Posts by slimboyfat

40

The pope's cousin is a JW

by loosie in

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sorry i can't get the file attachment to work

Yeah all that might be what happened at a stretch, it’s not impossible. Or she could simply be the cousin of the pope, which is a perfectly ordinary and everyday thing to happen in this world. Given the number of JWs (around 1 in 400 in Christian countries) it’s reasonably likely that one or other pope has had a JW relative. Why not this one? Why are you so determined that it could not possibly be true? It’s not like she was claiming something incredible or supernatural, like her cat turned into a dog, or her wine turned into blood.

As far as I can remember Austrians were expecting that Cardinal Schönborn might become pope and were a bit disappointed he was apparently disqualified because of scandals. I only heard about Ratzinger, after he was elected, from commentators who said it was a shock that such a traditionalist was elected. Some treated it as the worst possible outcome given his history. I remember journalist Christina Odone was visibly shaken at the result and they had good fun with Ratzinger (“eyes of a killer”) on the comedy programme Have I Got News For You.

All of which is completely beside the point, it’s really getting into the weeds and has next to nothing to do with the veracity of the story. I suspect you argue just for the sake of it and AI of course has limitless energy and resources to spew out plausible sounding but patently ridiculous and tangential arguments.

40

The pope's cousin is a JW

by loosie in

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sorry i can't get the file attachment to work

slimboyfat

Yeah all that might be what happened at a stretch, it’s not impossible. Or she could simply be the cousin of the pope, which is a perfectly ordinary and everyday thing to happen in this world. Given the number of JWs (around 1 in 400 in Christian countries) it’s reasonably likely that one or other pope has had a JW relative. Why not this one? Why are you so determined that it could not possibly be true? It’s not like she was claiming something incredible or supernatural, like her wine turned to blood or something like that.

40

The pope's cousin is a JW

by loosie in

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sorry i can't get the file attachment to work

slimboyfat

Anony Mous you give a reasonable scenario of a family legend that got out of hand and perhaps, by the time the papers got involved, it was too late to back down. It would require however that old JW woman lied specifically about the phone call and ran the risk of being exposed as a liar. That is not impossible but I still think on a balance of probabilities it’s more likely she was telling the truth, because the details of the pope having a cousin who became a JW, him contacting her, and the general comments he made seem ordinary and plausible enough. JWs are capable of not telling the truth like anyone else of course, so we can’t be certain.

One weakness in the legend scenario is the following:

a family legend they were related to a (in)famous cardinal who later became pope.

The story broke immediately after Ratzinger became pope, so there would not have been time for a family legend around him becoming pope in particular; a prominent cardinal perhaps. Although how many cardinals can your average JW name? Even at a time when cardinals have been in the news for weeks, I can only name a handful myself. Ratzinger was a very prominent and important cardinal before he became pope, but I still don’t think I’d heard of him before the conclave when John Paul II died. If a legend grew up about her being related to Ratzinger before he became pope isn’t it more likely that the reason it grew up was because it was based in fact? Otherwise why choose this cardinal in particular to build a legend around?

40

The pope's cousin is a JW

by loosie in

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sorry i can't get the file attachment to work

slimboyfat

For crying out loud give it a rest.

40

The pope's cousin is a JW

by loosie in

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sorry i can't get the file attachment to work

slimboyfat

I totally agree with the bot that newspapers get things wrong all the time. They habitually get names, dates, locations, sequences of events, and other important details wildly wrong. I’ve seen newspapers and broadcast media do this many times and assume it’s ubiquitous. What newspapers don’t usually do, and would be somewhat harder to mess up is, say, present a photo of a JW claiming to be the pope’s cousin complete with her JW convention badge on, when instead she’s actually a Mormon who fell down a hole in the street and is suing for lifelong impairment, for example. I mean I wouldn’t totally put it past some newspapers to be as wrong as that, but they are usually wrong on the details rather than the entire framing.

25

Things Rutherford got wrong that Fred Franz had to clear up

by slimboyfat in

i was interested by the suggestion in a recent discussion that rutherford was in some way preferable to fred franz, because i’ve not come across this view before.

it made me rethink my assumptions and try to work out why i hold the opposite view and prefer fred franz to rutherford.

i haven’t done any additional research, so i’m only drawing on what i can remember off the top of my head, but i thought i’d list a few things where i reckon fred franz’s approach was preferable to rutherford.

slimboyfat

This is interesting and seems entirely plausible. If true, it means that Franz was responsible for the blood ban.
Also Gene Smalley wasn’t around early enough to be the originator of the idea. 👍
If I remember correctly, there was a Golden Age article in the 1930s that commented on blood transfusion in a positive light. As in, it’s a miracle of modern medicine, kind of idea, without saying the Bible forbids it.

40

The pope's cousin is a JW

by loosie in

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sorry i can't get the file attachment to work

slimboyfat

Am I reading this wrong?
A grandfathers children and how many children they have determines if the grandchildren have cousins.

Nothing in the verbiage makes any sense, don’t be fooled by the formatting and analytical sounding language. Remember that the same bot was arguing not long ago that they couldn’t be related on the basis of the woman’s acquired married name. 🤨

Also the claim that a Viennese nickname can’t be used in Bavaria is bizarre. Those two regions share a lot of language patterns. Plus people are tremendously inventive and eclectic in language use and always have been, and get their influences from all sorts of places: neighbours, books, the radio, schoolmates who just moved from somewhere else, and so on. The idea that a nickname can’t possibly be used one place because it was also used a couple of hundred miles away is just bizarre and I can’t relate to the so-called logic of it at all. It’s as if it’s not human-based logic at all but some sort of algorithmic generation or hallucination.

At the end of the day what’s more likely: that and old JW woman happened to be related to the pope or that an old JW woman all of a sudden decided to fabricate her background, memories and false quotes and invited a newspaper to photo her with her convention badge telling him a load of nonsense. I can’t prove which is true, but I know which option makes better sense. Who does aqwebot think made up the story if it’s not true? The woman? The newspaper? The branch? Who and why?

40

The pope's cousin is a JW

by loosie in

.

sorry i can't get the file attachment to work

slimboyfat

I have personally been told that “Jehovah’s Witnesses do the work we should be doing” in more or less those words by a few different people, including a Christadelphian and a Church of Scotland member. They apparently came up with the same thought all on their own by looking at JW preaching. I didn’t take it to mean they suddenly think JWs are the true religion. It just seemed to mean exactly what they said, and that they admired the persistence of JW preaching even if they didn’t agree with the content. It’s really not that remarkable an observation and is entirely believable as something a Catholic, even the pontiff might say. I’m not saying he definitely did say it, I wasn’t there, but any argument that he couldn’t possibly have said that is clearly wrong.

25

Things Rutherford got wrong that Fred Franz had to clear up

by slimboyfat in

i was interested by the suggestion in a recent discussion that rutherford was in some way preferable to fred franz, because i’ve not come across this view before.

it made me rethink my assumptions and try to work out why i hold the opposite view and prefer fred franz to rutherford.

i haven’t done any additional research, so i’m only drawing on what i can remember off the top of my head, but i thought i’d list a few things where i reckon fred franz’s approach was preferable to rutherford.

slimboyfat

These are good points 👍

31

A gospel of LOVE or a gospel of HATE?

by JanH in

jw
friends

" (the watchtower, 10/1 1961, p. 596; bold added).

" (the watchtower, 11/15 1952, p. 703; bold added).

" (the watchtower, 10/1 1952, p. 599; bold added).

slimboyfat

2 Peter is one of my favourite Bible books. Maybe it was written by Peter, maybe it wasn’t, it’s still great either way. It says God wants everyone to repent and live, but it’s not alone, there are plenty of other verses that say similar.