The "Overlapping Generation" Revisited.

[TrueTomHarley]

I've got them all. I printed them up for posterity. My visitors walk right past the booze I offer them to leaf through the pages. Unfortunately, I've had to jack up that side of the house.

[TrueTomHarley]

18 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

and he has NO CONCEPT that there are people who are willing to risk their lives, their fortunes, their reputations and everything they hold dear to pursue Justice and Truth for its OWN sake .... and to defend the oppressed

This, too, gets very old. It is the slogan of every soldier of every nation on earth, collectively ripping each other's lungs out. Yes, of course you respect anyone willing to risk their lives for a cause. By that reasoning alone, you would respect ISIS, for they risk all to defend their oppressed back from where they come from.

Yes. You respect them. But at some point say: "You poor sap. Why didn't to give your life in a cause worth dying for?" Squabbling about the petty things you mostly squabble about hardly qualifies. Just suck it up and carry on: From: 'No Fake News..."

"After studying one book seemingly written for no other purpose other than to harp on dress and grooming and harangue about field service, the conductor said to me: ‘Tom, why don’t you comment? You know all these answers.’ It was a turning point. He was right. I did know them all. It was time to stop sulking. From the circuit overseer on down, they had stirred up major chaos in the family. They had been heavy-handed and clumsy - but never malicious. And it had never been Jehovah. I’d read of ill-goings-on in the first-century record. Congregations described in Revelation chapters 2 and 3 were veritable basket cases, some of them, but that did not mean they weren’t congregations. Eventually things smooth out. Should I stumble when it became my turn? I’d read whiner after whiner carrying on about some personal affront or other on the internet. Was I going to be one of them? 

Let’s face it - many of Jehovah’s Witnesses are nuts, but none are liars. In a world full of liars one should be able to overlook some nuts. If screwball things happened here, they happen everywhere - usually with consequences devastating to unity - usually with parties stomping off and forming separate factions. “That point the Governing Body just wrote about it?” Mike Tussen once said, referring to matters like the Babylonian exile. “You might have noticed that point, too, years ago. And if this was the world, you would have separated and formed your own religion over it.” Some points are arguable. They can be spun another way. But they are not the essential points. I’ll spin it the way Bethel spins it, out of loyalty. That way we can all move on and get something done. If they spin it another way later, I’ll spin it that way, too, if they demand it. But they don’t demand it – they never do - for these are peripheral points, not the stuff that the truth is made of. Jehovah’s Witnesses maintain precious unity to effectively proclaim a vital message. But everyone must take it on the chin from time to time, and not carry on forever about things that didn’t go their way.

Recovery didn’t happen overnight, for I have a PhD in grudge-holding. Indeed, I was so good at it that few noticed I held a grudge, for I had never left the library – I had only strayed from the same page. Now it was time to get on the same paragraph. Was that book truly a dog? They’re not all dazzling flashes of light, you know, for the treasure is contained in earthen vessels. Or was it the conductor? Or was it me? No matter. If life throws you for a loop, you thank God for the discipline and move on. ‘For those whom Jehovah loves he disciplines, in fact, he scourges everyone whom he receives as a son,’ the Bible says. Tell me about it. ‘Half of those at Bethel are here to test the other half,’ the old-timers said. Yeah – tell me about that, too. My training wasn’t even then over – it never is. 

[PeterR]

14 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Let’s face it - many of Jehovah’s Witnesses are nuts, but none are liars.

None? Ever? What basis is there to believe such a sweeping statement when the Bible says every man proves to be a liar.

Most JW's are not malicious liars. I can accept that. But "none are liars"? Really? Are they somehow prevented from this sinful tendency by a 24/7 intervention of the holy spirit?

When a JW does lie does that simply mean he wasn't really a JW? A bit like the Calvanists say that if one of the "saved elect" loses their faith then they were never really "saved elect" in the first place?

It's known as the "no true Scotsman" fallacy I believe.

The convention video on 1975 misrepresents the facts. Is that truth? If it's not truth then what is it? Whether the misrepresentation was accidental I cannot say, but it's far from the only example.

[TrueTomHarley]

2 minutes ago, PeterR said:

None? Ever? What basis is there to believe such a sweeping statement when the Bible says every man proves to be a liar.

Yes, that is the quote you pull from that long excerpt.

[PeterR]

2 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Yes, that is the quote you pull from that long excerpt.

Yes, it is the quote I pull. Because it's key to your whole thought process in this passage.

[TrueTomHarley]

2 hours ago, PeterR said:

Most JW's are not malicious liars. I can accept that. But "none are liars"? Really?

With some, if you are not strictly literal at all times, you are toast. It is why poets die young.

Tell them about 'crocodile tears' and they accuse you of changing the subject to crocodiles, whereas they are trying to speak about real issues involving real people.

("Dam* that TrueTom, mutters @The Librarian. Now I have to start another card category entry under 'reptiles.'")

*Misspelled deliberately so as not the offend the sensitive @James Thomas Rook Jr. with a bad word, which he would never use in his refined collection of graphics, lovingly collected as some people do rare stamps now bordering on 6000.

[PeterR]

1 hour ago, TrueTomHarley said:

With some, if you are not strictly literal at all times, you are toast. It is why poets die young.

Tell them about 'crocodile tears' and they accuse you of changing the subject to crocodiles, whereas they are trying to speak about real issues involving real people.

("Dam* that TrueTom, mutters @The Librarian. Now I have to start another card category entry under 'reptiles.'")

*Misspelled deliberately so as not the offend the sensitive @James Thomas Rook Jr. with a bad word, which he would never use in his refined collection of graphics, lovingly collected as some people do rare stamps now bordering on 6000.

 

TomHarley - You can write whatever you like. But I'm not going to use your self-awarded designation of "True" when you post wild assertions that are far from true, with a view to trying to get people to buy into an argument resting on the what you've falsely asserted.

If what you wrote isn't literal then you cannot rest your point of principle on it in the way that you did. It's just nonsense. The whole crux of some of these discussion is how honestly certain facts have been presented.

You're writing that many JWs might be "nuts", but at least they're "100% honest". But if the ones in question are not 100% honest (and you've failed to respond to the evidence I've provided on that) then what you've got is "nuts" and "dishonest".

You're trying to gloss over it. But it matters.

 

[TrueTomHarley]

3 hours ago, PeterR said:

 

You're writing that many JWs might be "nuts", but at least they're "100% honest".

 

The gnat you should have strained, if you had to strain one , is "nuts," for that is hardly a medically precise term.

Obviously, "TrueTom" is not my real name. My early friends appended the 'Tom'  and I've had to live that down ever since.

[PeterR]

TomHarley - I'm only referencing your terminology.

Are you willing to address the actual issues raised? Or is it fair to assume that you're not interested in doing that, and are now just releasing "chaff and flare" to divert from those issues?

I try to be extra patient online, because I really don't know what challenges people might be facing. I've largely ignored all your personal insults on this and other threads. But if you're just willfully distracting from the purpose of the discussion and the points raised then I'll stop wasting my time attempting to have any reasoned conversation with you.

 

 

 

[TrueTomHarley]

3 hours ago, PeterR said:

Are you willing to address the actual issues raised?

... if you're just willfully distracting from the purpose of the discussion and the points raised then I'll stop wasting my time attempting to have any reasoned conversation with you.

Having failed to ceaselessly debate me at the Kingdom Hall, eventually being shown the door because they WILL NOT accept any answer other than the one they've already set their heart on, they instead go online with the same plea to debate.

What they were not able to get me to do at the Kingdom Hall - patiently hash over all their unsatisfiable issues with them, they imagine they will get me to do online.

It's not happening on my watch.

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

TTH

The only thing on YOUR watch is possibly Mickey Mouse.

We have been exchanging barbs for MANY months now, and there is a common thread .... when your reasoning is shown by example to be deficient .. you change the subject, deliberately misunderstand or... worse ... accuse people of bad character or apostates, and at least three times, have been vulgar about it.

You are FAMOUS for ad hominum attacks, open, thinly disguised, and heavily disguised ... but ALL to try and conceal your lack of reading comprehension skills, or faulty logic.

And the worst crime in your attempts to be funny ... almost without exception ... all you can manage is clever. Fracturing your personality into three parts each with a name and log-in WAS clever... and ALMOST funny.

You lash out about form (type style, type size, cartoons, memes, etc.) and never address the issues that are stapled to your forehead.

AND YOU NEVER GET THE POINT OF ANY DISCUSSION that interferes with your predigested view of how things OUGHT to be, even when presented with HARD EVIDENCE to the contrary.

You still have not realized that the rules of engagement here in this public forum are that you fight to the END to advance your beliefs ... and getting miffed, and hiding behind the curtain of the "loyalty agenda", is the equivalent of cowardice on the field of battle.

That is not only Mickey Mouse ... it's just plain ... *coff* .... Goofy.

TRUTH is born of fire and steel, and bad ideas need to die publicly.

[TrueTomHarley]

Besides, I am answering your questions. I'm just not answering them in the way you prefer. I'm just not recognizing your right to submit others to interrogation. But, in every case (well...almost) I have responded to something you have said.

11 hours ago, PeterR said:

But if you're just willfully distracting from the purpose of the discussion

You need only change one word to make this statement accurate: 'But if you're just willfully distracting from MY purpose of the discussion'

For example, why did you not take issue with my characterizing many of my own people as "nuts?" What right had I to do that?

Generally speaking, if I have, at times, been ungracious to you, I think you have been no less to me. I simply haven't cried foul with every insult.

6 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

You are FAMOUS for ad hominum attacks, open, thinly disguised, and heavily disguised

Mr. Tact and Kindness is telling me about attacks?