How much written in this Forum can be believed? (page 5)

zagor

What I'm asking is what are the chances that some of the posts on this site regarding JWs are just slander?

Possible some of it. Though I would imagine your local newspaper aren't any better in that regard. There is always a grain of personal opinion of a writer. However, considering how many people are posting here most of the material is therefore peer reviewed. On the other hand, people here are hardly ever agree completely with something without someone raising an opposing view, which enables you to see both sides of the issue and judge for yourself.

jgnat

This is an excellent thread describing how you can judge for yourself over time if what is being described is reliable or "true".

We've had a few fakers. They last for a while. But they do get found out over time. I think of the young girl who represented herself as a full-time nursing student and exiting JW. Can you think of at least three things wrong with that scenario? Being found out is a natural progression, as it is very difficult to compose a three-dimensional person on the fly.

All I have written about my life is true. As far as anyone's perspective can be. My sister and I still argue about details of our shared childhood. We each have our own sets of memories, intertwined. How can you tell? Consistency and time. Nobody could make up the life I have lived. When I develop a friendship on the board, I look for that same consistency.

One of the great highlights since I joined JWD was meeting Blondie and her husband, Irreverent, face-to-face. Naturally, family and friends were concerned. After all, how could I KNOW they were real, if I had only met them over the internet? A girlfriend stood by to dial 9-1-1 if I didn't show up Monday morning. I kept saying, but this is Blondie and Irreverent! I use the same methods of discernment as so many of you outlined here. Consistency over time.

Anyone can be fooled, and it doesn't have to be the internet. Just read Dan0406's story, and weep!

http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/9/104581/1.ashx

ballistic

What sprung to my mind was all the resent postings about wife swapping parties. Now, I heard about such a thing when I was a witness but belived it to be an "urban legend". While some activities may well go on like this, we know it is not the norm. In my opinion it does this board no favour to promote that this kind of activity as normal even when one or two out of the thousands of us know it has happened. We are better off promoting the brainwashing and closed midset we know is a fact of every individual in the organisation.

Golden Girl

When I first started coming to the X boards I was amazed at all the info the people on them had. I was also shocked. I had learned things I never knew as a witness about the religion.

I believed it all! My JW hubby used to mock me and say they were all a bunch of liers. So I decided to do research..a lot of it. I looked up a lot of what was quoted on the links that people on the boards had recommended. I had hubby's old JW books and looked it all up. It was all true. I had it in the JW's own words. But the older books were sort of shoved to the back. No one talked about them(The JW's).

I learned how and when the JW's started their religion...how much they have changed their beliefs, in spite of it being called new light..it was indeed changes in their beliefs!

I learned that the year 1975 wasn't the first time they had said time was up. There were many many more!

They had dates changed..scripture meanings changed to fit their new beliefs..and so on.

I learned that each congregation had their own beliefs and some tolerated some practices where others didn't. The unity in beliefs they loved to brag about so much was not true.

I was glad I took the time to research most of the things quoted to me.

It validated my feeling that something was terribly wrong with that "Religion". very little of it was "The Truth".

Snoozy...

Lady Lee

I think there is another very important side to this question that needs to be addressed.

The digging for real truth. We have so many awesome researchers on this board. People go back and forth between old books and the new books to sort out just what the WTS has published and believed over time.

Like Golden Girl I found out way more about the WTS and JWs after I left than I ever knew while I was in.

People are often posting this rumor or that story or another belief. Having been fooled once not too many of us are willing to just accept everything at face value or just because someone posted it. We are kind of stubborn that way. We want evidence or proof or patterns of behavior to back up what is said.

A great example is Russell's jellyfish story. I had heard this while I was a JW. But like all JWs I discounted it. As a victim of sexual abuse as a child this bothered me but I always repressed those thoughts and feelings.

Well last year some folks here got together and did the research. The statement was actually true and testified to in a court of law. But the person that was referred to was not a child as Russell himself stated. She was an adult at the time she knew the Russell's. Due to the efforts of the researchers on this board they found actual proof of the girl's age and what happened to her after she left the Russell's. Birth certificates, death certificates census records. It was wonderful.

Basically a rumor is a rumor. We look for evidence and it stays a rumor until the evidence is found.

I applaud this part of the board and the wonderful people here who have spent their time and often money to get to the real truth

Spectrum

Lady Lee
Not quite sure what this jellyfish story is all about.

The effort and research that is done by some members here is top class.

Lady Lee

Charles Russell, Alleged Child Abuser

These charges of child molestation against one "Rose Ball" were brought out in the divorce trial between Chuckie and Maria in 1906. Russell allegedly said to Rose, "I am like a jellyfish. I float around here and there. I touch this one and that one, and if she responds, I take her to me, and if not, I float on to others."
Just how old was Rose Ball when these alleged things happened? That quintessential liar Grudge Rutherford said "Miss Ball came to them in 1889, a child of ten...She was an orphan." ("A Great Battle in the Ecclesiastical Heavens", page 19.) Marley Cole, a noted Watchtower stooge stated the same thing in "Jehovah's Witnesses: The New World Society", page 63. The 1975 WTS Yearbook on page 69 states, "The girl in question came to the Russell's in 1889 as an orphan about ten years old...Mrs. Russell testified that the alleged incident occurred in 1894, when this girl could not have been more than fifteen years old."

If all of these statements were true, it wouldn't be hard to believe that Russell was a child molester, or at the very least highly inappropriate towards a young girl. But are they true?

The thread is 3 pages long but worth the read just to see the wonderful research that was done

Oh and Rose Ball was no child hence no child molestation occured

Lady Lee

BTW I've known about this story for at least 30 if not 40 years. It feels good to finally put it to rest

How much written in this Forum can be believed?

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