Many Miles

To be clear, I was speaking from AlanF's perspective. Whether someone was, for whatever reason, failing to learn when AlanF thought them capable is something I would not know. I was just sharing a bit about how the man's mind worked and how he tended to interact with people. It was not my intent to suggest anything insulting.

It's no excuse for bad behavior, and I don't suggest a notion of interior 'gentle souls'. There are people who appear to be inherently straightforward in expressing their views and to the more genteel that might strike as crass or obnoxious. But that's different than being a bully. A person can be born with a personality that is straightforward. Bullies are made. Person's who project their thoughts straightforwardly aren't hurting or threatening anyone's person. Maybe their ideas. But not their person. So when it comes to "obnoxious trolls" I'm not sure what behavior you refer. I don't think AlanF was a troll. AlanF was a man who cared about facts, evidence and sound thinking. He also cared about people. Concern for people drove him, and in particular concern for people who were being intellectually manipulated.

AlanF would talk about Neo-Babylonian chronology until my eyes glazed and my ears were bleeding, and he'd still only be at the start of what he wanted to share. I'd have to open a bottle of fine wine and break off a piece of well-molded and stinky cheese to get him on another topic so I could rest.

I'm not intimately familiar with AlanF's participation here. But it's contrary to my experience that AlanF would attack things a person said for no reason. On the other hand, if he felt a person's intelligence was anywhere north of idiocy, he would become increasingly aggressive in his presentation of information and responses if the individual refused to learn. For AlanF, that reaction was somewhat of a compliment. It meant he saw intelligence in the person he was engaging. How what he said might make them feel was not something he'd spend much time considering, let alone worrying about.
A weakness AlanF had, in my opinion, was that he tended to discount the extent of influence emotion can have on a person's ability to comprehend. Academically he'd yield that latter point, but in discussion not so much. Some individuals have such an emotional need that there are things they just can't allow themselves to learn of because it would wreck the world they depend on. A person on a ledge we should not push. I'm not suggesting that's the case with the other names you mention. One I've had some decent amount of interaction with and find them pleasant enough and not tide down emotionally. But with AlanF seeing anything through another person's lens of emotion was something he had trained himself to refrain from as a matter of learning, and learning was what he thrived on and lived for.
AlanF and I have both been downrange of one another's conclusions and arguments, so I know that experience. Some of those discussions were more than robust! Thankfully we both gave one another full liberty to speak freely in our exchanges without thought of feelings. But I only know how I experienced it, not how the same would be experienced by another person. Another person could easily find it offensive, or even as an attack. Whether I agreed or disagreed with AlanF (or anyone else!) I always looked for whatever I can learn from each interaction, and there is always something to learn. That said, later in my life I have determined not to spend time suffering fools.

That's what I'd expect to see emphasized in video produced by the society. But my comment alluded to PEW research which found nearly 70% of persons raised as JW do not identify with the religion as adults, which is not something I would expect the society to produce a video of.

That was an instance of a person who, as an adult, returned to what he had been raised in. The situation with JWs is to the contrary. Children raised in the religion, as adults, cease identifying with it and don't return.

The sole reason I cited that same authority you did was to point out JWs haven't built a social panacea. If that were the case then those raised in the religion would tend to be more compelled to remain compared to other religions. But that's not what we find, even in westernized societies where people are freer to do so.
 

I dare say for certainty that I've known AlanF for probably decades before you encountered him here. Anyone acting as you described is screaming torture they've experienced.
Sometimes it's not enough to walk in another man's shoes. Sometimes you have to feel their feet walking in their shoes, a thing most of us are untrained to do. But fellow feeling would have us recognize a tortured soul when it's screaming at us. Bullies aren't born; they're made, and typically they didn't ask to be made. Rather, it was done to them. That's not to say AlanF was a bully, but in a text only format it could come across that way. In real life the man would stand up for the downtrodden every time. Every single time. Particularly if he saw someone being intellectually manipulated. He'd jump into that like a dog on a snake!

He could be tough, and rightly so. For instance, anyone who held a belief they would attempt to persuade others to believe, he held to an extremely high level of academic rigor, evidence and logically sound conclusions. It didn't matter if you were a friend. He held everyone attempting to teach to the same standard. He held himself to that standard too. In his mind if you taught but failed to stand up and defend what you taught, you were a coward and he'd say so in just that many words. He had  more respect for fools who'd stand up for foolish teachings than he did for teachers who refused to be transparent and stand and answer for what they taught.
His sense of humor was a bit dry and high-brow. To really see and feel his sense of humor you had to meet him in person. It rarely, if ever, came across in text-only formats, except for those who knew him in person and understood his humor. AlanF was a product of his raising, environment and high personal drive to know what could be known.

Sounds like you knew him in his later years. By then he had settled down a bit.

AlanF would talk about Neo-Babylonian chronology until my eyes glazed and my ears were bleeding, and he'd still only be at the start of what he wanted to share. I'd have to open a bottle of fine wine and break off a piece of well-molded and stinky cheese to get him on another topic so I could rest.

AlanF would talk about Neo-Babylonian chronology until my eyes glazed and my ears were bleeding, and he'd still only be at the start of what he wanted to share. I'd have to open a bottle of fine wine and break off a piece of well-molded and stinky cheese to get him on another topic so I could rest.

I recall the first time I read that in the Kingdom Come book. My first thought was to say to myself, everything said in that statement could be equally applied to our own chronology, its source material and interpretations. That was only my first thought!

*** kc p. 187 Appendix to Chapter 14 ***
Evidently realizing such facts, Professor Edward F. Campbell, Jr., introduced a chart, which included Neo-Babylonian chronology, with the caution: “It goes without saying that these lists are provisional. The more one studies the intricacies of the chronological problems in the ancient Near East, the less he is inclined to think of any presentation as final. For this reason, the term circa [about] could be used even more liberally than it is.”—The Bible and the Ancient Near East (1965 ed.), p. 281.
That statement also got my attention back in 1981. My first thought to myself was, then we cannot depend on our own conclusions as "final" because they are equally based on secular chronology.

*** kc p. 187 Appendix to Chapter 14 ***
Evidently realizing such facts, Professor Edward F. Campbell, Jr., introduced a chart, which included Neo-Babylonian chronology, with the caution: “It goes without saying that these lists are provisional. The more one studies the intricacies of the chronological problems in the ancient Near East, the less he is inclined to think of any presentation as final. For this reason, the term circa [about] could be used even more liberally than it is.”—The Bible and the Ancient Near East (1965 ed.), p. 281.
That statement also got my attention back in 1981. My first thought to myself was, then we cannot depend on our own conclusions as "final" because they are equally based on secular chronology.

I recall the first time I read that in the Kingdom Come book. My first thought was to say to myself, everything said in that statement could be equally applied to our own chronology, its source material and interpretations. That was only my first thought!

I recall the first time I read that in the Kingdom Come book. My first thought was to say to myself, everything said in that statement could be equally applied to our own chronology, its source material and interpretations. That was only my first thought!

Wait. What? BTK59 is a troll? I've been engaging with a troll for a few days? Guess I don't get out enough.

I only meant that for those of us who have watched this phenomenon for years, we can easily spot it. 
Then again, when someone needs you to explain something a dozen times over the course of several months, and several threads (like your use of the term "carrion") but they still come back with the exact same retort . . . well sometimes you can just 'smell' it:

Thanks for making me feel my own idiocy with even more intensity!
I've been idling in the background for too long, and apparently it's showing. But I like idle!

Wait. What? BTK59 is a troll? I've been engaging with a troll for a few days? Guess I don't get out enough.

Wait. What? BTK59 is a troll? I've been engaging with a troll for a few days? Guess I don't get out enough.

Wait. What? BTK59 is a troll? I've been engaging with a troll for a few days? Guess I don't get out enough.

Decay begins at death. Decay escalates to a point where flesh becomes inedible for humans yet still edible for other creatures. Some animals, like maggots, thrive on putrified flesh. Eating flesh is a sort of food from creation.

This subject reminds me of an incident from probably 35-40 years ago.
In very sincere, humble yet solemn form, an older sister approached me to report that her husband had eaten some birthday cake that had been baked by his workplace peers in celebration of his birthday, and worse he was refusing to come forth and confess this sin on his own so it fell to her to report it. As she put it, she knew a judicial committee needed to confront him. (Disclaimer: we don't hold judicial hearings over a person simply opting to celebrate their birthday)
To make her feel heard, I asked whether her husband participated in the celebration event. She said he had not participated in the party but his peers had wrapped up leftovers from the cake after his birthday party, and gave the leftover cake to him in tinfoil, which he brought home. He ate some of the cake for a late night snack that night. This was his sin.   
I don't need to go further into the experience, but this was an incident that did not involve a person engaging in any celebratory birthday event, but they did eat some perfectly good food left over from a celebratory birthday event. One should not confuse perfectly good food with an event, unless eating the food is part and parcel to the event. But weak minds do sometimes confuse the two as though equal.