From: corey@sdf.lonestar.org (Corey Carroll)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: [This is what Corey says] This is what the Jehovah's Witnesses do.
Date: 26 Jul 92 06:00:24 GMT
Organization: sdf Public Access UNIX, Dallas--unrestricted free shell access

In article <1992Jul23.171952.6592@e2big.mko.dec.com> news@illusn.enet.dec.com (Mark Sornson) writes:
>
>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:
>> 
>>> > my original post
>>> 
>>> > your response to my post
>> 
>>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).

What is "blanket policy"?  What fucking difference does it make what
someone's MOTIVES are?  If the arguments are substantive, it doesn't
matter if the person is cold and logical, harsh and bitter, or
an evil apostate.

>
>        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].

Ok, Mark.   I'll tell you what.  I promise never to do it again.
I will not post any email that you send me to the Internet.  Nor will
I quote out of context, as the Witnesses do (I posted the entire letter.
I didn't post parts of it to fit with my beliefs).  You can e-mail
me and patronize me all you like.  Go ahead.  I'm not afraid of you.


>
>        "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).
>

What?  Show me this in your precious Bible, Mark.  


>
>>>         The dictionary I have handy defines apostacy as:
>>> 
>>>                 "renunciation of one's religion, principles,
>>>                 political party, etc."

BTW, by definition, a large part, but not all, of Jehovah's Witnesses
are apostates.  They had to renounce their former religions to become
a full-fledged JW, even going so far as to have to write a letter of
resignation to their church.  But of course, you're the true religion,
so it doesn't count in your case, right?


>>> 
>>>     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?

Aaaah, but Mark, I *DID* accept Witness beliefs as my own convictions
many years ago!  I believed in creation as much as you do now, being
thoroughtly convinced by the Watchtower's arguments.

By the way, what the fuck does this paragraph prove?  It's just handwaving
and philosophical masturbation.
 
>
>        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.'  

Yes, I will agree that it takes guts to be a Witness.  I certainly enjoyed
my share of persecution in school with things like the holidays, birthdays
, not going to the prom, blood, creation/evolution, etc, etc etc.

Can you prove to me that you don't have a cult mentality?  It looks to me
like you do.  You say that you won't agree with anything  one told you
unless it agrees with the Bible.  Well, starting off, that's not a very
sound assumption to make, just because you have been indoctrinated to believe
that the Bible is true.  I find it to be repulsive in many places, as
you have probably seen (unless you hit the 'n' key) from my previous posts.

Besides, with regard to creation, why couldn't Jehovah create mankind
through introducing the necessary genetic mutations to reach humans? 
Who are you to judge God?  Who are you to read his mind?  Who are you
to claim to know how he created?  Maybe Genesis tells us who created,
and why, but now *how*.  Just an interesting sidepoint.

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

I don't.  I just see a brainwashed JW who spits out garbage that proves
nothing.

>
>>> [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.
>

Once again, you have brilliantly proved nothing.  

>
>>      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.

Gee, I wonder why?

>
>        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.

Email me your conclusion.

>
>        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.

Yes, I have.  Fuck off.


>
>        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 admit that it can be hard to have fruitful discussion of anything if
people keep changing the subject.  We'll deal with them one at a time
for you.  But you must be patient and willing to go through with this.
I have a lot of them, and I find more every day.


>
>>       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?

So?  What does that have to do with whether or not the Watchtower BTS lies
or not?  I think his claim is not a prejudicial assumption, but an
accurate guess, based on my own experiences as a Witness.  I should know.
Every deep philosophical or scientific discussion I have gotten into with
most Witnesses was answered like this :

"Do not trust the philosophies of man." >> Something Paul said..I don't
care where it is or what it says exactly.  You know what I mean.


>
>        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.

Yes.  It's very easy to set them up, because most Witnesses don't know
SHIT about evolution.  The only thing in your book that attempts to
"explain" evolution is a dinky little paragraph or perhaps a page.  

Yes.  It is easy to steam-roll you.  Because there are so many examples
of bad scholarship in that book.  I read it now and almost laugh tears,
it is that funny to me.  

No, JWs are not to prepare arguments against counter-evidence.  Because
they have none.  And they are not properly trained.  They are just
laymen who know little of what they are talking about except what the
Society tells them they need to know (I think you might agree, that
most Witnesses are like this.  They never get past the "milk" stage
so to speak, and go on to the "solid" spiritual food, using your own
Biblical analogies).

>
>>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?

Yes.  Witnesses are required from the Bible, the basis of their belief
system, to love everyone.  Remember that guy who got stoned and prayed
for the people who were stoning him?  What about Jesus?

>
>        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.

Noone is obligated to listen to anything.  But your attack on my motives
proves nothing.  Knowledge by itself *is* neutral.  There is nothing
"Satanic" about evolutionary theory.  I find it beautiful, compelling,
and intellectually satisfying.  Much more than some magic tricks in
the Garden of eden.



-- 
"All religions make me wanna throw up!"
"All religions make me sick!" - Dead Kennedys, Religious Vomit

corey@sdf.lonestar.org                       ..!uunet!convex!egsner!sdf!corey