From: Tim.ONeill@english.utas.edu.au (Tim O'Neill)
Subject: Re: [This is what Corey says] This is what the Jehovah's Witnesses do.
Organization: University of Tasmania (Australia)
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1992 02:12:30 GMT

In article <1992Jul23.171952.6592@e2big.mko.dec.com>, news@illusn.enet.dec.com (Mark Sornson) writes:

> >>         You are right that what you've done breaks all the rules of net
> >>     etiquette.  I suppose you feel that the ends justify the means, but
> >>     posting private mail without permission is still a dishonorable
> >>     activity, regardless of your reason.
> > 
> >Don't sweat about it for a second Corey, I, for one, was very interested to
> >read Andreas' comment. Hell hath no fury like a fundamentalist religion scorned.
> 
>         It's true that Corey has made his scorn (or "strong contempt,"
>     which is the dictionary definiton) for Jehovah's Witnesses public; but
>     what you are effectively doing is encouraging behavior that in general
>     is wrong, but excusing it only because it contributes to the end goal
>     of making Jehovah's Witnesses look bad (which may or may not be
>     something you personally approve of just as blanket policy).
> 
>         Posting private mail without permission is wrong; and by posting
>     Andreas's mail, Corey has probably made many Witnesses decide that from
>     this point onward, we simply won't write to him in private for any
>     reason, lest he post, and possibly twist, our private words in public.

Perhaps Corey shouldn't have posted Anreas' actual words, since this was private 
mail, but if he had simply paraphrased what Andreas had said, wouldn't there be
greater potential for 'twisting' his words? The fact that we saw *exactly* what
Andreas wrote means that there is no disputing that Andreas pulled out of the 
discussion for the extremely weak reason that Corey was an apostate. This is
something of a telling indication of Andrea's intellectual integrity.
 

> >If your religion is so bloody fantastic why don't you try to convince him to
> >come back? Where's all your loving-christian-niceness now? 
> 
>         Well guess what?  Before I had read Corey's posting of Andreas's
>     mail, I was giving serious thought to sending him private e-mail doing
>     just what you say I should be doing.  But his posting of Andreas's mail
>     made me instantly forget any thought of doing so, since his behavior
>     indicates to me that I can probably expect the same treatment,
>     regardless of how kind I am.  Because of his own actions, I do not
>     trust Corey [whereas before I would have granted him the benefit of the
>     doubt and assumed that he would honor the 'rules' of net ettiquette
>     just as anyone else does, whether friend or foe].

What are you going to be posting to him privately that you are so frightened he
might make it public? What dark secrets will you be revealing to him that the
rest of us can't be privy to? I agree that posting private mail without permission
is bad form, but your paranoia is very odd, and it sounds like a very weak reason
to shy away from talking to your ex-brother.

> >>         The dictionary I have handy defines apostacy as:
> >> 
> >>                 "renunciation of one's religion, principles,
> >>                 political party, etc."
> >> 
> >>     Regardless of the fact that Andreas as labelled you as an apostate, I'd
> >>     say, after having read a few of your postings, that you've made it
> >>     pretty clear that you've done precisely what an apostate does, namely
> >>     you've renounced your religion, and have done so publicly, at least
> >>     as far as the net is concerned.
> >And many of us applaud you for it Corey. It's called being intellectually
> >honest and true to your convinctions, and it takes GUTS.

>         Why is it that it takes "GUTS" to hold to convictions that are the
>     antithesis of Witness beliefs and practices, but you [or others] don't 
>     acknowledge that it ALSO takes "GUTS," to the same degree, if not more
>     so, to hold to Witness convictions?  Instead our ability to think is
>     catagorically assumed to be nonexistant, having been replaced by a
>     so-called 'cult mentality.'

All I'm saying is that it is very hard to step back from a deeply-held belief, look
at it objectively, listen carefully to arguments against it and then accept that it
is wrong. I respect anyone who can fight against social and intellectual inertia,
regardless of the belief they then adopt  

> >Which is why we're not going to talk to you anymore, or listen to anything
> >you have to say. Hey, I can see the logic there.
> 
>         But hey, guess what again?  If NO ONE wanted to talk to me anymore
>     or listen to anything I had to say, I'D get a clue, and either figure
>     out what was wrong with me personally or with what I had to say, or
>     else, as a final step in my self-analysis, find some reason to convince
>     myself that it's everyone ELSE who has the problem, and then find
>     another audience.  If I was convinced that *I* was not at fault, I'd
>     simply be resolved to be happy with my convictions, and not sweat
>     (overly much) how *other* people feel.  That's PART of being
>     intellectually honest and holding true to one's convictions.

Actually, quite a few of us are happy to talk to Corey and listen to what he has to
say, so Corey doesn't seem to have the problem you describe. The people who seem to
want to stuff their fingers in their ears and shout 'I'm not going to listen to you,
you evil apostate, but you'll be sorry when Jehovah's Kingdom comes!!' when he tries
to tell you why he thinks your sect is a load of bollocks are, surprise, surprise,
people like yourself.

> >      You say that you've made your decision about Jehovah's Witnesses on
> >>     the basis of what you've read in talk.origins, but tell me this: did
> >>     you independently analyze the quotes and their context *ON YOUR OWN* to
> >>     see if the critical analysis was *really* accurate; or did you just
> >>     accept what the critics said because you have been looking for a reason
> >>     to quit being a Witness anyway? 
> > 
> >Well I don't know about Corey, old son, but the book he mentions happens
> >to have been the very publication which fell into my hands about ten years
> >ago. It was my first encounter with creationist propaganda and, since my
> >field is the humanities, I found many of the anti-evolution arguments in it
> >pretty convincing. Luckily I went to a library and checked up as many of the
> >quotes and footnotes in the book as I could and did a bit of reading on 
> >evolution and anti-evolutionism (this is called looking at both sides of the
> >story). 

>         I don't claim to have checked every reference myself; but I did
>     just recently check a specific reference that Steven J. Edwards
>     included in a posting of his.  The reference was to an article in an
>     issue of Scientific American.  I read it for myself and posted my own
>     conclusion -- and my underlying reasons for concluding -- that the
>     quote was NOT dishonest.  If you want to begin a dialogue with THAT
>     quote, just let me know.

Okay, you've got my E-Mail address. Go for it.
 
>         My point to Corey was to question whether he did his OWN
>     investigation, or whether he just accepted the critical claims in the
>     'canned arguments' that he's read so far.
> 
>         Is what the WB&TS writes *also* 'canned'?  
Good lord? Are you suggesting the JW's would churn out the same old cliched bullshit
that the anti-evolutionists have been peddling for the last century or so? What an 
idea!

>					I suppose you could say
>     that; but *I* believe that they usually do a pretty good job of
>     accurately labelling what's 'in the can.'  *I* find no fault in what
>     they write --- but then, I'm not actively seeking to PROVE fault.
>     I have INVESTIGATED claims of falsehood, but I do my best to keep from
>     being prejudiced from the bias of someone else.

Why aren't you actively seeking to prove fault? Examining your own position with 
the same rigour and intensity that your opponent would use is a very useful way
of maintaining intellectual honesty.
 
> >        I found that your sweet little book is a bizarre collection of
> >out-of-context quotations, misquotations, misleading quotations, non sequiturs,
> >errrors of fact and just about every other dirty intellectual trick known
> >to man. (I'll substantiate this statement in long and glorious detail if you 
> >wish.) 
> 
>         Well, I'll tell you what; I agree to go through them with you, but
>     ONLY one at a time, with the preference of doing so privately and as
>     time and resources permit.  If you dump them all at me at once like you
>     did to the people who came to your door, forget it.

How about we do it, one point at a time, on talk.origins, then we should get a lot
of useful feedback by experts in the appropriate fields. Good idea?
 
> >       I recently had two JW's turn up on my doorstep brandishing this same
> >book. I invited them in and went went through it page by page. It took
> >several hours, but in the end they were reduced to silence and admitted that
> >'perhaps there's a bit more to it than we thought'.

>         I wonder though, if they came back with a rebuttal, would you
>     invite them back in for several more hours and listen to them?

Yes I would. In fact they said they'd be back the next week. That was four 
months ago.  


>					It's
>     true that you probably got them thinking; but you also have to admit
>     that you set them up, because there's no way that they, as j-random
>     Witnesses showing up at your door, would have been prepared ahead of
>     time to go over all of your counter-evidence in detail.  You silenced
>     them by steam-rolling them.

Hang on a second! These bozos turn up on my doorstep at an ungodly hour on a 
Saturday morning and tell me they have a book that proves evolution to be a 
big lie. I say that I'm pretty sceptical about that, and they challenge me to
prove anything in the book was wrong. So I did. If they weren't prepared to 
back up their little book, then they were very stupid to challenge me in that
way. I did not steamroll them, they had plenty of imput into the conversation,
and it wasn't as though I was prepared myself in any way. If anyone intended
to do some steamrolling it was the JW's, who weren't expecting to talk to someone 
who knew what they were talking about, and were hoping to steamroll them into 
believing their pseudo-scientific crap. 
 
> >Chin up Corey, it takes courage to say "I was wrong, what I used to believe
> >seemed to make sense but now it doesn't and I was wrong". Not very many 
> >people have that courage, but that's the only way anyone learns anything.
> >And if your dear sweet JW brothers don't want to listen to you, that's
> >their loss as far as I'm concerned.
> 
>         Although you are obviously being sarcastic, what you say touches on
>     a fundamental truth, that feelings of 'brotherliness' HAVE to extend
>     both ways in order for them to work.  Based soley on what Corey has
>     posted in public, what reason do any of the Witnesses looking on have
>     for having "dear" feelings toward Corey?

It's part of your religion isn't it? I believe a certain fellow named Jesus had
a little to say on the subject of forgiveness and continuing to preach even though
others revile you etc. By writing him off either because he's an apostate or because
you think he's rude is not much of a witnessing for Jehovah to a heathen like me.
It makes you people look petty, narrow-minded and intellectually bigotted. 
 
>         There's a vast difference between WHAT a person has to say and the
>     WAY in which he says it.  At the root of apostacy is ATTITUDE, not
>     knowledge.  You might make a case that knowledge [or certain kinds of
>     knowledge], all by itself, has a neutral quality to it that ought to
>     allay anyone's fears about confronting it; but I'd like to see you make
>     a case that anyone is OBLIGATED to listen to what someone else has to
>     say if that someone has an extraordinarily negative attitude toward
>     those whom he is attempting to address.

This from a Jehovha's Witness!!! You people go and talk to people who have a 
negative towards you all the time. Do you go door-knocking Mark? Most of those
people don't want to know you right? But you still talk to them. Why is Corey
different?
Tim O'Neill 
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc,misc.legal