I remember directions from Borg to read every magazine and every article. And as everything is base on appearance and being hypocritical in the cult. Of course thirst thing someone in congregation mention Is how wonderful new watchtower was. Specially out in service. Next question was. Have you read whole magazine? And then they pointed out points in magazine. Just to show how Holy they are 😂
Reading the Watchtower and Awake! is like getting a college education!
by kairos 57 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Vidiot
Yup.
Credit where credit’s due…
…the rank-and-file’s always been real good at policing itself.
😏
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Lee Marsh
Well you could say that the WTS gives JWs a good education in their own beliefs.
However... a real education will give you a good education about a topic you want to study AND topics that are about the wider world (that don't exclude all information they don't want you to know).
Sadly, far too many people get sucked into believing they are actually studying the Bible when what they are really doing is studying WT beliefs which are heavily biased and dare I say full of "fake truth".
My JW neighbor truly believes that she studied the Bible. She knows the WTS gets it wrong but since she thinks she studied the Bible she "knows" she is right. Very sad.
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TonusOH
A real education is, in part, about teaching you how to learn. How to research, how to measure information and compare things you discover and learn, how to assemble disparate bits into a conclusion, and so on. The WTS does not teach people to do this, and they sometimes warn against it. I can remember a couple of times when they warned against critical thinking ("higher criticism" I think they called it), seeing it as a way that a university education could lead one astray.
If your beliefs cannot stand up to scrutiny then they must be revised or abandoned. The organization should never take the approach that some avenues of inquiry are to be avoided. Instead, those should be investigated and judged. That is not what they want. They want you to accept what you are told, and then limit who you listen to so you only accept their claims. That is not a proper way to teach people.
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punkofnice
Knowing things doesn't equate to intelligence. Parrots can recite things but I doubt they understand what they're saying....sorry parrots.
Knowing Watchtower(tm) things certainly doesn't.
If this were the case, why are so many Elders(tm), CO's and those that used to read the rags when they existed, dim wits?
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Magnum
punkofnice:
Knowing things doesn't equate to intelligence.
I have said that often, and that's something a lot of people don't understand. I liken the situation to two different computers. One has vast "intelligence" - that is, massive processing power, but it has very little "knowledge" - that is, its database is almost empty. Another has puny processing capability, but lots of "knowledge" - files and files of info.
Also, consider the fascinating case of Kim Peek. His mind was filled with vast, inconceivable amounts of knowledge, but his dad had to help him dress - not because he was physically not capable of dressing, but because he lacked the intelligence to dress himself. A psychologist who was interested in him knew he could easily absorb and remember simple facts (names, dates, etc.), but wanted to know to what extent he could understood more abstract or figurative type language. He asked Kim "What does it mean to get a hold of yourself?" Kim laughed at him as if it was obvious what it meant and then Kim proceeded to literally try to hold himself: he wrapped his arms around himself.
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The term "college education" is virtually meaningless. One's having a college education in no way indicates he's intelligent. I know people with college educations who, and I mean this literally, should not have been let out of the seventh grade. I know college graduates who can't do simple arithmetic; they can't figure out what 1/2 of 1/3 is. They can't reason. They're illogical. They don't know simple grammar; they don't know the difference between adjectives and adverbs or transitive and intransitive verbs. They don't know what a gerund is or what the difference between the objective and nominative cases is. That's all seventh grade (or earlier grade) stuff.
If one has a degree in math or the hard sciences or engineering, then he has to have some kind of good intelligence, but, not necessarily overall, well-rounded intelligence. One summer years ago, I took two semesters of organic chemistry in a period of four weeks. It was all day classes with labs later in the day. We had two different instructors because it would have been too much for one. Both of them knew organic chemistry well, but I found that neither was what I really view as being intelligent. They both had bad grammar and just weren't that smart in an overall way.
I think that one's having a philosophy degree would indicate intelligence. I think that people like Christopher Hitchens are brilliant - much more intelligent than, for example, the two with organic chemistry PhD's who taught me that summer.
Anyway, sorry for the ramble.... it's just something I'm really interested in. My main point is that JWs' saying that reading their mags is like getting a college degree is totally meaningless.
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hoser
I read the Awake magazine for decades and I just received my BS degree
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LongHairGal
The fact that anybody made this claim (which is pathetic) in the first place just shows how sheltered and out of touch with reality some of the Witnesses are!.. They may be nice people but they are painfully ignorant.
It also sounds to me like generational ignorance! This is also a consequence of having no contact with non-JWs. Most non-JW people, even if they themselves hadn’t gone to college, know people who have. Surely they heard about studying until early am hours, exams and having to read tons of things, etc… I doubt any of them would ever come to the conclusion that just reading periodical magazines of some religion (with a half-baked article on science here and there) would be equal to somebody’s ‘college education’. 🙄