by John Aquila 133 Replies latest jw experiences
No the distinction is one of style. Like I said in a much earlier post, John adopts the position of an omniscient narrator which is a fictive stance. A factual account is usually narrated from a first/third person objective perspective.
In principle John could correct this style and thereby become more "factual".
Bohm,
You sound hot!
There is no reality/appearance distinction.
bohm may act hot and sound hot, but don't let that fool you, bohm really is hot.
Paul is it obvious? I was beginning to wonder judging by the comments. Or is it a case of: you pretend to tell me a true story and I'll pretend to believe you? The bleeding obvious is my specialist subject.
slimboyfat, I agree with you about the "omniscient narrator" position, one evident in a number of John's accounts. However, I'm ignorant about the philosophical stuff mentioned in some of the last few posts.
Consider this: John says that all the older friends of his mother whom she had told about the meeting change (except one) stopped by unexpectedly at the same time the morning after the first new meeting (as can be inferred from the account). Now, to me, if that did not happen and John knew it, then one can properly label that part of the account as being fictitious. Am I missing something?
I still maintain that that part of the account just doesn't sound factual.
FadeToBlack posted: 11 people showing up at your house is not so far fetched. If you are liked and the 'friends' feel comfortable around you, it can happen. Just recently, my wife had arranged for a couple we know to visit for lunch. Before they arrived, she got a phone call that the group from field service wanted to drop by. Right... So we end up with a boat load of people in our house for a few hours. And we live out in the country. If you lived in a city with good public transportation (I know, not likely in the US except for a few cities) as is common in Europe, you could easily get a bunch showing up in no time at the same time.
Sure, eleven people showing up is not far-fetched in some situations like the one mentioned in the quote above. That situation is entirely different, though. For example, the visit from the couple was arranged. Also, the wife received a call from the others before they showed up. As I mentioned in a previous post, it seems significant that in John's account, there was no call, nothing. All eleven sisters involved just showed up at the same time unannounced. That, to me, sounds fictional. If the rest of the story rang true, I could maybe (would still be hard) swallow that part, but the rest doesn't ring true.
Consider this: Well none of them believed her, and one in particular told my mom that since her son left Jehovah’s organization, God’s spirit was not with him anymore. She even went as far as telling my mom that probably Satan had entered my brain and was giving me delusional thoughts. My mom told her, “I not sure about that, my son was the only one of the entire elder bodies, in all the congregations that meet in our building, that went to college, and he graduated with honors.
Why in the world would the mother have responded that way? What kind of JW would respond like that? What would his having gone to college and graduated with honors have to do with it? It might be significant if they were discussing physics or grammar, but how would it bear on the issue of whether John knew whether the meeting format had changed?
