Anna

Jay .... you just made "The List".

Very true. But what I find the problem is, is when someone no longer wishes to be a Witness after they have been dfd and after they are no longer practicing what they've been dfd for, so of course there is no chance of them being reinstated, which means they will be shunned forever with all it's implications (loved ones will not talk to them ever again)....

Ask any parent whose child (adult or otherwise) is disfellowshipped.

This would not be the first time in Canada.  In 2012 Vicky Boer filed a lawsuit against the elders of her cong.and the WT which was a fiasco and ended badly for her. She ended up owing her lawyers, and is probably still paying them now.

OOOh....Look what a Google search on heirogrifics reveals......................   @James Thomas Rook Jr.

Very true. But we all know what would happen if it was found out you went on vacation with your dfd daughter or son. (Not yours literally of course!) It's one of these frustrating hard to pin down situations. There is a supreme court case going on in Canada right now where the dfd ex- brother is suing. But that's not what I wanted to say, but what is interesting is that the WT appealing the case mentions this in defense: "Disfellowshipping is not “a mandatory church edict” that removes family love. Family members decide according to their conscience the extent to which they will continue family discourse".  Page 9, par 31
How can that be reconciled with what really happens?
To illustrate:  If it was a conscience matter, then if someones conscience said it was ok for them to spend time with their disfellowshipped relative, perhaps even go on vacation with them, then it shouldn't be a problem, and no one should judge that decision, just like if someone decided their conscience allowed them to take minor blood fractions. For that reason, because minor blood fractions really ARE a conscience matter, we don’t have articles giving us advice on how to avoid them, and videos showing us how someone successfully refused them etc. like we do with disfellowshipping.
So really, all the articles and videos are “biasing” us to shun, rather than truly leaving it up to our conscience. I am not saying this is right or wrong, I am just pointing out  that stating that it is a conscience matter is not correct, (actually it is dishonest) and could be used against us if proved.
Here is the case, but I know you probably won't bother to read it, and I don't blame you, you will just have to trust me that the quote I posted is really there
http://www.scc-csc.ca/WebDocuments-DocumentsWeb/37273/FM010_Appellant_Judicial-Committee-of-the-Highwood-Congregation-of-Jehovah's-Witnesses.pdf
 
 
 

Very true. But what I find the problem is, is when someone no longer wishes to be a Witness after they have been dfd and after they are no longer practicing what they've been dfd for, so of course there is no chance of them being reinstated, which means they will be shunned forever with all it's implications (loved ones will not talk to them ever again)....

Ask any parent whose child (adult or otherwise) is disfellowshipped.

Of course it doesn't apply to the one whose association has ended. They can do what they like obviously since they are no longer bound by the rules of the congregation.
But rephrase it to say "....ask yourself these questions if you are an active member of Jehovah's Witnesses" and see whether the prospect of shunning has an impact on your answers.
 

No. I like to be fair, so I hope my perception was fair too. I generally try not to defend something that is obviously wrong or indefensible.

No. I like to be fair, so I hope my perception was fair too. I generally try not to defend something that is obviously wrong or indefensible.

I tried to figure out what the emotional guy was saying about a $66 million lawsuit and besides apostate websites that make it sound as if it's a done deal I found some serious news reporting. I can't find anything more up to date besides that though
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-court-asked-to-approve-sexual-abuse-class-action-lawsuit-against-jehovah-s-witnesses-1.4293138
 
 
 

Hmmm. Not only what you say, but also this description of the plaintiff:
"He contended his wife was a messy housekeeper and that caused his angry explosions of verbal abuse."
Today one does not pass Go nor collect $200 after such an incident. Abuse is a big no-no. With but minimal fabrication, one can imagine his favorite Elvis song: "Get out in that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans!"
 

We're back to that problem again of trying to use the idea of conscience in a court of law as an obfuscation. You are right that very few Witnesses leave anything up to conscience. It's "spiritual" peer pressure to conform, where not conforming can result in anything from being looked down upon by peers, or a loss of privileges all the way up to being disfellowshipped yourself. I don't have a good solution, but I have seen the type of shunning of young family members that just seems childish on the part of the supposedly mature Witnesses who have to conform to the rule. 
I note that we no longer claim in court that corporeal punishment of minors is acceptable, and yet it obviously has Biblical precedent. I wonder if there's a way we would begin to conform to more modern norms of conduct, in obedience to the superior authorities in shunning cases, too.

If it is one of those frustratingly hard to pin down situations, there is no reason not to pin it down your way, whatever you decide that is.
Among the reasons we are asked to respect the decisions of a judicial committee is that they have had opportunity to examine everything relevant and will know the situation better than us. In the case of a close family member, this is rarely true. Thus:
One factor a family member might know of is the one you suggested - a person who no longer practices anything wrong but declines to rejoin the congregation. Reasonably, that could have a bearing on one's conscience. 
 
Take the organization at their word. Go on vacation with them if your conscience permits it, perhaps because of the situation already described. If it raises eyebrows, and you wish to explain, do so. At worst there is some peer pressure. Perhaps one may not be considered 'an example' and as such, may lose or not be considered for privileges. So be it. They are voluntary things anyway. If they disappear over such a thing, they disappear. It is a choice you can make.
Some of the eyebrow-raising, in the above scenario of one who desists wrongdoing but does not wish to return, will have to do with separateness as much as prior congregation discipline. Separateness was a real concept in Hebrew times - there is no reason to think it is less so in modern times.  Our people are taught the Bible principle that separateness is a good thing - remain separate from the world lest its influence gradually seep back into us, and through us, the congregation. There is no reason for the GB to underplay that concept just because it is not popular. A person today might think it narrow-minded or judgemental, but there is no way it is not scriptural. 
One might get experience pressure (and who is to say that is such a horrible thing? - people have been meddling in each other's affairs since the beginning of time), but the point is, there is no actual sanction over it. Do it if you want to.
One reason no one would be judged over yes/no on fractions is that they would not know about it. I know of no one else's stand on fractions other than my own and my wife's. It is the same with your conduct with a df'd family member. Discretion helps the medicine go down. 
Admittedly, the tone of theocratic counsel is toward firmness. It is: 'Consider that the counsel of df ones applies to a relative, unless you can think of why it wouldn't' - instead of the other way around. Nonetheless, based upon factors that only a family member would know, one might adhere to avoiding association with a df'd relative to a lesser extent than a non-related congregation member.

Very true. But we all know what would happen if it was found out you went on vacation with your dfd daughter or son. (Not yours literally of course!) It's one of these frustrating hard to pin down situations. There is a supreme court case going on in Canada right now where the dfd ex- brother is suing. But that's not what I wanted to say, but what is interesting is that the WT appealing the case mentions this in defense: "Disfellowshipping is not “a mandatory church edict” that removes family love. Family members decide according to their conscience the extent to which they will continue family discourse".  Page 9, par 31
How can that be reconciled with what really happens?
To illustrate:  If it was a conscience matter, then if someones conscience said it was ok for them to spend time with their disfellowshipped relative, perhaps even go on vacation with them, then it shouldn't be a problem, and no one should judge that decision, just like if someone decided their conscience allowed them to take minor blood fractions. For that reason, because minor blood fractions really ARE a conscience matter, we don’t have articles giving us advice on how to avoid them, and videos showing us how someone successfully refused them etc. like we do with disfellowshipping.
So really, all the articles and videos are “biasing” us to shun, rather than truly leaving it up to our conscience. I am not saying this is right or wrong, I am just pointing out  that stating that it is a conscience matter is not correct, (actually it is dishonest) and could be used against us if proved.
Here is the case, but I know you probably won't bother to read it, and I don't blame you, you will just have to trust me that the quote I posted is really there
http://www.scc-csc.ca/WebDocuments-DocumentsWeb/37273/FM010_Appellant_Judicial-Committee-of-the-Highwood-Congregation-of-Jehovah's-Witnesses.pdf
 
 
 

Ask any parent whose child (adult or otherwise) is disfellowshipped.

Very true. But we all know what would happen if it was found out you went on vacation with your dfd daughter or son. (Not yours literally of course!) It's one of these frustrating hard to pin down situations. There is a supreme court case going on in Canada right now where the dfd ex- brother is suing. But that's not what I wanted to say, but what is interesting is that the WT appealing the case mentions this in defense: "Disfellowshipping is not “a mandatory church edict” that removes family love. Family members decide according to their conscience the extent to which they will continue family discourse".  Page 9, par 31
How can that be reconciled with what really happens?
To illustrate:  If it was a conscience matter, then if someones conscience said it was ok for them to spend time with their disfellowshipped relative, perhaps even go on vacation with them, then it shouldn't be a problem, and no one should judge that decision, just like if someone decided their conscience allowed them to take minor blood fractions. For that reason, because minor blood fractions really ARE a conscience matter, we don’t have articles giving us advice on how to avoid them, and videos showing us how someone successfully refused them etc. like we do with disfellowshipping.
So really, all the articles and videos are “biasing” us to shun, rather than truly leaving it up to our conscience. I am not saying this is right or wrong, I am just pointing out  that stating that it is a conscience matter is not correct, (actually it is dishonest) and could be used against us if proved.
Here is the case, but I know you probably won't bother to read it, and I don't blame you, you will just have to trust me that the quote I posted is really there
http://www.scc-csc.ca/WebDocuments-DocumentsWeb/37273/FM010_Appellant_Judicial-Committee-of-the-Highwood-Congregation-of-Jehovah's-Witnesses.pdf
 
 
 

Very true. But what I find the problem is, is when someone no longer wishes to be a Witness after they have been dfd and after they are no longer practicing what they've been dfd for, so of course there is no chance of them being reinstated, which means they will be shunned forever with all it's implications (loved ones will not talk to them ever again)....

Ask any parent whose child (adult or otherwise) is disfellowshipped.

First time I saw this I decided to just let it slide. But if it is going to become fixed in the firmament of my stellar past, I might as well correct it.  The brother I was asked to room with (upon my arrival there) was a brother who was just leaving Bethel. It was in the room right next door to Brother and Sister Merton Campbell's, a very dear old couple who put a lot of effort into making "Family Night" entertaining, and who had a long career and many great upbuilding stories from the past. I have a picture of him from about 1957 in an old shoebox somewhere (the picture is in the shoebox, not Merton). He's out on the roof of 124 Columbia Heights.
But I digress. The brother I roomed with for a few days didn't steal the money in the typical manner. He asked to borrow about $200 to get home by bus, with the promise that he would send me the money the instant he got back which would have been two days from the time I loaned the money, and I would expect to receive it within a week or so, assuming cooperation from the postal gods. Well 4 weeks went by, and no money. I didn't even know where he had gone, and I wanted to check to make sure the post office didn't lose it, or it wasn't stuck somewhere in the cracks of Bethel's bureaucracy.
I asked brother Campbell if there was any way to check up on the mail. He got the story, and told me that this brother was bad news, and that I was not the first to complain of the same issue. He was in the Service Department, and said he could get the money back for me if I would first write the brother then a month later, his congregation's presiding overseer. My money appeared, via Campbell, and I started thinking of the Service Department as a kind of "secret service."

Everyone is grappling with this in diverse areas and many do not handle it especially well. In the world of current events, it results in charges of fake news for what are sometimes just different points of view. In science and medicine, the internet results in 'anecdotal reports,' which science hates because they are not something their system is able to assess or repeat.

Me and my mates - we terrified the place. When the holyrollers saw our black leather jackets with BAA on the back (bad ass attitude) they ran. We was like Robin Hood, only halfway. We stole from the rich and we stole from the poor.
The one I hated worst was goody-goody JWI. He wasn't worse than the others at first but then he had a dream that he talked about at every meal. Aye. He was going to be exalted over all the rest of us to the Art Department. And what of his former mates? We would be swabbing the decks, like always. 'God gave gifts in men for some to be swabbers and toilet cleaners and waiters - but for me to do artwork' he use to tell us. Always smiling, he was. Always exhorting us to swab harder. I hate him. 
But I got even with him though. He left $200 lying right out there in the open! God will watch it, he said. I saw his money and his garments.- good looking ones from the land of Shinar - because he loved to shine, that one - and I took them. I wrote my ticket home and am a big shot right now back home.

[Part One - Just a little more background]
The Bible contains no dates, at least not anything like the dates we use today. There is no such thing as a date like 539 BC, or 607 BCE, or 29 CE, or AD 33, or 70 CE, or 1914. The only types of dates that the Bible uses are expressions like:
(Genesis 5:21-27) 21 Eʹnoch lived for 65 years and then became father to Me·thuʹse·lah. 22 After becoming father to Me·thuʹse·lah, Eʹnoch continued to walk with the true God for 300 years. And he became father to sons and daughters. 23 So all the days of Eʹnoch amounted to 365 years. 24 Eʹnoch kept walking with the true God. Then he was no more, for God took him. 25 Me·thuʹse·lah lived for 187 years and then became father to Laʹmech. 26 After becoming father to Laʹmech, Me·thuʹse·lah lived for 782 years. And he became father to sons and daughters. 27 So all the days of Me·thuʹse·lah amounted to 969 years, and then he died.
(1 Kings 15:25-34) 25 Naʹdab the son of Jer·o·boʹam became king over Israel in the second year of King Aʹsa of Judah, and he reigned over Israel for two years. 26 He kept doing what was bad in the eyes of Jehovah . . .  . . . 33  In the third year of King Aʹsa of Judah, Baʹa·sha the son of A·hiʹjah became king in Tirʹzah over all Israel and reigned for 24 years. 34  But he kept doing what was bad in the eyes of Jehovah, and he walked in the way of Jer·o·boʹam and in his sin that he caused Israel to commit.
A portion of the Bible therefore includes a chronology system, that appears to track the number of years from Adam to Noah (and the Flood). Another portion appears to track the number of years from Noah (through Shem) to Abraham. Other sections track the time from Abraham to the Exodus. Then it gets a bit murky. Even so we know we are not too many years off between the Exodus and the Judges and then to King Saul and David. There is a also a lot of information to help track the time from David through the last Judean King Zedekiah. But even these "synchronisms" between the lines of kings leaves several open questions, which can be interpreted in various ways. Of course, not long after Zedekiah and the return of the Jews from Babylon to Judea & Israel, it gets murky again. And we have no chronology to track the time from, say, Zedekiah until Jesus is born.
In other words, you could know that Methuselah was born a certain number of years after Adam was created, or even that Shem or Abraham was born a certain number of years after Adam was created. but you would still have no idea when Adam was created, or what year the Flood arrived. We also have those murky or incomplete portions. That means that we know, for example, that Jereboam's son Nadab became king over Israel in the second year of King Asa of Judah, but we don't know how long that was after Adam or Noah or Abraham.
Still, the main point is that even if we did have a perfectly linked chronology from Adam through Zedekiah, such as the one seen in Genesis 5 or 1 Kings 15, above, we would still have no way to tell how long ago that time period started or ended. We would not be able to identify specific years, only relative years.
The only way we can start attaching specific years, like 4 BCE, or 70 CE, or 539 BCE to any of these "relative dates" is if we decide that we will accept non-Biblical dates, otherwise known as secular dates.
4 BCE is not a Biblical date, it's a secular date. 33 CE is not a Biblical date, it's a secular date. 607 BCE is not a Biblical date, it's a secular date. 587 BCE is not a Biblical date, it's a secular date 539 BCE is not a Biblical date, it's a secular date. The reason that is important is because the question about whether Jerusalem was destroyed in 607 BCE or 587/6 BCE is often framed as if one of those dates is Biblical and the other is secular. They are both secular! Everyone in the world, incluing historians, scientists, archaeologists, Bible scholars, the Watch Tower Society and the Governing Body must rely completely on secular dates to figure out how many years ago a Biblical event might have happened. 
So what do we do?
We need to pick a secular date that we think we can trust and begin trying to link Biblical events to it.  Then we see if we can't create a chain of linked events backwards and forward from there. In fact, we need to pick several secular dates because the Bible's relative chronology does not really link the time around Adam, Noah and Abraham all the way through the time of the Judges and Kings. And after the Temple is rebuilt after the time of Ezra, the timeline stops again, so we'd need to find another secular date to see if we can match the time of Jesus birth, baptism, death, and any other events in the Christian Greek Scriptures.
We need to find some secular dates that we can trust! This is exactly where 539 BCE becomes so interesting. That's the time when Cyrus conquers Babylon, right? Yes, and it seems to be a perfectly good secular date for that event. If we accept it, we also get a pretty good idea when Jerusalem was destroyed. In fact, by accepting 539 BCE we ARE accepting the same secular chronology that pinpoints the destruction of Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar's 19th year.
(2 Kings 25:8, 9) 8 In the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month, that is, in the 19th year of King Neb·u·chad·nezʹzar the king of Babylon, Neb·uʹzar·adʹan the chief of the guard, the servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. 9 He burned down the house of Jehovah, the king’s house, and all the houses of Jerusalem; he also burned down the house of every prominent man.
This is the whole problem! We like 539 BCE, as the final year of a Babylonian king, but don't want Nebuchadnezzar's 19th year to be 587 BCE. We want his 19th year to be 607 BCE, instead. But we have a lot of trouble taking one without the other. In fact, if we say that Nebuchadnezzar's 19th year must be 607 BCE, then that's the same thing as saying that Cyrus conquered Babylon in 559 BCE instead of 539 BCE.
It makes no sense to say one is Biblical and one is secular. They are both secular and if you say you trust that 539 BCE is correct, then that's also the same as saying you accept that 587/6 BCE, NOT 607 BCE, is the destruction of Jerusalem. Therefore the WTS has always been looking for a way to try to accept one part of the secular chronology without accepting another part of the same chronology.  Those attempts have never worked out, but this is what we'll need to discuss next.
 
 

Assumption alert!!! And you probably are aware of the acrostic version of ASSUME?
Far better minds than I have seen here (so far) have discussed these issues at length elsewhere. I am keenly awaiting additional insight relating to their deliberations as and when it arises. If there is something relevant that appears here, I think this comment indicates my interest: