Why some smart people believe the JWs/Bible

by jws 20 Replies latest jw friends

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  jws

  I consider myself smart. Go ahead, laugh. I have a sense of humor too.

  But I grew up a JW and also believed in the Bible. Although I had an issue or two, I believed the JWs had the right religion. It took Franz's book to make me realize they didn't. Then I hung onto the Bible for a few years, expecting I could find a relationship with God without the JWs. Now I believe in neither.

  Considering myself fairly intelligent, I kick myself for how foolish I was. I envy those who knew it was all BS when they were in their teens or even younger.

  So I thought it over. And my conclusion is, I just didn't care. Everybody has things they're good at and things they are not. Everybody has their passions and things they could care less about. And some of those, we just pick something to have something.

  I think for me, I didn't care about religion. I was born a JW and my parents told me this is the true religion. This is God's book, etc. OK. And I just accepted it because I didn't really care or think about it. As a kid I was probably more interested in other things like playing. As a teen, way more interested in computers. A lot of times I would envision routines and how to get things working while daydreaming during talks or assembly parts.

  I'm going to be sexist for a moment. And this is not true of all guys, but I think for the most part, guys don't care about which hygiene products we use. At least not a few decades ago. We don't want to do an extensive search and learn about the pros and cons of each brand. We just want something that works. All it takes is an ad or a friend saying "this is good" and we go with that. As long as it serves it's purpose, we can be fiercely loyal to that brand. Perhaps for decades. For no other reason than we don't care. We have to have soap or shampoo and brand X works. So there's no need to evaluate and re-evaluate it and try other things.

  It doesn't mean we're stupid. Just that we've got an area of our life covered. That's taken care of, on to our true passions. Whether it be stereo systems, cars, computers, bikes, whatever. Some of which we may be experts at or geniuses with.

  I think religion was that for me. I didn't want to look through all of that boring stuff to form an opinion. I assumed there was a god, so which religion? This one dad & mom? OK. That decision's done. Now I can daydream and think what I'm going to do when meeting is over.
  

  Eventually I absorbed it sitting through all of those meetings and then I knew it. Still didn't really care, but I knew it. I might not care about the internal workings of a combustion engine, but hear about it enough, I will. Still won't care, but I will know.

  I even defended the religion based on the facts I absorbed. But I didn't question because I wasn't that invested. Like a hair product, I was told it was the best, so I went with it.

  And I think I can find evidence of this in my life. I was never happy about meetings except to see my friends or slide shows. I never wanted to go in service. I never wanted to do home Bible study. I often complained that I knew all that stuff already, so why go to meeting? Outside of meeting, my life was focused on whatever was going on. School, work, friends, etc. I didn't think about meeting or service except for planning around them and until it was time to get ready.
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  freemindfade

  I was raised in as well. Don't consider myself that unintelligent, but it took me 30 years to get courage to be rational. I can relate to what you have posted here. One day I was watching some middle east atrocities, and I thought to myself, "if witnesses knocked on my door, would I even answer it? or would I straight up tell them get the f%$# off my porch? I probably would never even entertain this mess, so why was I in? It turned the key for me to question absolutely everything and give myself of the opportunity of coming in the truth instead of being raised. And I found it all to be utter crap.
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  Finkelstein

  Many people has gone through a similar experience such as yourself , particularly born ins. ie. ...... myself
  

  You were told it was the right and correct religion, all others were decisively wrong and corrupt ( False Religion)

  What does happen though is that people grow intellectually in knowledge over time , some of that knowledge pertains to human psychology and sociological behavior. The connection to how organized religions take control of knowledge to support and appeal to their own self empowerment and control.

  The long extensive mental indoctrination by the WTS has a profound effect on people's psychological make up and suppresses their own intellectual growth and maternity. Essentially the WTS places a box over people's heads and restricts any knowledge that does not support the organization's directive teachings. Most organized religious institutions repel higher eduction because people might get in contact to information that would deem their information as false or entwined in human ignorance.
  
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  Finkelstein

  All kinds of people including the smart or not so smart can be brainwashed by virtue of mental indoctrination technics.
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  stan livedeath

  i was raised in it---- from about 10 years old-----of course it was the only true religion--it just was--coz we were in it. then--one day--i stopped to think.
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  Finkelstein

  Every religion is the right religion to people who are deeply involved in it.

  Ask any clergy in the Mormon , Catholic , Muslim faiths etc. , they will tell you they have the right religion too.
  
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  steve2

  I would like to think think that, had I not been a born-in, I would never have been interested in the JWs message, let alone join them. But that's ignoring the strong tendency for people to become interested in religious beliefs for reasons that have nothing to do with "checking the facts" and taking a strictly studious approach.

  There are all sorts of reasons people give the JW message -and, indeed, any religious message - a second look.

  In that regard, I knew brothers who first showed an interest in the message only when they had developed a relationship with a JW sister - and were given the clear message that the relationship would end unless they studied with the Witnesses.

  Many grieving, bereft individuals sitting at home are sitting ducks for the JW message, as are individuals who are in some significant way in grievance over their own religion.

  There is little in life so compelling as a likeable person making the time and effort visiting you in your home, showing you a lot of interest, when you are "out of sorts" with some aspect of your life - and your lovely JW visitor confidently shows you their way is based on truth and love.

  But, regardless of how an individual is "introduced" to the JW religion, and whether born in or not, sooner or later, if you've got a logical, thinking, inquiring brain, you will find yourself unable to continue "swallowing" their poorly argued, authoritarian teachings. You may not be immediately "free" to leave (because of family, spouses or children etc), but leave you will, in one way or another.
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  Phizzy

  Thanks for your thoughts JWS, your experience was very similar to mine.

  I suppose that my taking so long to wake up was actually being too lazy to go research, when that niggling thought " That can't be right" popped into my head, I always promised myself to check it out later, but did not do so, or if I did, in pre-Internet days, I just ended up confused.

  So according to you, I ain't stoopid, just lazy !

  Thanks !
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  sir82

  Your post pretty much could have been written by me - sums up my view/circumstances.
  
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  OneEyedJoe

  Towards the end of my time in the mental prison of JWdom, one of the few remaining threads that my loyalty to the cult was hanging by was the fact that one of the elders in my congregation was very intelligent and often gave comments about how he had previously been agnostic before converting. I liked him personally, and I couldn't understand how he wouldn't be able to see all the issues that I could see. But he was still in and by all accounts fully invested.

  One day I was bored and thinking about this predicament and googled "Why do smart people believe stupid things" which lead me to an article that referenced Festinger's "When Prophecy Fails" - a well regarded book written after following around a doomsday cult to study the psychology of it all. I never actually read the book, but the overview on wikipedia hit me pretty hard. In a lot of ways it sounded like the JWs - they predicted the end of the world, and after the failure of the prediction the ones that stuck around were more committed than ever and this is when they began to attempt to proselytize. When you're uncertain of a belief that you hold, convincing others of its truth validates the belief to you, so you seek to do that. I'm not saying that's exactly what happened with JWs, but at the time I didn't know fully the history, but I knew the preaching work mainly started after 1914.

  In short, intelligence has less to do with whether you believe stupid things than we'd like to think. In many cases it has much more to do with how invested you are in the truth of an idea. If you've given up jobs, family, friendships, property or a great deal of time in commitment to it, you're far more likely to continue to hold this to be true long after it's proven false. In the case of the elder I'd looked up to, he'd given up all these things for the cult. I also later learned that he converted only after his wife had converted, and this lent further credence to the idea that he, in spite of his intelligence, may well have been fooled into holding some very stupid beliefs.