It wasn't the straw that broke the camel's back. That back had already broken. It was more of the last nail in the coffin for my allegiance to the WTS. I'd struggled at "overcoming" my atheism for six years, with varying degrees of success, but I always considered myself an intellectual and fought desperately to amalgamate Watchtower doctrine with fact and logic. The social manipulation really got to me, too, but I forced myself to hold out the possibility that deep down the WTS had the truth.
Then the August 1, 2002 Watchtower came out. Everything that irked me about the Organization wrapped in 32 pages.
The cover article is "Do Superstitions Control Your Life?" (I know, try to keep a straight face now, it gets worse!) Page 3 asks "Are you affected by a 'belief, half-belief, or practice for which there appears to be no rational substance?' Your answer could be revealing, for that is how one reference work defined the word "superstition." Someone really must tell them at Brooklyn that its dishonest not to quote your sources. It goes on to say on the following page that "many superstitions basically stem from a fear of spirits of the dead or of spirits of any sort. Events are interpreted as attempts by these spirits to contact the living with a threat, a warning, or a blessing." And I agree completely. But by the next page, "contacting [demons] or submitting to their influence is not to be taken lightly, for they, like their leader, Satan the Devil, would like to devour us." Certainly sounds like a threat from spirits to me. Or was that a warning from Jehovah God and the angels? By the end of the artcle we have an experience by a man named Ade,* and guess what? *Names have been changed! So why give a false name? Certainly not to prevent anyone from verifying the story, I'm sure.
Now, as if this wasn't contradictory enough, later in the magazine we have an article on the dangers of Yoga. The writers quote Indian ex-president Dr. S. Radhakrishnan saying that yogi can communicate with telepathy and "The yogi can make his body invisible." Quite cleverly, they make no attempt to endorse his claims, so if anyone ever cornered the Society for saying such nonsense was possible they could easily deny it. Typical Watchtower dishonesty. The next paragraph is particularly damning:
The image of a yogi sleeping on a bed of nails or walking on hot coals may appear to be a hoax to some and a joke to others. But these are common occurances in India... In June 1995 The Times of India reported that a three-and-a-half-year-old girl lay in a trance as a car weighing more than 1,600 pounds was allowed to run over her abdomen. To the amazement of the crowd, when she awoke she was totally unharmed. The report added: "It was sheer yogic power."
No, it was sheer weight and heat distribution for all those examples. All hoaxes, easily duplicated without the help of demons, all easily explained by the simple laws of physics Witnesses champion when defending Creationism. Either the Watchtower Society is completely ignorant of such simple facts or are bold-faced liars and manipulators. Whatever the case, I expect more from "God's Organization."
Other points of interest include illustrations on page 17. At a Witness function, seven friends are seated around a coffee table. The only Black person is sitting on the floor! Over the caption "Does your personal appearance reflect well on the God you worship?" a teenage Witness walks down a high school allway in a fully-buttoned plaid shirt neatly tucked in to his khakis, in sharp contrast to the "worldly" students who wear jeans, one of which sports a tattoo on his neck. Coupled with the previous photo the Society seems to be implying that even in the privacy of ones homes denim jeans are unacceptable forms of dress. One last quote from the opposite page: "One of her clients was Martha, one of Jehovah's Witnesses. Since Martha was severely affected by dementia, she was in need of constant supervision." It's not funny that this poor old lady was senile, but when you put it like that...
So, does anyone else remember this magazine? Does anyone else have a similar experience with a certain talk, publication, or comment that pushed the limits of your tolerance for nonsense and hypocrisy one iota too far?