TrueTomHarley

3 hours ago, 4Jah2me said:

Oh dear is it really important though ? We know they had the exact information 

Oh my, no. Oh dear. God could have just shot him a email and it would have made the same dif.

Why people waste their time striving to learn things I’ll never know.

4 hours ago, The Librarian said:

In the past they were always shown with 5 items on each tablet which is wrong according to Exodus 32:15

I dunno, but it looks as though he dropped them accidentally, as though butterfingers.

Not quite having the resources just yet to plow through all of the above, just skimming it quickly instead, understand that what I say are but preliminary impressions. I know next to nothing about FG.

Are they secretive? Are they uncomfortably effective in spreading their message? Do they withdraw from “normal” society? Do they learn to lead “double-lives?” Do they mislead the regular people as to their true mission? Do they have some offbeat (and therefore ‘dark’) beliefs about what the future holds? Do they have members who die because of not embracing all that modern medicine has to offer? (at 75, no less, as though no one of that age has ever died otherwise.) Do they even have an elaborate “compound” in NYS? Are they non-violent, but still a cause for concern, since “all cults are non-violent until they are not”—that cute line from the #cultexpert—in his wacko world, the more peaceful people are, the greater the cause for concern.

When I see how JWs are slammed in the media as a cult, do I imagine that all the other “cults” are getting a fair shake? 

In TTvs the A, I wrote of the Moonies something to the effect of: Is is possible to lead a fulfilled life as a Moonie? They’ll have to make the case for it, not me. However, if the “mainstream” and “normal” life resulted in happiness, fulfillment, and provided answers to the deep questions that vex people, none of these cults would succeed in people giving them the time of day. Let them deliver a little bit before they condemn everyone else. 

 I might even prefer committed religionists to the vanilla people of today because you can “talk shop” with them. You are not faced with, as we are here in the US, people in a panic over discussing a Bible verse, people scared of going off the mainstream of conventional goals for fear of where that might take one, people who do not roll their eyes when you speak of what a verse might mean, and people who do not distrust your explaining a verse by appealing to another one—as though they already indulged you by listening to one, and what more do you want?

As far as I can see, joining one of these “cults” is getting off the “broad road leading to destruction,” in favor of the “narrow road that leads to destruction.” They both lead to destruction, one no more than the other. I don’t view “cultists”  as a threat to people any more than the “normal” life is a threat to people. 

Broad road or narrow road, the one factor that indicates they “lead off to destruction” is their rooting for various leaders of the world to succeed and for other ones to fail. They are part of the world when they do that. The “cramped and narrow road that leads to life” is marked by not being part of the world—not claiming that this or that human is God’s gift to humanity, not claiming that this or that leader must go down, but taking a neutral attitude towards them. “Pray for the king,” Paul writes to Timothy. “That way maybe he’ll keep out of our hair.” That is as “involved” as the religion that is true to God gets with regard to this world’s political structure of good guys and bad guys. Anything else, be it FG or conventional media, is equally part of the world in my eyes. Your “eyes may be opened” when you leave the FG, but it is only so they can be blinded by another source rooting for this world.

42 minutes ago, César Chávez said:

Hmm! I'm surprised, no one with Bible Student knowledge here has "corrected" you on this "incorrect" assertion you make.

Because he will just turn around and make another one. And another one. And then another one. The only common feature of them will be that they have nothing to do with the thread.

It’s my own fault for not posting in the closed club.

5 hours ago, Arauna said:

You know the story of painter Van Gogh is the same

No, Charles Darwin did not do a stint as a clergyman—much less get yelled at by his superiors for not shaking his parishioners down for money—he may have thought about becoming a clergyman, but he never actually did it. How could I have written that he did?

I’ll tell you how. It is because I recalled the Darwin story from Irving Stone’s historical novel The Origin. Irving Stone also wrote an historical novel of Vincent Van Gogh (Lust for Life), and this is the fellow who flunked out as a clergyman (a missionary, actually) in his younger days, not Darwin. This is the fellow who wouldn’t shake his parishioners down for money, not Darwin. This was the fellow who “went native” to share the work and living conditions of those he was assigned to, not Darwin. This is the fellow who was dismissed for “undermining the dignity of the priesthood,” not Darwin. Ya wanna check your facts before you let fly, Harley? You remember half of them wrong, you know. 

Fortunately, I do check them, but once in a while some blooper slips through—as another one almost did when I savored a new unflattering portrait of Charles Dickens from a review of a new book by A.N. Wilson, and initially thoughT it was of Charles Darwin. I had even begun the process of cutting Darwin down to size, as payback for him bringing us evolution— have borne him a grudge for years over that—relishing the revisionist biting words that he was “cruel, oversexed egoist”—I imagined the possibilities answering one of his godless followers who ponders “the fundamental mystery” of how “a man he finds atrocious could have spoken to him so deeply.” “I’ll tell you how you could do that...!” I saw myself saying with glee, and then I noticed it was Dickens, not Darwin—and I like Dickens’s work. I have even adopted many of Dickens’s lines, such as that of Miss. Pross, defending like a lion its cub against the wicked foreign woman who would destroy it: “I am stronger than you. I thank heaven for it.”

They are both D-names, and both Charles—it’s a easy mistake to make. 

All is not lost. Van Gogh serves my purposes as well as Darwin, because the intent of all this is to segue into Voltaire. He, too, was ground up by the church, as was Darwin in a different way. He, too, can be used to introduce Voltaire, who spent his life eviscerating the church and the way it ground up people. In fact, Van Gogh serves better that Darwin, because his trampling of faith reveals more starkly the Church’s amassing of wealth for wealth’s own sake, and that was one of Voltaire’s constant themes—that the clergy used the wealth they accumulated so as to lead corrupt lives. Not too much had changed in France, apparently, in the century of so between Voltaire and Van Gogh. 

And Darwin was British!—how in the world could I have had him doing a clerical stint in France? Even as I wrote it, I knew something didn’t quite square, but I was on a roll and couldn’t stop.

Of course, many things did change from between Voltaire and Van Gogh—most notable is the French Revolution that intervened. Voltaire skewered the clergy of his time—whoa! did they hate him for it!—but he was adamant that atheism was for fools. The ‘Book of Creation’ was enough to teach anyone not self-blinded that there was a God, he maintained, and he was much taken with the common-sense of verses like Hebrew 3:4, that “every house is constructed by someone, but the one who constructed all things is God.” If you come across a well-stocked home in the midst of a barren desert, are you going to maintain that no one designed it? It took years of atheist machinations to undermine the obvious sense of that one. 

They rose to the occasion, though. Let no one say they are not industrious. If people are intent on breaking free from God, do not underestimate their ability to rationalize it. The heart chooses what it wants and then charges the head to devise a convincing rationale to it. Voltaire’s followers were on the cutting edge of “enlightenment” heading towards the French Revolution that would cost so many heads, but they soon fell into disfavor for being too conservative—their movement passed them by—and many of them were among those whose heads were severed by the guillotine. When a mob gets rolling—watch out! Voltaire directed public fury at priests who abused their power, but he did not waver in God’s existence. It would take the next generation, some claiming to stand upon his shoulders, as Newton did on Galileo’s, to throw the baby out with the bath water. 

Surely, the most egregious of abuses of the clergy were curtailed by the Revolution, if for no other reason than the royalty disappeared. French aristocracy prior to the Revolution forbade offspring to work—that was for commoners—so it became a problem for royalty to find suitable careers for their offspring. There was always the Royal Court, there was always the military—that’s why there were so many 21-year old colonels—and there was always the clergy to which one might appoint a young man as archbishop. Young men being what they were—and these French aristocrats being what they were—they would often hire at a pittance some underling to tend to spiritual things while they themselves would revel in riotous and luxurious living.

Voltaire liked the English way, that he picked up on during his exile there. There, only the number one son of nobility could not work—all the remaining ones were launched somewhere into the world of human enterprise. There, only those with long devotion to the church—not some nobility’s snotty kids—could be appointed to high clerical station. By that time, Voltaire notes, all the womanizing and drinking had been refined out of them, if not by spirituality, then by age alone. Their excesses against their churches were fewer, he notes. He is ever writing humorously on such things, and at this point he takes it to a new level: “Besides, the English don’t like women much anyway.” Ha! Bingo! Listen, I may not know much about Voltaire, but I do about my own family. My great-grandfather was English. He had six children, and yet the family name managed to die out in but two generations! Meanwhile, the other side of my family has produced enough children to fill a stadium.

25 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

Perhaps, we can even discuss the Tiananmen Square protests under this topic, too.

Be careful not to portray it as the Festival of Booths.

Forgive me—I’m just being punchy. It’s a value-added discussion between you two, I appreciate it, and I have no problem with the notion of media misportraying things. They certainly do elsewhere—maybe here, too. I am amazed at the tenacity of the both of you in chasing it down in such detail. And, of course, I have used it to my own purposes, that with so many so intent on muddying the waters for whatever reason, it is nearly impossible to get to the bottom of anything.

I can picture myself as a defender of Trump, if I let myself do it, but I don’t. Defending him against reports that are overblown, misrepresented, or downright false, which I am often tempted to do and sometimes yield to that temptation,  it inevitably triggers an impression of shedding neutrality. Suffice it to say for now that I enjoyed his speculation on why the California hair salon operator might have ratted on Pelosi: “Well, she probably treats him like she treats everyone.”

But now she says she was set up. Who can say? Sigh—here, too, people do nothing but muddy the waters.

22 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

. I found a good write-up on those topics here. Later we can discuss its source, accuracy, any critiques, etc.:

Alright, you’d better not be planning a putsch here.

The word was new to me just a few years ago, and I liked the sound of it, so I coined the college student Ted Putsch, who is majoring in government,  and who comes into the truth, in some ways has more common sense than his teacher (me).

37 minutes ago, Arauna said:

You know the story of painter Van Gogh is the same.  He was a clergyman and preached to the potato planters who were so poor.  He drew them, shared his meager meals with them and looked just as bad they did - working in the fields with them.  Then came a guy who did an inspection on him - he was fired.   He lost all faith in religion and hoared and painted for the rest of his life.  His syphilis made him cut off his ear in a mad spell. Sad life.... religion has a lot to answer for.

 

You know, I think I am getting the two mixed up. Irving Stone wrote a book on him, too. I read both, and it was a long time ago.

Yeah—it wasn’t Darwin at all. He did toy with going into the clergy, though. That is for sure. But he never actually did it, not even as a trial gig

Sigh...That’s what one gets for relying on memory. I knew something didn’t quite jive—like how Charles could end up in France.

38 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

but they have been outpaced for years by JW.org.

Oh, that’s what she was talking about. I thought it was of individual JWs witnessing online..

Yes, the website is amazing and exactly the ticket since online is where people hang out these days.

I recall in the days before JW.org telling a workmate that we were online. She came back the next day, and it was clear that she didn’t want to hurt my feelings—she was ever so diplomatic as she told me that it sucked. Not any more. Now it is top of the pack. I wrote the following in Tom Irregardless and Me:

In recent years, the Watchtower organization even offers its own programming through a JW Broadcasting streaming channel, a refreshing and most unusual alternative to mainstream TV. Members of the Governing Body thus repeat the pattern they are known for with any new technology: They eye it with suspicion. They advise caution. They know that when the thief switches getaway cars, it is the thief you have to watch, not the dazzling features of the new car. They follow the thief for a time. Convinced at last that they still have a bead on him, they examine the car. They circle it warily, kicking the tires. At last satisfied, they jump in with both feet and put it to good uses its inventors could only have dreamed of.” 

On 8/26/2020 at 2:24 PM, Arauna said:

there is a way to prove the bible to be absolute reality. ... which to me is the only truth there is. 

Listening up on Voltaire via the Great Courses Lecture series (the entry that caught the attention of @JW Insider), I get the same sense that I did with Mark Twain, and even to an extent, with Charles Darwin—that if they had had any sense of the overall coherence of the Bible writings, their output would have been much different. 

Darwin at one point toyed with becoming a clergyman—a respectable profession for a man of letters who couldn’t otherwise figure out what he wanted to do with his life. The historical novel ‘The Origen,’ by Irving Stone, vividly tells of and probably exaggerates Darwin’s brief stint as a priest, and how he infuriated his superiors. Not only did he refuse to shake down his peasant-class parishioners for money, but he committed the unforgivable sin of joining them in their toil and day to day lives. (It was a long time ago I read this—I really should re-read it.)

Mark Twain savaged religion, and Christianity in particular. He is widely thought to have been atheist, and yet—he never had an unkind word for Jesus. His constant complaint was that those who claimed to follow him did not. “There has only been one Christian,” he would write. “They caught and crucified him—early.” Imagine what might have been if he had found a people who follow the Christ.

He did not find one because the weeds were proliferating, and they had choked out the wheat. “Do you want us to pull the weeds out?” the slaves asked the master, and the reply is to hold off until the harvest. The harvest begins after Twain’s time, and Darwin’s, and Voltaire’s. It hardly seems fair to them, but “the devil” who planted the weeds while “men were sleeping” must be given full reign to prove his claim that humans need not heed God’s right to rule. (Matthew 23:24-30, 36-39). The wheat was completely overrun by our trio’s time. One result was that a coherent explanation of the Hebrew and Greek scriptures was nowhere to be found, and not one of the three greats could figure it out on their own.

It makes a difference. You will fight a lot harder to save your home than you will to save your dumpster. Voltaire and Twain readily condemned the travesties of religion—they were principled men, offended at injustice, so why would they not?—and in the process nearly threw the baby out with the bath water. Their successors would later do just that.

Voltaire’s brashness caused him trouble in France, so he fled to England, where he remained for a decade or so. Whereas France allowed only Catholicism to be practiced, England had many faiths and they all at the time, more or less got along with one another. He wrote ‘Letters on England’ and remarked on how others besides Catholics can appeal to verse to buttress their point of view—to frothing clerical disapproval back home. He sets himself up as a devoted and rigid (and naive), Catholic himself, aghast to find Quakers appealing to verse “wrongly”—as his narrative demonstrates that they are not doing it wrongly at all..

Feigning shock that the Quaker is not baptized—after all, Jesus was baptized—he wonders how the Quaker can call himself Christian. The Quaker asks him if he is circumcised—since Jesus was. He replies that he “has not had that honor.” “So—I am a Christian without having been baptized and you are one without having been circumcised,” is the reply. Voltaire lets that stand as having proved the point that all religions can successfully argue scripture. 

What is amazing is that he has no concept that scripture might be grasped as a coherent whole. It is perfectly fine with him to cherry-pick verse, and the reason that it is perfectly fine is that no one has ever demonstrated any other way. When in the skirts of ‘Babylon the Great’ is found the blood of ... all those who have been slaughtered on the earth” (Revelation 18:24) it is not so much for her acts of commission as it is for her acts of omission; it should have been teaching the complete Word of God, but it neglected that task, and thus Voltaire quite naturally assumed that it was not possible to teach it—so far as he knows, no one has ever done it. 

We Witnesses may not be ones for exalting humans, but by this standard, C.T. Russell becomes one of the most innovative humans of all time. You would think his approach to unlocking the Bible would be the most common-sense thing in the world, but it appears to be revolutionary: Toss out a verse for discussion, and do not move on until every other verse on that same topic is discussed. In that way, get a grasp on what the scriptures teach as a whole. The basic Bible teachings that Jehovah’s Witnesses are known for, so different from what may be found in any of the churches, have been in place for well over a hundred years.

It gets much heavier than this, and the blood of Babylon gets much thicker. More to come—

1 hour ago, Witness said:

But now, JWs are using computers to reach people, in the same way those who are not JWs, are doing.  

Actually, very few are doing it this way. 

1 hour ago, Anna said:

And then there there this statement to the UN by Hamid Sabi. @JW Insider how credible do you see this as?

 

I don’t pretend to weigh in credibly on this but it did strike as odd that he appears to feel he must explain that it is wrong to cut organs from living people, and that the fact that others are benefited does not justify it.

1 hour ago, JW Insider said:

especially after Prince's death in 2016

Ah—finally. Something I can weigh in on with some fervor. If it wasn’t so crass and I wasn’t so scared of the old hen, I would use this reference to hawk my book once more.

11 minutes ago, 4Jah2me said:

i used to find it funny when the meetings were all about 'simplify your life',  'work less hours',  no need for decent ed.....BUT the Org still wanted donations

This indicates that your entire overstated point is nonsense.

If they were as hung up on money as you insist, they would NOT want members to simplify and work less hours. 

They would want them to work around the clock and make as much dough as they could, so they could say like the Big Bad Wolf to Red Riding Hood, “All the more for me to take, my dear.”

Their enemies want to keep them penniless and disrupt their organization so that they cannot get preaching of the good news done. It is as simple as that.

When Anderson Cooper interviewed Jakob Blake’s dad, the latter answered a question with ‘Some people like Brussel sprouts.’ Anderson was flummoxed over this answer and when he pressed the dad, the dad explained that he hated Brussel sprouts—which also flummoxed Anderson.

This only registers because about two weeks ago on my blog, someone answered with a similar reply about food choices.

This only registers because @The Librarian(that old hen) has at times thrown in a complete non-sequitor about “I love pizza” or ‘I love tacos.’

Am I looking at a new evolution in memes and language? 

When the old hen does it, I think she is being snarky about those who destroy the order of her library by throwing any irrelevant remark into one of her threads—Dewey Decimal System be d**ned. I have no idea what the fellow on my blog is doing—does he just lurk here, too, and he is playfully imitating the Librarian. (Gasp! Don’t tell me it IS the Librarian—naw, I don’t think so (but you never know))

But there is no way on God’s green earth that Jakob’s dad is reading my blog. Why does he say what he does to Anderson about Brussel sprouts? Does he do it to say to Anderson: “I’d appreciate it if you’d stay on some topic that’s meaningful?”

[edit: I put this on my own blog as well, after working it up more, after watching some of Anderson’s interview. Even linked back here to the Library.] 

7 hours ago, Matthew9969 said:

This statement is very telling in that you live in a very small world and have never been inside another church. I remember

What I remember is Ronald J Sider’s book ‘The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience—Why are Christians Living Just Like the Rest of the World.’

After reviewing dozens of verses on conduct, he says “if Paul is even close to being right on what it means to be a Christian, these verses ought to drive us to our knees in repentance, and then determination to reform.

He is an evangelical leader with suggestions for reform. Of course, they are of an organizational nature. And, of course, JWs are already doing them, and yes, they do resolve the problems he details.

I wrote several posts about this

1 hour ago, Witness said:

To the WT organization, money carries more clout than Holy Spirit.  

The reason that people organize is so they can get more things done, and get them done effectively—an obvious plus when it comes to gathering, teaching, and shepherding a worldwide congregation.

The reason that people oppose such organization is that they do not want such things done. It is no more complicated than that.

And the reason the Christian organization applies for money that is legally owed it is....do I really have to explain this?

1 hour ago, JW Insider said:

But I really wanted them because I had already checked a few out of the library,

Probably I should not admit that I was halfway through the 47 -lecture Eastern Civilization course when you began this thread, and that without that new background, my meager contributions would have been more meager yet—perhaps confined to a rant about how Chinese Checkers is not as good as real checkers.

1 hour ago, JW Insider said:

There you go again.

Who was it that slam-dunked a debate and went on to win an election on the strength of that line?

1 hour ago, JW Insider said:

Or perhaps that Trump claimed he would withhold aid from fire-razed California because they didn't vote for him.

The other way to phrase this is that certain states have taxed themselves into oblivion and certain states have “lived within their means” and that the former are hoping to transfer their massive debt onto the feds under the guise of Covid-19 relief and that Trump balks at that. Such states are nearly always Democrat—it is in the nature of Democrats to run up such expenses far more than Republicans (arms spending is irrelevant for a state). So it is not really that “they didn’t vote for him,” it is that they hope to transfer their social engineering ambition, and inefficiently onto the feds—and they happen to be Democrats because that’s what Democrats do.

And, in the words of another POTUS, who always wanted to “let me be perfectly clear about that,” since I live in one of those pricey states, It is probably in my financial interest if the orange man loses—the other guy is much more likely to pick up the tab that “my” gov has run up.

And...somewhere along the line it must fit in somehow that I am now in the Gilded Age Great Courses theory. Why did America become the industrial giant when it did, eclipsing everyone else? The professor posits much of it is the “luck” to exist where natural resources were abundant. He then says natural resources are not the only factor, though, since Japan later became a huge industrial power and they have almost no natural resources at all. On the other hand, Russia, he says, has abundant natural resources “but has never really developed as an industrial power.” What sort of a government did Russia long have, and is in some ways returning to now? 

Of course, this is economic growth we are speaking of, and not justice per se. I think no one would clarify that the the country was an especially bright beaco for justice, though. And no, the czars didn’t help either. But they disappeared long ago.

Why in the world would anyone downvote the 2nd-above post? A 60% tax on religious donations is just?

It is worth pointing out also that this situation in France began decades ago, long before anyone’s favorite issue arose front and center.

If religious exemption is cut off for everyone there will be no objection here. But as long as it exists, JWs are entitled to it as much as any other faith. Probably more so, in fact, since such exemption is founded on the premise that religious faith makes for more upright people, thus improving overall society and saving the state much policing work. JW’s, though they may not bat 100%, given human imperfection, do fit the bill on this. Most religions consist of members whose conduct is indistinguishable from the overall world.

The only thing that is lacking is that a penalty or fine might be levied upon whoever fed the government the faulty information that caused them to classify the Witness organization wrongly In the first place. Wouldn’t that be an appropriate thing? Then a certain yo-yo would be saying: “Oh dear. Oh dear. It’s looks like my side is getting its head handed to it on a platter by the CCJW.”

7 minutes ago, Arauna said:

They are, I think, just asking what was due to them including costs.

They did the same in France, when that country’s 60% tax on JW donations was ruled discriminatory by the ECHR. France had to make amends, just as Russia will have to if we can imagine Russia heeding the rulings of outside courts.

1 hour ago, Srecko Sostar said:

Jehovah's Witnesses have been denied state funding for several years. ...Last year, the government overturned the decision - and now the organization is demanding SEK 25 million in compensation. 

Well? Of course. The only verb that has probably been added is “demand.” Change it to “asserted that the consequences of the wrong classification should be addressed” and one could not expect anything else.

Maybe no religions should get state funding. Maybe no charitable organizations should. That is a separate issue. 

But if they do, and JWs alone were excluded due to a prior incorrect classification, then of course that should be rectified.

3 hours ago, JW Insider said:

And then there's the problem of giving "the other side" too much credibility when it is not worthy of a mention.

I don’t see that Sanger had much of an issue with this. He didn’t speak of the scenario of doctors vs the unwashed & uncredentialed.. He spoke of controversies among doctors, and controversies among scientists that are papered over to give the impression that the community is monolithic 

I will even manage to tie this is with the Voltaire kick that I’ve been on lately.

Voltaire was very taken with Newton’s discoveries and the idea that you derive truth from experience—in this case, truth about the universe from his experiments. Seems obvious to people now, but at the time truth was established by religious teachings and one did not think to look beyond them: What does the Church say about such-and-such? was as far as people went, or were even authorized to go.

Voltaire wrote it was “arrogant” to arrive at truth that way, and only common sense to arrive at truth Newton’s way. He could not possibly have foreseen that it becomes arrogant to think one can learn through experience, too—and this business with Wikipedia illustrates why. 

People choke on “experience.” There is far too much of it to process and we are far too puny to take it all in. It depends upon where we’ve been and what we’ve seen. 

Well, one ought to be able to rise above that—at first glance, that seems reasonable. Through study, reading, “critical thinking,” one can yet deduce truth. If there is one thing your exchange with Aruana proves to me, it is that even so we cannot—for the same reason: the sheer volume of what must be processed, and our insignificant time and ability to do it. 

Study the nature of water while it is in a test tube—yes, then it may be doable. But we dont get to study it in a test tube. We are forced to study it at the precipice that is Niagara Falls—as it cascades over us and overwhelms our instruments. 

If you and Aruana cannot convince each other—both of you with background, time, resources, experiences, and studious natures far in excess of the average person, then it cannot be done. 

And whereas the above illustration with Niagara Falls assumes, so far, that all sources are truthful, and open as what they are doing. they’re not. Everyone just assumes that Wikipedia is neutral, and thereby authoritative. It isn’t. Without explicitly lying, it effectively does so. By not presenting “the other side” of anything, it presents the picture that there is none. So it our determination to search for truth, hampered by the limitations already discussed, we also have to deal with the fact that people are trying to muddy the waters.

It goes back full circle. You can’t determine truth through religion, as Voltaire states? Sounds reasonable. But it turns out you cannot determine it by experience, either—it is equally “arrogant” to think we possess the resources that makes us up to the task. It turns out that you do determine it through religion. Of course, you have to have the right one, and that is mostly a matter of heart, not head.

23 hours ago, JW Insider said:

how political, religious, and scientific topics, too, can be biased.

I notice how the biases often correspond, too. It is amazing how they do that, almost to the point of, to take an example, if you know (in the US) a person’s view of health treatment, you can make a guess on their political leanings and seldom be wrong 

There are people who live to slander. 

Is there shame in an arrest? Not on the part of the one arrested until he/she is found guilty. If found innocent, the shame may even be on the accusers.

Is it not slander to take an accusation that would otherwise never go beyond some tiny community billboard and re-broadcast it to the whole world news media .org?

In Ann’s defense, she is hardly the first one to do this. It is the new standard of the world and has been for some time. An arrest is synonymous to a conviction in the new world of “journalism.” She can’t possibly have missed the point of the reference to the French Revolution in which a denouncement was enough to send one to the guillotine—she is not stupid.

Mostly I use Wikipedia for details on out-of-the-way topics that you wouldn’t think would be subject to bias—lately it has been to corroborate some background on Voltaire, for instance.

But not always—sometimes I use it as though a base stock, like you would in cooking, to develop a post on some contemporary issue. Others do this, too—pretty routinely—to provide backdrop for points they are making. @JW Insiderand @Araunaare doing that right now with a thread about China and its modern-day & changing role.

It’s an encyclopedia, Wikipedia is—that’s how everyone thinks of it. As such, it is unbiased—that supposedly is it’s mission statement. Anyone can edit it (I’ve never quite understood how that works—well, I guess I do, but I’ve never been interested enough to attempt it, and the premise is that when anyone can do so the result will be complete and unbiased.) Not so, says co-founder Larry Sanger. “Unbiased” went out the window long ago. NPOV (neutral point of view) Is a thing of the past.

He says it here, on this post from his own blog: https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/

He doesn’t say the website is not factual. Nor does he say it is not objective. But it is not complete. It clearly sides with particular points-of-view. Larry offers about a dozen examples of clear bias, from politics, to science, to health, to religion in which the minority view is run off the road. 

Sigh...this seriously compromises Wikipedia as a base. It is a leftist choir that is preaching there these days, and if you quote the source, which I do all the time, you will be getting a leftist point of view, and other viewpoints either ignored completely or declared wrong. It is not for an encyclopedia to do this, Sanger says. It is supposed to reflect all points of view. It is not to declare a winner. 

Sanger’s background (per Wikipedia (!) ) is not primarily technology, as being co-founder of Wikipedia might imply. It is philosophy, epistomology, and ethics. He is clearly disappointed in the path his creation has taken.