Howdy,
I'm looking for Kingdom Ministry's from 1998 through the present. If anyone is quitting the JWs and wants to get rid of these, please contact me at alanf00@home.com . I even-a pay-a some money. Thank-a-you bery much!
AlanF
Posts by AlanF
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6Looking For KMs
by AlanF inhowdy,.
i'm looking for kingdom ministry's from 1998 through the present.
if anyone is quitting the jws and wants to get rid of these, please contact me at alanf00@home.com .
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89
God not only condoned mass murder, he ordered it
by Kent ingod not only condoned mass murder, he ordered it .
i notice that many people here have claimed that "god is not a murderer.
god does not condone or plan the brutal murder of children!
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AlanF
According to the eminent historian Dr. Suess, the Grinch was in the habit of stealing Christmas. Now the Grinch has accumulated followers who by divine providence came to be called Grinchians. The prime goal of Grinchians is to gather proselytes for the Grinch so that Christmas may be stolen every year. Grinchians' holy book and instruction manual is How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
Now, there exist many heretics who do not believe in the Grinch or in Grinchian principles or in the divine inspiration of their 'bible'. Ultimately the Grinch will harshly judge and then kill these heretics. In the meantime it behooves all men to put faith in the Grinch, for it would be foolish to take a chance that the Grinch is imaginary. What does anyone have to lose by believing and being Grinchlike?
Some heretics have arrogantly dared to judge the Grinch and how well Grinchians follow the Grinch. Such ones should shut up because they don't even believe in the Grinch and his holy words. Such ones will never understand why they should shut up until the Grinch comes in his final judgment and puts them on their knees immediately before he executes divine judgment upon them.
Men, everwhere, repent! For the Kingdom of the Grinch will come upon you as thief in the night! Do not take a chance on losing everlasting life in the Grinch's blessed Kingdom!
A Grinchian
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11
Get Rid Of Old WT Books?
by sawthelight ini havn't been to the kigdumb hall in 3.5 years and have no intention of ever going back.
i have a collection of some of the rainbow books from da judge as well as da judges edited copies of 6 0f the 7 studies in the scripturs.
should i get rid of them?
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AlanF
The best thing would be to donate them to a charitable cause that would use them properly. Get in touch with Randy Watters at freeminds.org . Otherwise get in touch with me and we can make an arrangement.
AlanF
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12
God no god? Scholarly pseudo schorlarly?
by D wiltshire infirst off i beleive in god's existance.. that being said, let me proceed.. there is much so-called scholarly debate on both sides, but lately on this forum it has been brought out what scholarly and pseudo-scholarly is.. scholarly: compiles facts then makes deduction based on all facts as best as unbiasedly possible.. pseudo-scholarly: makes deduction then compiles selected facts that support deduction, giving little validity to the contrary.. .
so my point is if these definitions are true then the only one that can provide scholarly work on the existance of god is an agnostic since those from the other 2 camps fall in the pseudo-scholarly collectors of facts.. i admit that my beleif is from selected facts and a discounting of others that i feel quite probably are wrong, but not from facts always but because i'm not a scientist and don't keep up with all the data availible, it would be so so tireing for me.
to me in my mind it works.. so then can either camp(the beleiver, or nonbeleiver) prove that they are unbiased and that they collect facts and look at them dispassionatly?.
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AlanF
Hello, D Wiltshire:
: What are the stated premises?
They are the definitions you gave of "scholarly" and "pseudo-scholarly", which you referred to in the premise of your "if - then" statement:
:: So my point is if these definitions are true then the only one that can provide scholarly work on the existance of God ...
In other words, what I said was that your conclusion that "the only one that can provide..." does not follow from the definitions you gave.
: So as you state that Scholar is just a label that one attaches to himself. I may have misunderstood you so please don't take me the wrong way. So is it just a self applied label?
I did not imply or mean to imply anything about who applies these labels. My comments were about definitions, which are almost self-evidently true. Application of such labels is a whole 'nother ball game, since it involves judgments about things that are the subjects of the arguments themselves. It involves deciding just what evidence supports what conclusions and whether a particular conclusion follows from the evidence given. It involves deciding just what "biased" means, but such a decision is often difficult to impossible to make with certainty.
Sometimes it's easy to establish bias in an argument. For example, if a large body of evidence is available, which contains material positive, negative and neutral towards a particular conclusion, and someone writes an essay that claims to be an objective look at the issue but leaves out all negative or neutral evidence, then it's easy to establish that the writer is biased and non-objective. But if some of the negative evidence is hard to come by, it's not so clear that the writer is biased. There are any number of factors that can weigh on whether a writer is biased or not, scholarly or pseudo-scholarly.
So applying a label is a matter of judgment for each person. I usually judge that young-earth creationists are extremely biased, pseudo-scholarly writers because I've seen countless times that they carefully select their evidence and ignore what they can't deal with. On the other hand, a committed YEC will claim that their favored writers are objective and that non-YEC scientists are extremely biased.
Since there is no authoritative, world wide organization that renders unassailable judgments about what is "scholarly" and what isn't, it's up to each individual to accumulate enough information to make his own judgments. So these labels can be applied by others or by oneself.
In the case of your son-in-law claiming to have done "years of scholarly research", he might sincerely believe his claim, or he might just be saying that to get you off his case by pretending to have done more than he really did. You and I know very well what "scholarly research" tends to be for JWs -- reading WTS publications and nothing more. Perhaps, if the JW is unusually well motivated, he may go to a library and look up a few references and confirm that the words between the quotation marks are correct. But most of the time he won't make the effort to understand the original quotation and then judge for himself whether the WTS writer used the quotation correctly. In any case, you and I would judge that this self-proclaimed "scholarly" research is "pseudo-scholarly" because we can point to what we feel are biased "research" methods -- methods that serve only to confirm what a person already wants to believe. JWs can often be shown to engage in pseudo-scholarly research by challenging them to show, in the face of negative evidence, that a particular WTS conclusion is correct. Often they will fail to understand, or claim to fail to understand, simple points of logic or evidence. This is proof to you and me that the JW is biased.
So your son-in-law may have convinced himself that he did "scholarly" research, and if he really believes this he would not be lying when he says he did. But the JW mindset is screwy enough that, as you pointed out, a JW can know intellectually that the WTS tells lies and yet blow it off as if it were nothing. Their minds then convince them that nothing is wrong, that lies are the truth. Is a person lying when he engages in such massive Orwellian doublethink? That's a difficult judgment to make, since we who were once JWs can look back on our own forays into doublethink and know now that we were lying to ourselves, but remember that we were not conscious of telling lies to others when we were still under the spell. In other words, doublethink allows a person to simultaneously lie and tell the truth, while being conscious only of telling the truth, and yet being able on a moment's notice to change "truth" and immediately forget the change.
If this makes sense, great. If not, get hold of George Orwell's books Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm. They show what this sort of mind control is all about.
AlanF
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48
Eulogy for My Father
by Farkel inon tuesday, august 4, 2001 at 3:42.a.m.
mst, duane floyd checketts, 77 died in his sleep due to complications from pneumonia.
he is survived by his wife bette and two children, douglas checketts, patty smith, and 8 grandchildren.. duane, who was fondly called duke by everyone who knew him was born in farmington, utah on march 8, 1924. his father floyd, was one of 10 children raised in a tiny house built by his own mormon father who immigrated in the early 1860's from birmingham, england.
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12
God no god? Scholarly pseudo schorlarly?
by D wiltshire infirst off i beleive in god's existance.. that being said, let me proceed.. there is much so-called scholarly debate on both sides, but lately on this forum it has been brought out what scholarly and pseudo-scholarly is.. scholarly: compiles facts then makes deduction based on all facts as best as unbiasedly possible.. pseudo-scholarly: makes deduction then compiles selected facts that support deduction, giving little validity to the contrary.. .
so my point is if these definitions are true then the only one that can provide scholarly work on the existance of god is an agnostic since those from the other 2 camps fall in the pseudo-scholarly collectors of facts.. i admit that my beleif is from selected facts and a discounting of others that i feel quite probably are wrong, but not from facts always but because i'm not a scientist and don't keep up with all the data availible, it would be so so tireing for me.
to me in my mind it works.. so then can either camp(the beleiver, or nonbeleiver) prove that they are unbiased and that they collect facts and look at them dispassionatly?.
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AlanF
D Wiltshire said:
: So my point is if these definitions are true then the only one that can provide scholarly work on the existance of God is an Agnostic since those from the other 2 camps fall in the Pseudo-scholarly collectors of facts.
That conclusion does not follow from the stated premises. The notions of "scholarly" and "pseudo-scholarly" apply both to people and to works. An extremely biased person demonstrably can produce a relatively unbiased, scholarly work. Someone who is generally objective can produce a horribly biased, pseudo-scholarly work. One who regularly produces one type of work or the other attaches the label to himself.
Works are also produced for different audiences and purposes. Some works are intended or billed to be objective. Whether they are what is intended or billed is another story. Other works are intended to persuade and do not necessarily make any pretense at being objective or scholarly. There is nothing particularly wrong with this kind of work, since it's at the heart of advertising and even of evangelism. What is wrong is for an author to bill his work one way when it is the other.
AlanF
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80
Food at Proper Time:Insider's Insight from Barbara
by Maximus inbarbara anderson's attention was called to the thread about the differences in policy of great britain and the us regarding child abuse; as you know she has championed a change in that policy.
another post caught her eye, and she expressed the desire to share some thoughts with you.
i'm delighted to share her first post, which i know you will find riveting.
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86
More Bethelite Table Crumbs Please!
by MadApostate inin a controversial post in a separate thread, janh makes an extremely good observation that a certain former gb member will likely carry many, many wts "top secrets" to his grave, for whatever reasons he does not wish to divulge such.. then, on this db, former bethelites constantly exchange posts where their word choice is "cloaked" so that many of us who were not insiders are left guessing at meaning, people, etc.
obviously, even individual members of this fraternity have unique experiences and insights.
if such info is not disseminated, it is lost if that person dies naturally or in an accident.. would you folks please post more elaborately so that the rest of us can benefit from your knowledge and experience.. the statement that motivated this post made a silent reference to the author of the happiness book.
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80
Food at Proper Time:Insider's Insight from Barbara
by Maximus inbarbara anderson's attention was called to the thread about the differences in policy of great britain and the us regarding child abuse; as you know she has championed a change in that policy.
another post caught her eye, and she expressed the desire to share some thoughts with you.
i'm delighted to share her first post, which i know you will find riveting.
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AlanF
proplog2 said:
: Once again you take an incident and turn it into a blanket judgement of "all" JW's. This is a serious fallacy.
Once again, proplog2, you demonstrate that you are not competent to understand subtleties of the English language. I nowhere said, nor did I imply, "all". Again you show your bias, which results in your making statements that show your stupidity or proclivity to lie.
: Alan said: "And some posters don't think JWs are capable of overt killing! LOL!" The implication here is that ALL JW's are capable of killing.
Wrong. That kind of language -- without use of qualifiers -- is meant to avoid an implication of quantity. It is meant to provoke the reader into investigating further and making his or her own conclusions about quantity. It is a more subtle way of implying the technical definition of "some", but better than using "some" because "some" often carries the implication of "small fraction", even though "some" technically can mean a percentage ranging from 0 to 100. It is apparent that English is not your forte.
: The fact that some people in any population are capable of extreme behavior is hardly worth noting.
Wrong again. In a general population that's correct. But in a population that prides itself on non-violence, and teaches outsiders that one of its most distinguishing characteristics is non-violence, it's very significant.
The fact is that some JWs will resort to violence when they think their religion is being attacked. When James Penton was disfellowshipped in the early 1980s, a reporter came to the Kingdom Hall and waited outside on the sidewalk for the result. He was taking pictures as JWs came out. One JW man told the reporter to go away. Being on public property the reporter refused. The JW attacked him, punching him in the face. The reporter struck back and knocked the JW to the ground. The JW later brought a lawsuit, which he lost because the reporter had witnesses to the attack. You can read about this in the book Crisis of Allegiance by James Beverley, available from Richard Rawe.
Now, proplog2, tell me that it is false that JWs are capable of overt violence. Explain to me why you think it's not an easy step to overt killing -- especially if JWs think their entire way of life is under attack.
AlanF
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9
W43 WT article "Righteous Requirements"
by AlanF infor those who want to see the original july 1, 1943 watchtower article "righteous requirements" on which i based a parody a few days ago, check out these pages:.
the article preceding this one, "supreme court interprets" is extremely instructive about the loonieness of the society's leaders, and shows how they make almost direct claims of inspiration.
if there's enough interest, i'll put up the nine jpg's of that one, too.. alanf
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AlanF
I'd like people to understand at least one thing from these articles. In the "Supreme Court Interprets" article, the question for paragraph 37 asks:
"Why does difference of understanding today from that held previously not prove God the author of confusion or prove that the remnant of Jehovah's witnesses are not of His organization?"
Paragraph 37 actually says:
"Does this mean that God is the Author of confusion or that they are not of His Theocratic organization?"
Then it answers:
"No ..."
Despite the fact that the question asks "Why?", the paragraph does not answer that question. It simply answers "No" and launches into the usual bullshit rigamarole that obscures the fact that an answer has not been given.
This paragraph seems to be the origin of the same kind of bullshit excuses that JWs offer today to justify their belief in JW leaders as God's spokesmen despite their committing at least as great sins as do the other religious leaders they condemn.
One can also see another typical Watchtower technique at work. The first article goes through a great deal of bullshit that puts the typical reader into the usual stupified state of mind; then the next article hits him with the meat of what the Society wanted to say all along. In this case, it was "follow our instructions better!"
AlanF