TrueTomHarley

It is a great nuisance, let me tell you, but it has always been. Here I am trying to do nothing but think about God and they keep batting eyes at me.

It is a great nuisance, let me tell you, but it has always been. Here I am trying to do nothing but think about God and they keep batting eyes at me.

Several years ago we visited San Diego for a few days. It was atypically cold and the locals were all apologizing for it.
I did learn something about % chances of rain there. If the weather forecaster said 80% chance of rain, and thereby you thought the day would be rained out, what it meant was that the day would be pure sun expect for about 15 minutes when it would rain like a monsoon, after which it would be pure sun.
Where I come from if they say 80% chance of rain, that means it will rain all day today plus all day tomorrow plus all day yesterday. When the sun at last appears, those who are superstitious will be terrified at the ball of fire from the sky.
The doctor who wrote the White House with the medical regimen that quickly cured Trump when the latter came down with kiss-of-death Covid thinks there will some day be the equivalent of Nuremberg trials for those who let hundreds of thousands of people die by discrediting and even withholding treatment of an eminently treatable disease.

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)

Oh sure, says the dodo who has accused me of being sexist. All that remains is to tell the little women to leave the thinking to us menfolk, who know how to do it.

It is a great nuisance, let me tell you, but it has always been. Here I am trying to do nothing but think about God and they keep batting eyes at me.

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)

It is a great nuisance, let me tell you, but it has always been. Here I am trying to do nothing but think about God and they keep batting eyes at me.

It is a great nuisance, let me tell you, but it has always been. Here I am trying to do nothing but think about God and they keep batting eyes at me.

Oh sure, says the dodo who has accused me of being sexist. All that remains is to tell the little women to leave the thinking to us menfolk, who know how to do it.

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)

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)

Just as I stated. It has become ‘all roads lead to heaven’ with him. That didn’t take long.
I’ll bet already with him Jesus has died upon a cross.

Just as I stated. It has become ‘all roads lead to heaven’ with him. That didn’t take long.
I’ll bet already with him Jesus has died upon a cross.

And what were people smoking in those pipes?

It was 4:45 am and I decided to watch this video. Very strange. It's the first I ever heard of such a "brother" at Walkill Bethel. While I was at Brooklyn Bethel I never had an opportunity to go to Walkill but once, and that was only to look at a piece of typesetting equipment being designed by some brothers up there. I couldn't believe anyone there had been given so much freedom to work on their own projects, and here was a group of several brothers doing just that, and that particular project (electronic typesetting) turned out to be a great success soon adopted by the WTS.
If someone knew the Walkill Bethel family during the years in question, it wouldn't be too hard to figure out who this man with the notebooks was. If I heard the video narration accurately (at 2.5x speed) it sounds like he had a brother and a wife also at Walkill, and he implies perhaps even another relative. Even at Brooklyn, during the time I was there (1976 to 1982) the turnover rate was very high. A complaint in the Home Office was that Elders all around the country were quick to approve their "problem cases" from their local congregations in the hopes that Bethel would "fix" them. Even the group I came in with had a brother who kept asking me to join his new study group because he realized he was now anointed. I assume there were others. In fact, I knew several brothers who were involved in private Bible study groups usually in the room of a brother from the Writing Dept, or Service Dept, and who were very upset (myself included) that a "crazy" brother was going to ruin this wonderful opportunity to study with highly experienced brothers, because this one "crazy" one was spreading strange ideas that might end up getting all of the private study groups closed down because of "one bad apple." I knew about 10 brothers who had come from my home state in nearby circuits, and three of them returned with serious mental problems, which may not have been in evidence before they were approved to be accepted to Bethel.
So I don't doubt that brothers who had strange ideas about themselves could have existed, and might have been protected to some degree by a close friend, roommate, wife or relative, who was there with them.
But I think the video narration breaks down in accuracy when he talks about Brooklyn Bethel's tunnels as if they were something secret. I was on the tour guide list, so every week or so, I was called away from work to handle one of the tours. Fairly often, I would hear the visitors ask, "Are you really going to show us the secret tunnels???" Or, "Is it true that Bethel has secret tunnels?" And my response was that of course we are going to see them, we'll use them to get between 124, 107, and The Towers Hotel. The main reason for the tunnels was to avoid airing Bethel's dirty laundry. And to avoid airing the clean laundry, too. That's because the laundry room was connected to the tunnels between the buildings, and this way all deliveries of laundry to and from the residence rooms could be rolled through the tunnels and never have to go through the otherwise quiet and up-scale neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights. The neighborhood thought it was bad enough that Bethel factory workers crossed back and forth after breakfast, at lunch and dinnertime. (No tunnels to the "117 Adams" factories or "25 and 30 CH Squibb bldgs.") Imagine 1,000 people all crossing the street level at once around 6:55am to be seated for 7:00am text and breakfast!
There was absolutely nothing secret about the tunnels. No places for sinister meetings. They were at least 7 feet high, at least 10 feet wide, well-lit and constantly traversed.
I don't know if or care if "Pearl" begins to respond to people without thinking what she is going to say in advance. That description might be something odd as @Thinking has said, or it might be a lot like the way some of the brothers in Writing or Correspondence (part of Service Dept at the time) answered questions. When a question came in by letter, they were expected to just start writing without referring to notes or any preparation, and I knew brothers who could write pages and pages with scripture references and never prepare for the question specifically. One brother in Writing, who had written large portions of the Aid Book also wrote Watchtower articles and convention material this way, even the study articles. He'd be given a theme to write about and often just started typing at about 70 wpm and ended up with the entire study article, scriptures and all, requiring no edits.
The idea that there were "channelers" at Bethel who were given any credence at all, might be a conflation of mixed up information about the Seola book which the WTS rewrote as "Angels and Women" and actually promoted it as a "channeled" book. There were also the "Radio" therapy machines promoted by the WTS, which were NOT promoted as any kind of spiriitism, but non WTS versions of these machines sometimes were. Then there were opposers of JWs who made much of the admissions by the editor of the Golden Age magazine that he was once demon-possessed which he says caused him to disagree with Russell on an important matter. (It's in a WT-printed letter and a Convention Report.) And, it's a long shot, but some of the conflation could have come from Rutherford himself who had claimed that since 1918, Jehovah's holy spirit was removed from "his holy temple" and now "lightnings" were made to "flash and shine" through direct communication with angels. (That teaching didn't last for too many years.) And then there was one GB member from about 1974 to 2000+ who sometimes (but rarely) suffered from a kind of epilepsy apparently and would appear to be in a kind of trance, which affected his speech patterns. His wife would tell him, "Back to earth, [name removed], come on down back to earth."
I could see how one or more of these things could be twisted into a rumor of the kind that results in stories.

No surprise there. She has made some converts here though, PSomH, Srecko, and KickFace, for example, fall all over her. @Patiently waiting for Truth,your TrueAnointed has revealed herself. However, I’m not sure she has any doctrine other than expressing jealousy over those who have a bigger stage than she does. And she channels. Where does that come from?
I have incorrectly called her ‘woman from the hills.’ My bad.
Seriously, it is such a weird and obsessed sort of writing—I don’t know how anyone can fail to spot a rat. @JW Insider @Arauna @Anna @The Librarian @Pudgy
Given the ‘channeling’ concerns Thinking raised, one would think conversing with a bot would be more productive, not to mention spiritually safer.

No surprise there. She has made some converts here though, PSomH, Srecko, and KickFace, for example, fall all over her. @Patiently waiting for Truth,your TrueAnointed has revealed herself. However, I’m not sure she has any doctrine other than expressing jealousy over those who have a bigger stage than she does. And she channels. Where does that come from?
I have incorrectly called her ‘woman from the hills.’ My bad.
Seriously, it is such a weird and obsessed sort of writing—I don’t know how anyone can fail to spot a rat. @JW Insider @Arauna @Anna @The Librarian @Pudgy
Given the ‘channeling’ concerns Thinking raised, one would think conversing with a bot would be more productive, not to mention spiritually safer.

Oh, hogwash. He is all the time. Both aspects of his life have instructional value and both are often referred to.
It is true that someone here who claimed to know you personally described you as “demon-possessed”  I admit that the thought had never occurred to me. JWI, to his ‘educated’ credit (or possibly naivety) restated the description  (if true) with medical terminology.

No surprise there. She has made some converts here though, PSomH, Srecko, and KickFace, for example, fall all over her. @Patiently waiting for Truth,your TrueAnointed has revealed herself. However, I’m not sure she has any doctrine other than expressing jealousy over those who have a bigger stage than she does. And she channels. Where does that come from?
I have incorrectly called her ‘woman from the hills.’ My bad.
Seriously, it is such a weird and obsessed sort of writing—I don’t know how anyone can fail to spot a rat. @JW Insider @Arauna @Anna @The Librarian @Pudgy
Given the ‘channeling’ concerns Thinking raised, one would think conversing with a bot would be more productive, not to mention spiritually safer.

He hedged his own call by saying if they are not called to account in this life, they will be in the afterlife.

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

Yes.
No.
Okay. Banter doesn’t necessarily translate well. It can be taken for serious remarks. SpaceMerchant is from a region and culture substantially different than mine. He is also more serious in his demeanor than me. Therefore, he might think I am making fun or him or his moniker (since the topic is aliens.) I was not. That’s why I reached out to him to clarify. It is because I have regard for him that I did this. I don’t have the same high regard for everyone.
You have chosen the right forum to study, for there are several genuinely strange people here, and so what can be expected of their interacting?
You’ll have to give examples of this. It is nothing I try to do and if I’ve fallen into it, it was accidental.
On the other hand, there are some here I call “villains,” and I genuinely don’t like them, because their purpose here is to trash what I hold dear. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t wear like an old shoe at times, and so here and there a comment might be taken for comraderie.
Sometimes you do well to stay with your first instincts.
No.
This place is a writing workshop for me, part of a hobby. ‘There is a gaggle of regulars here, some of them I like, some I don’t, some i like more than others, and some I dislike more than others. I’m a communicator and I gots to communicate. Stuff I first formulate here sometimes ends up elsewhere, for I have my own blog and have even written a few ebooks. Everyone else has his or her own rationale for being here too. 
My practice here is to divide people into three classes. 1) those who have tasted and seen that Jehovah is good, 2) those who have tasted and seen that he is bad, and 3) those who have never tasted. It is an application on Psalm 34:8: “Taste and see that Jehovah is good, O YOU people; Happy is the able-bodied man that takes refuge in him.”
Now, #1 and #2 will speak a language that #3, through lack of experience, does not. For that reason, there are probably not too many #3s around—they would soon get bored silly. From the standpoint of one who tries to be a #1, loyal to God as JWs understand him, I do not believe it is right to earnestly engage with those #2s who have tasted and spit it out the fine food. Maybe you know both the scriptures and the counsel behind this stand.
So, if I reply, I often don’t speak to them as much as I speak past them or even about them, as though they were not present. Or I ignore them completely to make another point of my own. This might easily give the impression of a pompous elitist schmuck to someone sympathetic to their point of view. But I am not elitist. I suppose I come off as cocky sometimes. Sorry.
I go on the assumption—I think it is correct—that this is a forum run by a Witness, admittedly an avant-garde one, who allows “apostate” comments, and thus Jehovah’s Witnesses are the ‘good guys.’ If it was the other way around, if it was an “apostate” site that allowed Witness comments, I would not be around, for I would think myself a troll for doing so.
So this is my site, in effect, not their site. I don’t try to bully. But I suppose when the besiegers have cast their ladders against the castle wall and I pour out the boiling oil upon them it might seem that way.

I will vouch for Tom…he’s a writer…and he banters…he’s also very genuine…yes he can talk a bit harsh at times…but I’ve also seen him be enormously kind …very tactful….and even unbelievably humble…a trait I admire greatly.

Yes.
No.
Okay. Banter doesn’t necessarily translate well. It can be taken for serious remarks. SpaceMerchant is from a region and culture substantially different than mine. He is also more serious in his demeanor than me. Therefore, he might think I am making fun or him or his moniker (since the topic is aliens.) I was not. That’s why I reached out to him to clarify. It is because I have regard for him that I did this. I don’t have the same high regard for everyone.
You have chosen the right forum to study, for there are several genuinely strange people here, and so what can be expected of their interacting?
You’ll have to give examples of this. It is nothing I try to do and if I’ve fallen into it, it was accidental.
On the other hand, there are some here I call “villains,” and I genuinely don’t like them, because their purpose here is to trash what I hold dear. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t wear like an old shoe at times, and so here and there a comment might be taken for comraderie.
Sometimes you do well to stay with your first instincts.
No.
This place is a writing workshop for me, part of a hobby. ‘There is a gaggle of regulars here, some of them I like, some I don’t, some i like more than others, and some I dislike more than others. I’m a communicator and I gots to communicate. Stuff I first formulate here sometimes ends up elsewhere, for I have my own blog and have even written a few ebooks. Everyone else has his or her own rationale for being here too. 
My practice here is to divide people into three classes. 1) those who have tasted and seen that Jehovah is good, 2) those who have tasted and seen that he is bad, and 3) those who have never tasted. It is an application on Psalm 34:8: “Taste and see that Jehovah is good, O YOU people; Happy is the able-bodied man that takes refuge in him.”
Now, #1 and #2 will speak a language that #3, through lack of experience, does not. For that reason, there are probably not too many #3s around—they would soon get bored silly. From the standpoint of one who tries to be a #1, loyal to God as JWs understand him, I do not believe it is right to earnestly engage with those #2s who have tasted and spit it out the fine food. Maybe you know both the scriptures and the counsel behind this stand.
So, if I reply, I often don’t speak to them as much as I speak past them or even about them, as though they were not present. Or I ignore them completely to make another point of my own. This might easily give the impression of a pompous elitist schmuck to someone sympathetic to their point of view. But I am not elitist. I suppose I come off as cocky sometimes. Sorry.
I go on the assumption—I think it is correct—that this is a forum run by a Witness, admittedly an avant-garde one, who allows “apostate” comments, and thus Jehovah’s Witnesses are the ‘good guys.’ If it was the other way around, if it was an “apostate” site that allowed Witness comments, I would not be around, for I would think myself a troll for doing so.
So this is my site, in effect, not their site. I don’t try to bully. But I suppose when the besiegers have cast their ladders against the castle wall and I pour out the boiling oil upon them it might seem that way.