I'm posting this with Simon's permission. I wanted to post it to IslandWoman's thread "Farkel... We Need You", but it was locked before I could post.
I've included a bit of history of ex-JW-related Internet discussion boards, etc., that may be of interest to some people.
On behalf of my friends, IslandWoman, I want to say thanks for your kind words. But they will not read them.
As has been said, these folks have moved on to various places in life. A certain amount of burnout with JW nonsense is present, but in most cases they have simply moved on with life.
I agree almost completely with you, jgnat. Except that there never were any "stars" on Simon's board. Only people who were particularly mouthy and unafraid -- sometimes wrongly -- to express their opinions, even when such opinions got severely in other peoples' faces. The only "stars" that exist on a board such as this exist only in the minds of a few. But to borrow a JW expression, such "creature worship" is unworthy of anyone on this board. We know better.
To expect unity from such a diverse bunch of people as ex-JWs is naive at best. Did we not all have our fill of enforced unity -- uniformity at the point of a sword -- at the hands of the Watchtower? Why yearn for, or expect, unity from people independent enough to throw off the shackles of a destructive cult?
As for the notion that everything that needs to be said has already been said, I say: Nonsense!
There is nothing new under the sun. The latest crop of mouthy Internet apostates largely repeats what apostates of previous 'generations' have said. But there are plenty of new things, and these need to be continually brought to light, even though the basics were stated long before even Ray Franz wrote Crisis of Conscience.
So what? Doesn't the Watchtower itself teach "repetition for emphasis"? Does the newest crop of apostates need to stand on the shoulders of earlier ones? Don't they have the gumption and intelligence to build on what went before and come up with new material? You better believe they do!
Perhaps the greatest scientist who ever lived, Isaac Newton, wrote to his colleague Robert Hooke in 1676: "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." Here is a fine commencement speech that shows what I'm trying to convey: http://info-center.ccit.arizona.edu/~sypherd/Commen2000.html
And of course, all of us continually benefit from the works of such giants as Ray Franz, Jim Penton, Carl Jonsson, Gary and Heather Botting, Alan Rogerson, etc. etc. etc.
There has been a real evolution in the larger online communities of ex-JWs during the past decade. When I started posting in 1992 in the old Usenet groups talk.origins and talk.religion.misc and a few others, there were almost no ex-JWs there. There were JW critics, to be sure, but these were mostly of the traditional type, concerned mainly with doctrinal disputes over such silliness as the Trinity. But the early 1990s saw an explosion of Internet use, and along with it an explosion of ex-JWs on the Net. Interminable discussions on the various Usenet forums occasionally resulted in a JW-defender defecting. JanH was one of those.
When JanH defected from the Watchtower organization, he was disowned by his father. He soon got in touch with the Norwegian "apostates", who at that point mainly consisted of Kent Steinhaug and Norm Hovland. They, along with a core of perhaps a dozen ex-JWs, waged war against the Watchtower on a number of Usenet forums. The forum that was the focus of their efforts changed over time. In 1994 the focus was mainly on talk.religion.misc. Due to discussions on this forum, a number of JW defenders saw the truth about "the truth" and quit.
One such man started a website -- the first JW-oriented website I know of -- called "Associated Jehovah's Witnesses for Reform" -- AJWR -- which was a joke to him but was taken seriously by a lot of JWs. Some of the JWs who visited that early website soon started one of their own, which turned into the infamous site "H2O" (I really miss that site). In the meantime, many JW-critics gravitated towards a Usenet email-based list called "Jesus-Witnesses", which for several years produced scathing written criticisms of the Watchtower from ex-JWs and non-JWs alike. Many of the regulars on that site gravitated to H2O when it came solidly online. Another group of ex-JWs took a hint from AJWR and produced the website "Associated Jehovah's Witnesses for Reform on Blood" (AJWRB), which is alive and kicking today. Eventually, H2O ran its course, and many participants ended up here on Simon's board.
About the beginning of 1995 an email list called "philia" was started. A lot of people who are still active in the JW-critical arena gravitated to this list, and many lasting friendships and working relationships formed. For example, many posters are familiar with Tim Campbell's website, "Beyond Jehovah's Witnesses". Tim got his start back then, and has helped countless people deal with JW issues. A site owner called DocBob also got started around that time. These guys got much of their early material from private discussions on "philia" and from the various Usenet groups.
During this time, Kent Steinhaug started his website WatchtowerObserver.org. It eventually became the largest repository in the world for online JW-critical material. Many, many people contributed to this site. Kent remained a large thorn in the side of Watchtower for many years, even posting the text of the semi-secret elders manual "Pay Attention To Yourselves and to All the Flock". At the instigation of Watchtower he was visited by legal authorities for his trouble, but they soon saw things his way.
Jan Haugland also started his own website, which contained scathing material on a number of subjects, including a concise criticism of the Society's ridiculous Creation book, and a concise summary of various Watchtower dates that -- without exception -- proved false.
Norm Hovland contributed many, many articles on the stupidities of JWism over the years. His writings appear today on the website http://www.geocities.com/osarsif/index2.htm which I think is a prime repository for JW-critical material. Many of my own writings also appear there. The site owner, Osarsif, has culled a number articles from H2O and Simon's board.
The above-mentioned three Norwegians have certainly got in the faces of a lot of people on ex-JW sites. While some may bristle at the prickliness of these guys, it is also true that their "2x4 upside the head" approach has awakened many sleeping JWs. It has also awakened plenty of sleeping ex-JWs, even though the latter might not appreciate it at first.
Uzzah, your comments about volatile things being stored together are well taken. I think that too much water has been passed for anything to change, but that's the norm for Net forums.
What I would like to see is for new people to continue taking up the fight against Watchtower criminality and driving home to the media that JWs are an extremely destructive cult. Plenty of people on this board have already done so and will continue. Only by a continuing infusion of "new blood" into the ex-JW/'apostate'/JW-critical movement can this continue.
On a more personal note, in the summer of 1997 my wife Julie and I had the good fortune to find ourselves able to travel to Norway for a 3-day visit with Kent, Norm, Jan and Jan's then-wife Kirsten. All I can say is that we had a blast, and that Norwegians are incredibly hospitable. We all rented a boat and tooled around the Oslo-Fiord for the better part of three days. Drank a lot of booze, too.
For those who think ill of such people as I've mentioned in this post, you may not entirely know what you're talking about, since you only have a limited picture of them. That goes for you too, Simon. As I told you in PM, I think you ought to be more objective (said with a huge grain of salt since I know what kind of poop you have to deal with every day). But you're as human as the rest of us. As many have said before, if we all sat down in a pub and had a few pints of that wonderful English brew, a lot of past unpleasantness would be forgotten.
AlanF