If you were
to read the Watchtower literature and you believed it to be the exclusive
divinely inspired interpretation of the Bible, I suggest that you would not be
learning anything useful, instead you would simply be absorbing the
indoctrination of the JW org.
What is the difference between indoctrination
and education?
Take any
passage from the Watchtower, this sentence for example, which assumes significance
in the end of six thousand years of human history in 1975: “How then does this
fit in with God’s timetable?” It asks.
Let’s de-construct.
The question
includes an assumption that God has a' time-table', is that normal for gods?... and for that to be possible there
has to be the assumption that there is a God in the first place.
We need not go there for the moment but let us
have a look at how ideas are embedded or nested in other broader cultural assumptions.
The WT text speaks of six thousand years of human history recalling earlier
assumptions that each Biblical day of creation was seven thousand years long,
therefore with a millennium of kingdom rule still to go (according to WT doctrine)
six thousand years from the creation of man would have significance. (Incidentally these notions like all of the early Watchtower teachings and most of
the Bible; are borrowed beliefs).
To get at the truth we have to ask; who says
that the world was created in six, seven thousand year “days”? Where is the
evidence? Who says we are all descendants of Adam and Eve? Where is the
evidence? What evidence is there for the divine origin of Bible texts? Why do
the Bible texts conflict so much? Why were the Bible books selected from
existing texts and put together by the Roman Catholic Church? Why should we
trust the Bible as being true? etc.
Such
assumed ideas as divine creation, divine retribution and salvation through
sacrifice are repeated ad nauseum over
time by preachers, it has been passed
down from parents to their hapless offspring to create a respected mythical
matrix in which all and any religious belief can flourish. Because of this JWs
can rely on certain assumptions on which to build their particular doctrines,
they can nest their own spin within an existing framework of unsubstantiated
religious belief. Religion avoids scientific analysis, it relies instead on "holiness".
We might
summarise indoctrination then as assumptions built upon assumptions repeatedly given
to an audience already conditioned to receive it uncritically. This is very
much at odds with education.
Education means
not being told what to believe but ”to learn how to learn,” and that requires
questioning the truthfulness of any statement or proposition offered. This
requires using questions like how do we know this is true? Where is the
evidence for this?
Assumptions
are a total waste of time, a critical evaluation of all information is vital
for truth to emerge.
The
Watchtower since it start, has spewed out completely worthless twaddle, its
vast catalogue of wrong conclusions have demonstrated its uselessness over time.
One cannot logically use anything it has said as a foundation for further conclusions. Conversely educated reasoning can
be built upon because critical analysis and fact is at its foundation.
Does your
religion strongly discourage higher education? If the answer is yes, it must have something to
hide. I think of the Watchtower like a nasty fungus which can only spread in the dark, it
is the daylight of education which destroys it.
