TrueTomHarley

Be that as it may, I apologize for implying that our Librarian is a lush.

if you can pry the bottle from the fingers of @The Librarian.

After all, on a recent visit covered in TI&Me, while the whole car group waited hours in the driveway, Mr. Strawman told me that he might someday come to a meeting! See? He is progressing. The circuit overseer was wrong! He also said something about climate change in hell, but I didn’t understand what he meant by that.

Maybe they’ll change it. Or maybe we’ll learn to deal with the whole thing as a metaphor. (though I don’t see how) Meanwhile, if someone starts giving me a hard time over this in the ministry, I tell them its okay to treat it as a metaphor, and on that basis, see what can they draw from it. A certain type of person almost takes that as a compliment—that you are not rubbing their nose in ‘Adam & Eve’ but you are deeming them smart enough that they can figure out a metaphor. I even briefly won over my return visit Bernard Strawman, whom everyone but me thinks is a waste of time, on this point. I used to call people like this ones who suffer from “We are wise and learned adults, far too clever to be sold Adam and Eve. What’s next—Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck?” syndrome. But now I drop the derisiveness, which does little good anyhow, and just invite them to treat it as a metaphor. After all, science is pretty universal that Adam & Eve is for dumbbells, and we are all taught that science is the be-all and end-all. Training like that doesn’t turn around on a dime. Sometimes when they see how well the metaphor works out they forget all about “science” and they put their “cognitive dissonance” on the shelf as something to work out later. You don’t have to know everything. It’s the antithesis of humility to think that you do—or can. I’’m convinced the phrase “cognitive dissonance” is an appeal to our pride and overall dumbs us down. It is an idea worthy of a pamphlet, but not the volumes dedicated to it. People can’t simultaneously hold two conflicting ideas as true at the same time? Of course they can. A little humility solves the problem, a willingness to put this or that on the shelf pending more information, which may or may not come, but in the meantime, you can’t rush it. You can’t just check yourself at the door because of a few facts that don’t line up. I note how often in mathematics, proofs will commence with assuming this or that point is true, and then seeing where that assumption leads. They don’t just stop dead in their tracks because they don’t know up front whether something is true or not When I first came across Jehovah’s Witnesses, I was astounded that here were people who actually believed in Adam and Eve. They didn’t look stupid, or if so in no greater proportion than anyone else, yet all my life I had heard that only the reddest of the rednecks believed in Adam and Eve. I couldn’t figure it out. I decided to shelve it for future resolution. I still don’t know how certain things will align. But the answer to the ‘problem of evil,’—why a loving God would permit it, the answer to the reason for and origin of death, the coherent answer to the question of how Christ’s death could benefit us—all these things were so overwhelming, that I decided to give “science” the back seat, not the front seat it usually demands. Without Jesus as the “first Adam,” a perfect man who by holding the course, repurchased us from that first perfect man who sinned and sold us out, the question of ‘Why Jesus died from us’ devolves into a mushy and intellectually unsatisfying “because he loved us.” To be sure, the head is not everything, but neither is it nothing. There is some sort of chromosomal evidence that goes back about 6K years. I think @Araunaposted of it not too long ago. I haven’t looked at it closely. Maybe that represents the reconciliation of timelines that otherwise don’t reconcile. It is roundly shouted down by majority scientists today. But we ought to know by now that being shouted down by the majority means nothing. Doesn’t this entire thread establish that? Or what of @JW Insider, who takes a line contrary to almost everyone else (and i think he’s wrong on the point) and declares bad reports of the CCP overblown? Here he is shouted down, but perhaps elsewhere he is paraded around as a visionary. Anything can be spun any way, by people who may or not be disingenuous. The majority team gets the ball and then tilts the field so steeply as to tumble the minority team right off it.

“Consider the future!” said the pre-Joker to the police informant as he plugged him from afar with a bullet in a movie you surely didn’t see but you absolutely know that Pudgy the Dog did. Aside from that—that really is a pretty good analysis you did above. Is that what we call ‘Reasoning from the Scriptures?’

Many generations later, once the ravages of sin had thoroughly worked themselves into the chromosomes, yes.

In the US, Covid 19 deaths have topped 600K. I’ve come to believe that the majority were preventable but for the prevailing meme that it was untreatable, that one with a positive case should sit at home, take fluids and bed rest, and only if it got really bad, go to the hospital—by which time is was often too late. The last physical I had I asked my doctor if were to come down with Covid, would he be able to treat it? Of course i can, he said, almost surprised at the question. He went on to relate a few drugs he has used to treat patients—he has done many—and they are some of the same drugs condemned in ‘high places’ as ineffective or even dangerous. You have mentioned some of them. We use them all the time, he says. They work fine in combination. He’s an older man and thus not so likely to be intimidated as is a younger doctor just starting out, beholden to many and intent upon paying off medical school debts. There was a time I used to dismiss all talk of ‘conspiracy theories’—not on the grounds that people were not evil enough—they can easily be that—but on the basis that they were not smart enough, that there were too many stories that must be corroborated for a theory to hold up and it would be too easy for others to punch holes in it. It’s a bit like how Abraham Lincoln once said that he was not smart enough to lie, meaning that once he did, he would have to adjust every subsequent statement to harmonize with that first lie, and he would surely trip himself up in the intent. But now I see that concern is not the operative one. You simply can repeat anything loudly and repeatedly, drown out the competition, or even pull the plug on them, and eventually people believe whatever they’re told. It doesn’t matter if people punch holes in it. You simply shout them down and call them quacks.

Is it like when I was walking my pet pig, and someone said, “Hey, where’d you get the pig?” and the pig answered, “Oh, i found him at the marketplace?” Come, come, is not the answer to some of this to be found in long lifetimes and Genesis 5:4? “And the days of Adam after his fathering Seth came to be eight hundred years. Meanwhile he became father to sons and daughters.” Frowned upon today, of course, and with good reason. Can you not see the reason why in some of the neighbors up in your neck of the woods? But back in the day of being just one generation from perfection…

I get it that some people dislike reading, and I have no issue with it. But usually such ones are modest enough to know that lack impedes their ability to take a lead role in a debate forum.

Nathanial Hawthorne is a writer who wrote some books. It is another example of my LISTENING to MEN.

And you should have seen the control-freak jerks when I tried to give a talk without pants! “It is remarkable, that persons who speculate the most boldly often conform with the most perfect quietude to the external regulations of society.” Nathanial Hawthorne

Not only buns, but also bunnies. on account of the joke: What do you get when you pour boiling water into a rabbit hole? Hot cross bunnies.

Oh, we hashed this out long before you came along—right here on the WNMForum: And though it has nothing to do with anything, I came across an old post of mine from 15 years ago and noted a response to it: “WOW! What a defense of Jehovah's Witnesses ! I am old enough to remember this stuff, or know it is true from the folks who were there. "We kicked them while they were up" (paraphrased). WOW.” And who was it from? Tom Rook! Little did I realize I would run across (and do battle) with him many years later. How is that bad boy faring today, I wonder. https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2009/05/enemies.html

I rather like the Gary Larsen cartoon of the Devil fuming that his 666 room has been mislabeled 999, and the workman explains that he must have been holding the blueprint upside down. Maybe that’s what hell is—not being able to find good help.

What’s wrong with it?

For whatever it’s worth, that other JW author I’ve mentioned a time or two wrote an article on whether to accept a shot or not, with the air of “lets be reasonable about this.” He did a lot of prep. He consulted the official sources. He crunched the numbers. I thanked him but also noted his post hadn’t been without bias: “It IS a good column, Bill, and I very much appreciate the research done. It does essentially answer my question. However, it is not all that even-handed. By emphatically stating that you did NOT look at anti-vaxxer YouTubes—well, if there is data and reasoning against mainstream thinking, that’s where it’s going to be—not necessarily YouTubes, but websites setting forth reasons for the opinions given. Robert F Kennedy (yes, of THAT Kennedy family) runs a good one. One major red flag for many is that, in the event, of a serious reaction, you cannot sue the manufacturer, nor get effective redress any other way. If a nut wobbles loose on my Chevy and causes an accident, I can get compensation from Chevy. This holds true for virtually every product EXCEPT jabs. I can think of no better way to underscore the shot’s safety than to remove this legal immunity. Your characterization of vax concerns (without apparently looking at them) as “noise” does not speak well for impartiality. Also, your statement that selfishness plays a part in declining vaccination—the organization does not go there, as though to shame people. They simply state to accept vaccination or not is a personal decision & not for them to advocate either way. That said, I am not a flag bearer for the anti cause. Most likely I will get one of the jabs soon, reassured by the research you have done. In the meantime, I observe all mask and distancing recommendations. But I never dismiss ‘conspiracy theories’ out of hand. When Satan is the ‘father of the lie’ AND the ‘god of this system of things,’ ought we really to imagine that the only valid ‘conspiracies’ are the ones Witnesses have uncovered regarding blood misuse and religious misrepresentations?” There was a little back and forth, in which he made a few valid observations. Some others joined in, some pro, some con. And then he writes: “Spent the morning watching a vid by a reputable doc who convinced me I came down on the wrong side of this. I promptly took down my column. I've also decided not to get the vaccine - not worried about getting ill, but I didn't know the part about being enrolled in a database. Since I have a healthy immune system and trust it more than I trust a vaccine anyway, I'd rather not go onto some mailing list for every new drug that comes out.” You could have knocked me over with a feather. If there’s one thing I’ve learned on the internet, it is that people never change. They take a position and stick to it come what may. He was big enough to examine an issue and reverse his stand. It doesn’t even matter if he is wrong or right. He is meek, in the Bible sense of the word, and that means everything.

It’s like trying to stop Jehovah’s Witnesses with a “Never Mind the Dog. Beware of the Owner” sign. Oftern works. But not always.

First of all, it was Paul who said that, you dodo, not Jesus. And pass this bit of info along to KickFace, Srecko, and Witness, who also don’t know the first thing about the Bible, but who do know how to press an approval gratification button like a Pavlov lab rat. As to Jesus, what did he say? Why, you will be haled before governors and kings for my sake, for a witness to them and the nations. However, when they deliver you up, do not become anxious about how or what you are to speak; for what you are to speak will be given you in that hour; (Matthew 10:18-19) I wonder what it is they would be given by Holy Spirit to say in that hour? What sort of words would be given “as a witness to them?” ”Your Honor, upon consultation with my attorney, PatientlySittingOnMyHands, I plead that you beat us and plunder all our belongings.” It all makes for a witness when you publicly expose a liar, and THAT is why you do it. If it leads to a reversal of unjust policies, that is icing on the cake. Word on the street is that, while the friends in Russia are obviously distressed at the villainies visited upon them, they also take consolation that their own undeserved suffering serves to focus world attention on Jehovah’s kingdom.

Do you remember the Twilight Zone in which the henpecked bank employee would retreat into the vault for some peace and quiet during lunchtime? While doing so, the vault was rocked, and upon emerging, he saw that the world had ended—everything was in ruins. Far from being alarmed, he was delighted, for now he could read in peace, free from his nagging boss and wife. Then he broke his glasses.

Is this when Bro Brumley was photographed at a conference and opponents made a big fuss about it because Scientologists were there, too? “Relax, he keyed their cars in the parking lot,” I replied to one of them.

Let us take this sneering remark seriously for a moment. In the greater scheme of things, what really was Voltaire? A brief point of relative light, but also a bridge connecting one train wreck to another. The train wreck of religious intolerance he battled all his life, and to a significant degree, he won that battle. But in a very short time, even during his lifetime, atheists usurped his work to provide underpinnings of their own rising movement—another train wreck. Voltaire was an initial hero of the French Revolution, but in short order, as inferior atheistic thinkers took over, he was downgraded as too moderate. Many of his own followers (Voltaire himself was dead by then) fell victim to the guillotine themselves when they resisted the fanatical excesses of those atheists. Meanwhile, the light that he offered was but relative, in that he refused any revelatory look at God, and thus missed out on solving the problem of evil, since that is only solved through such searching. He may even have represented “one step forward, two steps back.” The step forward is to win against intolerance. The step back is to repudiate the means though which God gives explanation of himself AND to smoothe the way for atheism. Maybe even three steps back, for in declaring the issue of evil insoluble after grappling with it the best part of his life, he plants the notion in the educated people that adore him that it actually is. So is he required reading for JW members? No. He is an elective. Read him if you will. It will be beneficial if you do. But by no means is he indispensable to having one’s head on straight. Make him the centerpiece of your education, and it all but guarantees you will not have your head on straight. The JW organization will never recommend that members read Voltaire. Nor will they ever disparage him, at least no more than I have done above. They would have members direct their primary focus on what does deliver with regard to life’s more important things.

Knowledge and research in regard to what? In regard to specific doctrine, or in regard to religious freedom? Some here are trying to turn this into a discussion of JW doctrine, even trying to assign that task to the Court, if not declare it negligent for not going there. If I am right, Massimo interests himself in doctrine not to press for its validity, but only to ascertain that it is innocuous enough to be allowed to stand unmolested.

The uncommon good sense of the former to realize that just because you don’t like a faith, that doesn’t mean it should be illegal. In applying this to Jehovah’s Witnesses, you have chosen the one example, almost the only one you could have chosen, which disproves the point. To make it fit, you must find a group that commits atrocities. I may disagree with what Srecko says, but darned if I’m going to die for it. If he wants to utter inanities, its on him.

I would love to be one of them, and I have more than once contacted certain ones—Introvigne, Folk, and Chrysiddes. They all ignore me. I don’t hammer at their door, nor do I take their non-response personally. I tend to think that they wish to maintain a scholarly detached independence. Whereas I unambiguously champion a certain New Relgion, they stand in defense of them all, and thus may wish to keep any specific apologist at arm’s length. Or maybe they have just concluded that my books suck. That certainly was the case with Dear Mr. Putin. Damage control after such a debacle to present the new and improved Don’t Know Why We Persecute is anything but a slam-dunk. You must persuade people who perhaps have previously written you off to give you another look. That’s why someone should have told me that Dear Mr. Putin sucked; The one whom I have hammered at his door to no avail (as much as 5 or 6 times cumulatively) is George Chrysiddes. The reason for added persistence here is that we had an email correspondence. On Twitter, I came across his saying to someone that he wished he knew a real live rank-and-file Witness. “Here I am,” I said like Isaiah, and we had some nice chit-chats. He faithfully read Tom Irregardless and Me, commenting via email as he did so, and wrote what is far-and-away the more original review of it (under his informal pen name Ivor E Tower). It’s the last I ever heard from him. Maybe he too, read Dear Mr Putin and concluded it stunk. (Of course, its always possible that all of these guys have read Don’t Know Why and have concluded that it stinks, too—yikes!—but that is a scenario I prefer not to entertain. I gave it my best shot.) My second book, No Fake News, stunk, too. Maybe that was a turn-off for George even before Dear Mr. Putin. It was written too hastily, too sloppily. Even after sinking some time in a rewrite, I have removed it. Not sure right now if it will ever see the light of day again. I have several other irons in the fire ahead of it, so that for all practical purposes, that one is not in the fire. Or if the fire is literal, maybe it is. Any day now (I’ve been saying this forever) Don’t Know Why will be in Amazon print. Just now I cannot make Word behave to do the bells and whistles version with fancy headers and whatnot. If I settle for a simplified version, I am fine, and I just may have to do that. The one who does my covers referred me to someone who wants $285 to format it just so. It’s not unreasonable at all, yet I think I’ll draw the line. I spend enough as it is and I’m self-published. I may have to settle for a certain rough-hewn look, which is certainly reinforced anyway by my many battles with proofing. To proof it professionally can cost thousands. Alas, nobody likes me. Even Liebster blocks me. I probably can patch that up, and will someday. Most likely they came along whilst I was bickering with some villains and were scandalized. Or maybe they, too, read Dear Mr Putin and thought it stunk, so that I became to them “an indiscreet brother.” Only the Librarian likes me (that old hen). I may be a bad pupil, but I am her pupil, and she doesn’t forget that. Oh—and I have Cesar in my back pocket, too. But then, who doesn’t?

The group Introvigne heads, CESNUR, (Center for the Study of New Religions) is roughly the opposite of FECRIS, the latter which, if they had their way, would ban them all as “cults.” “New religion” is the scholarly term for any group originating in relatively recent times. Scholars deliberately choose “new religion” over “cult” to avoid the incendiary overtones of the latter word. Non-scholars favor “cult” because they are intolerant and wish to make it as hot as possible for the “new religions.” One might think of Introvigne (who I know nothing of personally) as a modern-day Voltaire. Voltaire (probably you know) is from the 17th century, and is considered founder of the Enlightenment. He was a fierce critic of organized religion, particularly the Judeo-Christian variety. He was also firmly deist, that is, he never doubted the existence of God, and he came to be much distressed that his body of work was used as a stepping stone into atheism—breaking free of God altogether. His dream was that there be religious tolerance, that all religions should get along peaceably. It never occurred to him to change them internally or to mush them into one incoherent whole. He just wanted them not to wreak violence upon one another. Early in his life a dispute with a French aristocrat caused Voltaire to flee to England. While there he noted how there were dozens of religions, many (maybe all) claiming to be the one true path (people took religion more seriously then), yet they all co-existed without rancor. (In his native France, the Roman Catholic Church was torturing those professing other faiths on the rack.) It never would have occurred to Voltaire that a faith calling itself the one true faith was doing violence to any other one. Virtually all of them were doing it. It is a uniquely modern concept to think a religion regarding itself as the true path does violence to the others. Voltaire’s “Letters from England” conveys his amazement and delight that here was a country, so different from back home, where people could worship as they pleased without anyone trying to ban them or beat up on them. He sets himself up as a chump interviewing a Quaker, just about as weird a religion as one could envision backed then—they ‘quaked’ when they became filled with spirit. He paints himself as though a devout Catholic thoroughly scandalized by Quaker beliefs, gives dialogue with one in which the Quaker ties him in knots, before summing up with how you just can’t talk sense with a fanatic. It never occurred to Voltaire that the Quakers should change—he was just delighted that, given their “weirdness,” they could coexist so easily with the rest of society. In short, “intolerance” had nothing to do with doctrines or beliefs within a religion. He took for granted that internally each religion would be sufficiently different from other religions. If they were not, there would not BE separate religions—they would all blend into the same. It didn’t matter to him if Quakers were weird; if you conclude they are, don’t be one, would have been his obvious conclusion, just like it should be today with anyone concluding JWs are weird. Being a strict religion, serious about their beliefs, there would be severe internal strictures for any Quaker doing a 180 and leaving his faith. This was of no concern to Voltaire, who personally had no use for any of the established religions. Whatever strictures a departing Quaker would encounter would be more-or-less human nature: turn your back on previously cherished beliefs and you will of course find yourself on the outside looking in as regards those still holding true to those beliefs. It only adds “fuel to the fire” that the Christian scriptures can so easily be read that way. It’s the same with JWs today. It’s the same with most of the “new religions” that FECRIS labels as “cults,” as it seeks to homogenize religions, extracting whatever teeth they have to make them stand out from others, and mush them all into one that doesn’t stand for much or anything other than putting a God-face on humanist endeavors. Voltaire’s firm deism, his belief in God, stems from what the Jehovah’s Witness organization has called the “Book of Creation.” It stems from the observed design of creation, and from what he called first cause, the utility that created things are put to. He rejected any “book of revelation,” that is, any sacred scriptures from any source that would attempt to explain the creator. But he also famously, after years of soul-searching, declared insoluble the “problem of evil.” There is undeniably a God, and there is undeniably evil. He could not reconcile the two, though he was the foremost thinker and deist of his time. To say that rejecting any revelatory information on God is foolish might be going too far, but it certainly is self-defeating. He yearns with all his heart to discern the problem of evil, yet he confines his gaze to where the answer certainly will not be—in the book of creation. There is only so far that book will take you. His aversion is quite understandable, given the horrendous abuse practices by the religions of his day, but it was still self-defeating as for discerning the problem of evil or any other aspects of God’s personality. If there is an answer to the “problem of evil,” it will be found in the new religions. Of course, my view is that it will be found specifically within the the tenets of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Indeed, the wording may differ, but “Why is there evil?” is a staple of each of their basic study guides almost since their founding. Mainstream religions have so homogenized their views, so eager not to be out of step with intellectual or scientific trends, that they have modified their own foundation to the extent that the problem of evil cannot be solved. FECRIS gets around the issue by ignoring it. There is no answer to such questions, they maintain, forget about them. Focus on making the world a better place now. Nevermind arcane spiritual concerns that will distract from how we must, in the words of the Beatles, “come together.”