well this is the day.. i mentioned to my mum that i read a good book recently about dates, and cronology.. she blew up and told me i was just trying to read anything that attempts to disprove jws.. apparently i am like those apostates, and people didnt want to talk to my because of it.. "this is the truth", she said.. well i am now an apostate.
it doesnt feel as bad as i thought it would.. josephus
Prove to me from the bible why I should follow a group of men who declared that the end was coming...
A better challenge would be, "Prove to me that I should believe the Bible." It's accepting that the Bible is the starting point is what has caused all the problems.
Joseph F. Alward
"Skeptical Views of Christianity and the Bible"
http://www.geocities.com/plowbitch69/.
over 1,440 hits in a few weeks..
woooooohoooooo!!!!!
Here's the link to my summary of Watchtower articles which some people claim "disseminate UN propaganda":
* http://sol.sci.uop.edu/~jfalward/Watchtower_Propaganda.htm
I haven't had time to analyze all of the articles which mention the UN.
Joseph F. Alward
"Skeptical Views of Christianity and the Bible"
http://www.geocities.com/plowbitch69/.
over 1,440 hits in a few weeks..
woooooohoooooo!!!!!
How do we know that you aren't working for the wt? They have a lot of something you can use - money. As an eitheist, you have standards unique to yourself and your interests. You are likely at the scenter of your values.You registered on oct 4th and started posting threads on oct 10. Wasn't that when the scandal broke? You made a bunch of anti bible posts to gain legitimacy among us. Now you could be fulfilling the main part of your mission - exonerate the wt.
SS hoping it's not true
It wouldn't matter if I represented the Watchtower's interests, or not, would it? What matters is the argument, not the man presenting it.
Now, I know you were just trying to amuse the forum, Saint. Nobody on this forum believes that I thought you or anyone else on this forum would be so naive as to take my word for any claim I made just because I earlier trashed the Watchtower (calling them "the most evil, but legal, organization on earth) and have been ridiculing inerrantists since 1997 on my web site.
Say it ain't so, Saint. You know it cannot be true, right?
For the record, it is not true.
I won't have time to respond to other challenges made since my last substantive post until later tonight, and perhaps not until tomorrow. I still plan to show why I don't think the Watchtower articles were written "to disseminate UN propaganda," as Randall Waters and others on this forum have repeatedly claimed.
Does the forum now agree that there is no evidence that the Watchtower representatives never signed a form stating that they accepted the aims and goals of the United Nations? Is the word of the Isolda Oka at the NGO office accepted? She stated to me this morning that there is nothing in the Watchtower file indicating that they ever signed such a statement, and that as far as she and Paul Hoeffel know, there was no such form in 1991. Furthermore, if--and I say if--the Watchtower was aware that the UN expected--hoped, really--that the organizations accepted the aims and goals of the UN as their own, then this would only show that the Watchtower was taking advantage of the purple beast. Some will say that the Watchtower JOINED forces with the UN, but that's a gross exaggeration; all they did--as far as the current evidence I'm aware of shows--is USE the UN to defeat it. That's clear in the articles they wrote, the ones Watters referred to, and the ones I will be describing later.
I have to go now.
Joseph F. Alward
"Skeptical Views of Christianity and the Bible"
http://www.geocities.com/plowbitch69/.
over 1,440 hits in a few weeks..
woooooohoooooo!!!!!
I'll be gone for a few hours.
Joseph F. Alward
"Skeptical Views of Christianity and the Bible"
http://www.geocities.com/plowbitch69/.
over 1,440 hits in a few weeks..
woooooohoooooo!!!!!
I'm sure the Watchtower had to write to the UN to obtain NGO status; if you think that is the act of a traitor, then that's where we disagree. The Watchtower explained why it applied for NGO status.
Who on this forum actually believes that the Watchtower implicitly or explicitly accepted the aims and goals of the United Nations? That information would be public, and its disclosure would have been perhaps catastrophic. If the "acceptance" of the aims and goals of the UN ever existed implicitly, it seems increasingly clear that this acceptance existed only in the hopeful imaginations of overzealous NGO representatives who wanted to increase the number of affiliations to make it seem that the UN's outreach was succeeding.
Joseph F. Alward
"Skeptical Views of Christianity and the Bible"
http://www.geocities.com/plowbitch69/.
over 1,440 hits in a few weeks..
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I agree with Name Witheld completely. The Watchtower should have made itself more familiar with the expectations (hope) of the UN that the approved organizations actually DID accept the UN's goals. The Watchtower was careless and naive, that's all.
Joseph F. Alward
"Skeptical Views of Christianity and the Bible"
http://www.geocities.com/plowbitch69/.
over 1,440 hits in a few weeks..
woooooohoooooo!!!!!
Hawkaw,
The press release only states that the NGO DPI concluded that the organization's activities indicated that they accepted the aims and goals of the United Nations; it does NOT say that the organizations themselves signed a statement to that effect. Perhaps the NGO DPI occasionally was merely being hopeful when they guessed that the Watchtower--and probably lots of other organizations--supported the UN's goals.
Show me a piece of paper on which the Watchtower representatives indicate that they accepted the aims and goals, and that will be something to talk about. For now, all you have is the United Nations DPI office stating their opinion about the Watchtower's beliefs.
The paper you've been talking about does not exist; it evidently never existed.
Joseph F. Alward
"Skeptical Views of Christianity and the Bible"
http://www.geocities.com/plowbitch69/.
over 1,440 hits in a few weeks..
woooooohoooooo!!!!!
I just spoke to Isolda Oka, information officer at the United Nations since 1988, now currently with the NGO office; she claims she knows all about the controversy.
She stated that there was no form--as far as she or Paul Hoeffel knows--in 1991 on which applicants had to accept the aims and goals of the UN. She had already looked at the Watchtower file. "It was thin," she said. Nowhere is to be found a form like the one so many on this forum have referring to. All there was, she said, "was information about the Watchtower."
I asked her three times whether she objected to my stating that as far as anyone there knows, there was no form in 1991 requiring applicants to accept the aims and goals of the United Nations; she did not object, though she said that she preferred to stick with the formal position of the NGO, which is that the Watchtower applied for NGO status in 1991, was granted that status, and was disassociated in 2001.
I called back right away when I realized I failed to get a definitive answer about the forms from 1992-2001. Did they--do they--contain such a statement? Unfortunately, I got voice mail, but I left my question and my phone number; I let you know what I find out.
Thus, we now understand what Hawkaw meant when he said that Hoeffel refused to release the information: Hoeffel "refused" to release it because he could not find it in the file. In other words, the smoking gun form never existed.
(I reached Isolda Oka through Hoeffel's number, 212-963-8070; I got someone else, who valiantly tried repeatedly to fend off my questions with generic responses, but she finally passed me on to someone she said knew more than she did; that was Oka.)
Joseph F. Alward
"Skeptical Views of Christianity and the Bible"
http://www.geocities.com/plowbitch69/.
over 1,440 hits in a few weeks..
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They told us to stay so seperate from organizations like the UN, that we wouldn't even get the chance to lie to them unless they were attacking us. What they told us, was that when under clear SPIRITUAL danger, one could reasonably withhold the truth from an enemy.
This statement assumes the very thing which is in dispute--at least as far as I'm concerned. You are assuming that the Watchtower DID associate itself with the UN. Can the Watchtower not remain "separate" from the UN while still using information gathered by it? Just as the United States Ambassador to Germany in 1940 didn't associate himself with the Nazis, but still used--exploited--the Nazis to gather intelligence, neither did the Watchtower associate itself with the UN to exploit it--to gather information useful to the Watchtower.
Joseph F. Alward
"Skeptical Views of Christianity and the Bible"
http://www.geocities.com/plowbitch69/.
over 1,440 hits in a few weeks..
woooooohoooooo!!!!!
Let me clarify my position.
I don't trust governmental organizations always to know the truth, or its officials necessarily to be competent. Thus, when I read that a UN resolution prior to 1991 advises the DPI to grant NGO status only to those organizations that accept the goals of the UN, that doesn't necessarily mean that the DPI actually asked on its 1991 form that signers state that the accept the goals of the UN. That could have been the case, but the government does overlook things from time to time, and often doesn't follow its own advice or rules. When Paul Hoeffel said that Barry et al would have had to state that they accepted the goals, I'm not sure whether he is telling us that he was looking at the actual application form they signed, or whether he was just assuming that they made such a statement. Yes, I've asked this question, and not yet received a reply.
Until I see a blank form from that year--or a statement from Hoeffel saying that he held the form or a copy of it in his hand, and saw the criteria acceptance statement along with the signatures, I will tend to believe the Watchtower when it says that it was unaware of the conditions under which NGO status would be granted. It is not that I don't think that the Watchtower would lie to us, since I'm pretty sure they would if they thought by so doing it would further the faith of the rank and file. The reason I tend to believe them is that I cannot imagine WHY they would risk so much for so little; surely they would have known that their application would be public. It's almost inconceivable that they signed a statement saying they support the aims and goals of the United Nations, when all along they've been saying that the United Nations is the great Satan. It doesn't make sense. What makes more sense is that the form they signed did not state that the signers accepted the aims and goals of the UN.
The fact that evidently no blank form has been requested by the critics, and no copy of a signed form has been presented, and no statement received by Paul Hoeffel that he was looking at the Barry et al form when he responded to questions about this matter, tells me that we should exercise caution in passing judgement.
Too many conclusions have been reached based on circumstantial evidence, in my opinion. As "evidence" that the Watchtower MUST have known that there were conditions of acceptance attached to the NGO status, Randall Watters and others have repeatedly pointed to the articles in the Watchtower which Watters say prove that the Watchtower was knowingly "disseminated UN propaganda," because this was one of the conditions of being an NGO. I disagree that those articles are propaganda for the UN; instead, they are obviously propaganda for the Watchtower. I'll try to lay out my case for this later this evening (Wednesday), if I have time.
Joseph F. Alward
"Skeptical Views of Christianity and the Bible"
