FatGrotesqueJT

UM, haven't missed much have I.  I've not been here for days but having now read it all, well nothing new. 
The one thing I did note is that @xero  is really hung up on people's mental state. @Arauna would call it OCD probably.  Oh yes, and that cesar person seems to think I am @Pudgy, sorry Pudgy. 
I wish you all well. I am too busy selling and then buying vehicles and building sheds. The weather here in England is fabulous so making the most of it. 
@JW Insider seems to make it known how mixed up the GB / leaders of the JW org are concerning the owning or reading of 'other religious literature'.  
Best regards to @Srecko Sostar  and @TrueTomHarley and @Anna 
Take care and be good y'all. I'll try to stay away for another few days.  
 

cEEZAR
Do you not realize that by not making specific objections to JWI's account of life at Bethel, that you have validated it?
ALL of it.
Thanks for the validating!
.... don't forget to tip your waitresses.
Note, Question to the great washed masses: What ASCII code produces this ...  r⃗  ?
 

This is known as “jumping the shark“.

It doesn't surprise me. I've been for years meditating on the kinds of personalities necessary to generate a new religious group vs those required to grow the religious group vs those who wish to maintain the status quo.
I realize that I don't have the kind of personality which would gather a group for any purpose. I've always had the attitude of "Go about your affairs. Pursue your interests. The ones whom you run into along the way who are motivated will join in the manner of their choosing." - Clearly we wouldn't have the Bible or any religious organizations if everyone were like me.
I used to irritate this one sister who was a control freak about everything. Our circuit overseer's wife (Bro Rainer) was talking with my wife and she (Bro Rainer's wife) mentioned this diet "blood type diet" by Dr. D'Adamo. Anyway we both sortof got into it for a while and of course since we're all about knowing about blood I did a bunch of research and found while researching that the Japanese and Korean cultures are really big on blood types and personalities associated with them. (In Korea they made a movie entitled "My Boyfriend is type B") and so a bunch of people began to get into it. She, of course because the word "blood" was in the name of the diet was highly suspicious of the whole thing even after she realized it wasn't about eating blood pudding or blood sausages.
Anyway when I mentioned the blood type and personality thing it sortof tickled me that she was so irritated by the whole thing (she said "There are more than four types of people in the world!"), I paused and asked her what blood type she was and she "Replied A" and I said "Ohhhhh! That makes sense now." and she says "What do you mean?" and I say "Well as it turns out, people with blood type A are more likely to get stressed out over perceived ambiguity or perceived disorder because their brains produce more cortisol in response to stress and the way this is manifested when they try to reduce these levels is by trying to control their environment as well as the people around them.....pause...you see"
That annoyed her even more.
I'll bet Klein was blood type A for sure.

In the 1970's it was common for Bethelites to order Bible commentaries like Matthew Henry's and Barnes' Notes on the NT and various Bible translations. Later, they also allowed orders for Jay Green's Hebrew Interlinear and William Whiston's Josephus. Bethelites paid for them, but the price was fairly low because all requests were ordered through a one of Dean Songer's assistants.
Then there was a meeting in 1979, and all such books became impossible to order, and anyone who already had them in their rooms (except for Bible translations) would be looked at suspiciously. In 1980, housekeepers would report to their overseers if these types of books were found, and many Bethelites who owned them would be questioned by an interrogation committee. Within a matter of months, they moved the entire Bethel Library out of reach of all Bethelites by moving the entire Writing Department --along with the library-- out of 124 CH and onto a locked floor down at 25 CH.
Also, even before it moved, no Bethel tours allowed visitors to see the Bethel Library beyond a quick peek from the doorway to the "facing" shelves which were almost all WT material along with a couple sets of encyclopedias and dictionaries. All commentaries and books from other religions were were kept in the rows of shelves behind the first "facing" shelves, and could not be seen. Even the tours at Patterson in the 2000's only allowed a doorway glimpse of a small corner of the Library from the main hallway, about 40 feet from the nearest book.
I remember once when Brother Klein railed against commentaries one morning at breakfast. And he was one of the GB members in the Writing Department. At another meeting he said that using them was "sucking at the teat of Christendom." Now, of course, there is a much more reasonable approach, and I think that most of the brothers are at least partially aware that this is where most of the information in the Insight book comes from. They might be less aware that this is also where we get many of the spiritual gems and treasures in the meeting workbooks, and of course the footnotes in the Study Bible, all those interesting comments about Hebrew and Greek words, etc.

Scandinavian countries have IKEAs, too?

..... unless of course you are a man having a conversation with a woman .... then you are ALWAYS wrong.
The reason men play the Lottery more than women is that they think the odds are better at winning.
...... and the reason that men die almost a decade before women is .....
 
... they want to.

There's a Ted Talk I saw that suggests something along these lines as a sub current to all this
...."How does it feel to be wrong?...ans "It feels like being right."
We never feel like we aren't being unreasonable or unbalanced if we think we're right, but we could be.

I suppose reasonableness and balance is the key 😀

I remember a while back, when I was "super holy" browsing a brother's library and noticing Bible literature that was not from our source. In my self righteous judgemental previous self I was shocked and almost stumbled. The said brother then proceeded to recommend some of those books saying how interesting they were especially if we are into deep research. I was beside myself with disgust and loathing, wondering how an elder could be saying this...and is he even an elder, probably more of a closet apostate.  Well that was then, and this is now. Looking back I see how immature I really was, thinking myself spiritually superior to someone else just because they read other things besides "our" things. It works the other way too, do we consider ourselves somehow more intelligent and superior to those who only read "our" literature? Everybody is at varying stages of spiritual maturity and it is ultimately between them and Jehovah what they chose to, or not to, research.
The brother by the way is still our brother. His daughter sings some of our songs.

I’ve never heard it put this way before.
I also wonder if I can trick 4Jah and CC into giving me upvotes by posting photos like this:

Wow, hahaha! I wish I could understand what he is saying, but I don't speak Norwegian....
I wonder why him? Surely there are other maybe more suitable people like pop stars or actors? Perhaps though he is quite famous in Norway....

Finally got this image right.
 

I have changed my name from 4jah2me to Patiently waiting for Truth. 
Nothing hidden, just a name change. 

Yes you win on that one. I needed a name in a hurry and that old brainwashing just took over. I should change it really. 

Well said. Although, the topic gets heated from the moment you send 8 million people to preach that all religions will be destroyed because they don’t believe the way they should believe in God, and that’s the JW way. At such a moment, the alleged tolerance of another’s religious belief becomes an empty phrase. On one side JW gave picture of how tolerant they as people are, but in same time preaching how they worship intolerant God who will destroy them/other people because of their religion.
Does a JW member "like" someone else's religion? If he liked it, he might become a member of such a religion. But the JW member only likes his religion, and towards others he does not have such a kind of tolerance nor does he have it in such quantity that he would “like it”. Please nicely, let us explain what this might mean at all if a JW member have feeling and attitude; "I like other religions and I am very tolerant of them, but God will destroy them one day and i am glad that He will do it"?
If it is so as you said what Massimo Introvigne stand for, then that is not JW way/model of "religious tolerance".
OT records speaking about God who have no tolerance for false way of worshiping Him. Neither to worship some other God in different/opposite religion. And JW members also using such Bible verses to enforce and empower own religious attitude about this issue. By that, it is questionable about what sort of "religious tolerance" is about, here and now, inside JW Church.
 

Your own publication states Jesus already returned in 1918 and only the governing body could see him. please explain

Yep, the end is going to happen any moment now.

They are starting to resemble cultish mega churches.

"the marketplace of ideas" :)))
This forum with JW Open Club is marketplace of ideas, too. How would you describe the participants confronting their ideas?  Who are the buyers and who are the sellers? What is their business ethics? Are there any restrictions on what ideas are allowed? ... etc.

quote: That defamatory statements about the Jehovah’s Witnesses come from Russian official documents does not mean that organizations in democratic countries are free to reprint them. - https://bitterwinter.org/fecris-sentenced-in-germany-for-defaming-jehovahs-witnesses/
Is this, above, German Court ruling, opinion or something else? Or is this M.I interpretation?
According to JW interpretations about Bible and Romans 13 in particular, every secular government are equal before God. No matter is it about more or less "democratic countries" or or about other political ideology. In such point of view, all good and bad decisions aka "official documents" made by "democratic" or by "not-democratic" countries have same value. And people are free to choose to obey or not to obey, to trust or not to trust in such "official documents". With various outcome made by individual or group decision. In case of Russian JW they made their choice with knowing in advance what could and would look like going against "official documents".
We can "reprint" (copy/paste) WTJWorg official site articles or videos and say what we think about it. Or do M.I thinks we have to be silent about it/them?
WTJWorg publications (especially in the past) were full of freedom of (hate) speech against other religions, especially the Catholic Church. So, what's the problem now? Maybe the difference is that JW’s attacks on other religions are justified in JW’s eyes? Because other religions are false and their doctrines are false? And their traditions are wrong? So it's free to attack them?
Catholic priests told their members not to read literature from JW. What do JW elders and GB tell their members? The same thing, not to read anything that comes from other religions.
Today, “hate speech” in WTJWorg concentrates on former members. Who wants to deal with such things as listening to arguments from both sides and giving opinions? Maybe the German Court? It seems to be interesting to them, so maybe they will deal with it in the future as well. :))