Q.: Do you think that Ex-JWs are smarter than the average bear?
A.: Does a Dub shit in the Kingdom Hall bathroom?
Are Ex-JWs smarter than the average bear?
by reneeisorym 35 Replies latest jw friends
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reneeisorym
I can say one thing for sure:
I AM SKEPTICAL
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Paralipomenon
ex-jw's as a whole? I wouldn't say so.
Posters on this forum? Perhaps.
A while ago someone posted a link to a IQ test and people posted their scores. If people weren't fudging their results the average IQ on JWD was well above average. -
snowbird
I don't know about smarter than the average bear, but I used to have an eidetic memory.
When I told one elder that I'd memorized all the Kingdom songs and all the public talks, he said that Satan was playing games with my mind.
????????
Snowbird
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Gopher
Snowbird -- I have 3 responses to your post:
1. First -- you had me scrambling for my dictionary to look up EIDETIC.
marked by or involving extraordinarily accurate and vivid recall especially of visual images
2. Is eideticism something you can lose?
3. I interpret the elder's strange quote as meaning that Satan could make you too proud of your ability (even when applied in theocractic endeavors), and use that pride to make you, um, un-Witness like or something. (In other words, he was just jealous.)
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Gopher
Renee - in reference to your first question about are we smarter than average,
I refer you to Garrison Keillor's quote about Lake Wobegon, the fictional town from which he spins stories every Saturday night on his radio show "A Prarire Home Companion":
That's all the news from JWD, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.
(Now give me some of those Powdermilk biscuits ! )
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snowbird
Gopher, you asked:
2. Is eideticism something you can lose
I don't know if I've lost it or the encroachments of other things have crowded it out. I do know that eideticism in more pronounced in young children. I didn't even know I had that ability until one new teacher noticed that I would go ahead and write down all the words on a spelling test before she called them out. I'm talking a spelling list of 20-25 words.
She marched me to the principal's office because she thought I was cheating somehow. I couldn't figure out what the fuss was all about; I thought everyone else processed information the same way. They didn't know what to do with me, so they left me alone to read books, take spelling tests, and solve math problems all at the same time!
Snowbird
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John Doe
My experience is that being in the jw's causes one to view people outside the religion as being unintelligent. However, once you leave that point of view and begin to know people on more than a cursory level, then you start to appreciate intelligence that you probably overlooked when you viewed everyone outside the "truth" as naive and foolish. I know I've gained a lot more respect for people's intelligence than I ever had as a jw.
Being such, I think an analysis of ex jw's compared to others would be a rather hard assessment to make from the inside. Intelligence levels are subjective and arbitrary anyway.
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bigdreaux
rene, my mother said the same thing to me. one day, she said, maybe it's best if we don't discuss the truth. i asked, why not? she jokingly answered, you say things i could never have a reply for.