Posts by OneEyedJoe

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.

42

Serious Issue ....... that MUST be Addressed !!!!!

by Simon in

this is such an important issue, more and more people are succumbing to what must be some viral outbreak wreaking havoc in the world.. i'm talking about unnecessary punctuation.. it's easy to become infected.

you want to write something and add some emphasis so you add an exclamation mark to make it "important!

" but dang, it's not important enough is it??

OneEyedJoe

The unnecessary punctuation that bothers me the most is unnecessary usage of the sky comma. I'd be fine if people use all the exclamation marks that they want if they'd just stop making words that ought to be plural into possessives or contractions. This drives me so crazy that I can't even come up with an example out of the blue that makes sense to me to cite...luckily enough there's one right at the bottom of this page: Emoji's supported. Emoji's what is supported? Since when did the concept of emoji begin to own something? Or is it a link to things that Emoji supports? Oh? It's meant to just be a listing of what emojis are supported? Ugh.

Also, while we're getting all grammar nazi-y I'm not sure what you're saying about quotes and punctuation, but you ought also to put the punctuation inside the quotes, btw.

Edit - interesting link from tgnd - I didn't know that bit about quotes and punctuation was an american only thing...I must say there's an allure to how you limeys do it.

21

Muslims and the Jehovah's Witnesses

by Tameria2001 in

first i want to say that i don't know very much about the muslims, and what i am going to say is not attacking anyone, but instead, it was something that was said to me by a muslim man a few years back.. back in 2004 my husband and i found ourselves in a homeless situation.

his job had ended because the plant that he was working at, had shut down, and was sent off to china.

at the time our two sons were still very young, so we ended up staying at a couple of different homeless shelters until my husband could find another job, which took a total of three months before he found a new job, in a new state.

OneEyedJoe

At this shelter, those people would purposely put pork in everything, even dishes that don't call for it.

I'm extremely skeptical of this part of the story. Name one dish that isn't improved by the addition of bacon.

Is it really not common knowledge that the god of Islam, Judaism and Christianity are all the same god? Judaism was the original, christianity was based on some fan-fic of the original and then Islam did it all again, just like the mormons did more recently. Or was he saying that the JW conception of an asshole god that's going to kill the vast majority of humanity lines up especially well with the Muslim conception of Allah? Because that's a good point well made.

49

Wacky Baccy Eh! Cannabis Now Legal in Canada

by Simon in

so canada has legalized pot / marijuana / cannabis and you can go to stores today and buy some.

the local news is covering it here in calgary with crowds of thousands expected at one of only 2 stores licensed in the city but last i saw, there were only 7 people in the line so who knows how popular it will be.

i imagine all the people who really wanted to get it could already get it easily so this is more about expanding the market to new users who will be less inclined to queue for hours on day 1.. apparently you'll also be able to purchase online with discreet delivery by canada post.

OneEyedJoe

There's also the question of past convictions. Should people who were convicted of drug offences be pardoned? Personally, I don't think they did. If you broke the laws as they stand, you are guilty and pay the price decided, regardless if they laws later change. If you're given a speeding ticket and the speed limit it later increased then unlucky - that was the limit at the time. If the alcohol limit is lowered, should people who previously passed a higher limit be given convictions in hindsight?

I'm not really firmly made up one way or the other on this, but I don't think it's quite as simple as "it was the law at the time so you don't get a pass once it's changed." I think in this case it's a little bit fuzzy. There's a spectrum to be seen here and I think we ought to consider where we are along this spectrum before making blanket decisions.

Going a bit in reverse order - I think we can dismiss out of hand your comparison to ex-post-facto enforcement of laws. If you truly can't see the distinction between taking away someone's freedom because you decided after the fact what they did was wrong vs granting someone freedom because you decided after the fact what they did wasn't so bad, then maybe that warrants further conversation, but I hope it's a rather obvious difference - even before getting into a conversation about what sorts of powers you want to give the government (ex-post-facto laws being, in my mind, quite dangerous vs amnesty being a very good thing in certain cases).

Your analogy to a speeding ticket is an interesting one, and I think it actually illustrates quite well the fuzziness of which I spoke. Unfortunately I can't find a reference as it was years ago, but I do recall a particular case in which the a speeding ticket was thrown out because the speed limit was found to be unjust/illegal. Apparently there was some law in the jurisdiction that speed limits on certain roads were to be set based on the results of an independent study to determine what was safe, and in one case the speed limits were set significantly lower than that. The speed limits were later raised and speeding tickets that were challenged on that basis were thrown out. Obviously this is a very special case, and it has limited applicability to other law changes, but it illustrates the point that I'm getting to.

The question about what to do with people who were arrested/fined/etc on the basis of a law that is subsequently changed, I think, hinges on why the law was later changed. If, in the above example, the speed limit was changed not because the road had always been safe to drive on at the higher speed but because the road was resurfaced and improved signage was installed in order to improve high-speed safety, you'd likely come to different results (or, at the very least, the same result with differing strength of conviction). A more extreme example along the same spectrum - where I live currently there have historically been anti-sodomy laws that were used to arrest homosexual men. These laws were later overturned and the people convicted under them exonerated. This is a little different again because the laws were overturned by the judicial branch, but in my view it is more important the reason why they were overturned than by whom - they were found to be unjust laws. If a legislature decides that a law is unjust before the judiciary gets around to doing so, should we not exonerate those imprisoned on the basis of the unjust law?

In the case of the legalization of marijuana, it could be argued that its prohibition is quite different from a speed limit. Speed limits are in place, ostensibly, to further the interests of public safety. The prohibition of marijuana is in place....I don't know why it's in place, really - because drugs are bad? No, that doesn't work...there's tons of legal drugs out there, alcohol for one being by most/all measures more dangerous than marijuana. Saying its illegal "because illegal drugs are bad" is circular. It's not any more a threat to public safety than alcohol. As far as I can tell marijuana was initially made illegal due to puritanical religious reasoning and to satisfy corporate interests of the day. If I'm not missing some other justification, I think this makes it an unjust law. If its repeal was on the basis of this reasoning, I think it makes sense to enact some kind of amnesty for non-violent drug offenders. Perhaps, given the nature of the drug market and the unsavory elements at work, full amnesty might be inappropriate, but maybe reduced sentences or probation or something like that would be.

That's all before looking at this from a practical standpoint. Canada is, from what I understand, far better off than the US on this point, but coming at it as someone in the US - if we could get non-violent drug offenders out of prison in a controlled and deliberate manner and end prohibition (especially on marijuana) it would likely be a very large net positive. I'm not sure what the situation in Canada is, but at the very least it seems like it'd be worthwhile to free any convicted of non-violent marijuana related crimes if only so you can stop paying to house them.

Anyway, as I said, I haven't really fully made up my mind, at least on the general moral argument. As you say, they did violate the law as it stood at the time, and in many cases it's still a good thing to carry on the punishment of those that break the law even if the law they broke is later changed. My point is that it can't be covered with a blanket statement, and there are other considerations that should be taken onboard. As a practical matter, I think, at the very least, eliminating the need to take on further expense in punishing people that committed a victimless crime is generally a good idea. There's lots of ways that individual cases would likely become complicated though - for example: an otherwise non-violent offender that got additional charges for being less than enthusiastic to be arrested for possession of marijuana. Such a person is definitely stupid, but depending on the circumstances I'm not sure if I'd be willing to say that they need continued status as a criminal. Another situation - people that were arrested on marijuana charges and were caught while driving. Typically, though, in those cases (at least here) I think people get hit with multiple charges (possession as well as DUI - driving under the influence can include more than alcohol) so perhaps simply dropping the charges that would no longer apply under the new law would be sufficient.

Sheesh I'm long-winded. TL;DR - I don't think the idea of extending amnesty to those who broke laws that have since been repealed can be objected to as a rule, in my mind the best approach is a case-by-case consideration of law, why it was repealed, and perhaps of individual cases of its application.

Oh and congrats to America's hat on beating us to having some common sense around prohibition!

37

Have you seen this appalling new Caleb and Sophia video??

by stuckinarut2 in

this manipulative new caleb and sophia video has got me so angry!!.

the level of cultiness has just gone to a whole new level!.

https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/children/become-jehovahs-friend/videos/make-jehovah-god-happy/.

OneEyedJoe

You can clearly see how kids raised as JWs are systematically and explicitly separated from their peers and made to feel different and alienated from the outside world, and thus prevented from developing relationships that might grant them either an alternative viewpoint or a possible source of support outside the cult that might aid them in exiting. I suspect that every one of us that were raised in the cult can relate to exactly the awkward, conflicted, timidness that caleb displayed when he was offered a turn at the game. That feeling is weaponized by the cult to separate kids from the rest of the world. This video demonstrates that they know exactly what they're doing.

I agree that they definitely (and given how deliberate it seems to have been, intentionally) tried to subtly downplay her education, even were she not to cheat. Sophia's goal of becoming valedictorian and giving a speech with an encouraging message for her peers is one that would be difficult to attack face-on, so instead they use timing to create an equivalency between caleb's obviously bad (in a JW's eyes) fantasy of playing a violent video game and winning the adulation of his peers (creature worship! on no!) by first playing the caleb fantasy (something a JW will immediately recognize as bad in a dozen ways) immediately before playing sophia's thus setting hers up as a parallel and implying that it is equally unacceptable.

Not to mention the fact that a teacher worth anything would never tell a student "if you ace this you'll be at the top of your class" because it would either be untrue or irrelevant to say that. Either she's already top of her class (in which case acing it would indeed leave her at the top of her class) so it's entirely redundant to point out that acing that test would put her at the top, where she already is or she's not at the top of her class, in which case her acing the test is insufficient to place her there under any circumstance - whoever is ahead of her must also fail to ace the test, at the very least.

It was a bit funny to me, though, that they also acknowledged the idiocy of the average JW - they had Sophia (an apparently bright student who would have, therefore, understood the utility of at least guessing at the answer) leave the question blank rather than provide an incorrect answer...Apparently relying on a JW audience to be able to quickly work out that she'd gotten the wrong answer to a simple math problem is a troubling proposition.

19

The Silver JW Bible

by caves in

the year was 2010. .

this has always infuriated me.

i was pomi ( but didnt know it).

OneEyedJoe

When the bibles were initially released, they'd been sent in limited quantity to the congregations and I seem to remember there being some comment about them being only for publishers from the assigned congregation initially, if people wanted extras or one for a study, it would have to be ordered.

I suspect that the first elder was one of those that bought in particularly hard to the "we're special" mentality that gets trained into JWs and probably took pleasure in it, so he took the instruction that the initial batch of bibles was for his congregation's publishers only as another way to demonstrate the specialness of active JWs (and therefore himself) and that led him to act like a dick.

The second guy either didn't pay attention to the instructions not to give away bibles all willy-nilly or he didn't care or maybe by some turn of events he knew they had a few extras.