TrueTomHarley

Regularly I am summoned by the powers that be that run this site. ’Not more praise and honors!’ I say in disgust. ‘This gets so old.’

Even worse is the one about the genie that emerged from the lamp and granted a wish. The finder wished for a bridge to Hawaii, since he had always wanted to visit but got seasick and was afraid to fly. Whereupon, the genie calculated the difficulties of building such a bridge, the quantity of concrete required, driving piles into shifting seismic plates, etc, and said he couldn’t do it. Please make another wish. The fellow then wished he could understand women, something he had long wanted to do but had never been able. ’You want that bridge two lanes or four?’ the genie said.

I’d say I gave these guys from Metallica pretty good advice. The deal is even better today. They no longer have to shave off those beards, but still, if they get their act together, might be assigned to write, not one, but two, original songs in view of their background. I don’t know what became of Cesar, anyway. He was a very difficult guy to please, downvoting most anything.

Then there was the one of the grizzled farmer collecting his mail-order wife. Riding home, the horse evaded a mouse and jostled the carriage. ‘That’s one!’ the fellow said. It later pulled through a puddle and splashed the riders. ‘That’s two!’ he said. Then it strode beneath a low branch which slapped the riders. ‘That’s three!’ he said, stopped the carriage and shot the horse. ’What did you do that for?’ his new wife cried. ‘That’s one!’ he said.

Oh dear. Show me where. I’ll fix it.

When AlanF, in full evolutionist mode, savaging anyone who ‘refused to learn,’ made a similar statement, I said, “It’s just you and me, you blowhard! plus maybe a half-dozen more. What! Do you think you are Clarence Darrow, arguing Inherit the Wind?’ Quite a mission you’ve chosen for yourself. Are you having success? ’Come here, come here, gather round—so I can tell you why you shouldn’t be here!’ Yeah. Everyone has their own reason for being here. I use the site as a writing workshop and some of what I create here later appears elsewhere in better form. Meanwhile, I rub shoulders, learn, and share, just like you. Notwithstanding some occasional trash-talking, hopefully I am never mean-spirited in doing so.

Oh, there is so much you have to learn. Trouble is, I’m not sure it’s worth knowing. Crystal. (Why couldn’t you have said, like Jack Nicholson, ‘Is that clear?!’)

You know, there is a photo of him online suggesting that's a possibility! I'll have to see if I can find it. Found it. No. Billy belonged to our in-house whack-a-mole generator of souls. AI couldn’t crank out personas as quickly as he. They usually met the same end and for the same reason. I can’t imagine AlanF presenting as anyone other than AlanF He presented here exactly this way. Last night at the mid-week meeting, criticism arose over Stephen’s reply to the Sanhedrin, that he didn’t actually answer their question. More than once I pulled a ‘Stephen’ on Alan’s gotcha questions and he invariably responded the same as that august body did to the evangelizer. Then there was that time I signed on as ‘Dr Adhominum’ and tried to gradually draw him into a discussion of evolutionary psychology and the very recent hypothesis that boisterous flatulence evolved because it would quickly clear the area of predators, same as it does today with the general populace. To his credit, he saw through the ruse within 2 or 3 posts. Though, in typical AlanF fashion that he cannot be wrong in anything, even the most insignificant of details, he later insisted that he saw through it instantly. These guys who bluster about their superior knowledge and just assume it puts them in the driver’s seat of anything usually get my goat. I don’t know how God can resist the temptation of stopping the sun in its tracks for a while just to throw off their calculations. In a recent response to JR, I wrote: ”Key to me is Jesus words at Matthew 11:25 At that time Jesus said in response: “I publicly praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and intellectual ones and have revealed them to young children. “What other topic is like that, in which young children get the sense of it but the wise and intellectual ones do not? I think it means that a person ought park his/her intellectualism at the door, because it doesn’t help. Per Jesus’ words, it may even hinder. “In any academic topic I can think of, the wise and intellectual always have a leg up over the young children. Here, they lose out. Translation: Worship of God is not an academic subject and the biggest mistake one can make is to treat it as though it is. . . . “So, at least three factors exist that trump intellectualism: obedience, humility, and love. For the most part, those who frame discussion of faith as an intellectual endeavor make no mention whatsoever of these qualities.” Alan may have had some of those latter qualities. But, if so, he displayed none of them here. But you only see of people what they choose to reveal, plus perhaps a bit of speculative reading between the lines. I’ll allow he was ‘passionate’ and a more complex person than he revealed here.

These days, tortured souls are a dime a dozen. Even I am that way. And, not to complain, but I don’t think I’m getting anywhere near the love here that I need. Okay, now I see the reason for Aruana’s, Thinking’s and my trouble with Alan. We ‘refused to learn.’ That would make anyone furious.

It is true that I didn’t feel the love. But I may have egged him on. I have been known to do that. Thinking and Aruana did not, however. His attacks on them were provoked only by their standing up to him.

Another ‘tortured soul,’ methinks, for whom I must have compassion. The best way to heal and not to further inflict torture upon oneself is to forgive. “If errors were what you watch, O Jah, Then who, O Jehovah, could stand?” (Psalms 130:3) Errors are all people watch today, inside or outside of religion. Nobody stands in the face of such treatment. What is that saying about resentment—that it is like drinking poison and hoping the other person will die?

Yeah, just like the prodigal son’s dad ran a broken home. If he hadn’t, junior would have never departed. I dunno. You mean that every obnoxious troll on the internet is underneath it all a gentle misunderstood soul? Haven’t you spoken disparagingly of George88 or some of his personas? Alan behaved worse than he. I’ll concede that all I know of the man is the persona he chose to display here. I think what really set me off is not that he came after me, but that he also laid into Arauna and Thinking for doing no more than defending the faith.

Believe me, if he was ‘tortured,’ he gave no sense of it here. But, enough said, At death one’s sins have been paid for. It is not as though he had a monopoly on ‘sin.’ Well, you do have to stay in the place of safety, and there are plenty of scoundrels trying to lure you out of it. To me, this comment is completely antithetical to the theme of the Bible—that God has judged the world and the key is to flee from and be no part of it. While one ought not be unnecessarily difficult or confrontational (and I do think we step into that from time to time), I also don’t think the Bible’s message is that Christians should (or could) fix the world. You have to come out of it and not wander back in.

There are some magnificent threads buried within. Probably, just typing ‘AlanF’ into the search box will bring up a few. The trouble is, if you held to faith, you were one of those ‘stupid people’ to him. I detest these people who think they can muscle through on brainpower alone. “By their fruits you will know them,” holds no sway with them. Not saying anything of him personally, but you would think people would assess critical thinking by the world it has collectively produced. It has been the chief export of universities for some time now, and few world leaders are not university-equipped. Witnesses, on the other hand, though not without the minor mishaps stemming from being ‘earthen vessels,’ have achieved a peacefulness, unity, cohesiveness, that the world can only dream of. Pew Research says their membership (in the U.S.) is almost exactly 1/3 white, 1/3 black, and 1/3 Hispanic, with about 5% Asian thrown in. Translation: They have solved racism, the issue that is ripping this world apart, despite its educational advantage. Brotherly love is a concept that works, but it does not stand well up to ‘reason,’ especially reason with evolution at its root. It is not a concept that lends itself well to ‘proof.’ The truths that are declared ‘self-evident,’ that ‘all men are created equal,’ are not at all self-evident to those evolution-based. What is self-evident to them is the 2001 Space Odyssey humanoid discovering he can beat the snot out of his competitor with a leg bone, whereupon he throws it into the air and out comes this spacecraft to Jupiter.

The trouble with those who worship critical thinking is that they often presume they have a lock on the stuff. He did not suffer fools gladly, and a fool was anyone who disagreed with him. To be sure, I used to egg him on a little. But I would later regret it. The self-congratulatory donkey could chew up an entire day.

Never in my life had I encountered a more unpleasant person than AlanF. He was fine if you acquiesced to him . . . but if you disagreed to any significant degree, he would launch incredible streams of non-stop insults. My greatest fear was that his cherished evolution teachings might be correct and that he was the end result. Without specifically naming him, (which would be mean) ‘In the Last of the Last Days’ tells of a voracious opponent whose headstone no doubt calls the cemetery caretaker a moron for supposing the surrounding flowers are creations of God. I didn’t like him very much.

“Iceberg! Dead ahead, captain! A six-pointer!” “Not a problem, mate. Full speed ahead. I’m sure there’s nothing more below.”

Also (you must not tell JR about this), an excerpt about Chesterton’s style that much resonates with me: “He deployed a set of rhetorical devices that enabled him to create common ground with his readers. He used these devices to present himself as a friend, and to claim that he presented religious questions to his readers in the manner of an unbiased explorer, in spite of his own faith commitments. As part of this strategy, he restricted the range of theology he used in his apologetics so as to remain as far as possible within boundaries his non-religious readers could easily relate to.” And (no connection with the above), the reason for Father Brown’s success in solving crime? The padre explains that “a man who does next to nothing but hear men’s real sins is not likely to be wholly unaware of human evil.”

Whoa. I would never say we are dealing with typ/antitype here, but clearly we are dealing with a ‘this reminds me of that.’ And since we’re speaking of eating here, and I’m not following closely enough to make a contribution, but wish to make a contribution nonetheless, if only to placate the Librarian (that old hen), here is an observation of 300 lb G.K Chesterton interacting with rail-thin George Bernard Shaw: GKC: “To look at you, anyone would think a famine had struck England.” GBS: “To look at you, anyone would think you had caused it.”

Whose? Can you type in your sleep?

Okay, no more Mr. Un-nice guy for me. No more Acts 13:10. “O man full of every sort of fraud and every sort of villainy, you son of the Devil, you enemy of everything righteous, will you not quit distorting the right ways of Jehovah?” No more. Done* (*for a limited time only)

Man, you are petty and self-blind, aren’t you? The above is an excellent example of ‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you will feed him for a lifetime.’ Who can’t see the superiority in that? Why on earth can’t you emulate the Jehovah’s Witness’ relief effort among whoever you associate with? Then, you would be so occupied, you would have neither time nor cause to be envious of the deeds of others. People without Bible principles tend to be slow to roll up their sleeves. They also not to get along, so cooperation is amongst them is difficult. All they have to do is adopt the Bible principles that Witnesses have, and they’d be okay. Your assignment is to discern what impels Jehovah’s Witnesses to do what almost nobody else does, make a full mea culpa, and then take your leave as gracefully as you can.

(Quora question) Besides being a significant source for literacy in lands where it is poor, they are well known for disaster relief, prompting taking care of their own, in catastrophic times. They thus provide a good example for other groups to follow, for there is no reason that anyone cannot do as they do. In recent years, some critics have attempted to spin this exercise of brotherly love as a lack of concern for anyone else. They do this even though they themselves would—say, in the event of an earthquake—check on family members first, never dreaming that anyone would frame that as indifference to the suffering of others. Jehovah’s Witnesses are a family, frankly not large enough to fix everyone. If opponents refuse to acknowledge that love of God can form the basis of family, that is hardly the Witnesses’ fault, is it?

Oh, very well. Didn’t I tell you I didn’t care? ’I didn’t kill my wife’ said Richard Kimble. But scholarly Sam Gerard immediately countered that argument with, ‘I don’t care.’

Lots of threads on chronolgy here. Why should I weigh in? All it would do is rain on someone’s parade. If it is of an interest I don’t give two hoots about—well, there are plenty of things interesting to me that others don’t give two hoots about. ‘Let it be. Let it be. Whisper words of wisdom. Let it be.’ But, what about those words of wisdom, Tommy? What are they? How come you don’t care about what everyone else here does? How come whenever the topic comes up, you join Pudgy in picking off fleas off yourself? Because it seems analogous to someone finding a document in the engine room of the Titanic to the effect that the ship is not going down in the next 20 minutes, but will take 10 minutes longer. Apart from finishing a final cup of coffee in your stateroom, which can be done so long as you keep tilting it to correspond to the increasing pitch, what difference does it make? None of this is to undermine those with serious academic interest in the topic. Go for it, you guys. But also recognize (as most already do) that 90% of those who have made a tiny sliver of Persion history their cause would have difficulty naming who was president the year of their birth. They just latch on to the issue because they think they can embarrass the Witness organization that has based certain expectations on historical events and it turns out theirs is not the majority academic view. Oh, yeah, they’re intense students of history on that account, but otherwise are hard pressed to distinqush Karl Marx from Groucho Marx. It’s just like I wrote in ‘In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction:’ those ‘apostates’ who become too wrapped up in this issue end up becoming de-facto cheerleaders of this system of things, hoping it will go on and on forever because that would embarrass their former brothers. They may overestimate the ‘embarrassment.’ ‘New light’ always solves the problem, should one be identified. To be sure, adjusting would be awkward, but not a deal-breaker. I doubt the need for it will never arise. I think the brothers will play chicken with the present understanding, which for all I know is the correct one. How many times have I seen the news story that begins with ‘Everything you thought you knew about such-and-such is wrong.’ Majority opinions, even in matters of science, fall all the time. What a great way to end this system of things: with a colossal game of chicken between the two main protagonists! The system will end before resolution is necessary, or else life may become so tenuous that nobody cares. I also don’t care about it because, even if I win, most of my opponents will mutter, ‘Okay okay—but what about Adam and Eve? You believe that fairy tale?’ Every so often I find myself aligned with Pudgy, always a worrying development, who says, ‘If it doesn’t have practical consequence, who cares?’