You Know still tries to argue his fantasy world into reality. I said:
YK, Ray Franz doesn't have a "troop".
To which YK responded:
Sure he does. But, perhaps "pack" would be a better word.
Again, he shows his inability to separate his thought processes from Watchtower doctrine and argumentation. Since the Watchtower is unable to provide realistic scriptural arguments to support its doctrinal house of cards, it resorts to invective and name-calling in the best tradition of the scribes and Pharisees. After all, it's much easier to label dissidents with nasty names such as "apostates" and foment fear among the flock rather than actually refute the things they say. Likewise, it's easier for YK to call those same dissidents 'wolves' (which I take to be the thrust of the use of the term "pack"), and "trained baboons", since he is clearly unable to use scripture to prove us wrong.
Next, I said:
All he did was write a couple of books, revealing the Watchtower's dirty laundry that he was personally aware of.
and YK responded,
Correct.
I'm glad that we agree at least that exposing the Watchtower's dirty laundry is what Ray did. But then YK adds,
And virtually every apostate has read his tell-all laundry list and parrots his criticisms like trained monkeys. Ray Franz has become a cult hero among Apostate Dubs and you are a liar if you deny that fact.
Many people use the information that Ray provided about the Watchtower for the same reason that many other people use the information Einstein provided about physics. That is because it makes a lot of sense, and it holds up under test. No one has sucessfully refuted Ray's facts or proven him to be wrong. His writing has a great deal of credibility, and his tone is not that of a person with an axe to grind. That doesn't make him a 'cult hero,' merely a good source of information.
After that I said,
He doesn't have any power over the lives of others, and he doesn't have mindless followers.
and YK, typically, responded,
LOL. Yeah, right. And you're not a madmen! LOL
More name-calling to obscure the fact that his arguments have no substance. "Trained monkeys," "liars," "madman" - this guy has more names to call than the Watchtower has staples. I am reminded of something that a district overseer, Dennis Raftopoulos, once told me. He said, "profanity is the attempt of a feeble mind to express itself forcefully." If you substitute 'name-calling' for 'profanity,' you have YK in a nutshell.
YK sums up:
An organization doesn't necessarily have to be strictly organized. Terrorist networks are not traditonally organized and strictly coordinated with each other and yet they have the common goal of destroying the nation state system and so they independently work toward that end. So it is that apostates are united in their hatred of the Watchtower and work together under the common goal of causing as much damage as they can even if it's only offering support and encouragment too each other. Thus it is that X-Dub atheists and born-again lunatics of various stripe have a common bond and do work together.
It is the nature of human society that people with common interests will associate for the purpose of acheiving common goals, or perhaps just for mutual support. Many ex-JW's have been harmed emotionally by the Society's unloving, unscriptural, and un-Christian policies. For some, it is therapeutic to assemble, whether in person or on the net, to discuss their experiences. That doesn't mean that they have a common goal of destroying or even damaging the Watchtower. Many of them just want to forget and put their cult experience behind them. Others feel that they have a moral obligation to warn others of the damage the Watchtower can do to the lives of those it ensnares. A few may even have the hateful, bitter motives that YK and the Watchtower so love to ascribe to them, but, if so, they are far from the majority in my experience. To try to lump all of these diverse individuals together into some all-encompassing apostate "organization" is irrational, and springs from the Watchtower's propaganda technique of demonizing its critics rather than responding to the substance of their claims.
There is obviously a close knit online community of apostate Dubs who are unquestionably bound together as disciples of Ray Franz. No one can deny that you spout his writings like mindless robots all the while imagining yourselves to be liberated.
This sounds a lot to me like Hillary's "vast right-wing conspiracy." Who are the leaders of this community? Who are its members? How does one join? How does Ray control his minions? I've never heard Ray suggest that we should guard ourselves against independent thinking, or that he is the one true channel through whom God communicates with mankind. I've never heard him say that only his interpretation of the Bible is acceptable, or that persons who disagree with him should be shunned. There is no 'Ray Franz organization,' and Ray has no followers. He does have a large number of admirers who appreciate his work and are grateful for having information that the deceivers in Brooklyn would have swept under the rug, had Ray not had the guts to expose it.
Furthermore, it occurs to me that YK and other JW's should be very glad that Ray didn't start his own organization, because I suspect he would truly have decimated the Watchtower had he made an actual effort to draw away followers after himself. And, of course, YK is the last one who should be criticizing others for "spout[ing] his writings like mindless robots," since that is exactly what he does with Watchtower doctrine.
In a response to someone else, YK also said,
Even in your using the Watchtower's quotes against them is a method that you learned from Ray Franz. He even photo-copied internal documents and published them.
Not true. I had been given "apostate" literature consisting primarily of photocopies of old WT literature as early as the late 1970s, and at that time Ray was still a member of the governing body. So he neither invented nor pioneered that method. But if he had, so what? It is an effective method. People use it because it works, not because they are followers of Ray Franz, or of whoever it was that did invent that method. If you use a telephone, does that make you a follower of Alexander Graham Bell? The Watchtower's lies and false prophecies
should be exposed, and more power to anyone who provides an effective method of doing so!
Later, Utopian Reformist said,
Russell was idolized by his followers, as was the case with many WTBS figures.
and YK responded,
Yes. That's true. And many of those early admirers of Russell became the first wave of apostates called Russellites.
I wonder how YK would respond today if the officers of the Society's various legal corporations used their positions to wrest control of the organization from the governing body, ousting them, branding them as unfaithful, and then making major doctrinal changes. Would he regard those corporate officers as apostates? Or would he just assume that Jehovah's blessing was primarily upon the printing presses, and that whoever controlled them must be Jehovah's chosen? Because that is pretty much the situation that existed after Russell's death. Rutherford used legal maneuvering to oust a majority of the governing body of the time, replacing them with his lackeys. He then branded the ousted ones, who were faithful to Russell's teaching, as apostates, and proceeded to make change after change to the doctrines taught by Russell. By any objective standard, Rutherford was the one who should have been called an apostate, but he had the assets of the Society, and he had control of the printing presses. So he had a bigger voice than did his opponents. Right and wrong had nothing to do with it.
Then Utopian Reformist said,
Ray Franz wrote two truthful accounts of his life with the WTBS. Simple.
And YK answered,
Thanks for making my point Bozo. You just indicated that you are a follower of Ray Franz. Is that what you wanted to prove or was that inadvertant?
I don't understand by what mental process YK can equate saying, "Ray Franz wrote two truthful accounts of his life with the WTBS," with being a follower of Ray Franz. Does that mean that, every time I read a biography of someone, and I consider it to be a truthful account of their life, it makes me a follower of that person? That is absurd.
YK's attitude toward Ray Franz reminds me of Emmanuel Goldstein in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Goldstein never appears "on screen" in the book. He never orchestrates any opposition to the Party, not perpetrates any crimes or acts of terror. But he is the official "enemy of the Party," and all crimes, acts of terror, and negative happenings of any kind are automatically considered to be somehow associated with Goldstein. He is a focal point for the hatred of the masses, a propaganda tool. And that is how the Watchtower (and, by extension, its mindless slave You Know) views Ray Franz, as sort of a non-specific 'enemy of the organization' at whose feet all bad things can be laid.
Tom
"The truth was obscure, too profound and too pure; to live it you had to explode." ---Bob Dylan
