by gaiagirl 22 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
What convinced you personally that "The Truth" wasn't true after all? For me, it was several:
The claim that humans have only been on earth for about 6000 years.
The claim that evolution has not occurred, in the face of overwhelming evidence that it has.
The claim that the Bible is inspired by God.
It was science that convinced me as well.
In addition to the ones you listed, which were also major factors for me, were three other things:
1, The arctic ice fields, which provide essentially a year by year record like the rings on a tree, go back 160,000 years or so. Ice core samples have been taken and studied going back through that time span, and the core samples prove there was not a world wide flood 4,000 or so years ago - or ever. They also prove that the earth was never a tropical paradise under a water canopy.
2. Bones, fossils and skeletons have been uncovered going back tens of thousands of years, and they provide ample evidence that animals have been eating one another for all of that time, and didn't just start after the flood.
3. The eyes, feathers, bones, and even the facial shape and ability to handle huge G-forces in raptors like owls and falcons are all highly developed for one thing - finding and killing prey. All of those things would be unnecessary for an animal designed to eat berries!
There are about 1000 other examples like that.
S4
Six things...the last two are my favorite:
1. The WTBTS has logically incompatible beliefs. For example, evolution did not occur, yet we have organisms that are vastly different than their original form and function. They teach MORE evolution than any biologist ever would. For an herbivore to become a carnivore would take millions upon millions of years. That makes them guilty of teaching not ONE but TWO forms of logically incompatible nonsense. Further, they once taught theistic evolution (Photo Drama of Creation), stopped doing so for no specific reason, started pirating the lies of other fundamentalists and went on to accuse moderate accomodationists who say evolution is compatible with the bible as being immoral and sinful.
2. The WTBTS teaches the orthodox belief of Progressive Revelation which they disengenuously call "new light." The belief in spirit directed authority combined with progressive revelation produces a system of belief which, when viewed from the outside, could not possibly be falsified.
3. The WTBTS has never officially retracted any harmful teaching, never a single apology. A basic expectation of dignified, respectable, trustworthy individuals is that they admit when they are wrong. Even the Catholic church, which I equally detest for its historical atrocities has had the dignity, from time to time, to respond to well informed criticism in a grudgingly civilized way.
4. Not a single point of moral achievement or good is the unique province of a Jehovah's Witness. Not one. Yet there are many uniquely bad and harmful things within the religion.
5. Under no circumstances can a thinking person believe that an all loving, all wise, all powerful being could wait through 1800 years of human suffering, death and pain to finally in the late 1800's reach his hand into the mix and guide malcontented men through a century of endless equivocation, speculation and confusion to conclude that the grand creator of our cosmos is deeply concerned with your masturbatory habits, sexual positions with your wife and your choices in popular music. Furthermore, that he expects you to be totally credulous to the immoral preachments of his arrogant, ignorant, dotteringly elderly, secretive and capricious white american leaders.
6. That we should teach our children to hunger with great expectation for the slaughter of billions of humans who have no access to "The Truth" and have been given every conceivable evidence a rational person could want that the very message they are being executed for rejecting is the complete fabrication and wicked wishful thinking of anonymous octagenarians who have pick-pocketed the gullible masses in totalitarian, Orwellian deception since the preposterous shameful infancy of the faith.
Wicked, wicked fairy tales from poorly evolved mamals.
That everything they say is the indisputable TRUTH . You must accept everything from Brooklyn as having been carved in stone on mt. Sinai . Even though I was never in the cult this idea never appealed to me . Apparently you aren't the "meek" that inherit the earth unless you are a WTBTS sock puppet.
A pile:
Like you said, the belief that humans were only on the earth for 6,000 years. - (Dispite the fact that we have artifacts and tools from at LEAST 10,000 years ago.)
The rejection of evolution. - (Speaks for itself.)
The belief that the entire world was flooded 4,500 years ago. - (Speaks for itself.)
The belief that the ten plagues uccured, dispite the lack of evidence. - (Fish killed, livestock killed and taken, plants killed, slaves gone, army killed, leader and heir killed, money taken.... But according to history the egyptians were in the middle of a very prosperous time: Link)
The belief that the sun stood still for a day, dispite the lack of evidence. - (They really believe that the sun/earth stood still: w04 12/1 p. 11... They don't bother to explain why no other cultures noticed this event.)
The belief that there was a 7 year famine over the whole earth. Dispite the lack of evidence. - (Speaks for itself.)
There's a lot more, but those are the easiest to explain in a few sentences.
The perceived bullshit and lies that was propagated and the commercializing of those non-truths
LtCmdLore:
They don't bother to explain why no other cultures noticed this event.)
Thank you for that nugget.
*puts in mental pocket for later use*
OM
We can't forget those six unique Watchtower positions on whether the ancients from Sodom and Gomorrah will be resurrected. That's 5 flip-flops so far. Who says they've stopped on that one? Click the following link for proof.
Len
Their bizarre fixation with controlling men's facial hair length.(This just struck me as freaking inhuman, unnatural and a ridiculous way to measure a man's value as worthy of "privileges".
Suddenly I saw that it was all about men controlling men. Power and control. Fear, not love.)
The belief that they are the most loving org'n on earth.
(It wuz all sposed ta be about love.
Then they tried to limit/control who & how I could love.)
The belief that they are spirit-directed
by the "reader of hearts" in judicial matters.
(When I wuzn't sorry, they didn't DF me,
and when I wuz sorry and wuz too down and out to play their little mind games with any amount of enthusiasm, they did DF me, angrily.
Suddenly I just knew the whole holy spirit ting vas hogvash.)
Asking for the blood card back when they kick ya to the curb.
(I'm SO glad they did this. It spoke volumes. Volumes like "die bitch, we don't care".
I was suddenly so creeped out by these freaks I couldn't run fast enough away.)
To name a few,
"By this you will know that you are my disciples, if you have love among yourselves." No love found. It was always conditional even in so called loving families. That and the obvious absence of the HS in JC and appointment of elders convinced me that they were not "all that."
