TrueTomHarley

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

I studied with an African-American college student who was later baptized. We studied just before the Thursday meeting and I drove him straight from the study. He had all these skin bumps on his neck from shaving "in-grown" hairs and he would quickly shave just before the meeting. He often had to switch shirts at the last minute because of the mess of blood that came from those freshly shaved bumps. If he tried shaving like that just before getting married he would have been a "bridegroom of blood."

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

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

From what I remember in the bible reading - it was a death sentence to not be circumcised.  Moses did not take care as meticulously as he should have.  His wife was astute and saved the day!  

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

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

What’s wrong with it?

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

Reminds me of the time I came to a door that had two no soliciting signs. I rang the doorbell and asked them if they'd like to buy another no soliciting sign. The guy laughed and took the magazines.

What a stupid statement!
“Interpretation of Bible text” is not what is on trial here. What—we are all required to interpret Bible text in a certain way? 
Jehovah’s Witnesses are a ‘one true faith” religion. There are many ‘one true faith’ religions. As such, they are known to criticize other religions, as all ‘one true faith’ religions criticize other religions. It is a valid read of the Scriptures that any perusal will suggest just might be true—that there is one true faith.
But if they would “not allow any faiths” they would call for violence against them. They would try to get politicians to pass laws against them. Instead, the “weapons” of Jehovah’s Witnesses are words only. Tell them ‘no’ and they go away.
Joel Engardio has stated how Witnesses provide a fine example, perhaps our last hope, of how groups with strongly polarized views can yet co-exist peacefully.
There is a difference between criticizing and disallowing. The back of a cigarette package contains a very strong warning agains smoking. Does that mean people are not allowed to smoke?
 

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

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

Even imagining these accusations to be one hundred true, can any sane person say, that this is in the least comparable to flying planes into the WTC?
 

Not crumbled completely, however. Here is a German Court that ruled how most of the “anti-cult” organization, FECRIS—most of their charges against Jehovah’s Witnesses were false.
https://bitterwinter.org/fecris-sentenced-in-germany-for-defaming-jehovahs-witnesses/
It is the VP of that organization who rides high in Russia and is a prime instigator of the ban on Witnesses. Would that the ruling had more teeth, but it is still good to show that the world of judicial reason does not side with such anti-cult fanatics. All the other “cults” FECRIS opposes—Witnesses disagree with them all, and they with us. But we prefer to ‘do battle’ with them in the marketplace of ideas, not by ruling them illegal and muzzling them. Whatever ruling illegal is to be done will be done by God, not any humans.

I would love to be one of them, and I have more than once contacted certain ones—Introvigne, Folk, and Chrysiddes. They all ignore me.
I don’t hammer at their door, nor do I take their non-response personally. I tend to think that they wish to maintain a scholarly detached independence. Whereas I unambiguously champion a certain New Relgion, they stand in defense of them all, and thus may wish to keep any specific apologist at arm’s length.
Or maybe they have just concluded that my books suck. That certainly was the case with Dear Mr. Putin. Damage control after such a debacle to present the new and improved Don’t Know Why We Persecute is anything but a slam-dunk. You must persuade people who perhaps have previously written you off to give you another look. That’s why someone should have told me that Dear Mr. Putin sucked;

The one whom I have hammered at his door to no avail (as much as 5 or 6 times cumulatively) is George Chrysiddes. The reason for added persistence here is that we had an email correspondence. On Twitter, I came across his saying to someone that he wished he knew a real live rank-and-file Witness. “Here I am,” I said like Isaiah, and we had some nice chit-chats. He faithfully read Tom Irregardless and Me, commenting via email as he did so, and wrote what is far-and-away the more original review of it (under his informal pen name Ivor E Tower).
It’s the last I ever heard from him. Maybe he too, read Dear Mr Putin and concluded it stunk. (Of course, its always possible that all of these guys have read Don’t Know Why and have concluded that it stinks, too—yikes!—but that is a scenario I prefer not to entertain. I gave it my best shot.)
My second book, No Fake News, stunk, too. Maybe that was a turn-off for George even before Dear Mr. Putin.  It was written too hastily, too sloppily. Even after sinking some time in a rewrite, I have removed it. Not sure right now if it will ever see the light of day again. I have several other irons in the fire ahead of it, so that for all practical purposes, that one is not in the fire. Or if the fire is literal, maybe it is.
Any day now (I’ve been saying this forever) Don’t Know Why will be in Amazon print. Just now I cannot make Word behave to do the bells and whistles version with fancy headers and whatnot. If I settle for a simplified version, I am fine, and I just may have to do that. The one who does my covers referred me to someone who wants $285 to format it just so. It’s not unreasonable at all, yet I think I’ll draw the line. I spend enough as it is and I’m self-published. I may have to settle for a certain rough-hewn look, which is certainly reinforced anyway by my many battles with proofing. To proof it professionally can cost thousands.
Alas, nobody likes me. Even Liebster blocks me. I probably can patch that up, and will someday. Most likely they came along whilst I was bickering with some villains and were scandalized. Or maybe they, too, read Dear Mr Putin and thought it stunk, so that I became to them “an indiscreet brother.”
Only the Librarian likes me (that old hen). I may be a bad pupil, but I am her pupil, and she doesn’t forget that. Oh—and I have Cesar in my back pocket, too. But then, who doesn’t?

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

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

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

Yes. His general goal is always to minimize any negative press about NRMs. He lists "Mostly Against [Their Own] Members" as one of those minimizing factors. This is why I said:
If in politics, for example, a dictator were to bomb or gas a part of their own population, the world would point out how terrible it was that "he gassed his own people." It would not be considered a factor that minimizes guilt.

I would love to be one of them, and I have more than once contacted certain ones—Introvigne, Folk, and Chrysiddes. They all ignore me.
I don’t hammer at their door, nor do I take their non-response personally. I tend to think that they wish to maintain a scholarly detached independence. Whereas I unambiguously champion a certain New Relgion, they stand in defense of them all, and thus may wish to keep any specific apologist at arm’s length.
Or maybe they have just concluded that my books suck. That certainly was the case with Dear Mr. Putin. Damage control after such a debacle to present the new and improved Don’t Know Why We Persecute is anything but a slam-dunk. You must persuade people who perhaps have previously written you off to give you another look. That’s why someone should have told me that Dear Mr. Putin sucked;

The one whom I have hammered at his door to no avail (as much as 5 or 6 times cumulatively) is George Chrysiddes. The reason for added persistence here is that we had an email correspondence. On Twitter, I came across his saying to someone that he wished he knew a real live rank-and-file Witness. “Here I am,” I said like Isaiah, and we had some nice chit-chats. He faithfully read Tom Irregardless and Me, commenting via email as he did so, and wrote what is far-and-away the more original review of it (under his informal pen name Ivor E Tower).
It’s the last I ever heard from him. Maybe he too, read Dear Mr Putin and concluded it stunk. (Of course, its always possible that all of these guys have read Don’t Know Why and have concluded that it stinks, too—yikes!—but that is a scenario I prefer not to entertain. I gave it my best shot.)
My second book, No Fake News, stunk, too. Maybe that was a turn-off for George even before Dear Mr. Putin.  It was written too hastily, too sloppily. Even after sinking some time in a rewrite, I have removed it. Not sure right now if it will ever see the light of day again. I have several other irons in the fire ahead of it, so that for all practical purposes, that one is not in the fire. Or if the fire is literal, maybe it is.
Any day now (I’ve been saying this forever) Don’t Know Why will be in Amazon print. Just now I cannot make Word behave to do the bells and whistles version with fancy headers and whatnot. If I settle for a simplified version, I am fine, and I just may have to do that. The one who does my covers referred me to someone who wants $285 to format it just so. It’s not unreasonable at all, yet I think I’ll draw the line. I spend enough as it is and I’m self-published. I may have to settle for a certain rough-hewn look, which is certainly reinforced anyway by my many battles with proofing. To proof it professionally can cost thousands.
Alas, nobody likes me. Even Liebster blocks me. I probably can patch that up, and will someday. Most likely they came along whilst I was bickering with some villains and were scandalized. Or maybe they, too, read Dear Mr Putin and thought it stunk, so that I became to them “an indiscreet brother.”
Only the Librarian likes me (that old hen). I may be a bad pupil, but I am her pupil, and she doesn’t forget that. Oh—and I have Cesar in my back pocket, too. But then, who doesn’t?

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

Is the pope Catholic? Of course they do. It is the clearing-house anticult organization of French government sponsorship, and its VP is the driver of anti-JW narrative in Russia.
The German Court looked it over and judged that Jehovah’s Witnesses were being defamed. It was not their mission to make any judgment upon the faith itself. Doubtless it reasoned that, in the event that Jehovah’s Witnesses are unorthodox, even weird, one can easily solve the problem by not being one of them, and if one already is, to quit and go elsewhere. It’s a big world.

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

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