From: news@illusn.enet.dec.com (Mark Sornson)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: [This is what Corey says] This is what the Jehovah's Witnesses do.
Date: 23 Jul 92 17:26:11 GMT
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation


In article <1992Jul22.232752.5755@newsroom.utas.edu.au>, Tim.ONeill@english.utas.edu.au (Tim O'Neill) writes...
>In article <1992Jul22.184137.12369@e2big.mko.dec.com>, news@illusn.enet.dec.com (Mark Sornson) writes:
> 
>> >I don't care if this breaks all the rules of Internet etiquette.  This
>> >must be posted to show what the JW's do when they encounter arguments
>> >they cannot rebutt.  According to Andrea, I am an 'apostate', apparently
>> >because I had the "truth" and I rejected it.  
>> 
>>         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.

        You ask me this:

> 
>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].

        "Christian loving niceness" may be extented by some Witness if
    there's no evidence that it will be rejected outright; but Corey has
    made me feel that sending him private mail of any sort is now just too
    risky.  Since I figured that he would also post my reply to his latest
    posting in public if I had mailed it to him [to avoid the flames that
    I have since received], I posted it myself (having accepted the risk of
    additional heat).


>>         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.

        Well, it's all well and good to applaud Corey for being true to his
    CURRENT convictions; but unless Corey NEVER really accepted Witness
    beliefs as his own convictions afore time, why should any Witness
    applaud Corey for being arguably intellectually dishonest and untrue to
    his PREVIOUSLY HELD convictions, which are the same convictions that we
    ourselves ARE holding true to?

        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.'  

        I see a double standard here which is pandering to prejudicial and
    bigotted thinking.

>> [my response deleted]
>
>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.


>      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). 

        First of all, I find no fault in you for at least having done your
    own investigation.  The reason the Society provided the footnotes was
    so that people WOULD check them if they felt it necessary, and either
    find themselves in agreement or disagreement, and then take the next
    step from there.  The Watchtower Society knows full well that most
    people will not be convinced of the truthfulness of what they say; and
    has the view that regardless of the evidence that they present
    honestly, people will at the very least disagree, and at the very most
    call the truth [as we see it] a lie.

        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.

        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'?  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.

>        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.

>       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'. They probably went back
>to their kingdom hall to be re-brainwashed, but I like to think that perhaps
>they went home and thought about what they believe and why. I don't care what
>they concluded so long as they THOUGHT ABOUT IT. And if I sound angry that's
>because I am.

        You don't know WHAT they did when they left, do you?  Without real
    knowledge of their actions, what you said about them going back to be
    "re-brainwashed" is really just a prejudicial assumption, isn't it?

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

>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?

        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.

                                                                    -mark.
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc