by OnTheWayOut 45 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Spot on Vid, but I have had a number of JW relatives, after long discussions showing the problems with the JW religion, fall back on:
" Well, I believe it is the Truth, and that's good enough for me "
It is their way of closing down discussion, and therefore thought.
It does not reflect well upon the person's intellectual honesty when they do that. They make themselves look very foolish. But they cannot see that of course.
Nickolas, I don't think like you at all. I am a firm believer that everyone deserves to know the real truth. I could make an exception for a JW on their deathbed. Some would say to let them die in happiness about their beliefs. But as for me, if that person has been shunning and judging negatively, especially family members, then I would not even make an exception for them if I could make them see the truth about "the truth." Let all those whose spark might go out see what they have been doing/promoting to others all their life.
But I cannot automatically do that and I do hope the outcome for helping JW's comes out more positively when it happens.
I would say for your wife, as well as mine, that if they did wake up to TTATT, they might go through a troubled period but would eventually be happier to know they stopped living and promoting the lies.
As for the rest, maybe the Watchtower is winning as far as my wife goes. But I think they are not winning. It's just that I haven't won either. The struggle goes on between us. My wife and I were very active JW's. She was a pioneer when we met and married. She was a good JW as we both were at the Kingdom Hall. Now, she hasn't pioneered in years and years, her "service" is very token. She doesn't keep up with the changing doctrine, perhaps to her detriment, but she doesn't really do anything for the advancement of their doctrine. She does good toward other JW's, which I cannot fault her for. But she has worldly friends from her professional life that include fornicators, homosexuals, various other believers in various other things. She is happy to be in, but has learned (maybe mostly from me) not to sweat over all the details and not to be coerced into following the unwritten rules and not to tell the elders and other JW's everything she does.
My perspective is against the backdrop of faith and the greater damage it does. Unqualified belief in fantastic things. What flavour that faith assumes is of lesser significance. What the Watchtower teaches, how it controls the thoughts of its adherents, is a variation on a common theme. A particularly insidious variation, to be sure, but a matter only of degree. Some of the most ardent critics of the Watchtower, including many of those frequenting this forum, steadfastly cling to a less strident variation of the very same faith espoused by the Watchtower. TTATT is subjective if the residual truth they perceive is every bit as unlikely. Do not these people also deserve to know the truth about the "truth" that they perceive? I think so, if they can handle it and thrive. If a secular one such as I - and I had assumed in incarnations past you as well - can be construed as occupying one end of the spectrum and an active Jehovah's Witness the other, the ones who have cast off the yoke of the Watchtower but still cling to their faith in improbable things are far, far more similar to the Jehovah's Witnesses they loathe than they are to me. The enemy is not the Watchtower alone, as much as it is a formidable aspect of it. I'm sure you will recognise this closing to Sam Harris' famous letter:
This letter is the product of failure—the failure of the many brilliant attacks upon religion that preceded it, the failure of our schools to announce the death of God in a way that each generation can understand, the failure of the media to criticize the abject religious certainties of our public figures—failures great and small that have kept almost every society on this earth muddling over God and despising those who muddle differently.
Nonbelievers like myself stand beside you, dumbstruck by the Muslim hordes who chant death to whole nations of the living. But we stand dumbstruck by you as well—by your denial of tangible reality, by the suffering you create in service to your religious myths, and by your attachment to an imaginary God. This letter has been an expression of that amazement—and, perhaps, of a little hope.
That said, I suppose I would be almost as content if my wife converted back to Anglicanism, although we'd still not be on the same page.
Very interesting, as I am always analyzing, "What can I say to 'crack the egg'?"
In other words, I think that once a crack into the armor of JW's thinking is made, more info can flow into it. Having your wife think about subjects that are just like JW subjects/ controversies/ hypocrocies I think is a good idea, as later, it will alow her brain to 'take that route.'
Just as the WT repeats, repeats, repeats, and things are grooved / etched into our brains, so too can WE start etching new grooves that will allow info to be routed there...
If your wife hates it when people lie in court, and the pedophiles gets away, and kids get hurt when priests get moved from church to church, then she will have a hard time saying "it's ok for the WT lawyers to lie in court" or "it's ok that we didn't know that a pedophile was in our congregation"...
My mom started studying when I was five... I am now 59, and i would not want to live a lie.... It was a bit hard at first, as I thought I had a very cozy future planned out for me by the creator of the universe. However, as nice as that seemed, I would never, ever, ever want to support an organization that lies, and uses people and harms people. Life is too precious.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
"Members just wanna belieeeve... oh, members just wanna believe..."
cha ching, great comment. I hope I get through on the wavelength you describe- seeing the injustices/problems with the world outside of Watchtower, then helping to apply it toward Watchtower.
Good comedy relief moment, Vidiot.
Talesin, so sorry I didn't address your comment previously. Fear is huge as a factor, and it may be that the member isn't even aware of it. So true. I am confident my mother is like what you describe, afraid to have to make her own decisions without someone to simply tell her what is wrong and right. My wife, not so much. Watchtower is the way she grew up and "it must be right."
Nickolas, I am with you more than I am against what you are saying. But if my loved one were a captive of Christianity in a Protestant church, I would be less concerned about her being negatively affected than she is as a JW or as a Mormon or Scientologist. I tend to go along with the cult expertise of Steve Hassan in that some places are dangerous mind-control cults and others are not so much. I tend to think the Catholic church is somewhere inbetween, a wee bit too far toward the dangerous side than I care for, but most of the rest of Christianity is not causing members to function as fundamentalist extremists who radically ignore science and evidence. That said, I would be happy my wife left the JW's and more happy if she left Christianity, and thrilled if she became an agnostic/atheist. But one step at a time. I have considered trying to help her along the atheist path in bigger steps, but really- I can't even get her to recognize what's wrong with Watchtower let alone religion and belief.
So I apply my same thought to Christians, Jews, Muslims, various other faiths alike. They all deserve to know the actual real truth. But I am focused on what I know and where I am at. Is it just a matter of degrees in difference- many times YES. If my wife left the JW's for the Seventh Day Adventists, I would probably start learning more about how to help her out of that.
>Leaving quietly
Doesn't "fill the earth" imply extending the boundaries of the garden of eden?
OTWO, great thread. Really good thought provoking stuff.
Ultimately it comes down to this: wanting to believe something does not make it so. We should demand evidence, real evidence. Not the illusion or suggestion of evidence such as using the word "evidently" or others like it as if they are the same as real proof.
Hassan suggests that the best way to get someone to wake up and recognized their in a cult is to gently and slowly point out the logical flaws and fallacies of other religions that are identical to those in whatever cult they are in, in this case: JWs. NEVER ATTACK THEIR BELIEFS DIRECTLY! That will only invoke their cult personality and trigger "thought stopping" slogans.
I also think that the teaching of critical thinking skills is another key component. Even then, there are no guarantees that any particular person will wake up. Some people really do want to be led.
Phizzy: It took a personal crisis to get me to that point, and I think that is what it will take for most people, at least for those who chose as adults to join. It takes a lot to break through the cognitive dissonance, that is why it's so hard to break through to a believing JW.
This is a very important statement.
It was certainly true in my case. When I think about those that have woken up and left the religion, they all had to go through some sort of personal crisis that forced them to confront their beliefs and the unreality and lack of logic or coherence which characterize those beliefs. That often propagates its own personal crisis. It's a process to be sure.
LisaRose, on your earlier comment:
They pointed out that they were the only Christian religion that told the truth about hell fire and the trinity, so even if they were not perfect they were still better than any other religion. I briefly found this argument to be compelling, as these teachings were what motivated me to convert in the first place.
That is my wife's biggest downfall. They are the only ones who teach "basic Bible truths" (as defined by their own doctrine and drilling it into people's heads). Along with the name "Jehovah," there's hellfire, the Trinity, the cross, and door-to-door preaching. I know better than them now, but I cannot break through that simple train of thought that goes along with my A-G process from page one of this thread:
Members are asked to think like this-
A. The Bible is "right."
B. There is a "right" way to serve the God of the Bible.
C. The God of the Bible is "Jehovah."
D. To be serving God "right," you must recognize Jehovah.
E. WTS recognizes Jehovah and uses the Bible, therefore they are the "right" way to serve the God of the Bible.
F. If WTS is "right" then all others are "wrong."
G. Any deviation from this simple "logic" that causes dissonance should just fall back on repeating the steps above.
Freddo, people have been assuming what the Bible evidently means for all the time it has existed. Filling the earth with people is one thing that doesn't necessarily involve extending a garden. Yes, it is easy to assume that one. But does that make one wrong if he doubts that because it really does go beyond what's written?
Thanks for reminders, Oubliette. I will work on pinging things like shunning and pedophile priests and whatnot in other groups.
