The intellect gives us our powers of conception, judgment, and free choice in the way which has separated humanity from the rest of the animal kingdom. It really works and this is proved by the fact we are out of the food chain dominating all other species.
However, be warned! Human intellect is not a perfectly functioning machine. It will not function properly if it processes raw data corrupted in any way or incomplete. As any computer engineer will tell you: Garbage in = garbage out.
Honesty is seeing things as they really are--then dealing with them realistically
INTELLECT REQUIRES HONESTY or the human animal goes astray into suspicion, cynicism, false conclusions and a brooding herdlike dependence.
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INTELLECTUAL HONESTY says: "I am willing to be wrong if the facts go against even my most cherished beliefs."
Ask yourself this question: ARE YOU WILLING TO BE WRONG?
Without a willingness to be wrong (who can always be right?) no room for personal growth is possible.
You can't climb from the bottom of ignorance to the top of wisdom without a vast stairway of many levels requiring many steps. To move up, you must abandon the lower steps to reach the highest ones.
MAN'S GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT IS PROGRESS THROUGH SELF-EXAMINATION
HOW DO WE AVOID BEING INTELLECTUALLY DISHONEST?
1. LISTEN TO PEOPLE with whom you disagree. Really listen. Why? Because you were once a Jehovah's Witness and had all the answers and all the Truth--but you were dead wrong. You tuned out what others said when they objected to your certainty WHAT IF YOU HAD DONE YOUR OPPOSITION RESEARCH with an OPEN MIND? Still-in JW's refuse to hear what their opposers say automatically contemptuous and suspicious. We cannot afford to be deaf, blind and stupid the second time. You have nothing to lose but your smug complacency by listening to your opponents.
2. TEST YOUR SOURCES. When we were Jehovah's Witnesses we thought the Bible (and ultimately, Jehovah) was our source of knowledge, truth, and wisdom WE WERE WRONG! We had become blind to the startling fact it was all coming from FALSE PROPHETS pretending to channel Truth from heaven. Had we listened to CRITICAL ANALYSIS by actual Bible Scholars (instead of letting the GB do it for us) we'd quickly have become alert to problems with authenticity in the scriptures themselves. A red flag would be the wake-up call.
3. BECOME A RATIONAL, NON-CYNICAL SKEPTIC. When we were Jehovah's Witnesses, we sneered at all human society except for the New World society. Why? JW's are taught to be untrusting, suspicious, dark-minded and smug. However, a rational thinker looks for data, facts, and solutions from any source as long as it's testable and peer-reviewed without bias.
4. STUDY CONTROVERSIAL SUBJECTS by reading opposites sides of the debate. When we were Jehovah's Witnesses our reading and viewing material was censored. The label of "worldly" poisoned research. Independent thinking was forbidden. This left us vulnerable to emotional manipulation. The quotations published in JW reading materials were filtered, clipped and rendered corruptly so contrary viewpoints by neutral authorities would not reach us with potency. When we study any topic, we need to know what opponents EACH set forward, to examine the data set, and become aware of the weakness on BOTH sides.
5. SELF-AWARENESS of your limits. Face the fact you are flawed, subjective, ill-informed, unskilled and over-confident while at the same time thinking you are objective, intelligent, and smarter than most others. THAT'S HUMAN NATURE. Get over yourself! As Jehovah's Witnesses, we considered ourselves as sharp, quick-minded experts on absolute truth. We were dead wrong! But old habits die hard. Cultivate humility and seek to become aware of just how dumb being a JW has made you! Without humility no persona can learn. Your opinion is important to YOU but everybody else thinks you're an idiot. They are probably partially right some of the time :)
6. LEAVE ROOM FOR DOUBT. Have you ever met a JW Elder who left any room for doubt that what he was saying was the be-all and end-all of knowledge? Weren't you that way at one time?Next time you offer an opinion try ending your sentence with room for doubt. "Your mileage may vary, of course" is a phrase I try to cultivate. You remind yourself you aren't a damned expert. It invites others to sharpen your remarks with additional and perhaps more accurate commentary. If you are so cocksure--you shut out your only chance to receive correction for smarter people. Doubt your facts and you'll seldom end up wrong. If you are skilled at debate it is an especially easy trap to fall into sounding like you are an encyclopedia of wisdom when actually you're only a deft counterpuncher.
7. EXCHANGE HOPE for FAITH and you'll avoid ignorance and heartbreak. What Hope offers is a positive and confident mental attitude which reassures an outcome while simultaneously leaving room for the possibility things won't turn out. On the other hand, Faith destroys objectivity and forces delusional dependence on wishful thinking which can destroy you when it falls apart. As Jehovah's Witnesses, we discovered this in 1975. Read the following quotation and try not to gasp at the insanity of what is being offered to millions of Jehovah's Witnesses looking forward to 1975.
8. AVOID PERSONAL ATTACKS and rely on facts. The Jehovah's Witness first line of defense against their enemies is to label them "mentally diseased", wicked, Satanic, worldly and Apostate. Instead of rationally listing objections and methodically offering counter-proofs as refutations, the Governing Body exposes themselves to be weak, dishonest and tyrannical. If you are on the side of genuine truth, you should be able to defeat wrong statements with sources factually accurate. You know an opponent is out of ammunition as soon as they revert to name-calling. The number one signal of a dishonest debate is the attempt to shut down all two-way discourse by a pejorative label. Look for the word "ridiculous" because it can often reveal an empty rebuttal.
9. LOGIC is essentially a test of NON-CONTRADICTION. As Jehovah's Witnesses, our view of Truth was crippled by constantly changing absolutes. If something is true, it doesn't need changing from one certainty to its own opposite certainty. This is why Science is provisional and constantly seeks tests of falsifiable principle. In the last few years, the religious denomination of Jehovah's Witnesses had been erased and redrafted WITHOUT ANY MEMBERS NOTICING. Why? Their rational mind is like a house with the burglar alarm wire cut by burglars. They are intellectually defused, blind to the many contradictions with previous core 'truth.'
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Having no clear view of alternatives, Jehovah's Witnesses are blinded. On top of that, having a smug self-assured attitude has made them closed off to the possibility of being self-deceived. Finally, by refusing to open themselves up to the possibility of being wrong, they refuse to self-examine for intellectual dishonesty. This has rendered the members of this religion very depressed, nervous, fearful and blocked from their native potential to lead healthy and happy lives.
No progress is possible for JW's until they become humble enough to be wrong when the facts go against them.
