they are made by believers in the paranormal, by scientologists, by alien abductees, by healthfood fanatics, by reformed addicts, by other religonists outside of the Christian traditon. They just change who they give credit to.
As for any internal proof, I'd recommend you learn more about auto-suggestion and dwell on the fact the shaman of a tribe of neolithic hunter-gatherers ALSO believes he is right because of his internalised experiences with the spirit being he believes in.
You seem to base your opposition to abortion on the loss of POTENTIAL. What about the loss of potential for a woman who is not in a postion to raise a child? What about the loss of potential to children born in developing countries or to disadvantaged familes? How come the minute a baby is born all this talk about loss of potential goes away? The stance you have is niot consistant unless you take step to ensure the loss of potential is also prevented from happening once a child is born.
However, unless you are able to counter evidence I presented in my other post to you (that there is no Biblical prohibition against abortion even though logically there would be if the writer had wanted there to be one), all you are doing is supporting a Pharasitical elaboration of Biblical law, and I'm sure you know what Jeus thought of the Pharasees.
You say you are doing gods will, but I see no evidenece for it in this respect, so that even if one accepts the existence of god all you're doing is expressing a personal opinion you've copied of someone else, not a law that can be shown to be divinely inspired.
I think the main problem with the abortion debate (other than it being approached from two different paradigms whose arguments are largely meaningless to each other) is that at 12 weeks gestation, whilst a baby is a tiny 2" long human being in appearance, that is where the similarity ends. In terms of neurologica complexity (the thing that arguably makes us human), there is no comparison.
If cats had scales and long flicky tongues people would like them far less. They are cute and cuddly, even if they are totally self-centred couch parasites. Likewise, if 12 week-old fetuses had scales, or were still an amphorus blob, there just would not be the issue.
Because it LOOKS like a tiny little human being, people think it is. But it isn't, not in any meaninful fashion, even when compared to a new-born.
... well, I will give you a brief backgrounder.
JW's, along with a few other similar Christian adventist belief systems, have a rather poor history when it comes to medical science.
At one point JW's opposed vaccinations. This was not on any genuine scientific ground but on the grounds of religious superstition. I can validate this satement with quotations fom their literature if you wish. Often JW's or their apologists are totally unaware of their beliefs previous doctrinal revisons. They later revised that teaching.
Similarly they opposed organ transplants until the mid 1980's. They actually believed (for example) that a person's personality would change after a heart transplant, again, due to religious superstition. They later revised that teaching. Again, I can prove the thoroughly muddled thinking behind the dogma (which had only the lightest of claimed Biblical backing, as with the vaccination prohibiton) by quoting from their literature at the time.
Their prohibiton against blood is another religious superstition. If you actually study the devlopment of the doctrine you can see it bears no relation to science what-so-ever.
For example, they oppose the transfusion of whole blood even if death is the likely outcome of this. However, the dogma is not consistant with science.
If they had an internaly logical objections based upon their religious beliefs one could accept it. Like not eating pork. That's simple. Don't eat pig flesh.
However, JW's leaders have progressively fiddled with the doctrine. For example, you cannot have a transfusion of blood plasma; this is 99% water. You can however have treatment using blood fractions that are 100% derived from red blood cells. It is like saying don't eat pork, and then disallowing bacon-flavoured crisps (potato chips to Americans), but allowing the consumption of small pork cocktail sauceges.
The reason that I site them as an example of an attitude is that rather than trying to interface their religious beliefs with the real world in some comprenhensible, logical, consistant manner, they set non-medical church leaders to make pronouncements they do not have the understanding to make, with the resultant illogicities.
They suspend reason in favour of dogma, which is exactly the atitude of some religionists that stifle science.
I hope you are suitably enlightened.