9 minutes ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

These guys go totally off topic but I don't mind it takes the heat off me for a while.  

 

Your turn will come, buster.

16 minutes ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

True ... but based on past experience, the probability is about ( 1 divided by 163 = 0.6%) less than 1 percent.

That’s what Slow Joe said. But Davey the Kid went on to never give a bad talk in his life.

Then he built a Kingdom Hall. Then another. Then he built an Assembly Hall.

Then he tired of running a cleaning business. He combined college course with credit for life experiences and became a psychotherapist.

His dying words to me were (and this is the only part I’m making up):

”You can do it, Tom. You can take out the big lout JTR. Remember, he uses chain-saw logic. Distract him a little, and he will cut off his own arm.”

20 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:So folks, here at halftime, the score is JTR ,163  .....  TTH, 1 .

Alright alright, so it is. 

But it is also like what Slow Joe said to Davey the Kid after the latter delivered an absolutely stellar talk:

The tough-as-nails counselor said: “So...I am giving you a ‘G’..............but next time it may not BE that way.”

17 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

That's some LAX security!

I fear you have been smoking it yourself 

1 hour ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

You are funny but you do write such twaddle sometimes  

However I still don't comprehend this Anna up/down thing . 

She will. ThatÂ’s all that really matters.

8 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

Yeah John ... don't rush the guy.

He is still flummoxed by the 163 questions I asked him in the past three years, that he did not answer.

And how many pages and pages did it take for you to finally admit that I was exactly right about Sarah and the Terminator?

If you didn’t obfuscate so much, you’d have an answer to every one of your petulant questions by now.

Do you think that you are the only one? If someone so much as farts at Bethel, Jack starts a thread on it, and I have to answer that, too, don’t I?

And don’t forget my latest project: upvoting @Annaand then downvoting her for the same comment on another forum. And then I have to deal with John demanding why I am doing it? Is he crazy? It is like the eggheads at (disgraced) Bill Cosby’s old high school running around saying ‘Why is there air?’ Only the gym teacher knew the answer. ‘There’s air to blow up volleyballs and footballs and basketballs!

2 hours ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

Explain in detail please and then explain how it is connected to this topic. 

I’m on it. It may take a while, though.

Hey, you know what might be fun? Let’s upvote @Anna for a comment on this forum and then downvote her for the same comment on another forum!

4 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

LOL! Never heard of a real estate person yet who didn't have a 'square foot' fetish.

Yes. It was that anatomical anonomy that gave him an instinctive feel for his work, a modern-day survival of the fittest.

On 7/18/2018 at 4:29 AM, JW Insider said:

What's interesting about the song, is that even after it was canonized in the album, Lightfoot looked into new evidence that had come to light, and which made Lightfoot's foot path grow brighter and brighter. 

This suggests that admin or someone might start a new thread dedicated to the urban legend of whether Gordon Lightfoot truly had light feet or not. He did not. However, he is related to a real estate magnate who truly did have square feet.

2 hours ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

Well if somebody decides, in their wisdom, to make a topic about ME and why they THINK I left the Org.

I am a little worried that admin or someone will start a topic entitled ‘Why TrueTom did not leave Jehovah’s Witnesses.’ Then I will feel obligated to write pages and pages and pages of pure brilliance and I simply do not have the time.

3 hours ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

That is why the courts became annoyed because the GB were deliberately wasting time. 

Do you mean the court whose demand was overturned by a higher court as overreach, so that, in reality it was more like the thief becoming annoyed with his target for wasting time forking over the goods?

Wasn’t this answered before? Yet you barrel on as though it never was. No wonder some here think you are unbalanced and I have to restrain them.

57 minutes ago, Srecko Sostar said:

"Studies in the United States suggest that one in five girls and one in ten boys suffer sexual molestation before they grow up."

Invisiblechildren.org, first brought to my attention by JWI, gives a figure even higher: one in four for girls, one in six for boys.

1 hour ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

Contrary to your own personal belief, acquaintance with what is inside a box of Band-Aids, does not qualify you to have profound surgical opinions.

I would never say that going to original sources is valueless. I do not practice abstinence in that regard myself. But large amount of anything original is throat-clearing rubbish. You do as well, often better, considering what the thinkers have said about it, and processing the pros and cons that they observe. . 

Unless you are a thinker yourself. Possibly you will modestly admit that you are not. Are you not the one who relies on 'chain-saw logic'?

"Sure, 90% of science fiction is crud. That's because 90% of everything is crud."  Theodore Sturgeon

3 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

Since you COMPLETELY avoided my simple, straightforward question I will state that once again you have stated a strong opinion about which you know nothing at all.

You are one super scary dude, dude.

It may be that I don’t consider this forum your own personal courtroom so that you can try your own vendettas and cross-examine opponents at will. Have you attended all the legal JW trials that you lecture the rest of us about?

Summaries, reviews, commentaries, and concordances usually get the job done. The trick is to be sure they are not all penned by your own people but also by those you disagree with. I pass this test.

Otherwise, one ought not comment on any Bible verse without first having demonstrated competency in Hebrew and Greek. Moreover, there are plenty of elitist boors who think it is that way, and they try to run every opponent off the road who has not ‘attended the proper schools’ as they.

I read continually, sometimes original sources, sometimes not. Suffice it to say that builds up a reservoir to draw on more quickly than does watching every offering from Hollywood, watching nine and a half hours of the Kavanaugh hearings, or reading the phone book.

9 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

I watched the Kananaugh Senate Hearings this past Thursday for the whole 9-1/2 or so hours, and was VERY impressed.  

If I recall correctly, you are also VERY impressed with the Terminator, Jack Reach, and Die Hard movies. Here, I admit, my screen time is slim.

2 hours ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

You keep pretending I'm over emotional, 

You write that way. Whether you are or not, how would I know?

You cannot mishandle something that you never attempted to handle. JWs did the best they could in cleaning house when few others had any interest in doing likewise. The fact that cases from 2000 on do not present themselves (they are ever from the 80s and 90s) suggests that whatever problems there were, they have been corrected.

11 hours ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

And from you viewpoint the victims of all the Child Abuse in the JW Org Earthwide are just 'Collateral damage'.  

This exactly makes my point. This is pure emotion. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the passage you used to segue into it. It is nothing more than your unhinged hatred of the GB speaking. You suffered abuse in pre-Witness days such as does not afflict one in a thousand. The ‘upside’ is that you know how depraved humans can be. The downside is that you think they all are when child sexual abuse has occurred.

As reported on this thread or elsewhere (I’ll relocate it if I have to) two thirds of professionals REQUIRED BY LAW to report suspected abuse fail to do it. Are they all vile? Plainly, other factors are at work, but you can see only one.

 It is as stated before: You are too close to a particular tree to properly assess the forest. You were tied to a tree that was rotten. You think they all are.

2 hours ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

Maybe the tree you refer to is the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses, a rotten tree giving off rotten fruit. And the forest I'm looking at seems to prove my point.

The poverty-stricken person of a developing nation is stuck with 200 year old turkey of a translation that he can neither afford nor understand because nobody other than the GB sees anything inappropriate about Big Business overseeing the distribution of God’s word.

That is the forest: the distribution and subsequent education in God’s message to humankind.

The tree is your pre-Witness history with regard to child sexual abuse, a background that does not afflict one in a thousand.

2 hours ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

why did they refuse to obey the law of the land by refusing to hand over thins information to the courts ? 

Since the much-hyped penalty for not doing this was later thrown out by another court, it ought to be clear that it was not the law of the land. Rather, a certain court was exceeding its authority.

The Kavanaugh hearings also ought to have made clear that the lauded impartiality of the world’s justice system is but a bad joke. Law is not the issue. One’s interpretation of law is the issue and that is forged in emotion which is forged in one’s personal experience.

Your pre-Witness experience gives you knowledge of the depravity that humans can sink to. But it also makes you prone to see it everywhere.  It is rather like a Holocaust survivor seeing Hitler everywhere.

6 hours ago, admin said:

You are your people are SO intense....

WE ARE NOT!!!!!

6 hours ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

However it seems ok for Anna to call me a liar. 

She did not do this.

What she essentially said is that you are too close to a tree to properly assess the forest.

Listen to @Gone Away, Shwiiiiiiii. He has a handle on reality 

2 hours ago, Shiwiii said:

 

 

Are you both serious? Really? 

You mean to tell me that you cannot see the similarities between passing the plate and requesting money? Had this come from the Catholic church encouraging their members to fork over some money, you two would be going over some dialog in your minds of how jws are so much better because the jws don't do that. The fact of the matter is ALL churches do it. They all do it for the same exact reasons stated here and elsewhere, to cover expenses. Do some spend it frivolously and are wasteful? Sure. Is any one group innocent in their dealings with the peoples money 100% of the time, probably not. Are there some who try to use the money responsibly? No doubt. But to look down your nose at another group while ignoring your own actions is the perfect definition of hypocrisy.    

That's not a terrible answer. I'll try to get the count of 'iii's right.

I suspect he has unloaded his secret weapon when he states he was a virgin and had nothing even resembling sex until well after school days. It is obviously true, for in today's culture, nobody admits to such a thing. It is to scream from the rooftops: "I am a loser!"

Now, he doesn't view it that way. And I come from a religious background where such is more common than uncommon for unmarried persons of that age, and it is due to their religious beliefs on the sanctity of marriage, so I don't view it that way either. But his most vociferous opponents, irreligious almost to the person, cannot conceive of such a thing. Some of them pursue sex almost as though it is the purpose of life. 

He tells them he was a virgin? It is the most definitive answer possible, and ought take the wind completely out of their sails. They would never admit to such a thing, were it true. It would be a matter of deep shame. In fact, wasn't there a shooting recently by someone who hasn't scored with the females, and he and his are passed off as "of all men, the most be pitied." I think they have even coined a word for that type, as though it is an ethnic group. 

Kavanaugh is not ashamed of it at all. He is proud of it. That doesn't mean he willingly advertises it, for it is a personal matter. But when backed into a corner, he states it as his perfect defense. 'Well.....well....just when did you have sex, anyway?' say his opponents, since this is a hugely important topic for them. But there is a limit to how much he will indulge them, for next they will want video footage. It is enough to say 'well after.'

It is too much. There is no better way to defang an enemy than to freely admit to a weakness. This is especially true if you do not regard it as a weakness at all. Not getting the sense of it, one pundit, sympathetic to he and his cause, lamented how disgusting it was that he should have been maneuvered into revealing his then-virginity. He didn't get maneuvered at all. He played his trump card. And, yes, I will indulge his enemies and state that he also played his Trump card.

16 hours ago, Gone Away said:

I am struggling to see any comparison between reminding brothers of the modern-day, fluctuating costs of running an assembly and "passing the plate"???

16 hours ago, Shiwiii said:

what do you want me to do about your struggle? 

What! Shiwiiiii would equate the two? It's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

Even Jack, who starts a thread if a GB member so much as passes gas, is not this dumb. When he heads this thread, it is 'Witnesses now "encouraged?" He puts the 'encouraged' in quotes because even he knows that you have to stretch it very thin to see matters this way.

'Taste and see that Jehovah is good,' says Psalm 34:8. If you tasted and saw that he was bad, what is to be done? 'Check your taste buds' is the only answer that comes to mind. However, Shiwiiiii can just as well fire the same answer back. So it becomes a stalemate.