Hi Steve,
So you want to take pot shots at Bergman from your mole hole? Fine!
Jerry Bergman's my friend. I'll go to the wall with him. You stay in your mole hole. Bergman and I use our real names and our efforts have come with great costs to us both. You can stay safe and warm in your anonymous hole and take shots at good people like Bergman who are out on the line using their own names trying to help.
Are you gonna criticize Bergman because his mother shunned him because of the work you're disrespecting? Did you know when she got sick with Alzheimer's and was no more use to the Witnesses Jerry took care of her?
Jerry has been a friend and a personal help to me and to my family and I appreciate him and his work. I don't appreciate you. I think you're a crackpot of the worst kind.
Jerry Bergman on JWs destroying library books
by Dogpatch 67 Replies latest jw friends
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garybuss
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Dogpatch
methinks my threads are too controversial for y'alls.
I'm going back to reporting on "figs, how they give pleasure to god."
Randy
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slimboyfat
Gary,
You stay in your mole hole. Bergman and I use our real names and our efforts have come with great costs to us both. You can stay safe and warm in your anonymous hole and take shots at good people like Bergman who are out on the line using their own names trying to help.
That is a little ironic, considering Bergman has used false names to present his work such as Havor Montague. Not just that but he elsewhere referenced his own work written under the assumed name without revealing he was in fact the author.
Others have made claims about Bergman that he has been dishonest about his qualifications, or that he has been elitist about who he helps. I don't know about that one way or another and it is not what I am interested in.
I don't think anyone should deny your experience that Jerry Bergman has been a very good friend to you. On a personal level that obviously counts for a lot and others would be foolish to dispute that. I am just a bit disappointed in his scholarship. It is bad social science.
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garybuss
Hi Slim,
You wrote: "That is a little ironic, considering Bergman has used false names to present his work such as Havor Montague. Not just that but he elsewhere referenced his own work written under the assumed name without revealing he was in fact the author."
I wasn't aware of that. Please provide specifics. -
VM44
My whole personal experience with Dr Bergman is one telephone conversation I had with him. He was very helpful and polite the whole time.
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slimboyfat
Jerry Bergman was on a yahoo group I was a member of a few years ago and answered claims about his having authored articles under the name Havor Montague. He said that was true but at the time he was not yet officially out of the Witnesses to he had to use pseudonym. I have had a look for it and searched for it on google but I can't find it now. If you are in contact with him he will likely confirm that he has used that name, most specifically for this Social Compass article.
http://www.rickross.com/reference/jw/jw73.html
I also found this site. These people obviously oppose Bergman, but they quote him and take it as fact that Bergman wrote as Havor Montague.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/bergman-and-racism.html
Have you also read this critical review of one of Bergman's published JW bibliography by Dutch anthropologist Richard Singelenberg.
http://www.watchtowerinformationservice.org/bergman.html
I remember reading a response to Singelenberg from Bergman a few years ago online and that was interesting too, but I can't find that now.
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steve2
Jerry Bergman's my friend. I'll go to the wall with him. You stay in your mole hole. Bergman and I use our real names and our efforts have come with great costs to us both. You can stay safe and warm in your anonymous hole and take shots at good people like Bergman who are out on the line using their own names trying to help.
I apologise if any of my comments about Jerry Bergman have come across as derogatory of him as an individual. I don't think I have ever made personal comments about his integrity as a fellow human being, although I acknowledge I have readily criticised his scholastic methods and claims.
I respect the fact Jerry is a friend of yours and admire your standing up for him. In my book, you have the qualities of a really supportive friend. I also admire people such as yourself who have the courage to use their real names and who have paid a big price for it. My decision not to use my name is personal: I am not yet prepared to have my children removed from my custody by their still very active JW mother whom I separated from just on 9 years ago. She has made it clear that if she has any evidence I am opposing the organization she will stop our present shared-custody arrangement. It is a cruel threat and I believe she would carry it out.
Lastly, Gary, I have never asked anyone on this forum to believe anything I say on the basis of my profesional qualifications. You were the one who brough people's attention to my qualifications by reading my profile. As I said to the local elders: what I say should stand or fall on its own merits. As you know, JWs are fond of asserting that people who criticise the watchtower should not be believed and they often resort to personal attacks to undermine their critics. I deplore that tactic: We need to look at the different points of view on their own merits and not resort to emotive name-calling. At the end of the day, whatever argument I advance means nothing if I have inadvertently offended you in the process. I am sorry for that.
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garybuss
Hi Steve,
I'm extremely loyal to Bergman, right or wrong. If Jerry's right I'm with him. If he's wrong, I'm still with him, just like he's been with me when I've been wrong. I don't care what you do wrong, I care what you do right. I've been wrong, Jerry's been wrong, but we're friends and we're trying to do what we can to help people. If that's upsetting to some people, so be it!
Will I excuse Jerry's wrongs? Damn right!
David Reed's another writer and another former Witness, that I like a lot, who helped my family. I doubt David satisfied scientific research requirements and passed peer review with his book "Worse Than Waco" but I like David, I like the book and it helped me and my family and the value in Jerry's and David's books to me is the content, not the context.
I'm interested in facts. I'm not interested in poisoning this well. I'll defend Jerry Bergman's character to my dying day. For me, it's not okay to trash my friend's character who's not here to defend himself.
You wrote: " At the end of the day, whatever argument I advance means nothing if I have inadvertently offended you in the process. I am sorry for that."
Apology accepted, let this fade into the archives. Let there be peace on the board:-) -
Fangorn
"I'm extremely loyal to Bergman, right or wrong. If Jerry's right I'm with him. If he's wrong, I'm still with him," Wow! enough said. I bet you were a wonderful Witness, you certainly have the right attitude.
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cathyk
Well, before this devolved into a flamefest, this thread had my attention. Randy has gone to sit under his fig tree in the shade, which is perhaps wise. However, I shall press on with some relatively uncontroversial (I hope) observations:
1) As someone who deals in old WT literature, I have some anecdotal observations concerning the whole "book burning/destroying" theme. I remember hearing the accusation that JWs would go around to used bookstores and buy up the old lit to destroy it. Variations on this theme included, in some form, an order direct from Bethel to do so. I used to give it some credence before I met some JW collectors.
Now as a book dealer, a fair number of my customers are faithful Witnesses who are like Stan Milosevic (not one of my clients) in Canada. They collect the old books as an historical record of the JW movement's earliest days. They feel a connection to the sacrifices that JWs made, rightly or wrongly, in past years. Lots of them collect it to display, not necessarily to read. J. F. Rutherford especially seems to have a fan base among some older JWs who see him as a great fighter for "truth".
So many of these collectors exist, in fact, that I think the whole idea of getting rid of the "old light" by destroying it is little more than an urban legend. I am talking here about the WTs own literature, not "apostate" books. Those I can believe are stolen and defaced on a regular basis. I know that my public library never keeps Crisis of Conscience on the shelves for more than a few months at a time before it is "lost."
As for official WT books -- Maybe a few JWs take it upon themselves to get rid of incriminating evidence, but many more buy the old stuff to look at the pretty covers and display them, not read them. It also affects some JWs' status in a positive way in their congregations. At least a couple of JWs buy and hold their finds so that they will be able to show those resurrected in the kingdom what weapons were used in spiritual warfare. I believe Chester Harris, who used to post to a lot of ex-JW boards at one time, had that as a motivation behind his early collecting.
2) I only know Jerry Bergman's work directly in two ways: one, as the pseudonymous "Havor Montague" and his article in the 1977 Social Compass journal, and as author of a comprehensive annotated bibliography of JW and related literature. The latter is indeed comprehensive but rather sloppy. I don't know who did the editing, but whoever it was did a lousy job. There are typos and mistakes in the citations all over the place.
It would probably be prohibitive to print a revised edition, but I know at least three people, myself included, who would be willing to provide corrections and some research to that project. I don't know if it is true, but I have heard that the offer has been made by others and refused, at least for now.
Still, it's a useful work for a collector to haves ince it references magazine and newspaper articles as well as books, booklets and tracts.
Cathy