I think the direct assault strategy is off the board. Thanks, designs, but I imagine you probably see it too. It might end up more like a kamikaze attack, and I'm not into self sacrifice, at least not to that degree. Guerilla warfare against the larger target, love, patience and understanding otherwise.
Debunking the Watchtower - Slam Dunks and Solid Arguments
by Nickolas 88 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
-
-
Heaven
Most of us have had our own personal epiphanies. I believe Stephen Hassan says the same thing. You have to find what will personally trigger a person's desire to leave. He actually asks people outright what it would take.
Regarding the actual organization The Watchtower, I would like to see laws enacted that would force them to remove their destructiveness. These laws would hold true for any organization that harms people. That's what I'd like to see done.
-
OnTheWayOut
Nick, your family is well worth a few small investments. If you are looking for a simple logical assault on WTS, there is a great one at http://www.captivesofaconcept.com/
Just download the book from that site for a fee.
-
TD
Most of us have had our own personal epiphanies.
Yes... Look at the recent example on this board. The straw that broke the camel's back was inconsistency regarding the 'pagan' origins of various folk celebrations and customs. When compared with the fact that this religion has manipulated parents into contributing to the death of their own children, that seems relatively minor.
-
Heaven
When compared with the fact that this religion has manipulated parents into contributing to the death of their own children, that seems relatively minor.
So true, TD. I think a lot of JWs see it as the ultimate sacrifice ala Abraham's example.
My personal reaction to the blood doctrine as a teenager was that it was wrong. But my parents wouldn't listen to me. So I simply chose not to have children. That way I wouldn't have to decide nor would I be put under any pressure to make a choice.
What a very sad statement on manipulating a person's life.
-
tec
Most of us have had our own personal epiphanies.
I agree with this. I think it makes a big difference as to what your wife holds important. And I can't see scientific evidence of lack of global flood, or old earth, changing her mind about the WTS stance on young earth. Unless she is a scholar in that particular scientific area, then its just going to be too big, with too many variables she doesn't fully understand. Making it very easy to dismiss whatever you bring her (or anyone else in her position). Because she knows that she has to trust someone to have understood and dealt honestly with all the things she does not understand. Scientists of the GB? You already know who she's going to trust.
I would say that emotion might be a bigger thing to bring up. The prodigal son is a huge one to me; that and mercy being shown as more important than all rules and laws. Also something like, 'when you stand before Christ, what would you rather him call you to task on (if He were to do so)... speaking to a df'd member, or failing to show the mercy and forgiveness that he commanded and showed? Failing to condemn a guilty person, or judging and condemning an innocent person?
There are little things too... like only the eleven disciples partook of the meal? John is very clear that all twelve were there.
But Shelby brought up the biggest and most obvious contradiction, I think, about partaking being for everyone. That without drinking his blood and eating his flesh, you have no life within you. I said once, to a JW at my door, that I thought that every year, passing over the 'flesh' and the 'blood' of Christ was not observing him, but denying him. It was something that I had read, but it described what I felt. She seemed shocked, and said she had never thought about it that way.
Also Christ being the mediator for all men is a clear thing, but perhaps you have to be seeing clearly first, to get it... "there is one mediator between man and God, the man Christ Jesus."
Just a few thoughts for you to mull over with the rest.
Tammy
-
designs
Nickolas-
Most persons who leave the Watchtower organization do so in increments. First doubts about the literalness of the Bible accounts, then fading from Field Service, then Meetings. Sometimes moving to a new location gives the needed cover to not go back.
All the best to you and your family, I know you love them.
-
Curtains
nickolas - here is something from wiki re anti-intellectualism. In fact if you read the whole article you will find that wiki is quite balanced in its treatment of the subject. but I think the extract below focuses on examples that are like how Jehovahs witnesses utilize anti-intellectualism. Perhaps by means of such discussions your wife may soften in her attitude to your disfellowshipped nephew and hopefully even agree to invite him over to share a meal at your place. Moreover you may be able to, over time, educate your children to recognise when a damaging ideology is at work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism for the whole article whilst below is the extract that I think focuses in on JW type anti-intellectualism
Authoritarianism
Benito Mussolini: Il Duce of Fascist Italy, a police state. Dictators, and their dictatorship supporters, use anti-intellectualism to gain popular support, by accusing intellectuals of being a socially detached, politically-dangerous class who question the extant social norms, who dissent from established opinion, and who reject nationalism, hence they are unpatriotic, and thus subversive of the nation. Violent anti-intellectualism is common to the rise and rule of authoritarian political movements, such as Italian Fascism, Stalinism in Russia, Nazism in Germany, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and Iranian theocracy. [citation needed]
In the 20th century, intellectuals were systematically demoted or expelled from the power structures, and, occasionally, assassinated. In Argentina in 1966, the economic liberalmilitary dictatorship of Juan Carlos Onganía intervened and dislodged many faculties, leading to a massive brain drain in an event which was called The Night of the Long Police Batons. [ 5 ] [ 6 ] The biochemistCésar Milstein reports that when the military usurped Argentine government, they declared: “our country would be put in order, as soon as all the intellectuals who were meddling in the region were expelled”. In Brazil, the educator Paulo Freire was banished for being ignorant, according to the organizers of the coup d’ État of the moment. [ 7 ]
Flag of Democratic KampucheaExtreme ideological dictatorships, such as the Khmer Rouge regime in Kampuchea (1975–79), killed potential opponents with more than elementary education. In achieving their Year Zero social engineering of Cambodia, they assassinated anyone suspected of “involvement in free-market activities”. The suspected Cambodian populace included professionals and almost every educated man and woman, city-dwellers, and people with connections to foreign governments. Doctrinally, the Maoist Khmer Rouge designated the farmers as the true proletariat, as the true representatives of the working class, hence the anti-intellectual purge. (cf. Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, 1966–76)
Governmental anti-intellectualism ranges from closing public libraries and public schools, to segregating intellectuals in an Ivory Tower ghetto, to official declarations that intellectuals tend to mental illness, thus facilitating psychiatric imprisonment, then scapegoating to divert popular discontent from the dictatorship (vide the USSR and Fascist Italy, cf. Antonio Gramsci).
Moreover, anti-intellectualism is neither always violent, nor oppressive, because most any social group can exercise contempt for intellect, intellectualism, and education. To wit, the Uruguayan writer Jorge Majfud said that “this contempt, that arises, from a power installed in the social institutions, and from the inferiority complex of its actors, is not a property of ‘underdeveloped’ countries. In fact, it is always the critical intellectuals, writers, or artists who head the top-ten lists of ‘The Most Stupid of the Stupid’ in the country.” [ 7 ]
-
wobble
Dear Nickolas,
I think Designs above makes a point above that those of us anxious to free our families often miss, that people leave by increments. most of these at first are very small,and may just be in the person's sub-conscious.
What is good is if we are able to identify these small movements towards freedom, and reinforce and support them.
In my wife's case, it began with the fact that she found FS hard, then meeting attendance and so on. By the time I walked away for good she had been inactive for years and was a poor attender, so I was able to support the correctness of what she was not doing, and take away any guilt she felt.
I know things will be different for you and yours, but I do feel that we sometimes believe we are getting nowhere when in fact, small but imperceptible progress is being made.
I wish you all the best in your efforts to free your family,also long may you continue to work against the WT , and long may you post here, your words and thoughts are much appreciated.
-
Rydor
I personally think Peter Gregerson's argument is a very good one:
1. First point out that really the only doctrine of Jehovah's Witnesses that needs to be considered is the idea that the WBTS is God's one and only, spirit-directed organization, and has been since Jesus selected it in 1919. If this teaching is not true, then all other doctrines of JW's are meaningless. Get the other person to acknowledge this.
2. Pose the question, "What would be the criteria on which Jesus would base this decision?" The answer of course is, he would base his decision on what the JW's were teaching at the time.
3. Point out that there were only two "messages" being preached at the time. One was the "Millions Now Living Will Never Die" talk; the other was the book "The Finished Mystery."
4. Get the Witness to do some research into what kind of ridiculous nonsense was published in those two books, or provide them with the info yourself. And then ask the question, "Does it make sense for Jesus to have chosen this organization based on THIS?"
That's what finally got me out of the Borg mentally. I had slowly started to see the organization's faults, but after reading some passages from "The Finished Mystery," I said "There's no way in hell Jesus would have selected the WT based on this garbage. That's an insult to Jesus."
Another factor that undermines the Watchtower's claim to be directed by the Holy Spirit is their doctrinal changes. Of course a Witness will immediately counter by misapplying Proverbs 4:18 as they've been trained to do. But this logic falls apart when you consider their interpretation of the "superior authorities" in Romans 13:1. All you have to do is ask, "Why would Jehovah lead his people to understand that this refers to earthy goverments in Russell's time, then under Rutherford change the understanding to "Jehovah God and his Christ," and then revert back to the original understanding under Knorr?" And all the while "Christendom" has had it right for 2000 years?
