JWs the kings of plagiarism

by Hecce 16 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  Hecce

  The WT used to be rich for the quality of their public speakers, at the top of the ladder were the DOs motivating the brothers on a weekly basis. Some of them used very folksy experiences related to the brothers as motivational tools, when you left the convention those experiences were the talk of the town.
  

  I remember one very well qualified brother serving as DO that was constantly using those sort of experiences as part of his arsenal, at one time he related one about a sister that new that she was going to die soon and while meeting with the family and brothers for final preparations she requested to be buried with a fork in her hand. When she was questioned as to the reason for that she said that she wanted to be ready on the day of the resurrection to eat her favorite cake, since she knew that the best was yet to come.

  The speaker related this as a real life experience and by the time that he ended there were no dry eyes in the hall. I left the place swallowing everything that he said, to my surprise later on reading on the net I saw the same experience adjusted to a different set of circumstances and since then I have found it a gillion times.

  Here is one version: http://hopeforlife.org/2009/09/save-your-fork/

  Have you ever seen a similar situation?

  Thanks
• 

  the truth is mine

  Living in an area where there are a large number or returned LDS missionaries I was surprised to find that many of the so called witness experiences are really just recycled religious lore. The story about the poor depressed householder ready to commit suicide who is rescued by the JW knocking at the door Mormons have their own version. The angel protecting the witness at a violent house holders door, they got that too. They even have a version of the "we were so broke and down to our last dollar with no money when someone dropped of a bag of groceries and some money for rent" story. Jehovah's witnesses can be like many Facebook users,always ready to repeat a story to lazy to find out if it is true.
• 

  Juan Viejo2

  Plagiarism? Oh yeah!

  A few years ago I was looking for a reference in the Watchtower about an incident that happened in the 1970s that I had read in a bound volume from the 1980s. I'm not sure why, but I decided to plug that into Google search just to see if I could find it in Wikipedia or somewhere on the Internet Machine.

  I am getting old and can not remember details anymore. So please forgive me for not coming up with the actual item. But the bottom line was that I soon found that the incident that supposedly happened to JWs was actually a rework of several similar stories referenced in at least ten other non-JW related places. In each case the incident had a different time and place, but the wording was almost the same.

  In another case, I remember reading a Questions from Readers in the Watchtower (1950s/60s) and thinking that it sounded very familiar. I was maybe 16 or 17 at the time. I mentioned it to my mother and asked her if she noticed the Q-from-R and if she thought it sounded familiar. In those days we did not have the Internet to look up anything like that. But Mom piped right up with, "Yes. I read that same story a few months ago in the 'Ask Ann Lander's' newspaper column."

  It was only much later after Ms. Landers passed away that I found out that she too would present stories that originally appeared in other sources and rewrite them and credit them to some anonymous person who "wrote" her.

  "Advice" columns apparently have rewritten and repeated these types of stories almost since their beginning in the 1890s. Ann Landers and her sister Abigail VanBuren - and yes, the Watchtower's writing department - have all followed in that tradition.

  Maybe Barbara Anderson is more familiar with this subject since she worked within the Writing Department at Bethel for some time. But another contact of mine who served time in Bethel in the Translation Group told me that Qs from Rs were often "manufactured in house" to deal with a particular issue that the WT wanted to address - so many were just made up on the fly and then presented as actual questions from WT readers. When I flip through the back of old WT bound volumes and read some of the Qs from Rs I see that pattern definitely seems to exist with the timing and the focus of the question addressing some particular issue.

  Maybe it is the Holy Spirit who is asking these questions???

  JV
• 

  The Rebel

  I think the "Watchtower" comes in at an honourble 3rd position for plagarisam, and proves they have learnt well from there leader Jesus Christ, who comes in at second place for his many plagiarized and famous parables, all stolen from Greek mythology. However if you are familiar with " The Epic of Giligamesh" then at no 1 for plagarisam must surely be the Bible, for its many blatant similarities to the book of Genisis and the character of Jesus.

  The Rebel.
• 

  baker

  they seem to get some stories from the old Readers Digest
• 

  steve2

  Yes, rebel, I so agree. Since time immemorial, religious propagandists have been eager to copy, embellish and alter existing beliefs and stories and then pass the "new" versions as original and true.

  Some people wilingly see that it happens with specific religious groups - but they refuse to see that it has happened for centuries and that even their "sacred" texts (in this case the Bible) have done it.

  The willingness of readers and followers to believe without question what they read in their sacred texts reflects the often desperate human need for hope and comfort. These are important human needs, to be sure; however the desperate need for hope and comfort makes people close their active minds and be led instead by their desperate needs. Again, nothing wrong with that - except when they palm off their beliefs as "the truth" and their leaders as the sole source of "the truth".
• 

  slimboyfat

  There was a thread on here a few years ago that showed a GB member relating an "experience" that was lifted from a Christian magazine and changed to JW terminology. I can't remember enough details to find it.
• 

  baker

  “ For example, the teenage son of a single mother was leading a double life. A well-meaning Christian sister said to the mother: “It’s too bad you have failed at child training.” The mother thought for a moment and responded: “It’s true that things are not going well right now, but his training is a work in progress. Talk to me after Armageddon; then we will know for sure.” This mild response helped to maintain peace between the sisters, and it encouraged the son, who overheard the conversation. He realized that his mother had not given up on him. This moved him to stop his bad associations. In time, he got baptized, and he later served at Bethel.”
  Excerpt From: WATCHTOWER. “The Watchtower, December 15, 2015.” iBooks. I,ll bet u 40 quarters that this little story cannot be verified by anyone. Just another expample that "most" have gotten use to tales like this and never question veracity.
• 

  ttdtt

  Having years of experience I have found that MOST of those are all made up, or sourced from other speeches given by NON JW sources. I have my self looked for good stories from websites that have them, or for sermons given by ministers, or the many books of quotes and anecdotes that are out there.

  What I have found is that the ones the sound the most amazing are usually completely BS.

  A CO gave one where the gist was - a daughter disobeyed her parents and went out at night without her parents knowing about it - they thought she was missing and the dad went out to find her - then he got into an accident - his car hit another one and guess what - his daughter was in it and she died.

  Boo Hoo - BullShit made up crap.
• 

  ResearcherNY

  I heard that very story in 2013 at the Memorial service in Rochester,NY, without the favorite cake.