19 Reasons why I am not a Jehovah's Witness.

Following on from my previous post, here are the 19 reasons that I sent to a Jehovah's Witness. I only spent about an hour putting these together for an email conversation I had with him, but I think 19 reasons should be enough. Nevertheless, instead of trying to argue with all of the 19 reasons, which would probably have taken forever, the JW continued talking about the signs of the end of the world, giving no explanation as to what evidence he had that the number of signs had increased at any point:

- The idea of punishment in the bible appears to be a mixture of a response to human anger and justice, rather than pure justice. The purpose of justice is to prevent bad things happening - pain and death are simply by-products. If this is not understood then consider too that billions of people have not had access to the bible ("truth"). Any way you look at it - it's unfair.

- The idea of a devil spending all of his time trying to manipulate people into doing bad things seems ridiculous. It seems like the devil would be doing more than God, and the things the devil is accused of trying to make us do seem more likely to be a result of our natural need to survive, be warm, and reproduce.

- The creation seems to contradict any kind of evidence as to how the universe came about and its age. Also, God made some very horrible animals & diseases, not just pretty things.

- Genesis 1 tells a story that seems more like a fairy tale than anything else: talking snake, fiery sword, snakes eating dust, etc. Also God's placing the tree there in the first place, and taking revenge on descendants doesn't make any sense.

- Had the bible been inspired by God, I don't think the ignorance of the writers would have remained, e.g. four corners of the Earth & contradictions like the time of Jesus' death.

- I've heard that JW's are not meant to be friends with non-JW's, especially those who have left. I believe we should all be treated equally, regardless of our religious beliefs.

- The religion is anti-gay. I think to be anti-gay is just plain wrong - one does not choose one's sexual orientation.

- The founder of the JW religion used a pyramid to create his prophecy. No-one's explained how this works, but it makes him appear to be a bit mad.

- The Watchtower has predicted multiple comings of Jesus, and Jesus never came.

- According to the new testament (mainly Matthew), there was supposed to be some major event like the end of the world in the first century. It never happened.


- The JW's have made their own translation of the bible to suit their beliefs. The Watchtower's reason for "The word was (a) God" is not the same as their reason when they explain to Greek people.

- JW's are expected to agree with the Watchtower. They are not given the freedom to use their own intellect to determine whether something is true or not.

- There are always excuses why God does not appear to exist: he is invisible, do not put him to the test, he only talks to people in their dreams.

- If one were to develop a hypothesis as to what would happen if a loving, almighty God existed, it would fail.

- All "miracles" which happen today, are only things which might have happened anyway: Cured sickness, safe arrival, safe medical procedure. The following miracles do not happen: cars running without petrol in emergencies, amputated limbs re-appearing, etc.

- Even my most desperate prayers requesting faith and understanding do not get answered.

- The bible was written in languages which most people do not know. We do not have the originals, so thousands of mistakes / variations have crept into the manuscript copies that we have. These are then translated by people with different prejudices, beliefs, understandings, etc. The original meaning is often debatable, or very difficult to understand.

- The decision as to which books should be included in the New Testament was made by people. We have no proof that they chose the correct books.

- There is lots of research to indicate that JW's are far more prone to mental illnesses than other people. This statement is neither a joke, nor intended to be offensive, this information comes from serious articles.

If, for some reason, you were extremely bored and made your way through my entire post, please dump a comment or two below this. I'm interested to know what people think. Ta :)

My Fascination with Jehovah's Witnesses

I have a fascination with Jehovah's Witnesses. They are like little wounded birds. When you try and help them they flap their wings as hard as they can to try and get away. I love them, and wish I could help them, but there doesn't seem to be anything I can do.

In case you don't know, and I also found this a bit surprising, but Jehovah's Witnesses have a particularly high tendancy to have mental problems. This is not an insult, this is a serious comment, based on what I've found on the net. Amazing how much you come up with by googling something like "jehovah's witness mental illness".

Here's an example

So, what can we do to help these poor, little, injured birds? I don't know, but here's something I've tried... and it didn't work, because the person I tried it on almost completely ignored my questions and moved on to other things. I asked these three hypothetical questions:

1. Hypothetically, if you had a daughter, who was scientifically minded, and therefore could not make sense of your religion, and chose rather not to be involved in it, but was kind to people and animals... If God chose to kill her and save you, would you consider that to be right and just?

2. Hypothetically, if you found out that a major teaching in your religion was a lie, and you could not convince others that it was a lie, would you stay in the religion anyway, or would you leave?

3. Hypothetically, if an international committee was set up for the sole purpose of figuring out the true religion, and consisted of the most open minded and intelligent people in the world, who spent their lives evaluating various religions, and testing them to see if their claims were true, would you join the religion that they claimed was true, or would you rather trust your own mind?

In my next post I will list 19 reasons why I am not a Jehovah's Witness, which took me about an hour to think up in order to send to the same person I mentioned above.

I know no-one reads my posts, but if you are no-one, please post a comment and let me know what you think about these thoughts of mine.

How to have a lucid dream

A lucid dream is simply one in which you're aware that you're dreaming.

I remember studying the Sun-eye method of having a lucid dream, over ten years ago, but it's really a time-consuming task. Besides preparing yourself for sleep, you have to set your alarm, wake up, read about lucid dreams for an hour and then go back to sleep. I tried it a couple of times, and had one lucid dream. One thing about the method terrified me... they say that afterwards you might wake up temporarily paralysed, unable to move anything except your eyes.

Recently I've been trying self-hypnosis mp3's and realized that there may be a self-hypnosis mp3 which can induce lucid dreams. I found "Sleep Hypnosis for Lucid Dreaming by D.Min, Mft Holly Holmes-Meredith" on Amazon.co.uk for less than £1.

I tried listening to the relaxing story every night for about four nights, with no effect except feeling very relaxed. On the fifth night I realized I was dreaming. I looked around and everything seemed to be crystal clear around me... an amazing experience, but it didn't last long as I felt myself waking up. One is supposed to try spinning, or according to the mp3, rubbing one's hands together, in order to remain asleep. As I woke up I tried spinning in my dream, but I was unable to stay there and woke up.

I tried the mp3 about three more times, and on the third time I realized I was dreaming and found myself in some country that I felt like I had travelled to before. I remembered my previous lucid dream, and tried to just relax and not see everything in high definition. I think that's what kept the dream going for a lot longer. Eventually I started waking up, and, trying to remain in my dream I would attempt to rub my hands together. Unfortunately when looking down at my hands I realized that they weren't there. I tried spinning, and I think it may have worked had I not been thirsty.

I woke up, and wanted to have a drink of water, but my body refused to move. It wasn't scary. It was simply interesting. I tried harder... nothing happened. I remembered that if one wakes up paralysed, one simply has to wriggle one's toes... but I was sort of enjoying this new experience. After about a minute I realized that my fingers were easy to move, and I got up and had a drink of water.

Optimizing JavaScript for Google Chrome

Just wanted to make a note of two things I've discovered while writing highly optimized JavaScript for Google Chrome:

1. for(var i in myArray) is much slower than (for var i=0;i<myarray.length;i++)

2. Inserting objects into arrays is much slower than setting the properties of objects in arrays.

That's all :)

It's NOT A 3D MONITOR!!!

Welcome to another crazy rant about something that annoys me... Monitors being called "3D" monitors. There are only two makes of monitor that I know of which are actually 3D: IZ3D, which is no longer being made, and the 3D monitor made by Zalman.

Zalman's monitor has the drawback of being so reflective that you can use it as a mirror. I have no idea why they decided to take this approach, because it's obvious from reviews that it's a major problem. The monitor splits the resolution in half during 3D mode, so 3D won't be as sharp as 2D, but apparently it looks good.

Now onto the other makes... they are NOT 3D! It seems that any monitor which can handle 120hz (flickering 120 times per second) is called 3D. They can only be viewed in 3D if you buy the nVidia LCD shutter glasses for $200! This is an ancient technology that has been around since cave man days. I remember having 3D shutter glasses for my 120hz monitor back in about 2002. The problem with them is of course that they flicker! This means that after using them for about 15 minutes they start to strain your eyes.

All that for $200! There's a simpler solution... download the IZ3D anaglyph driver, and buy a few pairs of red and cyan glasses from eBay for a pound. Suddenly any monitor is 3D!

nVidia used to supply generic 3D drivers, so that any company could make LCD shutter glasses and virtual reality headsets. I used to have a Z800 3DVisor... one awesome piece of 3D technology that worked on the generic drivers. A few years ago nVidia decided to make cards which are no longer compatible with these drivers. Instead they now make drivers which only work with certain technology (THEIR OWN). This means that technology that used to be available for everyone now costs a fortune. Anyone who had a 3D device had to get rid of it if they wanted to upgrade their graphics card.

I suppose it's to be expected in a Capitalist world... I long for the days when a new system like The Venus Project will take over.

Steam Encourages Piracy!

All I wanted to do was download demos of the new games Mafia II and Civilization 5. I found myself having to waste an hour or so installing a program called "Steam". Steam is supposed to prevent people from pirating games. This silly program is required in order to download the free demos, or play the full versions of the games.

After having downloaded the program I found out that it doesn't work on my PC. On the site there's a long list of suggestions as to why the program might not be working. There is NO CHANCE that I am going to try all of those suggestions. It would take FOREVER!

I would buy legitimate versions of these games, but since Steam does not work, I will HAVE to get pirated copies if I want to play them.

It's 00:13 am now, and I'm going to bed. I just wish someone from a gaming company would read this... but what are the chances... about one in a billion?

The Flu Shot

Just a quick thought about the flu shot... I think many people confuse colds with flu, which is why they think they need the flu shot. I used to think I had the flu every year, but I've recently realized that they were always colds. I haven't had the flu in as long as I can remember!