"Intelligent" Witnesses

megaboy

After reading some experiences, I have found that this organization has had quite a big change in its operations within the last decade. Back when I was talking to the ocassional witnesses at a local hotspot I remember some of them having respectable intelligence.

What I want to know though is those who have been aquainted with who they felt were more educated and independent in thinking, how they handled the rapid changes.

Did they give a benefit of doubt to the organization despite the clear signs that there is no solid respect for "truth" and its really just like other religions?

Did anyone experiences others that had wake up calls and leave? Did most choose to fade? Did others make statements before leaving?

I had researched that their HQ had a lot of layoffs and people were homeless and were lied to by the head honchos. Did this have any large scale effect? Was it kept under raps and spun?

What is interesting about these new guys I've met, is that when I talked to them, they don't seem to be intelligent individually but merely memorize talking points, its not a conclusion they made personally. I'm sure some of them had to have been aware of this.

snare&racket

Are you sure that it's not you that has changed..... now more informed and analytical you see their empty and vacuous memorised talking points. The JW members have not altered much in 10 years, it's the same people with the same education and same fears and ignorances.

i imagine the gap between JW's and the average informed individual will grow as the Information Age continues to rapidly develop.

i remember when returning to college, learning physics, chemistry, biology.....looking around and seeing everyday people studying and learning in depth topics that as a newly ex JW made my lifelong 'spiritual' education from Watchtower seem pathetic. I remember well, looking around and the thought hitting me "Ahhh no wonder nobody listened to us JW's, look at what the average person knows!"

P.s. Pew studies show that the JW's are the least educated international religious demographic (and poorest).

scratchme1010

Did they give a benefit of doubt to the organization despite the clear signs that there is no solid respect for "truth" and its really just like other religions?

Hard to say about every single JW in the planet. In general, the one thing that remains a constant in the JWs is that they are a controlling group, which means that it requires independent thinking in order for people to have the capacity to give the benefit of the doubt.

Did anyone experiences others that had wake up calls and leave? Did most choose to fade? Did others make statements before leaving?

Look in this forum and see for yourself. There are plenty of people who had wake up calls and left. Do you mean in any of use personally met a person who decided that the JWs are full of --it and left? Otherwise, the fact that you are posting in a forum like this, like, should give you a clue.

I had researched that their HQ had a lot of layoffs and people were homeless and were lied to by the head honchos. Did this have any large scale effect? Was it kept under raps and spun?

Huh?

megaboy

I got the impression that most people here were kind of just there, maybe not fully IN to it. But I guess I mean someone really invested beyond just maybe family ties and has some reasonable thinking ability. Maybe higher ranking ones?

I guess the "Huh" answered my question. Wonder how they spun that.

Crazyguy

Isn't that an oxymoron ?

dubstepped

Falling for a cult's tactics has nothing to do with intelligence. Some of us here are thought to be quite intelligent as well. Many of those here were very much IN the cult, myself included. I was all in.

I don't think that the massive changes led me out so much as they coincided with the natural progression that I was making internally that did.

schnell

Are we talking about changes in doctrine (overlapping generations) or changes in publications (simpler, shorter, and almost 100% deepities) or changes in meeting structure?

Because I honestly didn't care about any of those.

I cared and still care about intellectual honesty. First, I decided that science and the Bible MUST be congruent if it is the word of the one true God. Failing that, I decided that a loving and merciful God would not give me a brain so that I could then not use it. Then came the big question: Is there a God? In honest skepticism rather than high arrogance, I had to mimic Pharaoh and ask: "Who is Jehovah?"

notalone

Three years ago I was totally in. I read everything- watchtower, science, history, philosophy,health. I am insatiable when it comes to learning and I loved a good debate. My sibling is a nuclear physicist who had been raised in the org but never became baptized. We had deep conversations using both the Bible and secular knowledge- not the org's literature.I recognized that most of those I knew within the org did not have this same love of learning. I always credited it to living in small towns in the deep south. I always tried to broaden their horizons by adding references outside the given articles. I was always outspoken on issues I felt were not accurate. Well, it was around this time, three years ago, I found myself screaming at articles and blackening out what was not accurate or was misleading. I would add notes next to these areas that counteracted the thought. After about three articles that had sizable redactions, I put them to the side- something was wrong. They were wanting complete obedience without questioning, something I would never give. This coincided with a profound personal situation that made it clear that the moral standards I believed in did not exist within this org. So I did what I do, but now we have the internet and access to more information then I had ever had before. I woke up and my whole family came with me. There were a few others like me , they also have left. I don't know, but it seems that those who really think have left, are leaving or are being pushed out.

Village Idiot

With an IQ in the genius range (congratulates himself) I can say that it was not intelligence that got me out though it was a close second. What got me out was more of a visceral feeling that there was something very wrong in what I was perceiving to be the self-glorification of the Watchtower. It was always we, ourselves, and nobody else. It seemed that for every finger they pointed at the sky there were three more pointed at themselves. That is what was giving me anxiety attacks out in field service and what eventually got me out.

respectful_observer

We were just talking about this subject last night as a couple. We'd just found out that a married couple we liked, respected, and classified as of a higher intelligence than the average JW, recently and dramatically "dropped off the grid". Apparently they encountered something regarding the Org's history/practices that gave them pause. No one seems to know anything more because everyone is being told by elders to not ask them their reasons, or listen to them if they reach out to you. Our close friends who gave us this update are "intelligent", but their response is: "we don't want to know; we CAN'T know what it was" (ignorance is bliss).

As a couple we discussed how, not that every "intelligent" JW is leaving, it's that those that are leaving are the "intelligent" ones and that the remaining intelligent ones are coping by sticking their collective heads in the sand/fingers in their ears. My other half who is not (yet?) in exactly the same place as my mind, expressed quite a bit of concern over what that meant for those of us who are still "in".

"Intelligent" Witnesses

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