ikhandi,
You hit the nail on the head dantheman. I knew the answer to the question before I posted it here. Just curious as to what others had to say. Its up to you, myself, and everyone else on this board to decide what they believe to be the real truth and what is in fact a blatant lie. In essence time will tell.
You ask an interesting question and Dantheman also underlines what is a the base of all WTS claims, that is that they ( in essence the Governing Body), are the only persons on this planet with whom God is having any dealings with and that the rest are all misled by Satan. This is not an unusual claim for religions, most of who start out with the assumption that all religions are based on lies, except our own.
All religions in one way or another base the tenets of their beliefs on interpretation, be it of Holy Books, tradition, folklore etc. Religion is after all just humankind’s method of trying to deal with mystery.
When persons say that the WTS religion is based on 'lies', they are not necessarily discussing issues of Biblical interpretation but issues of WTS methodology.
The WTS own definition of lying is a good starting point in trying to make sense of this issue. They define lying as 'withholding the truth from someone who deserves to know it'. This definition of course, allows for many things to take place within the walls of the WTS that would be viewed as dishonest to most people, but not necessarily to the WTS.
I will give an example. When the WTS published its most recent version of the 'Creation' book, it presented many quotations from scientists and authorities in defense of its creationist stance. One XJW researcher took it upon himself to do the painstaking work of comparing what was actually said, to what was actually quoted and noted scores of incidences of quotations being misused and manipulated to mean the opposite which the author intended. Of course this is not a unique methodology that the WTS used just for this book and they have often found themselves threatened with Lawsuits for doing a similar thing in other pieces of literature that they publish. The William Barclay incident comes to mind immediately. This is described as intellectual dishonesty, or lying. Once the WTS realized that its books were being dissected by 'opposers', they immediately refrained from presenting a bibliography in the appendix at the back of their more 'research' oriented books. These days, they often do not even name the person they are quoting, let alone the publication the quotation came from when they try to validate their view. They might write something like this, 'A professor in France said that the JW's are among the most balanced persons in the community'. Why did they do this? I think that the answer is quite obvious. They are well aware of what they were doing and it is dishonest.
Another way in which they lie is to paint all those who leave the Organization as weak in faith, proud, selfish, having an ulterior motive etc. etc. They will not allow for persons turning their back on the WTS out of principle, as this might lead to an exodus from the WTS, so they invent lies about them as a group, and often as in the case of Ray Franz about them as individuals.
Another example which I alluded to on another thread was when the WTS lost its court case in which they entered as ‘friends of the court’ with Jimmy Swaggart, who was defending his right to sell religious literature without paying tax on the profits. He lost his case and subsequently so did the WTS. Within days they introduced the donation only system of distributing the literature and the food-free assemblies. What did the average publisher know of this? Well, just that a ‘simplification in procedure’ had taken place. Of course many of us closer to Bethels knew what was going on but were instructed not to discuss the matter.
What you begin to see ikahandi, is a pattern of inherent dishonesty which as you learn more and research more deeply becomes miserably apparent. It actually holds the Organization together and as more of their lies and methodology of dishonesty come to light, then they seek to ‘spin’ it to the average JW’s in a way that scurrilously distorts the truth.
An example of this. I was speaking with an elder last week who, when I mentioned the problems with child-abuse within the WTS exposed in certain TV programs, told me that the CO’s had been instructed from their prospective Headquarters to make sure that the elders told any JW’s asking about this issue that it was ‘lies and propaganda from our opposers’. Clearly this is damage control, just a clearly this is lying.
Best regards - HS
PS - KAZ - welcome to the board - nice to 'read' you.
PPS - Please forgive my formatting problems, I think that they are now finally fixed!