A Stake in the Heart of Watchtower Truth
_________________________
A Thought Experiment
Imagine a world in which:
There is one religion alone which is TRUE.
This one true religion is true because it teaches true teachings.
Now watch what happens. ..
Every so often, one of the true teachings is “adjusted” so that it :
Changes
Disappears
Reverses meaning
Now, over the course of 130 years, the one religion alone which is TRUE
Is now completely different in its original teachings, doctrines, definitions, explanations.
Questions:
Is this the SAME religion?
Is it no longer true?
Is it ‘true-er’?
______________
What has happened?
Let me explain.
This phenomenon at the heart of this paradox is recognized as the phenomenon of vagueness.
(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/vagueness/)
Vagueness is characterized by a resistance to inquiry
Example: We all know what the word “short” means, right? Well then, what is the maximum height of a “short” man?
How many hairs can we remove from your head before you are “bald”?
When does a fertilized egg develop into an actual “person”?
___________
What happens when we face a category, word, or belief which contains vagueness?
It becomes resistant to any inquiry. This leads to disagreement, argument, and divisions.
So what?
So this:
Science requires definitions which can be tested and falsified. A scientific fact isn’t a fact if there is no way for it to be proven false!
Example: What if you were told that ALL swans are white? How is that falsifiable?
Answer: Find one instance of a non-white swan.
Easy enough? That’s how science works.
That’s the difference between science and religion. One is falsifiable which means carefully defined, testable and DISPROVABLE.
The other contains assertions which contain vagueness.
____________
What are the red flags for vagueness?
Shifting standards for what is excluded or allowed
Instances which resist all attempts to settle whether it is true or false.
Existence of borderline cases
__________________
The more vagueness, the greater the need for absoluteness to control / enforce the rule.
Authoritarian enforcement replaces trueness: “Because we say so.”
__________________
Revealed truth is really the same thing as vagueness and whim disguised as truth.
Revealed truth is some person or group’s collective whim--their opinion at this moment subject to change the next moment.
A whim isn’t guided by facts or susceptible in inquiry or proof.
A whim isn’t falsifiable.
The fact is, there are tall pygmies and short Masai warriors because terms such as tall or short, beautiful and ugly, are subjective. (Each person can decide based on private tastes, feelings, and opinion.)
Religion is a special category of the use of language because it contains arbitrary borderlines, with no testable, falsifiable instances of fact.
Example: He replied, "Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you."
Question: Is what Jesus is saying actually true?
Answer: Is it testable? Is the term ‘faith’ and ‘small’ and ‘mountain’ literal or poetic?
Is the seemingly absolute statement “Nothing will be impossible for you” vague while sounding certain?
Has anybody demonstrated Jesus’ expression to be practicable?
HOW DO WE DETERMINE TRUTH-VALUE for poetic or religious belief? Is it the warm and fuzzy feeling we get? How reliable is emotion and magic-thinking?
None of us is comfortable unless we know where we are and what are the rules.
Nobody really wants traffic signs which read: Sorta Stop. Language is essential.
___A look at language__
fic·tive
ˈfiktiv/
adjective
creating or created by imagination.
___________________________
Once we shift from literal to figurative usage, we gain fictive control over our entire vocabulary—not just vague words.
___In religion, the person or group in authority has fictive control.___
It is the whim of the one in authority which determines what is true and false, real and unreal, certain and uncertain--subject to change at any time.
Authority becomes necessary where vagueness and uncertainty exist.
_____________
Tom Lehrer's 1971 children's song “Silent E”:
Who can turn a can into a cane?
Who can turn a pan into a pane?
It's not too hard to see,
It's Silent E.
Who can turn a cub into a cube?
Who can turn a tub into a tube?
It's elementary
For Silent E.
____________________
The presence and absence of Silent E builds or wrecks reality! It isn’t magical but it has the power to transform one thing into another.
Question: Why does the English language have Silent Letters?
English has about 45 sounds and only 26 letters to represent them.
English has been written for about 1,300 years.
More than half of the letters of our alphabet are silent in at least some words:
B, D, E, G, H, K, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, W, X, and Z
Answer: English is an accumulation of words from across many borders where words have different meanings. English, consequently, is vague.
What happens when there is vagueness?
It is the whim of authority which determines what is true and false, real and unreal, certain and uncertain--subject to change at any time.
There you have it!
The reason we have all those silly rules in English about Silent letters and changing Y to I and adding ing, etc. is because vagueness requires Authority to step in and lay down whimsical rules which are enforced or not, changing--always changing.
______________
Begin at the Beginning
______________
We started off by looking at True Religion and ended up with Silent E, but did we learn anything useful?
That one ‘true religion’ kept changing until it was different--completely different.
That is our red flag: VAGUENESS alert!
That signals immediately there will be an AUTHORITY involved with changing opinions in absolute control.
“Truth” is actually Authority’s fictive imagination enforced upon others.
The rule of evidence is that it must be testable and falsifiable and self-consistent.
Evidence does not change if it is true.
A man arrested for a crime whose testimony keeps changing is seen to be lying.
Why?
Because the truth is consistent with itself and is not self-contradictory.
An accused criminal cannot expect a Court to accept “It is true because I SAY SO.”
_____________
Note: The more specific a claim, the less likely it is to be true
“Hey Fred, how long ago was Adam created in the Garden of Eden?”
Fred: “Adam was created in 4026 BCE.”
Fred has a less likely chance of being correct by being so specific because an estimate is a guess.
An honest person is aware when they are making a guess. A dishonest or stupid person tends toward too much specificity.
Liars give you too many details! They are confident because their mind is a fictive arena where they are accustomed to inventing truth. Their ego tells them others will believe what they say because they are so wonderful.
____________
Fred Franz is the Fred in the above paragraph. He was the oracle for the Watchtower organization from 1913 to 1992. Actually, that is too specific to be factual. When Fred first joined Pastor Russell’s merry band of true believers the year before 1914’s prophetic END, he wasn’t a person of any particular importance. This was a gradual process for him to be seen as useful and ultimately charismatic as a channel for divine truth. By the time he became the President of the Watchtower organization, it was not the same organization as the one he joined in 1913.
All of which takes us back to the top of the opening paragraph, doesn’t it?
The Watchtower organization has one consistency for 137 years: it has been the TRUE religion referred to as THE truth.
That is too specific.
It is testable only by some FIXED standard of testing!
Is there a fixed standard?
_____________
What sets the Watchtower organization apart from most other Christian denominations is where it strays into areas of testable specifics which are falsifiable.
Official obsessing with the chronology of End Times has caused the authority of statements made to be highly vulnerable to disproof!
Each statement of absolute authority has variously been attributed to either “the Lord,” “Jehovah,” or the Bible.
The source of the Watchtower’s authority, however, is another matter.
Let’s distinguish the distinctions.
When the Bible is cited for specific passages, those passages can be looked up and read.
When “meaning” is extracted from specific passages it is a different matter, however, because interpretation or exegesis, is fictive.
This is demonstrated easily.
A = A is an axiom (So evident as to be non-controversial) A thing is equal to itself.
Consequently, 1=1, 2=2, 3=3, and so on . . .
2 Peter 3:8 “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” This bald statement is one of an Authority in a fictive category untestable in any manner. It can only be taken as true in a fictive sense. This is referred to as Faith.
Faith is the acceptance of the truth of something without evidence.
If the words “DAY” and “YEAR” are vague as to meaning, they can only be useful if you completely surrender to a particular Authority on whom you depend for clarity. The responsibility for logic, rationality, and truth--at that point--has transferred from you to the Authority.
This is why religion in general, falls into a different magisterium from Science.
(magisterium= authority and power to teach).
Jehovah’s Witnesses make the fatal error of slipping outside the vagueness of religion’s magisterium. Chronology exposes them to disproof!
The years 1874, 1914, 1925, 1975 are actual years on the calendar which arrive and depart. Events occur or do not occur inside the definite boundary line of those years.
Vagueness vanishes. Empirical examination becomes operative.
The specific statements published by the Watchtower organization as prophetically true predictions on Authority of the Lord, Jehovah and the Bible become testable as true events or non-events.
What is the verdict?
The one True religion has been tested against reality and has failed the test!
Going back to our opening paragraph and we now find the explanation for the changes.
Having your absolute certainty refuted by reality causes changes.
The fictive pronouncements which explain the changes are spin, excuses, and lies.
_____
Examine Jehovah’s Witnesses Doctrine over the years and compare the new changes with the old ‘truths’ and what do you discover?
What are the red flags for vagueness?
Shifting standards for what is excluded or allowed
Instances which resist all attempts to settle whether it is true or false.
Existence of borderline cases
__________________
The more vagueness, the greater the need for absoluteness to control / enforce the rule.
Authoritarian enforcement replaces trueness: “Because we say so.”
__________________________________________________________
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PcGrKyAleWpCwYkhL9A6QFAIU4KJZetvLMONYyn5pd8/edit?usp=sharing