TrueTomHarley

Our cat was never quite the same after spending a few seconds with head inside the dog’s mouth. Later, he auditioned and actually became the moniker for Top Cat O’Malihan, one of my aliases here, employed to mess with astoundingly obnoxious people like Alan F.
Since the dog and cat did not get along (I thought I could keep them out of each other’s sight, but did not reckon on sense of smell), while the dog stayed with us (it was a temporary resident that later became permanent), I brought it to stay with my dad who had dementia. He took it for one of the barn cats that he had grown up with and left bowls of milk for it everywhere, which it did not touch. “Pop!” I grumbled later since I staying with him overnights for a few months before he died, “I want to pour myself a bowl of cereal but I can’t because you’ve poured out all the milk in saucers throughout the house!”

I was.
I did.
He wasn’t.
You’re wrong.
It’s his heart that it never came up into, his center of motivation. It is the furthest thing from what he would ever do. It’s not that he can’t imagine it.
There is division among translators over this verse. Someone want to spend some time looking into this? I’ll take the NWT any day in this case. It dovetails far better with everything else we know of God.
https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Jeremiah 7%3A31
One translation best captures the “mind” sense with, “I never entertained the thought,” which is not the same as being “surprised.”

Tinkering with the transistors that became the internet has been the source of much income for Al Gore and myself.

I’ll give PSomH an upvote for this. He doesn’t get that many from me.

Tinkering with the transistors that became the internet has been the source of much income for Al Gore and myself.

Tinkering with the transistors that became the internet has been the source of much income for Al Gore and myself.

I was.
I did.
He wasn’t.
You’re wrong.
It’s his heart that it never came up into, his center of motivation. It is the furthest thing from what he would ever do. It’s not that he can’t imagine it.
There is division among translators over this verse. Someone want to spend some time looking into this? I’ll take the NWT any day in this case. It dovetails far better with everything else we know of God.
https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Jeremiah 7%3A31
One translation best captures the “mind” sense with, “I never entertained the thought,” which is not the same as being “surprised.”

Tinkering with the transistors that became the internet has been the source of much income for Al Gore and myself.

I’ll give PSomH an upvote for this. He doesn’t get that many from me.

Humans know different types of 'love' but I don't think humans understand love from God's perspective.
God's ways are far higher than human ways.
And this also, we can only see from a human perspective.  Arauna replied to me once that 'humans are important', but I think not in comparison to the Universal issue.  
It would seem that millions of humans will die at the Judgement time, and it will be a necessary 'operation'.  A bit like clearing a building site before building a nice new house. Many humans cannot handle thinking about it, they see it as hateful / cruel.. And in reality I think many JWs try not to think about it. But, God will do what God will do to solve the Universal issue. 

I was.
I did.
He wasn’t.
You’re wrong.
It’s his heart that it never came up into, his center of motivation. It is the furthest thing from what he would ever do. It’s not that he can’t imagine it.
There is division among translators over this verse. Someone want to spend some time looking into this? I’ll take the NWT any day in this case. It dovetails far better with everything else we know of God.
https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Jeremiah 7%3A31
One translation best captures the “mind” sense with, “I never entertained the thought,” which is not the same as being “surprised.”

The bible indicates that Satan knows that Jehovah exists and shudders - but he does not obey.  It is like a child that is on drugs and destroys his own life in front of a parent. 
Satan has seen the power of Jehovah - but it is rarely used destructively. Satan is the father of death and destruction, lies and deceit.  He knows that Jehovah is his creator but will spread lies to humankind about it.  Anything which takes away the honor from Jehovah whether it is atheism or false philosophy

but it still qualifies me to be premier spokesperson for those who don’t like Jehovah’s Witnesses.

but it still qualifies me to be premier spokesperson for those who don’t like Jehovah’s Witnesses.

but it still qualifies me to be premier spokesperson for those who don’t like Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Ring Ring.
”TrueAnointed Taxi Company. It’s your dime—start talking.”
“This is Patiently Sitting on my Hands! I just heard the Armageddon Express left the station. I didn’t want to miss that train. You were supposed to send a cab by. Now I’m in a terrible fix, and it’s your fault!!”
“Look, you dodo, we did what you said. You said send a cab over once they hired perfect personnel at the station who didn’t make any mistakes. We monitored just like you asked, and they never did! They made do with the guys they already had! Blame yourself!
”There’s another train leaving tomorrow on the WeepnNash Yurteeth line. If you want, we can send a cab by and pick you up for that.”
 

I don’t know of any forum besides this one that is not fully skewed one way or the other. Are there any? 
There are many sites run by those who unabashedly oppose Jehovah’s people. These I would never take part in, for I would feel like a troll if I did. You have to let someone else’s point of view stand on their own website. 
That’s not to say that I have never done it. I have in the past, on an experimental basis, to see what would happen. Never so much as to be thought of a ‘regular’ anywhere. I don’t do it anymore.
I even owe @Pudgy’s friend an apology, for I told him I had commented on a hostile site maybe 3 or 4 times. It was at least 12 times, he said! No, it was 3 or 4–why on earth would I lie about that? He responded that he used to be an engineer for the municipality, and as such, he learned to be precise. I told him that if he used to be a municipal engineer and no longer was, possibly the reason was that he could not count!! Furthermore, I would hate to visit whatever city he was the waterworks engineer in, for no doubt under his stewardship there wasn’t a single toilet there that flushed!
However, much later I realized he was right. There had been over a dozen, but only 3 or 4 recently. The rest were so long ago and on another website that I had forgotten about them! So maybe the toilets are okay after all.
Since then I have been on the Reddit site a few times, but no longer. That began when i found the Philly.com reporter wrote a front page anti-JW article and then returned to that forum where he was hailed as a hero! If he goes there for his “facts,” I figured, maybe I can go there and present a few that are more balanced. But I stopped. I was being a troll, and I don’t like to be a troll.
The downside of handling apostates the way we do is that we almost create an aura of mystique about them that they do not deserve. On some level, they are no more than Demas, who left Paul because he loved the present system of things. Plus, if someone, often a youth, falls for the oldest trick in the book—going somewhere because he has been advised not to—he or she comes across material that they are completely unprepared for, and may be stumbled. Thereafter few are able to help them because they don’t know what is there themselves. That’s originally why @Annabegan familiarizing herself with ‘apostate’ thinking. She had a teenage son, and did not want to find herself helpless in the event he came across hostile material & was troubled. (Last I heard, he is now an adult, doing just fine, has never displayed such curiosity, and is bemused that his mom keeps up with weirdos on the internet.)
I wrote ‘TrueTom vs the Apostates’ with the recommendation not to read it unless you were one troubled by all the bile opposers throw our way, that if you were one who could shut off the TV, pull the plug on the computer, or stuff the newspaper in the trash at a anti—JW presentation without ever giving another thought to it, then there’s no reason to read TTvtA,, but if not, well—that’s why I wrote it.
They have a mystique they do not deserve and part of that reason is we lend it to them by such insistent direction to STAY AWAY. It is good counsel, and it is scriptural counsel for sure, but everything is a matter of degree. I think it can be observed that if apostates were a huge issue in the first century (and they were—no NT writer does not deal with them, and two Bible chapters are exclusively devoted to them) then they should correspondingly be a huge issue today. Nobody has apostates so vitriolic as do Jehovah’s Witnesses. What if we didn’t have any? Wouldn’t you have to wonder why, since they are so plainly in the NT? ‘Our’ apostates exactly pattern themselves after the pattern of the first-century, and they thereby validate us. I am almost proud of ours. Ours are the best. 
The chapter ‘Who are the apostates?’ has quotes from a few scholarly types who point out that ‘apostates’ almost have to attack their former faith with brainwashing and mind-control memes, otherwise they have to explain how, if it is as bad as they now maintain it is, they could have been so stupid as to follow it in the first place. I wrote the book to forward a response with views that I had never seen presented before. I forget what the free download section is. At first it was the standard 10%, then I made the whole book free, then later 1/3–I forget what it is now.
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/917311
At long last I’m getting books into print. Don’t Know Why is available now on Amazon, Tom Irregardless will be very soon, and TTvtA after that. Alas, it is already time for TTvtA—Round 2, but it will be a long time before that sees the light of day.
I think we have a “good” assortment of “apostates” on this forum in that some of them are flat-out crazy, and the ones that aren’t are over-the-top in their venom—‘hate OCD’ is how Aruana puts it, and it is hard to argue with regard to spiritual things that it is not so. Might some be persuaded by them? I’m sure some are, but I haven’t seen it happen here. With but one negligible exception, nobody here, good guys or bad, has budged one iota in basic orientation. Surely people can see that there is not the tiniest amount of spiritual food provided by ones here who oppose, even ones who claim anointed status. Maybe you can argue that the spiritual food provided by God’s organization is not without a pebble here and there, necessitating revisions as “the light gets brighter,” but there is none whatsoever from the hostile ones here.
Some of them are broken people. @JW Insider considered one of them not long ago and felt terribly for her. That doesn’t mean that they can be fixed by human hands. Horrible suffering is endemic in the world today, and some of it has happened in a Witness context. Hopefully they will respond to present reach-out efforts from the Christian organization, but just how, or if, they will respond must remain in their court.
I am reminded of a Bashevis Singer short story in which a 19th-century Jewish settlement in Poland is paralyzed because the priest (rabbi?) cannot bring himself to sacrifice animals. He just loves them too much; he is too kind and gentle. Finally one settler tells him that it’s fine to be merciful, but he doesn’t have to be more merciful than God. 
 
 

When have I ever done this…?..and nor do I view apostates as many do…in fact I view most so called apostates as ones with genuine hurts and griefs needing expressions???..and answers…
Do you not think I have not experienced first hand one of those  broken people in my family…hence my journey on forums?..same reasons as Anna.
could any one save him…no!…he is now awaiting the resurrection …but I will still stand by my statement….all forums as well as this one is used by demons as a play ground…and it’s the genuine ones who will be their victims…..
anyway….I shall say my farewells here..and I wish you all well……but I will say one thing before I go…there is no point in bringing  to light or tearing down Russell’s name…it’s cowardly as the man cannot represent himself and make an answer….I do t agree with all that is written by him  either…but he was one hell of a man to stand up in his time ..and dispense the food that he did..and fight to his death and put in its grave ..the teaching of hellfire and trinity…was he a flawed man…yes…..was he used by Jehovah ..without doubt…..Jehovah uses flawed men and women.
is it easy to publicise his errors..absolutely…sadly it will continue on…but remember..it’s just opinions..written by ones who never knew him or his era he lived in…

Ring Ring.
”TrueAnointed Taxi Company. It’s your dime—start talking.”
“This is Patiently Sitting on my Hands! I just heard the Armageddon Express left the station. I didn’t want to miss that train. You were supposed to send a cab by. Now I’m in a terrible fix, and it’s your fault!!”
“Look, you dodo, we did what you said. You said send a cab over once they hired perfect personnel at the station who didn’t make any mistakes. We monitored just like you asked, and they never did! They made do with the guys they already had! Blame yourself!
”There’s another train leaving tomorrow on the WeepnNash Yurteeth line. If you want, we can send a cab by and pick you up for that.”
 

I don’t know of any forum besides this one that is not fully skewed one way or the other. Are there any? 
There are many sites run by those who unabashedly oppose Jehovah’s people. These I would never take part in, for I would feel like a troll if I did. You have to let someone else’s point of view stand on their own website. 
That’s not to say that I have never done it. I have in the past, on an experimental basis, to see what would happen. Never so much as to be thought of a ‘regular’ anywhere. I don’t do it anymore.
I even owe @Pudgy’s friend an apology, for I told him I had commented on a hostile site maybe 3 or 4 times. It was at least 12 times, he said! No, it was 3 or 4–why on earth would I lie about that? He responded that he used to be an engineer for the municipality, and as such, he learned to be precise. I told him that if he used to be a municipal engineer and no longer was, possibly the reason was that he could not count!! Furthermore, I would hate to visit whatever city he was the waterworks engineer in, for no doubt under his stewardship there wasn’t a single toilet there that flushed!
However, much later I realized he was right. There had been over a dozen, but only 3 or 4 recently. The rest were so long ago and on another website that I had forgotten about them! So maybe the toilets are okay after all.
Since then I have been on the Reddit site a few times, but no longer. That began when i found the Philly.com reporter wrote a front page anti-JW article and then returned to that forum where he was hailed as a hero! If he goes there for his “facts,” I figured, maybe I can go there and present a few that are more balanced. But I stopped. I was being a troll, and I don’t like to be a troll.
The downside of handling apostates the way we do is that we almost create an aura of mystique about them that they do not deserve. On some level, they are no more than Demas, who left Paul because he loved the present system of things. Plus, if someone, often a youth, falls for the oldest trick in the book—going somewhere because he has been advised not to—he or she comes across material that they are completely unprepared for, and may be stumbled. Thereafter few are able to help them because they don’t know what is there themselves. That’s originally why @Annabegan familiarizing herself with ‘apostate’ thinking. She had a teenage son, and did not want to find herself helpless in the event he came across hostile material & was troubled. (Last I heard, he is now an adult, doing just fine, has never displayed such curiosity, and is bemused that his mom keeps up with weirdos on the internet.)
I wrote ‘TrueTom vs the Apostates’ with the recommendation not to read it unless you were one troubled by all the bile opposers throw our way, that if you were one who could shut off the TV, pull the plug on the computer, or stuff the newspaper in the trash at a anti—JW presentation without ever giving another thought to it, then there’s no reason to read TTvtA,, but if not, well—that’s why I wrote it.
They have a mystique they do not deserve and part of that reason is we lend it to them by such insistent direction to STAY AWAY. It is good counsel, and it is scriptural counsel for sure, but everything is a matter of degree. I think it can be observed that if apostates were a huge issue in the first century (and they were—no NT writer does not deal with them, and two Bible chapters are exclusively devoted to them) then they should correspondingly be a huge issue today. Nobody has apostates so vitriolic as do Jehovah’s Witnesses. What if we didn’t have any? Wouldn’t you have to wonder why, since they are so plainly in the NT? ‘Our’ apostates exactly pattern themselves after the pattern of the first-century, and they thereby validate us. I am almost proud of ours. Ours are the best. 
The chapter ‘Who are the apostates?’ has quotes from a few scholarly types who point out that ‘apostates’ almost have to attack their former faith with brainwashing and mind-control memes, otherwise they have to explain how, if it is as bad as they now maintain it is, they could have been so stupid as to follow it in the first place. I wrote the book to forward a response with views that I had never seen presented before. I forget what the free download section is. At first it was the standard 10%, then I made the whole book free, then later 1/3–I forget what it is now.
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/917311
At long last I’m getting books into print. Don’t Know Why is available now on Amazon, Tom Irregardless will be very soon, and TTvtA after that. Alas, it is already time for TTvtA—Round 2, but it will be a long time before that sees the light of day.
I think we have a “good” assortment of “apostates” on this forum in that some of them are flat-out crazy, and the ones that aren’t are over-the-top in their venom—‘hate OCD’ is how Aruana puts it, and it is hard to argue with regard to spiritual things that it is not so. Might some be persuaded by them? I’m sure some are, but I haven’t seen it happen here. With but one negligible exception, nobody here, good guys or bad, has budged one iota in basic orientation. Surely people can see that there is not the tiniest amount of spiritual food provided by ones here who oppose, even ones who claim anointed status. Maybe you can argue that the spiritual food provided by God’s organization is not without a pebble here and there, necessitating revisions as “the light gets brighter,” but there is none whatsoever from the hostile ones here.
Some of them are broken people. @JW Insider considered one of them not long ago and felt terribly for her. That doesn’t mean that they can be fixed by human hands. Horrible suffering is endemic in the world today, and some of it has happened in a Witness context. Hopefully they will respond to present reach-out efforts from the Christian organization, but just how, or if, they will respond must remain in their court.
I am reminded of a Bashevis Singer short story in which a 19th-century Jewish settlement in Poland is paralyzed because the priest (rabbi?) cannot bring himself to sacrifice animals. He just loves them too much; he is too kind and gentle. Finally one settler tells him that it’s fine to be merciful, but he doesn’t have to be more merciful than God. 
 
 

Yes. The plan to demolish earth to make way for the new intergalactic highway has been on the books for 10,000 years. There has been plenty of time to speak out against it, and if you can’t be bothered to participate in civil affairs, its a little too late to be unsporting about it at the last minute.

I don’t know of any forum besides this one that is not fully skewed one way or the other. Are there any? 
There are many sites run by those who unabashedly oppose Jehovah’s people. These I would never take part in, for I would feel like a troll if I did. You have to let someone else’s point of view stand on their own website. 
That’s not to say that I have never done it. I have in the past, on an experimental basis, to see what would happen. Never so much as to be thought of a ‘regular’ anywhere. I don’t do it anymore.
I even owe @Pudgy’s friend an apology, for I told him I had commented on a hostile site maybe 3 or 4 times. It was at least 12 times, he said! No, it was 3 or 4–why on earth would I lie about that? He responded that he used to be an engineer for the municipality, and as such, he learned to be precise. I told him that if he used to be a municipal engineer and no longer was, possibly the reason was that he could not count!! Furthermore, I would hate to visit whatever city he was the waterworks engineer in, for no doubt under his stewardship there wasn’t a single toilet there that flushed!
However, much later I realized he was right. There had been over a dozen, but only 3 or 4 recently. The rest were so long ago and on another website that I had forgotten about them! So maybe the toilets are okay after all.
Since then I have been on the Reddit site a few times, but no longer. That began when i found the Philly.com reporter wrote a front page anti-JW article and then returned to that forum where he was hailed as a hero! If he goes there for his “facts,” I figured, maybe I can go there and present a few that are more balanced. But I stopped. I was being a troll, and I don’t like to be a troll.
The downside of handling apostates the way we do is that we almost create an aura of mystique about them that they do not deserve. On some level, they are no more than Demas, who left Paul because he loved the present system of things. Plus, if someone, often a youth, falls for the oldest trick in the book—going somewhere because he has been advised not to—he or she comes across material that they are completely unprepared for, and may be stumbled. Thereafter few are able to help them because they don’t know what is there themselves. That’s originally why @Annabegan familiarizing herself with ‘apostate’ thinking. She had a teenage son, and did not want to find herself helpless in the event he came across hostile material & was troubled. (Last I heard, he is now an adult, doing just fine, has never displayed such curiosity, and is bemused that his mom keeps up with weirdos on the internet.)
I wrote ‘TrueTom vs the Apostates’ with the recommendation not to read it unless you were one troubled by all the bile opposers throw our way, that if you were one who could shut off the TV, pull the plug on the computer, or stuff the newspaper in the trash at a anti—JW presentation without ever giving another thought to it, then there’s no reason to read TTvtA,, but if not, well—that’s why I wrote it.
They have a mystique they do not deserve and part of that reason is we lend it to them by such insistent direction to STAY AWAY. It is good counsel, and it is scriptural counsel for sure, but everything is a matter of degree. I think it can be observed that if apostates were a huge issue in the first century (and they were—no NT writer does not deal with them, and two Bible chapters are exclusively devoted to them) then they should correspondingly be a huge issue today. Nobody has apostates so vitriolic as do Jehovah’s Witnesses. What if we didn’t have any? Wouldn’t you have to wonder why, since they are so plainly in the NT? ‘Our’ apostates exactly pattern themselves after the pattern of the first-century, and they thereby validate us. I am almost proud of ours. Ours are the best. 
The chapter ‘Who are the apostates?’ has quotes from a few scholarly types who point out that ‘apostates’ almost have to attack their former faith with brainwashing and mind-control memes, otherwise they have to explain how, if it is as bad as they now maintain it is, they could have been so stupid as to follow it in the first place. I wrote the book to forward a response with views that I had never seen presented before. I forget what the free download section is. At first it was the standard 10%, then I made the whole book free, then later 1/3–I forget what it is now.
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/917311
At long last I’m getting books into print. Don’t Know Why is available now on Amazon, Tom Irregardless will be very soon, and TTvtA after that. Alas, it is already time for TTvtA—Round 2, but it will be a long time before that sees the light of day.
I think we have a “good” assortment of “apostates” on this forum in that some of them are flat-out crazy, and the ones that aren’t are over-the-top in their venom—‘hate OCD’ is how Aruana puts it, and it is hard to argue with regard to spiritual things that it is not so. Might some be persuaded by them? I’m sure some are, but I haven’t seen it happen here. With but one negligible exception, nobody here, good guys or bad, has budged one iota in basic orientation. Surely people can see that there is not the tiniest amount of spiritual food provided by ones here who oppose, even ones who claim anointed status. Maybe you can argue that the spiritual food provided by God’s organization is not without a pebble here and there, necessitating revisions as “the light gets brighter,” but there is none whatsoever from the hostile ones here.
Some of them are broken people. @JW Insider considered one of them not long ago and felt terribly for her. That doesn’t mean that they can be fixed by human hands. Horrible suffering is endemic in the world today, and some of it has happened in a Witness context. Hopefully they will respond to present reach-out efforts from the Christian organization, but just how, or if, they will respond must remain in their court.
I am reminded of a Bashevis Singer short story in which a 19th-century Jewish settlement in Poland is paralyzed because the priest (rabbi?) cannot bring himself to sacrifice animals. He just loves them too much; he is too kind and gentle. Finally one settler tells him that it’s fine to be merciful, but he doesn’t have to be more merciful than God. 
 
 

I don’t know of any forum besides this one that is not fully skewed one way or the other. Are there any? 
There are many sites run by those who unabashedly oppose Jehovah’s people. These I would never take part in, for I would feel like a troll if I did. You have to let someone else’s point of view stand on their own website. 
That’s not to say that I have never done it. I have in the past, on an experimental basis, to see what would happen. Never so much as to be thought of a ‘regular’ anywhere. I don’t do it anymore.
I even owe @Pudgy’s friend an apology, for I told him I had commented on a hostile site maybe 3 or 4 times. It was at least 12 times, he said! No, it was 3 or 4–why on earth would I lie about that? He responded that he used to be an engineer for the municipality, and as such, he learned to be precise. I told him that if he used to be a municipal engineer and no longer was, possibly the reason was that he could not count!! Furthermore, I would hate to visit whatever city he was the waterworks engineer in, for no doubt under his stewardship there wasn’t a single toilet there that flushed!
However, much later I realized he was right. There had been over a dozen, but only 3 or 4 recently. The rest were so long ago and on another website that I had forgotten about them! So maybe the toilets are okay after all.
Since then I have been on the Reddit site a few times, but no longer. That began when i found the Philly.com reporter wrote a front page anti-JW article and then returned to that forum where he was hailed as a hero! If he goes there for his “facts,” I figured, maybe I can go there and present a few that are more balanced. But I stopped. I was being a troll, and I don’t like to be a troll.
The downside of handling apostates the way we do is that we almost create an aura of mystique about them that they do not deserve. On some level, they are no more than Demas, who left Paul because he loved the present system of things. Plus, if someone, often a youth, falls for the oldest trick in the book—going somewhere because he has been advised not to—he or she comes across material that they are completely unprepared for, and may be stumbled. Thereafter few are able to help them because they don’t know what is there themselves. That’s originally why @Annabegan familiarizing herself with ‘apostate’ thinking. She had a teenage son, and did not want to find herself helpless in the event he came across hostile material & was troubled. (Last I heard, he is now an adult, doing just fine, has never displayed such curiosity, and is bemused that his mom keeps up with weirdos on the internet.)
I wrote ‘TrueTom vs the Apostates’ with the recommendation not to read it unless you were one troubled by all the bile opposers throw our way, that if you were one who could shut off the TV, pull the plug on the computer, or stuff the newspaper in the trash at a anti—JW presentation without ever giving another thought to it, then there’s no reason to read TTvtA,, but if not, well—that’s why I wrote it.
They have a mystique they do not deserve and part of that reason is we lend it to them by such insistent direction to STAY AWAY. It is good counsel, and it is scriptural counsel for sure, but everything is a matter of degree. I think it can be observed that if apostates were a huge issue in the first century (and they were—no NT writer does not deal with them, and two Bible chapters are exclusively devoted to them) then they should correspondingly be a huge issue today. Nobody has apostates so vitriolic as do Jehovah’s Witnesses. What if we didn’t have any? Wouldn’t you have to wonder why, since they are so plainly in the NT? ‘Our’ apostates exactly pattern themselves after the pattern of the first-century, and they thereby validate us. I am almost proud of ours. Ours are the best. 
The chapter ‘Who are the apostates?’ has quotes from a few scholarly types who point out that ‘apostates’ almost have to attack their former faith with brainwashing and mind-control memes, otherwise they have to explain how, if it is as bad as they now maintain it is, they could have been so stupid as to follow it in the first place. I wrote the book to forward a response with views that I had never seen presented before. I forget what the free download section is. At first it was the standard 10%, then I made the whole book free, then later 1/3–I forget what it is now.
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/917311
At long last I’m getting books into print. Don’t Know Why is available now on Amazon, Tom Irregardless will be very soon, and TTvtA after that. Alas, it is already time for TTvtA—Round 2, but it will be a long time before that sees the light of day.
I think we have a “good” assortment of “apostates” on this forum in that some of them are flat-out crazy, and the ones that aren’t are over-the-top in their venom—‘hate OCD’ is how Aruana puts it, and it is hard to argue with regard to spiritual things that it is not so. Might some be persuaded by them? I’m sure some are, but I haven’t seen it happen here. With but one negligible exception, nobody here, good guys or bad, has budged one iota in basic orientation. Surely people can see that there is not the tiniest amount of spiritual food provided by ones here who oppose, even ones who claim anointed status. Maybe you can argue that the spiritual food provided by God’s organization is not without a pebble here and there, necessitating revisions as “the light gets brighter,” but there is none whatsoever from the hostile ones here.
Some of them are broken people. @JW Insider considered one of them not long ago and felt terribly for her. That doesn’t mean that they can be fixed by human hands. Horrible suffering is endemic in the world today, and some of it has happened in a Witness context. Hopefully they will respond to present reach-out efforts from the Christian organization, but just how, or if, they will respond must remain in their court.
I am reminded of a Bashevis Singer short story in which a 19th-century Jewish settlement in Poland is paralyzed because the priest (rabbi?) cannot bring himself to sacrifice animals. He just loves them too much; he is too kind and gentle. Finally one settler tells him that it’s fine to be merciful, but he doesn’t have to be more merciful than God. 
 
 

I don’t know of any forum besides this one that is not fully skewed one way or the other. Are there any? 
There are many sites run by those who unabashedly oppose Jehovah’s people. These I would never take part in, for I would feel like a troll if I did. You have to let someone else’s point of view stand on their own website. 
That’s not to say that I have never done it. I have in the past, on an experimental basis, to see what would happen. Never so much as to be thought of a ‘regular’ anywhere. I don’t do it anymore.
I even owe @Pudgy’s friend an apology, for I told him I had commented on a hostile site maybe 3 or 4 times. It was at least 12 times, he said! No, it was 3 or 4–why on earth would I lie about that? He responded that he used to be an engineer for the municipality, and as such, he learned to be precise. I told him that if he used to be a municipal engineer and no longer was, possibly the reason was that he could not count!! Furthermore, I would hate to visit whatever city he was the waterworks engineer in, for no doubt under his stewardship there wasn’t a single toilet there that flushed!
However, much later I realized he was right. There had been over a dozen, but only 3 or 4 recently. The rest were so long ago and on another website that I had forgotten about them! So maybe the toilets are okay after all.
Since then I have been on the Reddit site a few times, but no longer. That began when i found the Philly.com reporter wrote a front page anti-JW article and then returned to that forum where he was hailed as a hero! If he goes there for his “facts,” I figured, maybe I can go there and present a few that are more balanced. But I stopped. I was being a troll, and I don’t like to be a troll.
The downside of handling apostates the way we do is that we almost create an aura of mystique about them that they do not deserve. On some level, they are no more than Demas, who left Paul because he loved the present system of things. Plus, if someone, often a youth, falls for the oldest trick in the book—going somewhere because he has been advised not to—he or she comes across material that they are completely unprepared for, and may be stumbled. Thereafter few are able to help them because they don’t know what is there themselves. That’s originally why @Annabegan familiarizing herself with ‘apostate’ thinking. She had a teenage son, and did not want to find herself helpless in the event he came across hostile material & was troubled. (Last I heard, he is now an adult, doing just fine, has never displayed such curiosity, and is bemused that his mom keeps up with weirdos on the internet.)
I wrote ‘TrueTom vs the Apostates’ with the recommendation not to read it unless you were one troubled by all the bile opposers throw our way, that if you were one who could shut off the TV, pull the plug on the computer, or stuff the newspaper in the trash at a anti—JW presentation without ever giving another thought to it, then there’s no reason to read TTvtA,, but if not, well—that’s why I wrote it.
They have a mystique they do not deserve and part of that reason is we lend it to them by such insistent direction to STAY AWAY. It is good counsel, and it is scriptural counsel for sure, but everything is a matter of degree. I think it can be observed that if apostates were a huge issue in the first century (and they were—no NT writer does not deal with them, and two Bible chapters are exclusively devoted to them) then they should correspondingly be a huge issue today. Nobody has apostates so vitriolic as do Jehovah’s Witnesses. What if we didn’t have any? Wouldn’t you have to wonder why, since they are so plainly in the NT? ‘Our’ apostates exactly pattern themselves after the pattern of the first-century, and they thereby validate us. I am almost proud of ours. Ours are the best. 
The chapter ‘Who are the apostates?’ has quotes from a few scholarly types who point out that ‘apostates’ almost have to attack their former faith with brainwashing and mind-control memes, otherwise they have to explain how, if it is as bad as they now maintain it is, they could have been so stupid as to follow it in the first place. I wrote the book to forward a response with views that I had never seen presented before. I forget what the free download section is. At first it was the standard 10%, then I made the whole book free, then later 1/3–I forget what it is now.
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/917311
At long last I’m getting books into print. Don’t Know Why is available now on Amazon, Tom Irregardless will be very soon, and TTvtA after that. Alas, it is already time for TTvtA—Round 2, but it will be a long time before that sees the light of day.
I think we have a “good” assortment of “apostates” on this forum in that some of them are flat-out crazy, and the ones that aren’t are over-the-top in their venom—‘hate OCD’ is how Aruana puts it, and it is hard to argue with regard to spiritual things that it is not so. Might some be persuaded by them? I’m sure some are, but I haven’t seen it happen here. With but one negligible exception, nobody here, good guys or bad, has budged one iota in basic orientation. Surely people can see that there is not the tiniest amount of spiritual food provided by ones here who oppose, even ones who claim anointed status. Maybe you can argue that the spiritual food provided by God’s organization is not without a pebble here and there, necessitating revisions as “the light gets brighter,” but there is none whatsoever from the hostile ones here.
Some of them are broken people. @JW Insider considered one of them not long ago and felt terribly for her. That doesn’t mean that they can be fixed by human hands. Horrible suffering is endemic in the world today, and some of it has happened in a Witness context. Hopefully they will respond to present reach-out efforts from the Christian organization, but just how, or if, they will respond must remain in their court.
I am reminded of a Bashevis Singer short story in which a 19th-century Jewish settlement in Poland is paralyzed because the priest (rabbi?) cannot bring himself to sacrifice animals. He just loves them too much; he is too kind and gentle. Finally one settler tells him that it’s fine to be merciful, but he doesn’t have to be more merciful than God. 
 
 

Exactly.
And you Arauna, do not come off as emotional at all. You come off as passionate, to be sure, but never at the expense of clear thinking.
He, on the other hand, makes so many contradictory, nonsequitur, and ridiculous statements, his thinking is so muddled that, despite my nobler instincts, I am drawn in again and again to kick him in the rear end. Accusing others of being sexist and then proving it true of himself in spades is just the latest example.
(Not to mention, no doubt, his subsequent crying like a baby that merely quoting his words is “misrepresenting” hm.)
For crying out loud, you dodo, just tell me what you mean to say and I will say it for you. (though perhaps not with the same malignant spin)