In my lifetime of knowing Jehovah's Witnesses, I recognized very few as being extremely intelligent. Most seemed to just go along with the program.
I noticed we have a number of "very intelligent" exjws here.
Did You Know A Lot Of "Very Intelligent" JWs?
by minimus 64 Replies latest jw friends
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goldensky
Minimus, just as you said: in my 45 years in, I've met very few witnesses whose intelligence made me open my eyes in amazement, whereas all I do nowadays is open them very big at the many bright minds on this board.
The question is: Why? Most of them, if not all, were witnesses before, and for sure just as clever. Or does intelligence "grow" after you leave and begin to think freely? What do you think?
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snowbird
The "very intelligent" ones have all left town.
Sylvia
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JWoods
It is pretty hard to show any intelligence when you are just reading a script (and living a life) word for word by radio control from Brooklyn.
Even if some of them had an IQ of 140, they were not allowed to go to higher learning, believed mankind was about 6000 years old, a global flood occurred circa 2400 B.C., etc. What the rank & file took to be "intelligence" was often a self-serving sense of hyper-loyalty to the society, ability to speak well in public, big activity in field service, or some such. Some of the circuit overseers were honestly some of the dumbest men I have ever met in all my life - but could act the role the society expected.
It would not be illogical to assume that some of the most intelligent JWs eventually showed this by LEAVING.
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slimboyfat
I know quite a few of the "too smart for apostasy" class.
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highdose
nooooooooooooooo! but I knew alot og JW's who thought that they were intelligent;) Poor things, if only they knew how dumb they are!
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minimus
We were stifled.
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cantleave
I know one University lecturer who is well and truly in. He is highly inteligent but can't see through the lie (or probably doesn't want to).
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JWoods
I personally don't much buy into the pseudo-intelligence IQ number type measurement.
Remember that some of the most successful people in world history (in their special field of endeavor) were practically so screwed up in ordinary life that they could barely take care of themselves.
Mathematician Kurt Goedel would be an example - a genius in math theory, but was barely allowed to join Einstein as a tenured college professor because of his ranting that "poisonous gasses were coming out of the refrigerator" in his campus house.
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Aeiouy
Ah this was actually one of the hardest things I struggled with when leaving. I know 2 brothers who are extremely intelligent. One of them has the entire library that the WT has ever printed, and has read the majority of it. He is fluent in Greek, and has a cursory knowledge of Hebrew. We are talking walking encyclopedia here. You could say hey what year was this article printed in and he could tell you the page number of the bound volume. I struggled a lot with this because I thought if this person was so smart and was still a witness, there must be something wrong with me. This elder could literally knock your socks off with the knowledge he had. I think there must have been other reasons for him to stay. I just don't know. That still bugs me sometimes.
The other elder was not so much book smart (He was it just wasn't the oustanding thing about him) as much as he had the ability to see through any B.S. People could tell him there reasons for doing certain things, and he would be like "That's not why you're doing it." And then proceed to slice your B.S. argument to pieces. He was an extremely convincing elder. And very gifted in his abilities to persuade. He also owns a multi-million dollar business that he built from the ground up. It spans literally the entire northern state of Colorado, including all of the Denver area.
The WT has some smart people. In fact, Hassan's book shows that cults specifically seek out smart people to recruit. The WT just happens to be very good at providing motivation to see them in a certain light.
Personally I don't think being very intelligent plays as large a roll as people think when it comes to cults like the JW's. My 2 cents
Aeiouy