@JWFacts > Unfortunately I no longer have that book. I believe I mentioned earlier that I had almost lost her back in February. It is a long story but we had a big disagreement and I ended up burning a bunch of books, probably 2 or 3 hundred dollars worth. I also deleted all of the research I had on my laptop (which was quite considerable and very well organized) Fortunately I have a Macbook and I had set that folder to backup on Apples servers automatically thank goodness.
Anyway, I don’t have the book any longer but I did find an article online that has a decent synopsis. Basically it says:
A model of cognitive dissonance in the face of failed prophecy is examined in a study by Festinger, Riecken and Schacter in their book, When Prophecy Fails. 3 It is their hypothesis that under certain conditions, increased proselytizing by a group follows disconfirmation of a prophecy associated with the group. This sociological principle has been borne out by subsequent studies with some modification and explanation necessary to accommodate variations. Nonetheless, the Festinger model of failed prophecy is the standard. It requires the presence of the five following conditions:
- There is a belief with conviction.
- The believers are committed to the conviction.
- The belief is susceptible to unequivocal failure.
- There is undeniable evidence disconfirming the belief.
- The believers have social support. 4
To the extent that these conditions are present, Festinger & company hypothesize that there will be recovery and outreach of the belief system. Because the model is one paradigm, it must be altered to fit a variety of factual scenarios and movements of failed prophecies that have occurred in the real world. However, sometimes the factual scenario is a perfect fit, and needs no modification.
The study was conducted by observers who infiltrated a group of flying saucer believers, who received messages, primarily through Marian Keech, a suburban housewife, that there would be a cataclysmic flood on a certain date, and that the "believers" would be "taken up" by space aliens before that date. She received this knowledge through auto-handwritten messages from Sananda, a "space medium," who was later confirmed by a "believer" to be Jesus. A number of followers within the small group of believers changed their position by quitting their jobs, dropping out of school and taking a public stand while waiting to be picked up by the "boys upstairs." When these prophecies failed, a core of believers rationalized the failure, and the authors' hypothesis was proved. The believers in Lake City, who had social support, increased their evangelistic fervor after the disconfirmation and rationalization. The believers in Collegeville who had less social support, did not evangelize, and quickly fell away from the faith.
I do know that the greater the commitment to the prophecy or belief the harder it will be to change them - even in the face of obvious disconfirmation. Basically the more a person is invested, the greater the probability of rationalization when failure occurs and a renewal of the belief.
Another factor in his theory is that the prophecy or prediction be susceptible to objective disconfirmation. For example the early witnesses had objective disconfirmation of 1914 and 1918. By the time 1925 turned out to be a lie as well a large percentage of the Bible Students left. That tends to confirm his theory to me.
Social support also helps their mind to continue tricking them into belief.
I thing the biggest thing is the level of commitment that most witnesses have. They have settled for less education, vacations spent knocking on doors, lower general income all of these things make them MORE likely to continue belief not less.
Of course the biggest commitment of all is friends and family. If you stand to lose your family and 90% of your friends, your mind will do anything it can to justify their mistakes. Even if those mistakes are as serious as blatant hypocrisy (UN-NGO) clear false prophecy (1914, 1918, 1925, 1975) Stating something different then what the bible clearly states (Jeremiah 25:12, WTBS states the 70 years ended 2 years after Jehovah God did!), and it goes on and on.
Unfortunately it also seems to be true for those at the top as well. I think a lot (not all) of the governing body actually believes that the Bible is written only for the "Faithful and Discreet Slave", they believe Christ is the mediator ONLY for them, they believe they have done nothing wrong as far as pedophiles in the org. The don’t see someone like Barbara Anderson as helping children and trying for progressive change, the truly see her as a vile apostate. Their whole life is invested in the world view that they have. It will take many major “disconfirmations” for one of them to really see the truth. Of course that happened with Brother Ray Franz and that was a very good thing. Who knows maybe one of them will finally realize the TATT and write another book like Franz did. That would be nice.
There is always hope I guess. I used to be real gung ho. I have a close friend who did a fade 15 years ago. I went to his house one weekend and really was a jerk. I was literally thumping my bible, I was judgmental, and I was a total idiot. I did all this research to prove him wrong and finally it got through to me. Now I will spend the next several years trying to undo what I did before. Oh well.
The good thing for me is now I feel like I finally am starting to really understand the Bible better. I am not saying I understand everything, but I do see the good news as actually good news now, not the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society good news which is not good at all for 99.99% of humanity. I no longer look at my neighbors as bird feed, and best of all I feel a lot better than before.
Sorry for writing such a long post, I do want to thank you for the Website JWFacts.com. If I am not mistaken, (and again I am NOT looking for a discussion re. atheism/agnostic vs. belief) you may hold a different world view than I do as far as existence of a God etc., but I do appreciate very much that you keep the site to verifiable facts to help get myself and loved ones out of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. Even if you don't believe in a God the fact that you don't push that view makes your site much more effective to those of us trying to escape from the WT. Thank you.
