Posts by OneEyedJoe

7

Why don't JWs have problems with board games involving dice?

by cognisonance in

so i don't really care about these things anymore, but i was reading this article (and it's a very good one): gamified life.. in the article it mentions (without references):.

dice-based games of chance are thought to have originated with ancient divination practices involving thrown knucklebones.. .

so it's okay to play yahtzee but not okay to go trick-or-treat.

OneEyedJoe

For my thoughts on this, see my post on a similar thread:

https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/5733471205982208/can-someone-help-me-figure-out-something-dealing-paganism

In short, it's because they ban things that might facilitate a JW finding commonality with a non-jw. Dice don't pose much of a threat.

18

I am an idiot..

by zeb in

jw
friends

going past a 'new-age' shop today i stupidly said to my most 'uber' wife, do you want a reading?

" ..not a good idea.. oh dear.. she opened up correcting my every other word and brought in a stream of jw speak and now many hours later is still steaming under an acute cloud of sol.. oh god keep me from being so stupid; cut out my tongue, glue my teeth together.

aaarrgh!

OneEyedJoe

Oh God keep me from being so stupid; cut out my tongue, glue my teeth together. aaarrgh! and help me to accept that not even wry humor is now allowed.

I'm not sure how serious you are or how much you've internalized this, but I just want to point out that this is a very big warning sign that you're in an emotionally abusive relationship. I was in a similar situation with my JW wife for a couple years and I know how oppressive it can feel...but you need to remember that it is not healthy for one person in a relationship to be solely responsible for managing the emotions of the other. You meant no harm by making a joke, and if it causes her distress then she can calmly talk to you about her feelings and manager her responses like a mature adult. Using her emotional outbursts to control you and keep you in line is not healthy for either of you.

43

A Cult Tactic: Removing Guilt By Dehumanising Others

by pale.emperor in

in the real world, very few parents would disown their own children simply because they read a magazine that told them to do it.

very few people would forever completely ignore their own parents because an elder got up on a platform one day and announced that they no longer follow the same religion as you.. in the real world it just doesn't happen.

and yet, for 8 million jehovah's witnesses it's very a normal part of their world to treat "other people" differently than they'd treat each other.

OneEyedJoe

ANY claim that what the WTS does is similar (in any way) to what the Nazis or Japanese of WWII did risks being seen as a claim that the two crimes are the same.

Here's a thought. Why don't we all act like adults and actually listen to the claims made instead of interpreting them under the assumption that the person we're in conversation with is a bad actor? The fact of the matter is that Nazi Germany was an authoritarian high control group and as such it used all the same tactics that every such group uses. Of course Nazis were more violent. Of course there should be no equivalency made. And there wasn't. This is like someone giving advice to a checkers player that they treat it like a chess match and think 5 moves ahead and you swooping in to make sure everyone knows that chess is a much more complex game and that the strategies used in checkers would never work in chess. Everyone already knows this.

They are not the same. There is a very vague and tenuous link which is, IMO, pretty contrived and I don't think trying to make this link helps convince people it's true or elicit sympathy - I think the correct response to this is laughter and ridicule because c'mon, it IS utterly ridiculous. We could make the same claim about lots of things - "advertising uses mental manipulation techniques and OMG, Hitler did that too, therefore people selling lipstick are literally Nazis!!!"

Against whom are you arguing? Absolutely no one said they were the same. It seems that you're alone in your inability to see the similarities in tactics (in spite of absolutely obvious differences in scale and the addition of physical violence) between Nazism and the JW or other religious cults. No one said that JWs are literally Nazis. They do use some of the same basic strategies for control as Nazis did, though, as do all cults.

Here's a thought experiment if you still disagree: go tell a holocaust survivor to recount their story and then say that a similar thing happened to you and explain why. If you feel you'd be embarrassed doing that (you should) then you are not looking objectively at the claim

I doubt that what Jews experienced during the holocaust was especially similar to what I've gone through in leaving a cult. But that was never the claim made. The claim made was that the Nazis used similar tactics as JWs to get other Nazis to mistreat Jews. Now if I were talking to someone whose father was a Nazi and committed atrocities during the war, I might sympathize and relate how the JW cult uses similar tactics to manipulate my parents into doing things that are against their nature. I think that may well be a useful thing for someone that might be struggling with their personal identity in the light of their father's misdeeds - seeing that your case isn't a one-off and that your family isn't uniquely evil is sometimes a huge help towards moving on.

43

A Cult Tactic: Removing Guilt By Dehumanising Others

by pale.emperor in

in the real world, very few parents would disown their own children simply because they read a magazine that told them to do it.

very few people would forever completely ignore their own parents because an elder got up on a platform one day and announced that they no longer follow the same religion as you.. in the real world it just doesn't happen.

and yet, for 8 million jehovah's witnesses it's very a normal part of their world to treat "other people" differently than they'd treat each other.

OneEyedJoe

I found his comment off putting but also count it as a guard against sensationalism. Where this post could easily go. (or might still go)

If a topic is going to be considered not worthy of discussion because of where it might go, then we'll never discuss anything. No one was saying that being a JW was as bad as living in Nazi Germany or North Korea. Drawing parallels (while acknowledging that they occupy different positions on a spectrum) is entirely valid. When people actually take things too far or make false equivalencies or begin sensationalizing things, that's the time for criticism.

Or hell, coming in and saying something like "while Nazis used the same techniques, I do think we should be careful not to equate the shunning that JWs do to the treatment of Jews during the holocaust" would be perfectly fine. I find it difficult, however, not to take the tone of that post to imply that the entire discussion is worthless, which it most definitely is not. It's a valuable comparison that explains how influential these techniques are, and understanding that can be a great comfort to those suffering under the torment of being shunned. Realizing that your family aren't torturing you out of malice or out of any special evil, but that they're just victims of the same sort of propaganda and manipulation that people have been using for centuries - that can be a powerful step towards healing.

43

A Cult Tactic: Removing Guilt By Dehumanising Others

by pale.emperor in

in the real world, very few parents would disown their own children simply because they read a magazine that told them to do it.

very few people would forever completely ignore their own parents because an elder got up on a platform one day and announced that they no longer follow the same religion as you.. in the real world it just doesn't happen.

and yet, for 8 million jehovah's witnesses it's very a normal part of their world to treat "other people" differently than they'd treat each other.

OneEyedJoe

Seriously? We're going to try to equate "mommy didn't invite me to the family BBQ" to what the Nazis and Japanese did in WWII???
I think this is a stretch beyond belief. The WTS try to paint us as "the enemy" because to them, we are. It doesn't really come anywhere close to the barbarism that has happened in history.

I'm trying to understand where you're coming from posting something like this. This is a forum specifically for victims of a cult...you know this better than anyone. Are we not going to talk about shunning and the psychological manipulation that the cult uses to get people to shun family members in defiance of what is typically the strongest social bond that we form? If you accept that it's natural for us to discuss the mechanism behind that, then why is it not natural to look at the extremes that can happen when people use these techniques to turn one group of people against another? Your use of the word "equate" is dishonest. No one equated shunning (which I think you well know goes FAR beyond not being invited to the family bbq, especially for those who are recently leaving the cult and have absolutely no support network outside the group).

Obviously the mass incarceration and murder of innocent Jews during the holocaust was a far worse atrocity than anything that the JWs have done. Pointing this out is not helpful in any way. The fact that former JWs are not Jews in the holocaust in no way makes their situation any easier. People come here struggling to understand what was done to them, how it was done, and how their family can possibly treat them the way they do. Discussing human nature and showing the extremes to which it can be taken is extremely instrumental in this endeavor for many.

I'm really confused by your post. You're the last person I would've expected to have such a drastic misunderstanding of what PE was trying to do with his post that I find it difficult not to think that you either didn't read it or that you're intentionally trolling. I hope there's a third possibility that I'm missing, because both of those options are very surprising coming from the person that created a forum that I had long assumed was here primarily to help cult victims to heal.

43

A Cult Tactic: Removing Guilt By Dehumanising Others

by pale.emperor in

in the real world, very few parents would disown their own children simply because they read a magazine that told them to do it.

very few people would forever completely ignore their own parents because an elder got up on a platform one day and announced that they no longer follow the same religion as you.. in the real world it just doesn't happen.

and yet, for 8 million jehovah's witnesses it's very a normal part of their world to treat "other people" differently than they'd treat each other.

OneEyedJoe

Beyond the dehumanization (or, perhaps, integral to it) is the way cults and propaganda machines seek to tap into the brain's disgust circuitry. There's strong indication that the moral disgust that we feel when thinking about atrocities committed by others (or, for right-wingers, thinking about homosexuality, etc) come from the same neural structures as the disgust that we feel towards feces, rotting food or carcasses, etc. These are very basic instincts that are wired in such a way as to strongly influence behavior. Two of the four terms you listed as ways ex-JWs are referred to are transparently designed to tap into this - calling us "mentally diseased" or "partaking at the table of demons" evoke images and concepts that trigger a disgust reaction. The feeling of disgust is "designed" to motivate a response of avoidance, so it's a very strong tool to use to separate people from society. It's no wonder that you can break up families, if you're able to make one family member find the other disgusting.

34

ECHR Rules Against Free Speech

by cofty in

the european court of human rights ruled against an austrian woman who claimed calling the prophet muhammad a pedophile was protected by free speech.

... the woman in 2009 held two seminars entitled "basic information on islam," during which she likened muhammad's marriage to a six-year-old girl, aisha, to pedophilia.. the marriage according to islamic tradition was consummated when aisha was nine and muhammad was around 50. aisha was the daughter of muhammad's best friend and the first caliph, abu bakr.. the court cited the austrian women stating during the seminar that muhammad "liked to do it with children" and "... a 56-year-old and a six-year-old?

... what do we call it, if it is not pedophilia?".

OneEyedJoe

What in the actual fuck. Stating uncontested facts is now illegal on the basis of protecting the feelings of the self-deluded?

18

Can someone help me figure out something, dealing with paganism?

by Tameria2001 in

the watchtower and quite a few other religious groups don't do certain things because of pagan origins.

they go on about the different holidays, certain traditions, and say they don't do those things because of pagan origins.

yet they turn right around and do other stuff, which does have pagan origins.

OneEyedJoe

One thing I do remember asking, and no one could ever answer was if they don't celebrate the different holidays, because of pagan origin, then why couldn't they celebrate the Jewish holidays such as Hanukkah, surely they weren't started by pagans. Weren't the Jews at one time God's chosen? That was how I brought it up back then, this was before I was even baptized. No one could or would answer my question.

I'm shocked no one could give you an answer. I can make up a perfectly coherent one for you just off the top of my head - The Jews were god's chosen people, but when they killed jesus and the curtain between the holy and most holy in the temple ripped, that symbolized the breaking of the covenant that god had with them and they are no longer his people. Jesus came to fulfill the law and put an end to it, so celebrating the jewish holidays would be clinging to the tradition of people that were no longer special in gods eyes, and clinging to requirements that were ended by Jesus. This would put you in similar footing to Lot's wife who looked back at the things left behind, you wouldn't want to be like Lot's wife, would you?

That'd be a great after-the-fact doctrinal justification. Obviously, though, it's more succinctly explained as: just like the other holidays you're not allowed to celebrate, you can't celebrate the jewish ones because then you might do so with non-JWs and start to see that they aren't so bad.

18

Can someone help me figure out something, dealing with paganism?

by Tameria2001 in

the watchtower and quite a few other religious groups don't do certain things because of pagan origins.

they go on about the different holidays, certain traditions, and say they don't do those things because of pagan origins.

yet they turn right around and do other stuff, which does have pagan origins.

OneEyedJoe

You're coming at it from the wrong direction if you're trying to build an internally consistent model that will predict which pagan practices a religious group will embrace and which they'll shun if you're going to actually look at the pagan origins and doctrines surrounding the individual practices. Those don't matter. The "pagan origins" concept only comes into play after something is decided to be banned as a justification. The best example I can think of here is with JWs not celebrating holidays. They don't celebrate christmas, halloween, easter, or valentines day because they have pagan origins. But what about thanksgiving? They clearly can't claim pagan origins there - it was started by a bunch of christians recently enough that its origin can't really be disputed reasonably (of course it's got a dark past to it that's often glossed over in schools, but that's beside the point). But nonetheless JWs don't celebrate thanksgiving...the justification being some wishy-washy condemnation over holidays that encourage national pride or some such nonsense. I don't know if it's the official JW line on the topic but I was also always told that we didn't celebrate mother's/father's day because doing so might imply that we don't need to "honor your father and mother" on a daily basis (obviously that's nonsense). Another counterpoint - Anniversaries. These are celebrated by all JWs that I ever knew. These can be said to have pagan origins from astrology that ascribe special significance to the particular time of year that some event occurred. And certainly we wouldn't want to risk implying that we should only love our spouse one day a year! But anniversary celebrations are fine...it's all confusing if you look at it from this perspective.

Instead, look at things from another perspective - what holidays/events are commonly used as talking points among acquaintances due to their near-universality in the culture, and what ones might lead to invites to a group celebration with non-JWs? In short, what things might risk leading to a closer connection between non-JWs and JWs? It's Christmas, easter, thanksgiving, halloween, mother's/father's day, valentine's day, etc. It's certainly not wedding anniversaries because unless you tell someone when yours is, they're unlikely to bring it up, and even if there's a group celebration of an anniversary, they're usually relatively private affairs so there's little risk of someone from work inviting you to theirs or a JW inviting a non-JW to theirs. If you do a half-way decent job of separating a JW from broader society, there's no risk of a wedding anniversary (or, say, a graduation party) being the impetus behind a JW finding camaraderie with a non-JW. Contrast those with birthdays and you'll see why one annual, self-aggrandizing event is no good and anniversaries and graduation parties are fine. Birthdays often become known to your casual acquaintances and sometimes just by dint of you being a decent person such ones will take it upon themselves to celebrate your birthday (especially in the formative years of youth) or commonly there are group celebrations at work for everyone whose birthday falls in a particular month or quarter.

I would conservatively estimate that the real reason 80-90% of the policies/doctrine in place in the JW faith are there for purposes of either control of adherents or to separate them from society. When you start to look at it from that perspective, reasons for the inconsistencies between the application of justifications like "pagan origins" or "we are no part of the world" start to become clear.

1

Fantastic article about Critical thinking, Cognitive biases, and logical fallacies etc!

by stuckinarut2 in

this great article is well worth downloading and keeping.

it well explains the techniques often used by high control groups (such as jws).. so much of it will resonate with us here.. https://lifelessons.co/personal-development/howtogetsmarter/.

OneEyedJoe

This is definitely a pretty good primer, though it seems to have a few significant flaws here and there, particularly in part 8 where he appears to misunderstand modern science enough to disagree with the likes of Dawkins, Harris, Pinker, and Hawking. The modern methods of scientific inquiry, making great use of statistical analysis and in particular bayes theorem, has progressed quite a ways beyond Popper's falsificationism. He also apparently has a very narrow view of science if he thinks that things like psychedelic experiences fall outside the realm of science.

He also states, as an argument that there are things outside of science that we can know: "But again: What if something can’t (yet) be counted, measured, weighed, or tested? Does that mean it’s not real or true, or that it doesn’t exist, or didn’t happen? Of course not."

He softens his position with the parenthetical "yet" which makes this all a list of things that merely lies outside of the realm of our current technology and in no way an argument about the validity of unscientific knowledge. If you make the stronger claim (the one without the "yet") then I would argue that, yes, this does mean that the thing you're talking about doesn't exist or didn't happen. In what way can we coherently talk about something's existing or happening if it cannot, even in principle, impact our experience in some way (the essence of what 'measuring, weighing, or testing' is)? You might argue that concepts such as extra spacial dimensions (suggested by string theory or super gravity) or parallel universes (Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics, eternal inflation theory) fit into this category, but they do not - if true their existence impacts our lives by allowing or disallowing certain configurations that our universe can take, and while we may not (yet) be able to state them as fact with the same level of certainty that we give to the laws of thermodynamics or to evolution, etc, they are still suggested by the actual physical facts of the universe.

He goes on to list examples of things that he claims are true but outside of science. They are: Mathematical Truths, Metaphysical Truths, Ethical beliefs (interesting that he decides at this point to stop using the word truth, leaving it only to be implied by the inclusion in the list), Aesthetic judgements,and science itself.

Math is used because it works. That sounds like the scientific method to me - we set up a system of rules, tested it against reality, and time and again it works. The examples of metaphysical truths he names (existence of other minds, the realness of the external world, and the refutation of last thursdayism) are also suggested by occam's razor which is the basis of science (it usually takes the form of the null hypothesis), furthermore none of these facts can be said to be "true" with the same kind of certainty as mathematical truths - he's now started making the fallacy of false equivocation. He's used the word "truth" (and implies it's usage later in the list) in different and incompatible ways. Metaphysical "truths" are not similar to mathematical "truths." Next, in the case of ethics and aesthetics, he gets to much shakier ground - these things are not true in any objective sense because they rest upon implicit assumptions in the mind of the one making the judgement. As soon as you make those assumptions explicitly specified what happens? Science tells you what's best. Then, in an appeal to the problem of infinite regress, he mentions science itself. But we use science because it works. See the point made about math.

He's correct that the term science/scientific gets thrown around by people on occasion to give false ideas greater weight, but that's a misuse of the term, not a problem with science itself. In any of the examples he gave of things that we "know" to be true but are outside the realm of science, it's either because of hidden axioms that, made explicit, enter the topic into the realm of science or it's because he's asserting something as true when it really isn't.

Reading some of his other stuff, I think I've found his motivation for wanting to believe things can be true but unscientific - he's a big believer in the usefulness of psychedelics (I'm a fan myself, so I don't say this as an ad-hominem) but instead of acknowledging that the psychedelic experience merely tells us more about what other possible conscious states might exist and that our minds are capable of producing a vast range of experience, he seems to want to think that a psychedelic experience can impart some "Truth" with a capital T that they would otherwise be hopelessly blind to. The reality, though, is that this is all just an experience invented by your brain that can in no way be used as evidence for how the world really is.

To his credit, though, he does largely invalidate most of my complaints via his advice to have many gurus. Since you find him here disagreeing with several people that would be fantastic gurus (in the way he's using the word) it is nearly grounds for dismissing his reasoning immediately just using his own advice.

I don't mean to nit-pick...it's all too easy to find faults in things like this and fail to point out the good. Too often people will point out possible flaws in someone's work and pat themselves on the back for being a good skeptic - so I will say this is definitely a better primer than most on the topic. It just also illustrates the importance of being careful not to be too self-congratulatory that you're such a good skeptic that you begin to blind yourself to your biases and use your new powers of rationality to make yourself dumber by rationalizing instead of looking for what's true.

If you liked this guy's primer on rationality, I'd highly recommend "Rationality: from AI to Zombies" by Eliezer Yudkowsky. It's an extremely long read, but I found it to be absolutely fantastic as it delves deep not only into the pitfalls of normal human reasoning but also into the pitfalls of the aspiring rationalist.