Why do Jehovah’s Witnesses say they are God’s organization so matter of factly as though such an audacious claim is an undisputable fact?
Here is how one person sees this claim.
"The entire Jehovah’s Witness religion is founded on unsubstantiated hubristic claims which are continually repeated until they are assumed by adherents to be a proven fact.
Never is this more evident than when the beliefs of a Jehovah’s Witness are successfully challenged. The more compelling the evidence against them, the more they resort to repeating their convictions with a sense of insistence, as if they are chanting a mantra.
Confirmation bias is prevalent in all religious ideologies, but particularly with Jehovah’s Witnesses. The reason for this is that their evangelical work puts them in contact with many rival belief systems.
In order to overcome challenges to their beliefs and to prevent any doubts creeping in, Jehovah’s Witnesses have to retreat to their echo chamber to bolster their faith.
By repeatedly discussing their beliefs with fellow believers, they convince themselves that what they teach is the only ‘truth’. As well as supporting their own need for certainty, they in turn are helping to reinforce the delusions of other members.
There is a very interesting logical fallacy which highlights this method of confirmation which Jehovah’s Witnesses use, called ‘proof by repeated assertion’.
Here is a brief description:-
“Proof by repeated assertion is an informal fallacy in which a proposition is repeatedly restated regardless of contradiction and refutation. The proposition can sometimes be repeated until any challenges or opposition ceases, letting the proponent assert it as fact, and solely due to a lack of challengers. In other cases, it’s repetition may be cited as evidence of its truth, in a variant of the appeal to authority fallacy.
…In its extreme form, it can also be a form of brainwashing.”
At their meetings, Jehovah’s Witnesses are trained by role playing, acting out the arguments they regularly encounter in their ministry. However, they only ever consider the scenarios which present the softest resistance to their beliefs.
By constantly ‘overcoming’ the more easy arguments during practice sessions, Jehovah’s Witnesses are lulled into a false sense of security, believing that they have watertight answers to all the questions and objections they can expect to encounter in their ministry.
However, in real life JWs are occasionally confronted with much more profound and difficult challenges to their faith which they have not previously encountered. They invariably refrain from directly arguing or debating on these topics, but instead use deflection tactics such as referring the questioner to their website, and then they quickly retreat.
Later, when no longer under direct pressure, JWs are likely to replay the difficult challenge over in their mind. If there are no set answers in the Watchtower literature, they are compelled to fabricate a refutation themselves, perhaps by looking for relevant bible verses. The motive for this is often more to reassure themselves than to answer the challenger.
But many times there is no valid refutation. A frequent recourse if they can't find a gratifying way to refute the objection to their religion, is to vilify the character of the challenger, as a means to negate the challenge.
They are then compelled to use flawed logic to find a ‘solution’ to the challenge. Once they have an idea, they cling to it and repeat it, however false or illogical it is, until it becomes an ‘established’ counter argument (at least in their minds).
A classic, often repeated example is as follows. After pointing out a flaw in the Organisation they will reply by saying:-
“Show me an alternative religion that has more truth than ours”.
If their adversary fails or declines to suggest an appropriate alternative religion, the JW erroneously concludes that this is decisive evidence that theirs is the true religion by default.
Many people who have had encounters with Jehovah’s Witnesses will recognise this trait. Very often, when Jehovah’s Witness are confronted with contrary evidence, they simply repeat an invalid point over and over, even though they have been presented with well-founded objections or incontrovertible evidence.
After several such encounters, Jehovah’s Witnesses begin to have misplaced confidence in their false reasoning, which leads them to the absurd conclusion that their religion is the only one God is backing.
The Watchtower literature is also a factor which builds confidence in JWs that their religion is God’s organisation. The articles repeatedly make the hubristic claim that they are God’s ‘channel’, that God is using the ‘Faithful Slave’ to convey his message, etc.
Despite the lack of sufficient evidence, the constant repetition of these claims forms a confirmation bias in the minds of the followers, and these invalid assumptions become an established fact.
One only has to read the posts of many JWs on Quora to see this process in motion. There are countless answers from JW apologists in which they claim to be God’s people.
Remaining in an environment where this predominant attitude is constantly played out, has convinced millions of followers that their religion is God’s organisation, even though they lack sufficient evidence to back up this baseless claim."
Giles Gray