Faith vs. Reason- Watchtower "apostate" quote+refutation by atheist author

by nvrgnbk 38 Replies latest jw friends

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  nvrgnbk

  The second major issue is transmission. You may be able to sway a few people into believing you, but spending all your time evangelizing would be tedious and slow.For maximum efficiency and rate of spread, the type of growth to strive after is exponential, in which the more followers you have, the more converts you make. The obvious solution is to add to this suite of beliefs a new one that encourages the converted to work to convert others as well. Since we already have the reward proposition, one could justify this by modifying it slightly to inform your followers that it will increase their own reward further to win converts. However, a more subtle and potentially even more effective way is to tell your followers that they should want to convert other people for those people's own good, so that they can share in this wonderful reward. This will give your followers a strong reason to want to evangelize: they will believe that it is the moral thing to do. The existence of a punishment for nonbelievers, as above, will aid in this. Transmission of these beliefs can also be made more effective by encouraging adult converts to teach them to children, who by their nature are more trusting and less skeptical. Throughout their lives, people rarely throw off the beliefs that they were taught while young.

  LMAO @ this.
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  BurnTheShips

  Any theists / christians out there think that this statement is not reasonable?

  It is reasonable.

  Burn
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  SirNose586

  Wow, talk about nailing the Borg's playbook! Dead on! I'd better save that essay.
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  flipper

  It is so like the Watchtower societies style to paint any information from apostates as " gangrene " or" poisonous " thus as you said, immediately putting a negative image or picture in the minds of rank and file members . The society tries to control not only the information they hear , but scare them away from information they need to hear. The GB are all nutcases , IMHO, Peace out, Mr. Flipper
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  VoidEater

  Hi Burn: Not meaning to pester, but:

  Pray, teach us how to do that! Subjectivities cannot be shed.

  Seems a bit dogmatic. As I pointed out, two such paths to observing your own subjectivities are therapy and meditation. A skilled psychotherapist can help you to see your beliefs more clearly, help you to challenge your own preconceptions, become more an observer than merely be at the whim of your thoughts. Another mechanism for you may be Zen Buddhism. Neither path is a quick fix, but both have been helpful to people trying to shed some of the subjectiveness.

  Of specific help, you might try working with a Certified Hakomi Therapist, which blends a meditative posture with therapy. Or any of a number of self-realization or self-actualization workshops. I'm not sure what will work for you, but I have known many people very well who have come to a balanced place, aware of but not at the mercy of their subjectivities.

  Some of them choose to continue a belief in the divine - but are aware that this is a choice that they make because it serves them well in their lives.

  Not that I'm suggesting anyone in particular needs or wants therapy. There are broadening paths available to blunt the hold that subjectivity has on us. Will it go away completely? Not in my experience - but it can be moderated.

  Whichever theories confer the best advantages to their hosts propagate preferentially over those that are flawed in relation.

  Since preferred theories do propogate (and they are preferred usually because they have verifiable results in the lab), I wouldn't have a problem with that. The major difference between religious memes and what you call scientific ones is that scientific ones are always open to continued testing and (sometimes with the difficulty of religious mems) are withdrawn when found wanting.

  Unlike JW memes. Which hare not propogating all that well, considering that less than .1% of the human population have been successfully infected.

  I need a meme inoculation...
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  nvrgnbk

  The third important issue is how to retain believers. Since the purpose of this assembly of memes is to keep people under control, encouraging them to think for themselves and question their beliefs is probably a bad idea. Those activities have been feared by those who would control others throughout history, and with good reason: skeptics and freethinkers are by nature difficult to herd. Instead, you want your followers to be passive, accustomed to obedience and unaccustomed to doubting your authority. The most effective way to achieve this is to add to the memetic virus a suite of beliefs that will convince those harboring the virus not to question it. These beliefs would teach your followers not to expose themselves to information or arguments that could damage their beliefs and, where possible, to cut off other believers' access to such information. Most important, teach them that they must always think of their belief as true, no matter what the facts say, and their personal faith takes priority over the evidence of the external world. If possible, teach that absolute trust and obedience are virtues, while doubt, for any reason whatsoever, is a sin, and puts them in jeopardy of losing their promised reward, or worse, suffering the corresponding punishment.

  This is too funny.
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  BurnTheShips

  psychotherapist

  Not psychotherapy again!

  There's a pseudoscience, if there ever was one.

  The major difference between religious memes and what you call scientific ones is that scientific ones are always open to continued testing and (sometimes with the difficulty of religious mems) are withdrawn when found wanting.

  I would contend that the evolution of memes would apply to religious memes as well.

  Burn
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  VoidEater

  Burn: On pyschotherapy, I wouldn't put it in the same class of "science" as the hard sciences. But to give it such an ad hominem attack belies a dogmatic position on your part that leads me to believe you are not willing to let go of your subjectivities. ;-) But to not get in the way of anyone's path to self awareness, let me continue to recommend Zen Buddhism as an alternate to anything with the word "therapy" in it.

  At least many aspects of psychotherapy are presented as theories and go through repeatable experimentation to determine their accuracy. Not so with many religious concepts, which are entirely subjective yet presented as fact - with no recourse to thinking, let alone debate. Kinda like the broad brush that dismisses psychotherapy as "psuedo science". Pehaps another meme at work?
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  IT Support

  A similar conclusion was reached by a 2001 Harvard University study by Bruce Sacerdote and Edward Glaeser titled "Education and Religion" (available for download here). This study found that, in general, increased education causes individuals to "sort into less fervent religions" and "decrease[s] belief in the returns to religious activity". The study found a strong negative correlation between higher education and beliefs that miracles occur, that heaven and hell exist, that the Devil is an actual being and that the Bible is literally true. More educated people were significantly less likely to believe all these things.

  The above link is no longer valid; if anyone's interested, the paper is now available from:

  http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/glaeser/files/Ed_and_Rel.pdf

  Good find, nvr, thanks.

  Actually, the entire site, Ebon Musings, contains many excellent articles on atheism and evolution.