Personal information:

I was born in 1951, and raised in Uniondale, Long Island, New York. I lived there until 1979, when I moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts to attend college. I moved to Beaverton, Oregon in 1982. In 1998 I moved to Geneva, Switzerland, then to Chestnut Ridge, New York in 1999, and finally to Fort Collins, Colorado in 2000.

I finished high school in 1969, and took science and math courses for college bound students. I received a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering in 1982 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Master of Science degree in 1985 from Oregon State University while working at Tektronix, Inc.

By profession I'm an electrical engineer, and I design analog microchips. I work for a microchip company named National Semiconductor. From 1998 to 2000 I worked for an electronics instrumentation company named LeCroy Corporation. From 1982 to 1997 I worked for Tektronix, Inc., another instrumention company.

In 1975 I married a JW named Susan Cossar. We began to divorce in 1994 because of religious and other differences. I have one daughter who was born in 1985 and lives with me, and is attending college. I married Juliann Bornschein (maiden name) in 1997, and acquired two fine stepsons. The older lives with us and is attending college. The younger lives on his own and is attempting to be a rock star.

Brief summary of my religious experience with Jehovah's Witnesses:

I was raised as a Jehovah's Witness, and was baptized in mid-1967 at the age of 15. Until late 1967 I had no inkling of trouble with JW religious beliefs. I was a true believer and thought that the Watchtower Society was Jehovah's channel for dispensing spiritual food to mankind. Shortly after my baptism, the Society decided that organ transplants were unscriptural. I strongly disagreed with this. After that, I gradually became aware of difficulties with an increasing number of Watchtower teachings. I almost quit the religion in 1972, but my parents convinced me to give it another try, largely due to telling me that I would have to move out of their house if I didn't. I stopped going in field service in 1979, shortly after beginning my sophomore year in college. After graduating from college in 1982, I resumed JW activities for a bit more than a year, and quit for good in 1983. I rarely attended meetings after that, but attended assemblies because of my JW wife's insistence. In 1987, I had some discussions of Bible-related topics with a local elder, but he couldn't answer any of my questions. These concerned the Bible's Flood and Creation accounts. He suggested that I pose the questions to the Society by letter, which I did several years later in a limited way.

Toward the end of 1990, I started doing research in various science-related fields in which the Society had taught something -- the Flood, evolution and a few minor topics. After about a year of research, I concluded that if God exists, he is not interested in mankind, and that in any case I wanted nothing to do with him, and certainly nothing to do with Jehovah's Witnesses. This necessarily caused a good deal of family stress, since my wife and many of my friends and relatives were JWs.

Having come to that point of disbelief, I told my stepfather (a JW elder) and my mother (a longtime JW) about the results of my research. They were unable to answer any questions, but my mother challenged me to investigate the fulfillment of Bible prophecy with respect to the "last days." I began to do so, but also began for the first time to look at what JW critics had to say. I was in a quandary about what various Christian groups said, not knowing what to believe, so I looked into a variety of subjects. Eventually I came upon a book that went into the JW "Gentile times chronology" and Bible history. This was the 1985 edition of Carl Jonsson's excellent _The Gentile Times Reconsidered_. It showed how well the Bible and secular history matched up with respect to the Jewish Exilic period, and so I concluded that Jehovah existed and was the God of the Bible after all. However, this restored faith also deepened my lack of confidence in the Watchtower Society, for the obvious reason that the Society says that most secular historical dates for the period are wrong. This presented me with the problem that the very information from the Bible and secular sources that restored my faith also indicated that the fundamental teachings of JWs -- 1914 and related doctrines -- are quite wrong. With the cornerstone 1914 teaching gone, there was no reason to think that the Jehovah's Witnesses are anything but an odd religious group.

Here is a more detailed and chronological account of my experience with Jehovah's Witnesses:

I was born in 1951 and raised as a Witness. I have one brother, who left the JWs in the 1980s. My mother and father were raised as JWs, as were most of our relatives. My parents were divorced in 1969, and my mother married the man who is now my stepfather. He was more a father in many ways than my real one. She was disfellowshipped, and he, not having been baptized, was treated as a disfellowshipped person. He officially became a JW in 1972 when they were reinstated. They are strong Witnesses, he being an elder. My real father was an extremely active JW for most of his life, but in the 1960s he pretty well dropped out. Unfortunately, he seems to have had a congenital birth defect (his mother almost died of the Spanish Influenza while pregnant with him in 1917), which caused him to have personality defects that caused him and those around him great difficulty, and led to my parents' breakup. He died in 2002.

When I was growing up, I took "the Truth" pretty seriously, and was convinced I believed it. I remember reading a book that pooh-poohed religion because it was inherently illogical, but I thought that it was great that my own religion was so eminently logical. After all, we could _prove_ everything from the Bible!

My family had been involved with the Witnesses for a long time, my paternal grandmother becoming a Bible Student in 1920 and the people on my mother's side knowing about the Bible Students since about 1909. My father's mother got wind of the Bible Students because her husband had, on general principles, defended a Bible Student colporteur who had been tarred and feathered in their rural Oklahoma town in 1918 during the WWI hysteria. My grandfather never took to the religion, but my grandmother later claimed to be of the anointed.

My paternal grandparents had 11 children, 6 or 7 of whom became JWs. Most of their offspring in turn became JWs, and most had large families, so I have literally hundreds of JW relatives, most of whom I've never met. On my mother's side, her aunt and mother became JWs in the 1930s, and about half of their families are in the religion. My mother's brother attended the first Gilead school in 1943, was a missionary in South America most of the rest of his life, and was a Branch Committee member in Colombia. My father was in Bethel from 1938 to 1946, served for part of that time in the Correspondence Department (now the Service Department), and knew all the major players in the Society. He was a very good administrator for conventions, and also headed up the Plumbing Department for several of the big 1950s conventions at Yankee Stadium. I spent some time in the Brooklyn Bethel factory when I was little, playing in piles of paper discards from the magazine trimming machines while he worked on convention things. Nathan Knorr came to our home once, in connection with dedicating a new Kingdom Hall for which my father had been appointed Congregation Servant. My dad was a contemporary and friend of men who have risen to the top of the Watchtower hierarchy, such as Don Adams and Robert Wallen (president and vice president, respectively, of the Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society of Pennsylvania, the parent corporation of all Watchtower corporations), and Harley Miller (now deceased), longtime head of the Service Department.

The first trouble I remember having with the Society's teachings was when it came out against organ transplants in late 1967, just a few months after I was baptized. I completely disagreed with the reasoning set forth in _The Watchtower_, although I never made an issue of it. I thought it was a very stupid argument and it damaged my faith in the Society.

My father's personality problems were manifest largely as an inability to get along with people close to him. To make a long story short, he almost drove my brother and me, and especially my mother, crazy by his overbearing, overcontrolling behavior. She committed adultery with a man we were renting a room to, and was disfellowshipped in 1969, and married him. He had been "studying" with another Witness, and was on his way to becoming a JW when he became involved with my mother. He was viewed as if disfellowshipped. When my parents broke up, I lived with my mother and new stepfather, but my brother lived with our father. When the divorce occurred, it became evident that my father was far more morally culpable than my mother for the situation. Further, he went around gossiping to all their former friends about how "badly" my mother had treated him all during the marriage. My brother and I spoke to the Congregation Servant (this was before the elder arrangement), but he said that, because my father's actions were not disfellowshipping offenses, there was nothing he could do. But he also refused to counsel my father to stop his un-christian activities. So my brother and I went in to Brooklyn Bethel (we lived on Long Island) and spoke to an official in the Service Department named Harley Miller, who was one of my father's friends during his days at Bethel. We explained the situation for about two hours. He, too, said there was nothing to be done. The episode left a sour taste in my mouth about so-called justice in "the Christian congregation."

In 1966, Jehovah's Witnesses first learned of the "significance" of 1975. At a circuit assembly in 1967 we were told that the end of the world was going to come before 1975, so it was extremely important to follow the Society's directions to get salvation. This expectation, along with the Society's extremely negative comments about obtaining higher education, caused me to forego college after finishing high school in 1969. I gave up a scholarship as well as an offer of financial help from a non-JW friend of the family who was well-to-do. From 1967 onward, 1975 figured prominently in the thinking of most everyone I knew. In my own mind it was kind of like a black wall I couldn't see beyond. We sincerely hoped everything would be over and release us from our labors and from the pain of seeing the world in such a sorry state. At least, most of us did.

In March 1971 the Society published a _Watchtower_ article which said that the human heart -- the physical organ -- was literally the seat of emotion. It held "conversations" with the brain, which was equated with the mind. Upon reading the article I became agitated, thinking this was among the most stupid things I had ever read. I thereupon decided the Watchtower Society could not be trusted. I remember being out in service one day with my best friend, "placing" magazines." He tried to explain to one woman about the article, and she looked at him like he was absolutely crazy. I just wanted to melt into the sidewalk. I argued with my father about the article. He thought it was great and cleared up a lot of things. To top it off, the summer district assembly program included a demonstration where a giant green brain on one side of the stage lighted up and talked to a giant red heart on the other side. The dialog reflected the emotional side of a person arguing with the intellectual side.

About 1972, I began having trouble with the Society's teachings that had to do with the length of the creative days of Genesis. Why did the Society teach that they were exactly 7000 years long? This was important because 1975 was supposed to be at the end of exactly 6000 years of human existence. I wanted to know precisely why they were teaching that, and so I researched it in the Society's publications. I could find no explicit explanation anywhere, and concluded that the reason they taught it was based on certain unstated assumptions. I reasoned that, since we knew we were _about_ 6000 years from man's creation, and that we were in the generation of 1914, which was to see the end of this system of things, it was a reasonable conclusion that _exactly_ 6000 years would be a significant number. I couldn't find any Brothers who could confirm this, so I wrote to the Society. To my astonishment, they confirmed it.

So here the Society had admitted that this most important date -- 1975 -- was based on little more than an assumption. I naively assumed that some sort of explanation would be forthcoming in _The Watchtower,_ but it never came. Over a period of time I realized that the Society was not going to tell JWs the truth about this. Since then, I've learned that the 6000 year idea can be traced back to antiquity. It appears in the writings of the early "church fathers", 2nd century B.C. rabinnical writings, and Plato. Traces can even be found in 6th century B.C. Zoroastrianism. Even Charles Taze Russell admitted that the idea was a "venerable tradition" but he held to it nonetheless. Based on a discussion I had with Governing Body member Albert Schroeder in late 1993, in early 1994 I sent Schroeder a detailed explanation of this material so that the Society would be aware of it. He never answered my letter, and told me in a later telephone conversation that he never would.

These things made me lose interest in attending meetings, and in early 1972 I almost dropped out. But since I was still living at home, my parents required me to go to meetings. Having been raised as a JW and having been trained in no job skills, I was pretty much at their mercy financially. Eventually I put out of my mind the things that had bothered me, made a comeback, and was a reasonably good member of the congregation from about 1972 to 1977, becoming a ministerial servant in 1975. In 1975 I married. Three years later, I went to college, and religion went on the back burner.

About 1976, one elder took my best friend to task for not properly handling taxes for his lawn care business, which he had started to support his pioneering and then, after getting married, worked into a real business. My friend had screwed up, being young and new in his business. When the problem was brought to his attention, he took steps to correct it, but this elder decided to try to get him disfellowshipped. Apparently there was some bad blood going back many years between their families, and the elder used this as an excuse to do some damage. Church politics in the JWs. Who would have thought? The body of elders (my stepfather had become one of them by this time) couldn't decide whether to disfellowship or reprove my friend, or just forget the whole thing. They went around and around for months, like the Keystone Kops. There was a great deal of troublesome talk in the congregation. They finally decided to reprove the poor guy, then disfellowship him, then they reversed themselves again. Finally the Society was called in, which called in yet another elder body, which decided that the matter never should have been brought up to begin with, since it is not the congregation's business whether someone handles their taxes properly.

This affair made me question the Society's teaching that elders "are appointed by holy spirit". What they _really_ mean is this: _if_ a local body of elders properly applies the qualifications set out for elders in the Bible, then _it can be said_ that, in a certain sense, elders are appointed by holy spirit, since God himself set the standards. This reasoning, of course, leaves much to be desired, since anyone can _claim_ that he is following the Bible, but that claim has no particular connection with whether he is _in fact_ following the Bible. It is clearly a "feel-good" line of reasoning and without substance. The Society applies the same line of reasoning to the claim that elders, including Watchtower leaders, are "directed by holy spirit" in performing their duties as spiritual shepherds. But the fact that many unqualified elders are appointed -- even elders with a history of child molestation or other crimes -- further proves that this teaching is false.

Let it suffice to say that this understanding is not what the average Witness has of the process of appointing elders, and it is not the impression the Society wants to give. Nor was it mine at the time, so I questioned a number of Brothers about it, and none were able to give a clear answer. Every one claimed that elders really and truly were appointed and directed by holy spirit, but they could not tell me why, if that were true, the situation of the Keystone Kops elder body could have developed. So I wrote to the Society, and they had the local Circuit Overseer, Wesley Benner, talk to me about it. We had a very good talk, and he explained to me what the Society _really_ meant by its claims. To sum it up, I asked him point blank: "In one sentence, is it or is it not true that elders are *directly* appointed by holy spirit?" He hesitated, hung his head, and answered, "No." I then determined in my own mind never to trust the Society again, but because I was already distancing myself from the Witnesses, at least in my own mind, it only added to my desire not to be associated. But being completely entwined by family and social ties, I couldn't see myself doing anything about it. Shortly after this, in 1978, I decided to go to college, and so I put religious problems on the shelf for four years.

After the autumn of 1975 passed without "the end" coming, I began having vaguely formed second thoughts about the Witnesses. I never said anything, like most JWs back then, but I was very disappointed that the end had not come. I never even put it into a solidly formed thought (likely because to do so would have forced me directly to confront the problem that the Society had lied to us), but I know that the disappointment had its effect. I kept having dark thoughts about what it was going to be like in 20 or 30 years, after lots more disappointment had set in. But I put them aside, and was able to put off the inevitable by burying myself in my college studies.

During all these years, I kept finding information from a wide variety of sources that suggested that my religion was not what it claimed to be, and in particular that my religious organization was not telling people the truth about many things related to science. In the manner of so many people who don't want to face unpleasant facts, I kept telling myself that, after college was done, I could attack and solve all the things that were giving me trouble with my faith. Little did I know how severe those things would prove to be.

For many years the Society said that a college education was unnecessary and dangerous. It spoke disparagingly of any JW who went to college rather than pioneer. During my first year at MIT, I got to feeling pretty bad about what was being said in _The Watchtower_ about college goers, and on a number of occasions I complained to my parents about it. One time, my wife and I visited my parents on Long Island, and it so happened that Governing Body member Albert Schroeder was visiting them for the weekend. Since I was feeling pretty resentful about the Society's comments on going to college, my parents suggested that Schroeder and I have a talk. He was very friendly, and we had a fine conversation. To my surprise, he told me that I shouldn't pay too much attention to what the Society said in print about college, and that if it was right for me, I should be satisfied. This placated me for some time.

While in college, I took an anthropology course for which a term paper was required. I decided to combine my interest in Noah's Flood with this requirement by writing a paper showing that Noah's Flood was a real event. I planned on including material about Flood legends as well as physical effects. Watchtower publications dealing with the Flood contained many references to secular publications, and I figured that the MIT library would have most of that material on hand. It did, but I was hardly prepared for what I found. I found that most of the references were from worthless popular accounts (although the impression was given that these were of real scientific value), or were quoted out of context, or otherwise misrepresented. Some references were even handled in such a way that the reader was led to believe they said the opposite of what they actually did. For example, in a number of publications the Society claimed that mammoths had often been found "quick-frozen" in the Arctic in virtually perfect condition. A picture of the famous 1899 discovery of the Siberian Berezovka mammoth, the remains of which are now on display in a Leningrad museum, was sometmes set forth as proof of this claim. The picture is taken from the Smithsonian Institution Annual Report for 1903, which contains an extensive report on the recovery of the mammoth's remains. This report shows that, far from being "quick-frozen", the mammoth was largely rotted away by the time it froze solid, so that only the outmost parts, such as the shoulder and neck and head, were frozen in an unrotted condition. But even these were so foul that only the sled dogs could touch the meat. This report, then, completely contradicted what the Society had claimed for decades about such finds in the Arctic.

Because the majority of references were misrepresented in some way, I could not honestly use them in my paper. I gave up on the Flood theme and thought that writing a defense of creation against evolution would work well, so I looked up references on that topic, too, in Society publications. I used the books _Did Man Get Here By Evolution or by Creation_, _Is the Bible Really the Word of God?_, and various Watchtower and Awake! articles. But I found the same problem with these references -- ones that were supposed to knock down evolution -- as I had found with those used to support the Flood. Since the end of the term was rapidly approaching, I nearly panicked, but lucked out and found a book written by a lawyer (_Darwin Retried_, Norman MacBeth), which used quotations from various scientists to poke at evolution, but without distorting them. This was barely adequate to let me write the paper and pass the course. This experience further eroded my opinion of WTS scholarship and intellectual integrity.

In 1982, I graduated from college and moved to Oregon, where I had landed a good job with an electronics company. My wife and I fit in pretty well with the local congregation and rapidly made friends. In late 1982, the Society printed _Awake!_ articles which claimed that the design of animals implied a designer. It pointed out that some people objected that some animals were predators, and so how could this be evidence of a _loving_ designer? Then it said that this question did not affect the claim that "design requires a designer", but does involve a moral question about how man and the animals got into their present bad state. It said that animals kill and eat each other because of Adam's sin, and that animals were not designed to kill and eat each other, but that some do so because they "adapted themselves to eating flesh"! How they were supposed to "adapt" themselves this way was not explained. I suspect that the Society got reamed about this, because a few months later they printed a couple of readers' responses that pointed out how stupid these arguments were. The printed reply skirted the questions and lamely concluded, in effect, "We don't know what we're talking about but we believe the Bible." This angered me greatly, not only because of the Society's obvious gross incompetence that was being paraded as "Bible knowledge", but because of the implications for the supposed loving-kindness of God toward his creation.

About a year after that, I found that I just didn't believe much of it anymore. I remember one day in late 1983, sitting in a car in service with three other JWs, doing return visits and thinking how stupid this all was. Here we were, four people in a car, with two people at a time going to a door that most likely no one would answer, claiming that this fulfilled Jesus' words about preaching the good news in the last days. It all seemed so futile, and so I resolved not to go "preaching" that way again. I also quit going to meetings other than some of the Sunday ones and most assemblies.

By 1987, my wife let me know that she was quite bothered by my "not doing anything about the Truth", so she convinced me to talk to a Brother who was about my age and who, along with his wife, had just come back from Bethel. So for about a year we talked about the Flood, Creation vs. Evolution, and a host of other things. I realized after a while that he had no answers, and so did he. So he suggested that I write to the Society about some of it. I put this off for another two years, until in the fall of 1990 something motivated me to begin research into all the questions I had stored up. The research got intense. I began to realize that the Society could not and would not ever respond to the full content of any letter I might write (this has proved to be the case), and so I wrote some short letters to the Society. Most were never answered, perhaps partly because they were not very tactful (but one would expect that one wouldn't have to walk on eggshells with "Jehovah's spokesmen"). Only one, concerning the ransom doctrine, was answered after I wrote personally to someone in a prominent position at Bethel (former Gilead Instructor Ulysses Glass) and called in a favor. In its response, the Society said that the Brothers disagreed with my conclusions but would not explain why. Then they referred me to some literature explaining why one should not ask "unprofitable questions". I wrote a reply but it was never answered.

By the end of the first phase of this research, I had pretty much lost faith in God, and had almost completely given up on the Witnesses. In late 1991, I decided to look at what critics of the Society had to say. I found far more than I could ever have imagined. Up to that point, I had stayed away from doctrinal stuff and concentrated on science. I found that all of my complaints about how science related things were dealt with were duplicated in spades in the doctrinal areas. I found that I was not alone in my complaints, and that I was not off the wall in my criticisms, because many others had seen the same problems, and they were just as angry as I was. Of course, they had left, but I continued to try to find answers.

An Essay on the Impossibility of Noah's Flood

About November 1990, I began to put together all of the information I had gathered about Noah's Flood. I anticipated writing a letter to the Society of perhaps a dozen pages based on this. But after a month or so of writing had produced about 30 pages, it was obvious that I still had a long way to go to treat the material properly, and I realized that the Society would never materially respond to such detailed material. So I decided to write an extended essay on the impossibility of Noah's Flood. This ultimately came to about 150 pages, and has been read by many hundreds of people. It can be accessed on the Internet at http://www.geocities.com/osarsif/flood01.htm .

An Essay on the Society's 1985 Creation Book, and Creation/Evolution Generally

In 1985, the Society came out with the book _Life - How Did It Get Here? By Evolution or by Creation?_ Although I had been inactive for a year and a half, I eagerly anticipated that, perhaps in this book, the Society would finally address many of the problems with its earlier expositions on creation and evolution. In particular, I hoped they would quote source references competently and fairly. I read the book at the district convention where it was released, and was rather disappointed. It failed to address many important topics. And something I couldn't quite put my finger on made me uncomfortable with the criticisms of evolution and defenses of creation presented. But because of the press of responsibilities of work, and wanting to spend time with my new daughter, I didn't follow through for another five years.

Eventually, after completing a first draft of my essay on the Flood, I began looking up source references in the Creation book. At first, I just looked up references that seemed a bit odd. For example, the book claimed that a famous evolutionist named Richard Lewontin supported the notion that "design requires a designer", by quoting him as saying that organisms "appear to have been carefully and artfully designed" and that he views them as "the chief evidence of a Supreme Designer". But why would an ardent evolutionist say that? After looking up the article cited from the 1978 Scientific American magazine for myself, it was obvious that the book grossly misrepresented what Lewontin said. He actually said that the quoted statements were the view of certain 19th-century scientists, and that the purpose of his article was to disprove those notions. Further research showed that the misquote was borrowed from the book _The Neck of the Giraffe_ by paranormalist author Francis Hitching, who in turn borrowed it from a small magazine called _Impact_ published by the young-earth creationist organization The Institute for Creation Research. I even found a criticism by Lewontin of the original ICR misquote, writing in the anti-creationist magazine Creation/Evolution. Lewontin complained that creationists constantly misquoted him and other evolutionists in attempts to make them seem to say the opposite of what they meant. So it was obvious that this misquote was a good example of deliberate deception by the Watchtower Society.

The paranormalist Francis Hitching is an interesting source reference, particularly because the Creation book quotes from him some thirteen times, and borrows material from him without attribution several more times. The Creation book refers to him as an evolutionist, as if that should give him credibility as a scientist, but it turns out that Hitching is actually just a writer of popular books on paranormal topics, with titles including Dowsing: The Psi Connection and Fraud, Mischief, and the Supernatural. He was, for awhile, a tabloid TV writer for the BBC series In Search Of, which is similar to the American tabloid TV series Unsolved Mysteries. His book The Neck of the Giraffe, from which the author of Creation got many of his arguments, is largely about Hitching's beef with both biblical creationists and normal evolutionists. He thinks that life evolved by some sort of unspecified cosmic paranormal force, perhaps akin to the science fictional "The Force" of the Star Wars movie series. Hitching certainly criticizes Darwinism, but most of his criticisms are borrowed directly from the literature of the young-earth creationists that the Watchtower Society condemns as unscientific and unbiblical. Paranormalists, young-earth fundamentalist creationists, and Jehovah's Witness certainly make strange bedfellows.

As I progressed in looking up these odd quotations, I almost always found a problem. In one way or another, the original author's intent was misrepresented, misunderstood or misused in such a way that the quotation did not actually support the point that the Creation book's author claimed. So, after a relatively brief look at these problem areas, I began a systematic look at most of the quotations and arguments up through chapter 17 (the rest of the book was not about science, so I wasn't interested). I was astounded at the level of misrepresentation. I gradually got to the point of trying to guess what was wrong with a quotation or argument, and I was right about half the time. By the end of my research, I had found more than 100 examples of misrepresentation or bad argumentation. I was shocked at the level of scholastic dishonesty and incompetence on the part of these self-proclaimed dispensers of "spiritual food in due season".

An amusing example of bad argumentation is found in chapter 3, "What Does Genesis Say?". The chapter explains the Society's view of the events of each creative day, and toward the end claims that "the Genesis creation account emerges as a scientifically sound document." But no information whatsoever has been given that supports this claim. The chapter ends stating that "the science of mathematical probability offers striking proof that the Genesis creation account must have come from a source with knowledge of the events." It lists ten events of creation starting with "a beginning", and then claims that "science agrees that these stages occurred in this general order." Well of course, science most certainly does not agree on this. Most amusingly, the book asks, "What are the chances that the writer of Genesis just guessed this order?" It answers, "the same as if you picked at random the numbers 1 to 10 from a box, and drew them in consecutive order." Well, I suppose that Watchtower writers might have to guess at where to place "a beginning", but most people would place it first in order. Also, it goes without saying that relatively ignorant people like the Jews who compiled Genesis would place the creation of land plants before land animals, since most animals eat plants and not the other way round. And so it goes with the rest of the "events" listed: every one is either in the order one would expect a scientifically ignorant person to put it, or science doesn't agree with the order or even the existence of the event. So the "probability argument" is wrong on all counts. I remember having a good laugh when I first realized how ridiculous the Society's arguments were.

A not so amusing example of misrepresentation is found in chapter 7, " 'Ape-Men' -- What Were They?". On page 96, Creation attempts to throw cold water on radiometric dating techniques to support its claim that man has been in existence for only some 6,000 years, by quoting a "scientific journal" to the effect that "dates determined by radioactive decay may be off -- not only by a few years, but by orders of magnitude", and that "man, instead of having walked the earth for 3.6 million years, may have been around for only a few thousand." Well of course, anyone who knows anything about reputable scientific journals knows that a reputable one would never publish such statements. This really piqued my curiosity, and so I looked up the source reference. It turned out that the "scientific journal" was actually Popular Science magazine, which is to real scientific journals as the National Enquirer is to the New York Times. But the 1979 article that Popular Science published was actually a mostly good one on how reliable radiometric dating has proved to be. The article's author, for reasons I cannot fathom, interviewed and quoted a young-earth creationist named Robert Gentry, who is a Seventh-Day Adventist who believes wholeheartedly in the teachings of the SDA prophetess Ellen White. White taught that the creative days of Genesis were literal 24-hour days, and so that is what conservative SDA's like Gentry believe. Gentry actually obtained a Ph.D. in physics, but by his own admission, only to gain the respectability of scientific credentials so as to lend credence to his criticisms of non-young-earth creationist ideas. So, when Popular Science referred to Gentry's ideas, it was merely presenting what the article's author thought might be a counterpoint. But the author said of one of Gentry's ideas: "Most scientists simply dismiss the idea. As one physicist told me, 'You can believe it or not; I don’t.' " So the Creation book's giving the impression that a reputable scientific journal criticized radiometric dating was a misrepresentation on several levels: (1) the "scientific journal" was actually a popular magazine; (2) the article showed why radiometric dating is reliable; (3) the criticism that Creation implied was by the journal speaking in an editorial voice was actually from a young-earth creationist with an obvious agenda; (4) the journal specifically stated that most scientists disagree with the young-earth creationist's claims; (5) Creation failed to warn the reader of any of these caveats. It is simply astounding that an author who is writing material that will be viewed by millions of Jehovah's Witnesses as "spiritual food in due season" could be so dishonest.

In 1996, after talking with several former Bethelites, I discovered who was the author of the Creation book. While visiting relatives in New York, I went into Brooklyn Bethel and managed to get him to come down to the lobby of the main headquarters building at 25 Columbia Heights. He's one Harry Peloyan, a long time Bethelite who for many years was/is the editor-in-chief of the Awake! magazine. He apparently farmed out the writing of the book to a number of JWs, so he was really the compiler and editor of the book. We talked for about 45 minutes. He became hostile when he found that I wanted to discuss some of my criticisms with him, and kept threatening to walk away. But he always wanted to have the last word, and so, after walking a few steps away, he kept coming back at me with what he thought were good rejoinders. I finally nailed him down on one point, though: I asked him about the misrepresentation of Richard Lewontin. He said, "Was the quote correct?" Of course, the quote did repeat the quoted words exactly. I said, "But the point is that you made Lewontin appear to say exactly the opposite of what he did say." Peloyan refused to admit of a problem with this. I said, "Think of it this way. Suppose that a Watchtower article talking about evolution said, 'Evolutionists claim that evolution is true.' Suppose that I then wrote an article about the Society's abandoning creation and wrote, 'The Society now says that "evolution is true"!' Even though I quoted the Society's exact words, would I have told the truth?" Peloyan just stared at me and refused to answer. I said, "See, you DO understand why your quoting practices are dishonest." At that point he did walk away about ten feet, then returned and had more hostile words for me. I thoroughly enjoyed putting that dishonest man on the spot.

My essay can be accessed at http://www.geocities.com/osarsif/ce01.htm .

About 1992, I decided to try to contact various prominent critics of Jehovah's Witnesses. At a meeting of evangelicals in Oregon in 1992, I first met James Penton, the author of _Apocalypse Delayed: The Story of Jehovah's Witnesses. He struck me as a kind, loving, grandfatherly man, quick with his wit and his emotions. We've become good friends over the years. Also in 1992, I stayed overnight with Raymond Franz, author of _Crisis of Conscience_. I was impressed by his calm intelligence and loyalty to his belief in the Bible. Again in 1992, I began corresponding with Carl Olof Jonsson, the brilliant researcher who publicly blew the whistle on the Society's failed 1914 chronology in his books _The Gentile Times Reconsidered_ and _The Sign of the Last Days: When?_ I've helped him a bit in various research projects from time to time. What has struck me most about these men is their integrity and devotion to the truth -- quite in contrast to "Society men".

The Internet

In the summer of 1992, I discovered the Internet. At that time, only Usenet News forums were available for discussions; the World Wide Web didn't come along in a significant way until 1995. Looking back, it was somewhat surprising how that came about. I had recently finished writing my long tome about Creation/Evolution and was thinking about what to do next. I was sitting at my work desk one day, feet up on it, when along came a good friend who started chatting about the Newsgroups he was reading on Internet. He told me about the "origins" and "religion" groups, and so I found out how to get access. Lo and behold, I found a discussion of the Society's 1985 book on Creation/Evolution. It was being ripped to shreds, which tickled me since I had just got finished doing the same.

Ever since then, I've participated in various Internet forums. I originally found that JWs who inhabited the Net tended to be much more open than other JWs when it came to discussing hard topics. Perhaps it was because one needed to be a bit thick-skinned to begin with to enjoy the fray. However, with the publication of the September 1995 _Our Kingdom Ministry,_ and because of the increasing presence of informed critics, many JWs have given up discussing doctrine on computer forums. It also appears to be widely known among JWs that many former apologists have quit the religion because of what they learned while trying to defend the Society.

To peg the time scale of my Net-related activities just a bit better, I began my intense research in November, 1990. By June 1991 I had completed first drafts of all my science-oriented writeups, as well as a piece on "God's Justice" which was essentially a criticism of the "ransom sacrifice" doctrine (see http://www.geocities.com/osarsif/ransom.htm). I was agnostic and nearly atheistic at that point. I spent the next half year filling in the holes in my research. In December of 1991, my mother challenged me to do some research on the fulfillment of Bible prophecy in the 20th century according to the Society. Instead of diving right in, I decided first to take look at what critics had to say about JWs. I read a book (_Witnesses of Jehovah_, Leonard and Marjorie Chretian) that summarized the main complaints evangelical types had about the Witnesses, and that led to my purchasing what I consider the best of the "critical" books on the Watchtower Society. Much of the critical literature is garbage, but these are gems: _Crisis of Conscience_ and _In Search of Christian Freedom_, Raymond Franz; _Apocalypse Delayed: The Story of Jehovah's Witnesses_, James Penton; _The Gentile Times Reconsidered_, Carl Olof Jonsson; _The Sign of the Last Days: When?_, Carl Olof Jonsson and Wolfgang Herbst; The Jehovah's Witnesses and Prophetic Speculation, Edmond C. Gruss.

In the fall of 1992, my parents agreed to forward a short list of difficult questions to the Writing Department via my mother's close friend in Bethel, Barbara Anderson, who was attached to the Writing Staff, and I was promised some answers. I didn't know at the time who their Bethel contact was, but have since learned that the questions were given to Harry Peloyan, who was for many years the editor-in-chief of Awake! magazine. I heard nothing for some six months, and finally asked my stepdad if he had heard anything back. He said that sometime earlier, one of the Society's writers had read the questions and decided that at least one was an "apostate question" and therefore that he would not deal with any of them. I was pissed that he hadn't the decency to inform me of this on his own, even though Peloyan responded within a few months. It was obvious that he was embarrassed by the lack of substantive response. Because of this statement that I was asking "apostate questions", my mother complained about my doing so. I asked her how a sincerely asked question, no matter what it was, could be "apostate". She couldn't answer. Then I said, "Mom, is it possible to be an apostate if you only speak the truth?" She said, "I refuse to answer." I asked why. "Because I can see where you're going with that question." I was extremely disappointed in that answer, for obvious reasons. It gradually dawned on me that most JWs are exactly the same way -- they know that some of the Society's teachings are nonsense, but refuse to take the obvious step of doing something about it. So they pretend to themselves not to have seen such questions. A completely Orwellian response -- "doublethink", "crimestop", and all that.

Sometime after this, I talked on the phone with mother about some of my JW issues. I complained that every JW I tried to get to answer my questions was stonewalling. She said that no one was stonewalling. I said, "Well how come I'm not getting any answers?" I brought up the fact that the Society's writer (Peloyan) had refused to answer, and that my uncle (a Branch Committee member in Colombia at that time) gave only a lame, substanceless reply to my heartfelt letter, and that the Society failed to respond to a number of letters, and that she and my stepdad couldn't or refused to answer any number of hard questions. I said, "Mom, how would you deal with one of your Bible studies who asked the same questions that I'm asking?" She said, "Well, I'd try to convince them to put aside their questions, and complete the study and get baptized." I said, "Ok, fine. How would you then deal with the questions you asked them to put aside?" She said, somewhat emphatically, "Well! I'd think that by then they'd have enough sense not to ask them anymore!" I said, "Mom, do you realize what you just told me?" She said, "What?" I said, "You just told me not only that you'd stonewall your Bible study, but you would actually lie to them." She said, "I can't deal with this!" and handed the phone to my stepdad. So it was obvious to me that, even people as supposedly respectable as my parents would not hesitate to lie to people to put off their questions and to get naive prospective converts to commit themselves to "Jehovah's organization" on false pretenses.

In the summer of 1993, based on input from a cousin who has close ties with certain Governing Body members, I decided to try to contact the Governing Body directly to get some of my criticisms of WTS teachings addressed. With help from my parents, who are personal friends of GB member Albert Schroeder, I forwarded a letter to Schroeder asking him for an opportunity to discuss these things. Eventually he agreed to a telephone conversation, and in late November 1993, on a Sunday afternoon, we spoke for about 2 1/2 hours. I raised enough problematic issues, that he saw were _real_ problems, that he agreed to address them in writing.

For example, I asked Schroeder to explain how the Society reconciled Jeremiah 25:11, 12 with its 607-1914 chronology. In the New World Translation, this reads: "11 'And all this land must become a devastated place, an object of astonishment, and these nations will have to serve the king of Babylon seventy years. 12 And it must occur that when seventy years have been fulfilled I shall call to account against the king of Babylon and against that nation,' is the utterance of Jehovah, 'their error, even against the land of the Chaldeans, and I will make it desolate wastes to time indefinite.' " The point I made was that verse 12 clearly states that *after* the 70 years had been fulfilled, Jehovah would call to account against Babylon. Obviously, that calling to account occurred in 539 B.C., when Cyrus conquered Babylon and killed King Belshazzar. But the Society teaches that the 70 years ended two years later, in 537 B.C., so there is a clear discrepancy between what the Society claims and what the Bible actually says.

This dating is extremely important in Watchtower chronology, because the Society claims that the 70 years spoken of by Jeremiah began in 607 B.C., and that that year is the start of the so-called "Gentile times" period which they claim was a 2520 year period that ended in 1914 and ushered in "the time of the end". This is also crucial for their claim that Watchtower leaders were specially appointed by God in 1919 to be "over all Christ's belongings" on earth, so it's their basis for their claim to be "the faithful and discreet slave" of Matthew 24:45. Schroeder had no ready answer, so we began to carefully consider verse 12 and its context. After reading the verse, I said, "According to this verse, when did the 70 years end?" He said, "In 539 B.C.E." Then he seemed to realize that there was a problem, and he had us go back to the beginning of Jeremiah 25. This tickled me, for here I was leading a GB member and former Gilead instructor through the Bible. We got to verse 12 again and he automatically said, "and that happened in 537 B.C.E." I pointed out that he had just agreed that the verse indicated that the 70 years ended in 539, not 537. This flustered him, so I suggested that I send him a written summary of what we were discussing and he could deal with it at his leisure, which he agreed to do.

Another thing that made Schroeder sit up and take notice was my pointing out that many of the arguments in the _Creation_ book were taken from the writings of the paranormalist author Francis Hitching (he has written a number of books promoting paranormal topics), as I mentioned above. He was audibly shocked and agreed to look at my documentation.

Two months later I sent Schroeder a large packet of material documenting the basis for my criticisms. These criticisms were along the lines of some of what I've described above. By August 1994 Schroeder had not answered my letter, so I arranged to talk to him by telephone the next month when I was to be in New York on business. More on this below.

In early 1994, a young, prospective JW named Alfredo De La Fe (a resident of upper Manhattan who was still "studying" with a mature JW) discovered the Usenet forum talk.religion.misc, and began posting defenses against various criticisms of his new-found religion. I was in the habit of posting long, boring but informative tomes on various JW-related subjects on this Newsgroup. Alfredo was particularly interested in my critical discussions with other JWs about the "Gentile times chronology". After several months, he found that he couldn't give answers to certain critical questions about the Society's claims. In particular, he couldn't explain Jeremiah 25:12, any more than Albert Schroeder could. So he contacted his "study conductor" (a relatively young "anointed" brother named Rick Tunon) and eventually set up a telephone conversation among the three of us.

It quickly became evident that Tunon was also unable to answer my criticism, and so he in turn contacted another "anointed" JW named John Albu (deceased 2004). Albu, it turns out, was the Society's top scholar (and apparently their _only_ scholar, after the death of Fred Franz) on "Bible chronology" and was conversant with Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and several other languages. He's almost certainly the author of the "Appendix to Chapter 14" in the 1981 book _Let Your Kingdom Come_. I soon ended up in a four-way phone conversation with these guys, but even Albu couldn't answer my challenge to explain the offending scripture.

In June 1994, I had to go to the east coast on a business trip, and Tunon agreed to allow me to meet one Saturday with all three of them at his apartment in uptown Manhattan. I spent about ten hours with them, and had a most enjoyable time. In fact, Tunon told me that he had prayed to Jehovah the night before that, if I were an apostate, Jehovah would prevent me from arriving, and so the fact that I had arrived on time proved to him that I was ok. During our discussion, I told them about some of my history of misgivings about the Bible and the Society. They agreed that I had many good points.

A significant result of our discussion was that Tunon and Albu had to admit that the Society's chronological claims contradicted the direct statement of Jeremiah 25:12 (which means that the 70 years mentioned by Jeremiah ended in 539, not 537 B.C., and kills the Society's claims about 1914). I asked Albu how I, as an inactive JW, ought to view this contradiction. He answered -- no suprise -- that I should "wait on Jehovah." We left on good terms. Of course, "waiting on Jehovah" for another ten years has brought no further information about this important issue.

By this time, I was more than half convinced that there was no God, or that if there were, he wasn't interested in mankind, and certainly not in me. I explained the reasons for this to Tunon and Albu, and they were quite understanding of why I felt that way. But Tunon, wanting to help restore my faith, explained how he had become "anointed", which bordered on a miraculous experience for him. After a good deal more discussion, he convinced me to pray once more to God and ask for help in getting through my spiritual difficulties. He said that it was his experience that God would open his hand and answer my prayer in an astounding way. So on my drive from Manhattan out to my brother's place on Long Island, I prayed my heart out. To my surprise, I actually cried as I "lay my burden on Jehovah", as the Witnesses like to say. Not long after that, things developed rapidly in ways that completely changed my life.

By early August, I found that I had to go on another business trip to New York, and so I phoned Albert Schroeder to try to set up an appointment with him to see what, if anything, he had done with that pile of documentation I had some seven months earlier. He refused to meet in person, but said that I could call him at his office on a Saturday morning. Shortly after that, I had one of the most intense dreams ever. I was crawling on my hands and knees up a long flight of stairs out in the middle of nowhere, sort of like the stairs on which you board an airplane on the tarmac, but so high that I could barely see the top. I crawled and crawled, finally nearing the top. As I set my hand on the landing, a shadowy figure in a trenchcoat rushed past me on my right. I crawled onto the landing, and the man turned to face me. I couldn't see his face. He teetered backward on the brink, and fell into empty space. I crawled over to the edge and looked down, and the man was lying on his back, obviously dead. It was a long way down. Then my vision telescoped downward and focused on the man's face, like a very fast zooming in. It was the face of Albert Schroeder. I didn't know it at the time, but I think that my brain was telling me that it was going to have me make some big changes in life real soon.

Simultaneously with these developments, my marriage was going through the final stages of failure, mainly because my wife was unable to deal with the fact that I was no longer a JW, and she had stopped treating me like a husband. I later learned that, around 1985, she realized I would never again be a JW, and so she emotionally abandoned me. After all, why would a self-respecting JW invest any emotional energy in a mate who would die "real soon now" in the battle of Armageddon? In 1993 and 1994, my wife told me point blank that she could not be my companion in life as long as I wasn't an active JW. In late August 1994, she threatened that if I taught our daughter my "apostate religious views" she would divorce me for "apostasy." So in September 1994, I decided to divorce her. The divorce was finalized in early 1996.

During the last year of my marriage, I began corresponding with Juliann Stutheit, and her sister and brother-in-law Rella and Rob Abernathy. I had met Julie via email at the end of 1993, when she responded to some posts I made on the Usenet religious Newsgroup talk.religion.misc, but we left off communicating for half a year. In the meantime, I met Rella and Rob the same way, and we quickly became friends. A couple of months after Julie and I resumed correspondence in early July 1994, we admitted to each other, and most importantly, to ourselves, that our marriages were dead and that we were probably going to get out of them. Later, we made plans to meet in person to see if we were as compatible in person as by email. Soon afterwards, we met and then made plans to marry. In December 1994, Julie moved to Oregon, and we married in early 1997.

With all these things going on, the summer of 1994 was a watershed for me in several ways. At the beginning of the summer, I began seeing a therapist to help me sort out the stresses of dealing with a failed marriage and a failed religion. By the end of the summer, we concluded that I was very angry about one factor common to three influential forces in my life: the inability on the part of my father, my religion and my wife to admit error. This realization spurred me on to end the pain of my current circumstances and start life anew.

During that summer, I hazily realized that things were coming to a head, and that's exactly what happened. At the beginning of September 1994, I internally resolved my problems with my father, and decided to divorce my wife. Two weeks later, I had my telephone conversation with Governing Body member Albert Schroeder while I was in New York, since he had refused to meet me in person. He said that he had better things to do with his time than deal with the issues I had brought up in our conversation the year before and in the material I had sent him. I asked him if he intended ever to deal with it as he had promised he would, and he said he would not. I also asked him, seeing that I now had nothing to lose, why the injunction in Luke 21:8 doesn't apply to Jehovah's Witnesses. In this passage, Jesus says, "Look out that you are not misled; for many will come on the basis of my name, saying, ‘I am he,’ and, ‘The due time has approached.’ Do not go after them." JWs obviously say, "I am he" in the sense of claiming to speak for God, and they certainly have said and still say, "the due time has approached". Schroeder balked at answering, but I persisted, and he finally said, "It _can't_ apply to us, because we're God's people!" I saw then clearly, as never before, that the entire leadership of the Watchtower Society normally acts just like Schroeder. I therefore concluded that, despite my best efforts to find contrary evidence, the Witnesses are just one of a number of religions in which good and bad can be found, and I mentally divorced myself from the Society. So in the space of two weeks, my three major psychological pressures began to be resolved and my personal life began to turn around. Since then, as I've learned more, I've concluded that the Witnesses are a destructive cult in every horrific sense of the word.

About the beginning of October, I decided to tell my wife that I wanted a divorce. I also made plans to visit Juliann later in the month. But before I did these things, I once again prayed to God. Working in my garden digging potatos, I asked God to give me a sign -- anything -- to tell me whether to proceed with my plans or to halt. Of course, no such sign ever came, and it quickly became clear to me that this business of praying was a complete bust. Ever since, I've been agnostic.

At various times in the 1990s, I defended various aspects of JW teachings on a number of Internet forums. Often, though, I found that these defenses were misplaced, and I was forced to change my mind. For example, I argued with one JW critic about whether the JW notion of a resurrection made sense. He argued that it does not, because what they call a "resurrection" is actually a new creation, where God creates a new body, or clone, at some future time and somehow inserts the dead person's memories and personality into the new body. So the new person would actually be an identical copy of the dead person -- what we today call a clone -- and would no more be the "resurrected" dead person than a perfect copy of a Renoir painting that had been destroyed in a fire would be the original. Not even God can make an original of anything, once the original is gone -- he can at best make a perfect copy. The problem is one of continuity. Of course, the Bible does teach about a resurrection, but because of the continuity problem, there must be some "thing" or "entity" -- traditional Christians call it an "immortal soul" -- that continues on after the person is physically dead, and maintains continuity with the resurrected body. This means that JW beliefs about the resurrection and the mortality of the human soul are mutually exclusive. So JWs who believe that when they die, they've gone out of existence, have no logical choice but to understand that, at best, not they, but their clones will be running around in a future Paradise Earth.

In the spring of 1995, Rella Abernathy saw a Canadian TV production called "Children of Jehovah". This documentary showed the destructive effects on families of the JW practice of shunning, as embodied in their practices of "disfellowshipping" and "disassociation". A very long series of Usenet discussions ensued on talk.religion.misc. As is usual on Internet forums, one thing led to another, and the JW handling of child molestation cases was raised. Many ex-JWs participated and pointed out that, in their experience, such cases were often handled very badly, with the main focus being on protecting the name of "Jehovah's Organization" rather than on helping the victim and protecting other children from becoming victims. Such discussions continue up through today.

During these discussions, several participants related rumors they had heard, or their own personal experiences, about two Governing Body members who were involved in homosexuality or child molestation. In 1979, Ewart Chitty (who was well into his 70s) was removed from the GB because of an accusation from a young Bethelite that he had made improper homosexual advances toward him. Chitty was reassigned for awhile to other duties in Brooklyn Bethel, then reassigned to the London Bethel, where he finished his days in the late 1990s. In 1984, Leo Greenlees (who was in his early 70s) was removed from the GB after the parents of a young boy brought charges that he had molested their son. The GB decided that Greenlees was repentant, and assigned him as a Special Pioneer. Greenlees died in the late 1980s, having finally been a member of a New Orleans congregation for some time. Greenlees was obviously a molester for decades, because old men in their 70s don't _begin_ careers in pedophilia -- they *continue* them. Since Greenlees was appointed a GB member in 1971, this means that, if God were behind his appointment, God would have appointed a child molester to the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses. It is inconceivable that God would do such a thing, and so this is an absolute proof that God has nothing to do with the leadership of the JWs.

In early 1994, I met a Norwegian JW named Jan Haugland on the Usenet Newsgroup talk.religion.misc. He was a JW apologist, and so we argued about many things, both online and via email. By about October 1994, he and his wife had decided to leave the JWs because of what they had learned. They were soon disfellowshipped for "apostasy". Jan quickly became one of the foremost online JW critics, setting up an informative website and participating in many debates with JW defenders. He soon got in touch with two prominent Norwegian "apostates", Kent Steinhaug and Norman Hovland, who had made many appearances on Norwegian radio programs dealing with JWs and in court cases dealing with custody issues involving JWs. Together, they made an awesome trio of online critics, pulling off some amazing and extremely amusing stunts. Steinhaug eventually started what became the largest anti-JW website, WatchtowerObserver.com, which recently shut down. It contained everything from the complete text of the semi-secret JW elders manual known as "the Flock book", to copies of letters to Bodies of Elders, to virtually everything critical of JWs that Steinhaug could get his hands on. Hovland has written many fine essays and posts on various online forums, some of the best of which can be found here: http://www.geocities.com/osarsif/index2.htm .

In 1996, Jan and his wife visited Julie and me in Oregon for three weeks. We all took a trip to visit Jim Penton in Lethbridge, Canada. In 1997, Julie and I visited Norway, and spent nearly three days on the Oslo Fiord on a boat with Jan and his wife, Norm and Kent. We had a wonderful time with these crazy Vikings.

Sometime in the mid-1990s I was pointed to a JW-oriented forum on America Online. I argued and discussed many topics with many JWs and JW-critics. One of my most formidable JW debate opponents posted under the moniker Apokrisis. Eventually I learned the real name of this man, Greg Stafford. Stafford was an eloquent defender of Jehovah's Witnesses, and in 1998 published the book "Jehovah's Witnesses Defended". He published a revised and expanded version a year or so later. From about 1997 onward, I spent most of my online time on the Web discussion board called H2O. For reasons best known to Stafford, he began posting on that board to defend JWs, and of course, I responded with vigor. We engaged in lengthy and heated debates, which were ultimately not finished due to unforeseen circumstances. Since then, Stafford has made an about-face, and in 2002 published the book "Three Dissertations on the Teachings of Jehovah's Witnesses", which presented a number of devastating criticisms of basic JW teachings, such as on blood, chronology and the doctrine of the "faithful and discreet slave". As of this writing, I am not aware of any online forums where Stafford is present, although I understand that he sometimes debates against the Trinity doctrine with various Evangelicals.

During the 1990s, I often argued online that Jehovah's Witnesses are not a cult. I based that mainly, not on an objective evaluation, but on an emotional reluctance. Since then I've been forced to conclude that they are a destructive cult, because they destroy the lives of individuals and family relationships by their deceptiveness, their destructive policies such as the inadequate child molestation policies, their practice of shunning, and their isolating themselves as much as possible from non-JWs.

All during my career on the Internet, I've discussed things and argued with JWs who wanted to defend their beliefs. I've learned one thing very well: Jehovah's Witnesses are very bad at defending their religious organization -- so bad that self-appointed defenders are often the best critics because of their example. They can defend a few things quite well, such as their non-trinitarian beliefs. But when it comes to defending the Society from accusations of dishonesty, incompetence, arrogance and pig-headedness, they fall down flat. Worse, they themselves almost always resort to illogical arguments, bad arguments, and sometimes, even outright lies. I suspect that much of today's reluctance on the part of JWs to try to defend themselves against online critics stems from a realization that they almost always lose debates against knowledgeable critics.

The dishonesty of individual JW defenders clearly stems from the dishonesty of the Watchtower Society itself. While honesty in everything is given much lip service, in practice, honesty goes out the window when JWs are confronted with examples of how the Society covers over most of the ridiculous episodes in its history, such as the recent UN scandal, and its past ridiculous teachings, such as that God lives on the star Alcyone in the Pleiades constellation. These defenders fail to realize that the Bible they claim as the very basis of their religion condemns anyone who would lie to defend God. Job 13:7-12 states, in The New Living Translation:

"Are you defending God by means of lies and dishonest arguments? You should be impartial witnesses, but will you slant your testimony in his favor? Will you argue God’s case for him? Be careful that he doesn’t find out what you are doing! Or do you think you can fool him as easily as you fool people? No, you will be in serious trouble with him if even in your hearts you slant your testimony in his favor. Doesn’t his majesty strike terror into your heart? Does not your fear of him seize you? Your statements have about as much value as ashes. Your defense is as fragile as a clay pot."

Final Things and Miscellaneous Thoughts

In 1993, Barbara and Joe Anderson left Bethel, after a career there of nearly eleven years. Barbara had been assigned as the chief researcher on the Proclaimers book project in the late 1980s, and was given access to all sorts of internal Watchtower historical material, including Fred Franz's personal files. By about 1991, from discussions with other staff members, Barbara came to realize that, through selective editing of many basic research results for the Proclaimers book, references to the most embarrassing JW teachings and practices were eliminated, so the resulting book was quite deceitful in its whitewashing of Watchtower history. The book also toned down the extremely dogmatic claims of the Bible Students under both Russell and Rutherford. My personal favorite of this sort of whitewashing language is from page 135 of the book. After writing in several paragraphs referring in a vague, fuzzy way to "the Bible Students" rather than to their leaders (i.e., C. T. Russell and J. F. Rutherford), who actually caused the Bible Student community to believe in various falsehoods, such as wrongly predicting great events for 1904, 1910, 1914, 1918, 1920 and 1925, the author wrote:

"As the years passed and they examined and reexamined the Scriptures, their faith in the prophecies remained strong, and they did not hold back from stating what they expected to occur. With varying degrees of success, they endeavored to avoid being dogmatic about details not directly stated in the Scriptures."

The reader will note the deceptive whitewashing here: the author says that these unspecified "Bible Students" are supposed to have "endeavored to avoid being dogmatic", rather than admitting honestly that Russell and Rutherford were often *extremely* dogmatic "about details not directly stated in the Scriptures." Barbara, having realized that Watchtower leaders in general were unwilling to change a number of deceptive and unethical practices which she saw as dishonest and hurtful to JWs, left Bethel in 1993.

In the early 1990s, a few Bethelites in positions of authority realized that the Society's traditional policy of either ignoring or covering up child molestation cases as much as possible was not only unchristian, but often illegal. Among these was Harry Peloyan, who was effectively Barbara Anderson's boss in the Writing Department after she finished her assignment as a researcher on the Proclaimers book. They, along with certain others of similar minds, worked for some years to convince the Governing Body to revise its child molestation policy into a responsible and Christian one. Barbara continued doing research for Peloyan and others in the Writing Department on this subject up through 1996. This effort resulted in the publication of the article "Let Us Abhor What Is Wicked" in the January 1, 1997 Watchtower. By that time, Barbara was so disgusted with the Society that she resolved to leave the religion.

Barbara Anderson has known my family since 1954, when I was just three years old and she was 14. She had just become a JW, and had become friendly with my parents. She and my mother maintained a close friendship until Barbara left the JWs in 1997. From that time forward, they've had little contact.

About 1996, a woman appeared on the Internet discussion forum where I spent much of my online time (an email-based discussion group called jesus-witnesses). She told a horrendous story of being abused by her JW father from infancy until she was ten. I spent a considerable time corresponding with this woman via email. She maintained anonymity all this time, although she told me that she lived in Tennessee. Eventually she said a few things about my past that made me realize that she was talking to someone who knew my family. She refused to tell me who that was, but I was extremely curious. One day, it dawned on me -- this woman had been talking to Barbara Anderson, who also lived in Tennessee, and who I hadn't seen since a 1992 visit to New York. At the end of one late-evening email to her, I offhandedly said, "Oh, and please give my regards to Barbara." I expected, and got, a reaction. Later that evening, my wife and I were lying in bed talking about this woman, and that's when a bolt out of the blue hit her about the woman's identity -- she was a long-lost shirttail relative by marriage. We resolved to contact her as soon as possible. Very early the next morning, the phone rang and it was this woman. She immediately said to me, "How did you know??!!!" I said, "I just put two and two together." Of course, at that point, all of the above was discussed in some detail. Naturally, the woman revealed her identity, and eventually told Barbara about all of this.

Not long after this, Barbara phoned me, and we began a fruitful relationship. She confirmed for me a great deal about the JW organization that I had suspected but not previously been able to confirm. When I told her about Leo Greenlees' perversion being revealed on Internet forums, she said, "It's about time that pervert was exposed!" She had known about Greenlees since about 1992, when her fellow Writing Department staffer, Ciro Aulicino, complained to her about a situation where a young man's application for Bethel service was rejected because he was Greenlees' victim -- the same young boy for whose molestation Greenlees had been removed from the Governing Body in 1984. Apparently, the personnel director, GB member Daniel Sydlik, along with the rest of the Governing Body, was afraid that the young man might tell others at Bethel what Greenlees had done to him when he was a child, and it would not do to reveal that the Governing Body had allowed one of its homosexual, pedophile members to get off virtually scot free -- not even revealing this pervert to the New York police.

Barbara also gradually revealed her role, and the internal goings on, in the efforts by a few decent Bethelites who had some authority to get Watchtower leaders to handle child molestation properly. Although we and others discussed strategies to bring all this out in the open, nothing could be done until a good deal of publicity could be raised. This publicity came about in spades in early 2000, when a JW elder named William Bowen (who founded the Silentlambs organization), with input from Barbara and others, began publicly criticising Watchtower policies on child molestation. The efforts of Bowen, Anderson, me and many others resulted in the groundbreaking presentation of an NBC Dateline show in May, 2002, on the Society's gross mishandling of child molestation. Not surprisingly, upon learning of the date of the probable airing of Dateline a week or so in advance, Watchtower leaders instructed local bodies of elders to disfellowship the four people who were the most instrumental in the presentation of the show: Bowen, Anderson, and Carl and Barbara Pandelo. Within a year, other documentaries were presented in the U.K., Australia and other countries. As a result of advance knowledge of Dateline, which had been in the works for a year and a half (the events of 9/11 derailed a planned fall 2001 presentation) the Society instituted a new policy at the 2001 Kingdom Ministry School for Elders which instructed elders for the first time in Watchtower history not to discourage victims or parents of molestation victims from going to the police. It was at this time, too, that the Society for the first time instructed elders to view child sexual abuse as a crime rather than a sexual sin.

Among the more fascinating events that I was involved in, largely as an observer, was the exposë on the Internet in the autumn of 2001 of the Watchtower Society's involvement with the United Nations. Back in 1991, a handful of people in the Writing Department decided that they needed access to the UN's Dag Hammarskjold Library in Manhattan. They could have gotten limited access by obtaining a limited library pass, but this would have entailed quite a bit of red tape on each visit, so they decided to apply for a full library pass. This required joining the UN as an "Associated Non-Governmental Organization (NGO)", which in turn requires an organization to agree to the UN's various political goals, and to produce samples of its publications proving that it promotes these goals. A series of articles began in the Awake! magazine, beginning with the September 8, 1991 issue, that appeared to promote many of the UN's goals. The cover of that issue featured the title "THE UNITED NATIONS - Its Quest for World Peace". Its three articles on the UN were written by Ciro Aulicino, and were used in 1992 finally to obtain Associated NGO status and the coveted library card. Aulicino was quite proud of his acquisition, sometimes even boasting to others about possessing this card and being able to attend UN General Assembly sessions.

The first information about the UN fiasco appeared on the Internet in late August of 2001, culminating in an article in early October in _The Guardian,_ a political and social commentary magazine in the U.K. Within three days of the _Guardian_ article, the Society withdrew its membership from the UN. Documents obtained from the UN revealed that in 1992, Governing Body member Lloyd Barry signed off as the Watchtower official with the corporate authority to apply for Associated NGO status. Representing the Service Department, Robert Johnson signed the application, and Writing Department staffer Ciro Aulicino signed off as the liaison man. Most Bethelites, much less rank and file JWs, knew nothing of this. During the 1990s, a few of the Society's leaders learned that Associated NGO status provided a foot in the door in certain political arenas, and the Society fielded representatives at political meetings of the European Human Rights Commission, the United States Congress, and various European political bodies, in order to try to secure more religious freedom for Jehovah's Witnesses. Of course, appearing before a political body to lobby for political rights is an obvious mixing in politics. So in its involvment with the UN, the Society compromised both its claimed "neutrality" and its doctrine that the UN is a tool of Satan.

Blood Transfusions

Among the most controversial of JW doctrines is that forbidding blood transfusions. The Watchtower Society bases this prohibition on the texts of Acts 15:20, 28, 29, which, in the New World Translation, say in essence, to "abstain from blood and from things strangled." Now, most commentators realize that these statements were simply a temporary suggestion to Gentile Christians to avoid eating blood or dead bodies that were not bled properly, to avoid offending the cultural sensitivities of the Jews who comprised by far the majority of Christians. But the Watchtower Society claims that this was an injunction for all Christians for all time to avoid eating blood, harking back to the injunction to Noah in Genesis 9:4, "Only flesh with its soul -- its blood -- you must not eat." The Society takes this one step further by claiming that the statement "abstain from blood" implicitly includes abstaining from blood transfusions, based on the argument that taking a transfusion is identical to eating blood. That this is a false analogy is easily seen: if a doctor recommends that a patient abstain from meat because of a liver ailment, he most certainly does not mean to recommend that the patient abstain from a liver transplant. It is, therefore, an extreme stretch to claim that the statements in Acts 15 imply abstention from blood transfusions.

It almost goes without saying that many thousands of Jehovah's Witnesses have died due to this misguided and unscriptural ban on blood transfusions. The fact that blood transfusions are dangerous is beside the point -- ALL invasive medical procedures are dangerous to some degree.

In 1999, I was introduced to an interesting argument that is scripturally devastating to the Society's claims about blood transfusions. It goes like this: In Deuteronomy 14:21, God allowed the Jews to sell unbled animals found already dead to be used as food by "alien residents" and "foreigners." The Noachian Law, but not the Mosaic Law, applied to these people, since they were part of mankind as a whole, but not part of Israel. The distinction is between animals that humans had killed for food, which were covered by the Noachian Law, and those which had been found already dead, which were not covered by the Noachian Law. Had they been covered, using them for food would have been prohibited by God in the Mosaic Law. It is inconceivable that God would explicitly permit the Jews to sell to non-Jews a food item he had long ago prohibited to all mankind simply so that Jews could make a little money. The conclusion, therefore, is that God's injunction to Noah in Genesis 9:4 did not prohibit mankind from eating already-dead, unbled animals, but commanded mankind to show respect for God's creation of life by pouring out the blood of animals *that men had specifically killed for food*. Thus, applying either Genesis 9:4, or Acts 15 which is based on the Mosaic Law, to blood transfusions, is ridiculous.

In 2000, I and several others put together an extensive writeup based on Deuteronomy 14:21 and its implications for the Society's blood policy. It's available here: http://home.comcast.net/~alanf00/essays/blood.html .

About 1993, when I was still living in Oregon, I met Dr. Sam Muramoto. Muramoto is a Japanese national who immigrated to the United States in the 1980s and is a neurologist at Kaiser Permanente. Muramoto's wife, to his chagrin, became a JW not long after they moved to the U.S. Eventually, Muramoto became morally indignant at the Society's blood policy, and decided to do something about it. He contacted various ex-JWs and began writing a series of articles in prominent medical journals in the U.S. and the U.K. on why the JW blood policy was wrong. He contacted one "Lee Elder", who was an ex-JW who quit the religion because of family problems with the Society's blood policy, and who in the mid-1990s started the website "Associated Jehovah's Witnesses for Reform on Blood" (AJWRB). Over the next few years, I was privileged to help Dr. Muramoto with some of his writing and a good deal of the editing on some of his fine articles. Not surprisingly, the Society's responses published in these medical journals failed to address most of Dr. Muramoto's criticisms, instead focusing on irrelevancies.

The 1914 Chronology

I've done a good deal of research and writing about the Watchtower Sociey's claims about "Bible chronology". After beginning my research into JW history and various related topics in 1991, I quickly realized that their basic chronological claims about 1914 were hogwash. They've claimed that there is a "composite sign" evident from 1914 onward, comprised of earthquakes, war, pestilence, famine, crime and various other major ills on an unprecedented scale, that prove that we're living in "the last days". For example, they used to make outrageous claims that earthquakes since 1914 were up to 20 times worse than before. While I was in college at MIT, I tried to find some evidence for this, but came up short. One would think that if earthquakes were so much worse, it would be a major research topic among geologists. The fact that geologists were unaware of such a problem indicated to me, way back in 1980, that the Society's claims were bogus.

In 1992 I obtained the book "The Sign of the Last Days: When?" by Carl Olof Jonsson and Wolfang Herbst. They showed by numerous historical references that the Society's claims about a "composite sign" were baloney. I made an extensive, independent study of earthquake statistics for the last 400 years, using data from the U.S. geological survey, which completely confirmed Jonsson's claim that earthquakes in the 20th century were not statistically different from quakes in any recorded time period. A portion of my data was used by seismology professor Bruce Bolt in his 1993 book "Earthquakes and Geological Discovery" (Scientific American Library, New York, p. 59), which indicated, if anything, that massive earthquakes *decreased* during the 20th century. If one feature of the so-called "composite sign" had been proved to be non-existent, then the entire notion was false.

In 1992 I also obtained Carl Jonsson's book "The Gentile Times Reconsidered". This book proves beyond all doubt that the entire edifice of Watchtower "chronology" leading to 1914 as a "significant date in Bible prophecy" is a house of cards. I gradually became moderately conversant in the necessary material, and wrote my own version of why the 1914 chronology is wrong. I contacted Jonsson in 1992, and we had an extremely fruitful correspondence from then on. My discussion with the Watchtower scholar John Albu was based on this research and correspondence. I was eventually able to find some critical historical data that allowed Jonsson, in the 1998 revision of his book, to write about the specific connection between Nelson Barbour's writings in 1875/6 in his journal "Herald of the Morning" and Charles Taze Russell's adoption in 1876 of all of Barbour's "Bible chronology". This material, of course, is the basis of the Society's current teachings on 1914.

About 1995, I became interested in why and when the Society changed its original date of 606 B.C. for the beginning of the Gentile times and the destruction of Jerusalem, to 607 B.C. I was able to track down a series of changes beginning about 1914, and ending in 1944. The Society's officially published date of change is 1943, in the book "The Truth Shall Make You Free". However, the date of only one of these events was changed in the 1943 book, namely, the date of the beginning of the Gentile times. The explanation was complete gobble-de-goop. The date of the destruction of Jerusalem was taught to be 606 B.C. until the following year, when the book "The Kingdom Is At Hand" actually printed the 607 date as the date of Jerusalem's destruction, and falsely claimed that the 1943 book had made the change. Oddly enough, various non-English versions of the 1943 book published after 1944 retained exactly the same "reasoning" as in the 1943 book, except that they all used 607 rather than 606 B.C. This is rather like explaining to an English-speaking audience why 3 plus 5 makes 10, but to a French audience that 4 plus 5 makes 10. Both are wrong.

Miscellaneous

More topics:

The result of asking hard questions

DF'ing and unofficial shunning of those who leave

Slowing down in activities

How the Society handles criticism; DFing for loose conduct & elders