crisis of conscience

by cyrus 69 Replies latest jw friends

AuldSoul

Terry,
If you have no sense of a distinction between my voicing my negative opinions of you and your opinions to you and you voicing your opinions of Franz and his motives to others outside his presence, then you have no idea what slander is.
Grasp reality a bit more firmly; it seems you've slipped off the top rung and rattled downward some 20 or so smacking your chin on each.
A lie is an unfounded or false assertion. In the post of yours that I lately linked, you lied. You did not simply opine. And you did so in Watchtower-esque fashion. I'll give you a tip: The sentence opens "Franz clearly had..." In my opinion, Franz clearly had nothing like what you assert. Recant this statement or prove it. If you choose neither it stands a false assertion, not any kith or kin of "reality", and really a lie.
It also infers the very self-serving opinion you have of his entire work is founded on something you invented out of conjectured whole cloth; his "leverage." It is really pathetic that you try to play down to me over your lack of rationality on the matter.
You have my pity. Feel better now?
<*cough*><*cough*>
"Excuse me. Pot? Terry just called to say you're black. He didn't tell you to your face, though. He muttered something largely incoherent in a very self-serving way about you being self-serving."
Terry

In the post of yours that I lately linked, you lied.
You've been watching too many Perry Mason reruns. To lie is to state the opposite of what you hold in your mind to be true. An opinion expressed on a discussion forum is just that: opinion. It is not evidence in a court of law or testimony to a judiciary. Questions of opinion are solicited by Topic Headers and individual posters.
Now, I know that you know that. Further, what stimulates my opinion is clear to me. It obviously cannot be clear to you because your emotional state of mind prevents a neutral viewing.
I often present personal theories which I term "crackpot". I don't take myself that seriously--only YOU do.
What you are hot and bothered about has nothing to do with my syntax or posts. That is a ruse.
Gather your wits together and take a deep breath. Making my post SO IMPORTANT you diminish yourself.
If you can't handle different opinions without apoplexy just skip those posts. Try reading only the opinions of people who think exactly the way you do. Straying outside your comfort zone leads to ranting and indiscriminate spittle.
You'll thank me for this suggestion later.
If you weren't so smitten by my poisonous prose you'd have read the posts and tone of others who have their own evaluation of Franz's action and taken them to task equally. But, we both know this is a personal bug up your personal ailimentary canal.
Terry

Wikipedia: An opinion is a person's ideas and thoughts towards something. It is an assessment, judgment or evaluation of something. An opinion is not a fact, because opinions are either not falsifiable, or the opinion has not been proven or verified.
There! Chew on that.
wikipedia: A lie is an untruthful statement made to someone else with the intention to deceive. To lie is to say something one believes to be false with the intention that it be taken for the truth by someone else.
james_woods

I would like to comment something on the point GaryBuss has made:
The fight to stay a part of that which he condemned was apparently very important to Ray due to the reprints of the letters and correspondence documentation. This was after he was fired from his job, lost his home, lost his income, was living on charity, and doing hard manual labor.
From my historical perspective, I think that Ray remained in hopes of a real reform for a long time past what might seem to be reasonable in hindsight. I knew about the struggles for a long time before the final acts due to Ray's friends Marion and Ed Dunlap. (Ed and Marion were in nearly daily contact toward the last.) I personally wanted to see all three of these guys make the "grand exit" much sooner.
I truly believe the reason they stayed around so long (or tried to) was to help as many friends and relatives out of it as they could. Remember, in those days - DFd for "apostacy" was a really big deal...it would have chilled many out to the facts of life about the GB who might have been able to see it if given time.
For what it is worth, of the three of us, I was DFd about a year or more before Marion and Ed. (I was already long gone before I ever saw a real copy of Crisis, but Ed used to have occasional letters, etc.).
On the record, I swear that this was not "guts" or "courage" on my part...it was anger! (over being lied to...). Marion and Ed (and I think Ray) were not angry 32-year old young men - they were more reasonable and experienced guys in their early old age. Everybody reacts differently. And maybe they were not always perfect. But they more than made a difference when it needed doing.
I still get pissed when anybody challenges the integrity of any one of these three great "watchtower patriots" even to this day.
James
AuldSoul

It would be "merely" opinion if I make the statement, "Terry is clearly gay." I regarded the majority of your posts in that vein, originally.
But if I have spent much effort building a case for that particular point, then make the point citing as support a baseless and conjectured set of false premises, my voiced opinion becomes a falsifiable statement of fact. The premises may be safely challenged for validity and—in the absence of valid basis—the resulting conclusion dismissed as false. Since your statement is falsifiable, it was not opinion.
Tip: Citing a definition that does not fit the point is no support of a point; your statement is falsifiable.
You are the one who insists so often that opinion held needs no support, but opinion declared as truth does require support.
"Clearly" you hold different standard for yourself than you apply to others. Your use of the trigger word "clearly" demonstrates that you desired others to agree with your conclusion as truth. Your conclusion is false.
mouthy

Some people are just fortunate that in serving themselves they can serve others in some small, or not so small way
I have to agree with the above statement. I started this support group for MYSELF!!!! to find others that have left the Organisation to help me.---but in doing that I certainly have been used to help others.... I know it was not by MY choosing. I believe GOD ALLOWED me to do it. Just to prove to me my 25 years in bondage was not wasted time.
MY two cents on the RAy topic. I have met him he is the most humble man I have ever met... I dont agree with all his theology-he knows that. But I admire him for all he has gone through under mind control -He has been maligned in the most horrible way, Also been praised to the heights. He alone stands before MY GOD!!!!as we all will do
Dont waste your arm power chucking the rocks. I wont feel them ((((
garybuss

Thanks James,

My outlook is also that Ray wished for serious Watch Tower Society reform. From Ray's own account he took his quest for reform to his own detriment. His wish was for a company that looked at some of the Jesus practices and principles more than the harsh hash of Paul and the Hebrew laws.

I walked away in 1974, but my relatives were still practicing members of the group and I remember them talking about the newer and softer Society and the rational treatment of disfellowshipped people during the late 70's.

My dad is hardline and he told me he knew something was "wrong" at headquarters, when the Society went soft on shunning and when the Society changed the name of the Kingdom Ministry to Our Kingdom Service. He's glad the hardliners are back in power and Ray got kicked out.

**********
This is not my quote. I saved it from somewhere and the writer deserves a medal.

The Witness group is like a terraced mushroom farm. Each level is fed it's own layer of horse shit. The level below is not supposed to see the horse shit of the level above or even be aware if it. When the mushrooms on the lower level look up, all they see are the white heads of the mushrooms on the upper terraces. The lower mushrooms can't see that the upper mushrooms are standing knee deep in their own layer of horse shit too.
james_woods

That's the way I remember it too, Gary. For a while, it actually looked like they were taking the failure of 1975 to heart and trying to get back to a rational view. I remember the book on James (supposedly Ed Dunlap's work) as an example of this style of writing that avoided dates, prophecy, and hardline values. There was even an inexplicable watchtower that sort of hinted that Jesus was everybody's mediator!
And I think there were far more Bethelites halfway in on the little reform movement than we will ever know.
What happened was that the true cowards who were kind of going along later vowed unconditional loyalty to the BS to save their own skins, leaving just a few to take the heat.
I think it also speaks volumes that neither Ray, Ed, or Marion ever tried to start their own cult. Despite years of lies and rumors to the contrary.
James
Terry

It would be "merely" opinion if I make the statement, "Terry is clearly gay." I regarded the majority of your posts in that vein, originally.
You diminish yourself more and more each time you go back over your rant. Give yourself a break.
Quentin

Geez...every time Ray Franz gets brought up in a topic and someone makes what is perceived to be negative comments about the guy out come the matches. Every single ex-jw, or soon to be ex, that knows about Ray, read his books, saw him on TV or anything else is not going to have a pristine opinion about the man. He's no choir boy, none of us are.
COC is a valuable historical document, probably the most valuable ever written about the inner workings of the wtbts. The information contained in that book should be taken and shoved under the collective nose of every jw you come across. The Mexico Malawi debacle is one thing that has stayed with me over the years. Any time I've had the good fortune to speak with a jw I make that the topic of conversation. It's a good one to hammer them with, they got nowhere to go.
COC is as pertinent today as when it was written. It stands the test of time. If you've never read it, do so, you'll be glad you did. As to Ray Franz, you be the judge. Read the book for what it is, a deep look into the belly of the beast. Ray Franz will be what he is, a man who wrote a book, nothing more, nothing less. There will be those who have a personal opinion about the man and others who will burn you to the ground for having them, Don't let that deflect you from obtaining this valuable information.

crisis of conscience

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