TrueTomHarley

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. 
 
 

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.] 

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.
 

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.

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.

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.

I added this here because we all need a primer or refresher now and then. At least I do. It's so easy to be pushed into topics like Trotskyism vs Leninsm, Hegelian Dialectic, Frankfurt School of Marxism, or to hear claims that BLM is Maoist, etc., without having first had a chance to understant even the basics. 
I once even heard a person say: Well, Hitler was socialist, right?
Hitler used the term National Socialist because he was trying for popular appeal, even though he never planned to allow even a bit of socialism into his plans. They were nearly the opposite. A very fascist, totalitarian, dictatorial regime that hated socialist policies.

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).

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.

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—
 
 
 

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.” 

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.

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
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?
 

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
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?
 

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.

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
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?
 

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.

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.

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.”

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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. 
 
 

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