ARE WATCHTOWER SOCIETY STATISTICS REALLY TRUSTWORTHY? (page 2)

Jeffro

Crazyguy:

Its just like their membership numbers printed every year and stating things like there are witnesses in places like Pakistan. Its my opinion their numbers are lies and some of the places they say they have members are lies.

Even if the statistics aren't simply made up by the Watch Tower Society, they're based on self-reported statistics, which many JWs know to be exaggerated—especially when it comes to reported preaching, for which there is an incentive to report time that is either inflated or entirely made up.

Beyond that, while their method of only counting those involved in 'preaching' as 'members' may seem modest, it is actually geared toward exaggerating their growth rates.

Most JW growth is made up of 'born-ins', and their statistics for 'Bible studies' are also majorly skewed by JW parents having 'Bible studies' with their own children.

Seventh Day Adventists make the same trade-off with their membership statistics by only counting baptised members to inflate growth rates. This method of exaggerating their grown may go back to their common origins in the 19th century.

TerryWalstrom

I'm no psychiatrist, but. . . the OCD preoccupation with numbers (in a fanciful and forced methodology) must be a very particular brain pattern which manifests in certain persons attracted to chronology, prophetic calculation, statistical number crunching, etc.

Is it a meme? Is it a neurosis? It's certainly a mania.

OrphanCrow

Hi Terry

Numbers and authority go hand in hand. Numbers are used to legitimize ideas and phenomena. It is this notion that "if you can measure it, it is real and has value". Also, the WT organization has this intense need to legitimize itself for legal and tax reasons.

When I was a kid, I remember the absolute unquestioning acceptance of the Society's number crunching. There was the attitude that the numbers were infallible. It was implicit in the doctrine and ideology - because the WTS taught the Truth of Jehovah, then it would be blasphemous beyond comprehension to question something as material as numbers. Numbers were as true as God was true. More true, in fact. If you questioned the numbers, that was the unforgivable sin - the numbers were like the Holy Spirit - Truth was unquestionable truth, and the numbers were part of the whole package.

There was this strange idea that the numbers were real material evidence collected in the here and now and the numbers could not, and would never be, inaccurate. The numbers were big letter TRUTH. Jehovah God was invisible but numbers were real - both infallible.

It is a strange loop of belief, where the numbers prove themselves, which goes something like this "...the numbers are true because they are numbers. And the Society is infallible in the collection of numbers. The Society speaks for God and numbers don't lie."

The problem that happens when searching for data on the Society is that they were almost the only ones collecting their own data - they own their numbers. And there is this strange qualifying or confirming of numbers that happens in the academic world - I have read researchers' justifications for using the data released by the WTS that goes something like this:

"We can trust the WTS' numbers because those academics who write about the WTS and who used to be members of the JW religion use those numbers, therefore the numbers must be true." In other words, the 'apostate' community using the numbers released by the WTS gives those numbers authority in larger circles.

i have a problem with that - when legitimate researchers who have come from the WTS community don't step outside of their bubble to question the data. There is this strange phenomena where the doctrine is questioned, the structure is questioned, but the last bastion of truth is held....the wall is never scaled...the numbers hold.

I am not sure why this occurs - it is as though the numbers are the only real truthful thing left: "... the numbers must be true, even if the WTS has lied about everything else, certainly they wouldn't/didn't lie about the numbers???"

But...think about it...the WTS is not truthful about doctrine. They have a history of lying. Why trust their numbers?

Is it a neurosis? It's certainly a mania.

Corporate power structures are neurotic unto themselves - they are madness personified. Insanity is implicit within the structure.

Crow

OnTheWayOut

Accurate numbers for exactly how many humans died as a result of the Nazi plans are simply not available and never will be. Research by historians place the number of Holocaust victims murdered by government policy to be not less than twelve million and probably more.

You can figure that half of that number were Jews, so I imagine anyone can run with the other half. This is not to say that the other half died in concentration camps, but that they died in a way that some consider "murder."

As Orphan Crow states, The Watchtower Society has embraced all the WW2 purple triangles as their own - when in reality, many of those purple triangles were not part of the Watchtower Society at the time.

I will go one step further and state that the Watchtower probably pulled the "10000" number from some source that didn't even say it was all purple triangles. I say that because the Jews in concentration camps were the death targets, the rest were just locked up and occasionally died from the treatment. It is highly possible that the WTS is including a significant number of the non-Jews that died, perhaps even including the PINK TRIANGLES.

Yes, I said it. WTS is probably laying claim to homosexuals dying for their cause. I simply revert back to my opening statement if challenged on that. Accurate numbers are not available, so if WTS prints a number, I can say that others are included in that.

OrphanCrow

Onthewayout - The purple triangles were worn by all prisoners who were in the camps for religious reasons. All religious prisoners - including 7th Day Adventists, Baptists, Catholics, Bible Students, Jehovah's witness....if a person was in the camps for religious reasons they were assigned a purple triangle. The JWs were the majority within that group.

.

sir82

The purple triangles were worn by all prisoners who were in the camps for religious reasons. All religious prisoners - including 7th Day Adventists, Baptists, Catholics, Bible Students, Jehovah's witness....if a person was in the camps for religious reasons they were assigned a purple triangle.

That's the first I've ever heard of that. Is there a source to look up more information?

blondie

Purple triangle—primarily Jehovah's Witnesses (over 99%), and members of other small religious groups.[2]

[2] Johannes S. Wrobel, Jehovah’s Witnesses in National Socialist Concentration Camps, 1933 – 45, Religion, State & Society, Vol. 34, No. 2, June 2006, pp. 89-125 "The concentration camp prisoner category ‘Bible Student’ at times apparently included a few members from small Bible Student splinter groups, as well as adherents of other religious groups which played only a secondary role during the time of the National Socialist regime, such as Adventists, Baptists and the New Apostolic community (Garbe 1999, pp. 82, 406; Zeiger, 2001, p. 72). Since their numbers in the camps were quite small compared with the total number of Jehovah’s Witness prisoners, I shall not consider them separately in this article. Historian Antje Zeiger (2001, p. 88) writes about Sachsenhausen camp: ‘In May 1938, every tenth prisoner was a Jehovah’s Witness. Less than one percent of the Witnesses included other religious nonconformists (Adventists, Baptists, pacifists), who were placed in the same prisoner classification.’"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camp_badges#cite_note-2

UFCFan

Why would they bother lying though? They're not trustworthy but I don't think they'd make up random facts for no reason.

OnTheWayOut

I stand by my pink triangle statement. Let them deny it.

TerryWalstrom

Lying is an interesting way of labeling the intentional massaging of facts to serve an end.

When Mormon scholars approached their council of Apostles to confess the awful fact honest research had refuted certain unshakeable beliefs of the church, they were told, "This isn't faith-building."

What an insidious way of saying, "Keep your research to yourself."

I would say this. If you KNOW you are right (delusional as this is) and believe yours is a divine mission, how empowered does that make you to achieve your end goals--despite--contrary facts?

Didn't Ray Franz say the GB was "Captive to a concept" of Organization as established by Jehovah? This imaginary imprimatur is like alcoholism.

When they crash the car of prophecy, they can shrug sheepishly and say, "I was drunk."

ARE WATCHTOWER SOCIETY STATISTICS REALLY TRUSTWORTHY?

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