by highdose 16 Replies latest jw friends
i was thinking of the ones who would say to me " i don't like to read/study" " i'm not really academinc". are these people doomed to blindly follow the GB forever, thinking that all the study has been done for them and they will just belive what they are told?
Is it mainly the smart thinking people who leave?
I know several JWs who are smart people... Unfortunately you can have lots of knowledge but no common sense. Sometimes it is the unintelligent ones who can see the problems easier. I haven't seen it go any one way but I'd think that some feel they are becoming educated by JW teachings and thus hold to them fast otherwise they have nothing. Its the smart ones that really annoy me. I know a guy who fixes medical machines and knows an awful lot about physics but as soon as a scientific FACT goes against the bible he writes it off... He believes the world is only 7000 years old!
One of the things that really distressed me when I began to have doubts was that there were so many intelligent people in the "truth". People that I looked up to and admired. I would wonder, "Can these intelligent people be so wrong?"
I have come to feel that brainwashing and being thoroughly invested in a set of beliefs has little to do with intelligence. Wasn't it Carl Sagan who wrote that "near the core of the religious experience is something remarkably resistant to rational inquiry"?
That's interesting that he believes the world is only 7,000 years old. The WTS has printed several places that the earth itself is 4 Billion years old. Now the WTS has said that humans have only been on earth for a little over 6,000 years. That is how the 7,000 creative day had its beginning, 6,000 years plus 1,000 years for the millennium.
*** g 9/06 p. 19 Does Science Contradict the Genesis Account? ***Geologists estimate that the earth is approximately 4 billion years old, and astronomers calculate that the universe may be as much as 15 billion years old. Do these findings—or their potential future refinements—contradict Genesis 1:1? No. The Bible does not specify the actual age of "the heavens and the earth." Science does not disprove the Biblical text.
Yes blondie, and I pointed that out to him but he is stuck in his ways! That's also why he annoys me so much. Like I said before he is generally a smart intelligent person but he has no common sense - he has a 14 month old child he doesn't buckle in when he drives, and he drives like a drunk. He also thinks vaccinations are evil things and refuses to give them to his daughter. But if she gets sick, I bet he'll go to the Doctor. It frustrates me how some people can be so smart and then so stupid. I don't have sympathy for JWs who are like that. It means they are happy to be ignorant and perhaps that's why there are that sort of people in the cult?
I believe that everyone has an opportunity to wake up to "the truth."
Most who leave the religion do not typically just start reading anti-JW information.
Some do realize a problem with WT literature, and wake up that way. Many others are effected by the lack of love or a bad situation with the congregation or a conflict with the command to shun. Others are kicked out for committing WT-defined sins, then learn that something was wrong with the religion. They don't have to understand 607 BCE to learn that a vast majority of credible people scoff at it. They don't have to understand the JW blood doctrine to know that a loving God would not provide a means to keep some children alive then punish those who use it.
Certainly, the "smart thinking people" have an opportunity to leave, but they have a handicap themselves.
They think they already "know" the GB is right. (Believing JW doctrine is all about being 'right' more than anything else.)
Many will look at scientific evidence of evolution and only look for flaws, holes in the theories. They will dismiss clear evidence that Man has been around much longer than 6000 years, there could not have been a worldwide flood 5000 years ago, the Jews came out of the Caananites and did not have a mass exodus from Egypt. Those that don't study any of these ideas might get out faster because they 'feel' something wrong about the religion, while the 'thinkers' stay because science and archaeology haven't got it all figured out.
Just thinking about a TV program I watched one time, with this guy who had the highest IQ in the world. He lived in a little run down house, had a car and a motor cycle but niether one would run so he takes the bus. Virtually no money.
Goes to show that rich people are not smarter than poor people.
Growing up in a small town with a nick name Little Chicago, I have always thought that there is smart then there is street smart.
I would rather have a heinz 57 then a high breed dog...
The Internet is becoming a great equalizer. Even the most uneducated people in civilization are online. So there is hope for all.
In the past, I think those with more education or at least more inclination toward learning had the advantage because they would be the ones in the library, at the college, reading the papers, etc.
It is just reverse FS work....
Be friendly, be familiar, ask questions, agree, segway and plant some seeds.......leave to let them germinate, return awhile letter and resume the conversation repeating the same process until one of the seeds takes a 'firm' root.
When you run into a 'lazy' JWs like yours Highdose,you can make comments like 'well how have you made the truth your own?' and after whatever lame excuse they give you admonish them to take in 'accurate knowledge'......for if they don't Satan will exploit their ignorance and blind allegiance to sway the from God.
My mother is one of those people. She hates to read, and she hates history. I once asked her why she in a religion where it is all about history. She said she had to get better at study. So she does not read very much. Hardly ever studies. She said gets all the information from the platform. I figured out long ago why she is a jw. She does not have to make any decisions for herself. Anything she does she can blame on her religion. She is one of those people who like having someone think for them. I feel sorry for her, but the watchtower is all she has. Her life is so awful, the kingdom hall is a happy place for her. (People treat her like crap, she is poor, old, and married to a "worldy" man.) But to change now would mean she has wasted the last 40 some odd years of her life. I hate it, but I understand too. How do we get along? I moved 2000 miles away, and now she misses me.
I haven't been on the board for a long time, it's nice to come back for a visit.
Pam
