Here's an update on me... I'm 18. I'm an atheist. I'm not making much money. I did something I promised myself I wouldn't do: I work for witnesses. (Crap, now I'll get fired when I leave.) As far as everyone knows, I'm a perfect dub, in fact they want to make me a MS.
I haven't done much at all in order to leave, but I intend to change that. In fact I'd like to get my baptism nullified! Cool!
I've grown less and less tollerant for the bull crap that comes from the Watchtower every week. So pretty much every week during our family study I point out some random thing I find ubsurd.
Last week it was the one about why god allows suffering... they go on and on about how superior they are since they have this lame answer to the age old question of why god allows suffering. (Obviously I'm unimpressed from the get-go since my answer works at least TWICE as good as theirs!)
They make fun of worldly preachers who tell their followers that they have to trust god to do whats right, or that god works in mysterious ways. But the watchtower says that it's OKAY to question god/their religion. But in a later paragraph they say that if someone questions the WTS's answer, then THAT is like saying they are smarter than god! (So it's okay to question your religion, but not THEIR religion.)
So during our study I made a face. And dad asked me why. I explained that if you are encouraged to ask questions, but then not allowed to question the answer, then you're right back where you started and no better off then where you started.
ANYWAYS it opened up into a huge long discussion about the nature of truth. I kept everything purely hypothetical.
Obvously these are not exact quotes... in fact they are only vaugely general quotes, because we literally talked for over 2 hours, and I am NOT typing two hours worth of text. Also, this was mainly between me and my dad, but my mom was there, so unless I specify that it was mom, it was dad. And I am in red.
I started with: "IF, just IF this isn't the true religion, how would you know." naturally they asked me to elaborate. "What could possibly happen to convince you that you are in the wrong religion?"
"Nothing." (Yeah, he acctually said 'nothing')
"Nothing? If you can't think of ANYTHING that would change your mind, not even in theory, then there's something wrong."
"How do you figure that? Is there anything that would convince you that we're not your real parents?
"Yeah, I can think of several things right of the bat: If I found out my birth records were forged, if I found out either of you were sterile, if I found out I'm living in a computer simulation, plenty of things. And those are things I wouldn't ignore either."
laughs: "Okay, but what are you getting at?"
"IF this is the wrong religion, there is no way you would know it unless you check. But the watchtower made it seem like you're not supposed to check, as if that was going against god."
Mom: "I already checked years ago when I joined."
Dad again: "It's all based on the Bible, we'd know if what they said didn't come from the Bible."
Me: "Okay well fist of all, everything you know is filtered through the organization. *points at book shelf* Look at our books: we have Insight on the Scriptures, Reasoning from the Scriptures, the Bible Teach book, the Bound Volumes... everything we READ is printed by the watchtower society, if there was something major they didn't want you to know about, how would you know it?"
"You have to have faith that god wouldn't let them do anything bad."
"Why would god interfere? He doesn't stop any other religious leaders from doing bad things."
"But they're not the true religion."
Me extremely frustrated, but not showing it."But my whole point is: what if they're NOT the true religion."
"But we already know they are."
"How do we know this?"
"Because what they say is based on the Bible."
"BUT what if it's NOT?"
"Well we would be able to tell that!"
"How?"
looking at me like I'm stupid: "By reading it..."
"Billions of people read the bible..."
Changing the subject: "Not really, most people just claim to be christians."
"Okay, but a LOT of people read the Bible, and they don't all come to the same conclusions. But either way, WHAT IF you did interpret the Bible differently then the society, how would you react?"
"Give an example."
heh heh... I know my dad, so I know what to say: Let me take some time to explain here... My dad takes issue with the fact that we are allowed to take blood fractions. He even came up with this, rather intelligent, illustration about a car___ The illustration he made goes like this: "God said you must pour out the blood. Not pouring out the blood would be like stealing a car for example, because it belongs to god. It doesn't matter what you do to the car, it's still a stolen car and you shouldn't have it. It's illegal even if you take the car apart and sell the engine and body and wheels seperately. It's STILL illegal even if you melt it down and make forks and sell the forks. The poin is, you shouldn't have stolen the car to begin with. And doctors shouldn't have stolen the blood to begin with. So no matter how much they break apart the blood, it's still stolen goods."
Okay, back on topic. (Dad asked me to come up with an example of something that someone would hypothetically disagree with the society on, for biblical reasons.) So instead of incriminating MYSELF by bringing up say the Flood or something I turned it on him.
"Like the blood thing..."
interupting (I hate it when people interupt.) "But the Bible does condemn taking Blood."
"I know, that's the point, the Bible says not to eat blood. But what if you think that the society is wrong in it's interpretation, and that we shouldn't even be allowed to have fractions."
"But I DON'T think we should be allowed to have fractions."
"Exactly, that's something you totally disagree on, you know that it's not a Bible based thing, and yet you still think it's the right religion. Why?"
"It's the true religion, but it's run by imperfect men, so they make mistakes."
"Why? Didn't imperfect men write the Bible? If he can make people write and infallible Bible then why can't he make imperfect men write an infallible Watchtower?"
Mom: "The Bible's not infallible, but it doesn't have any mistakes." (I'm not sure what the heck that meant, but she said it with conviction so let me know if I missed something.)
Dad: "But they still make mistakes."
Neither of them answered that question. I wished I had worded it more eloquently, I think I confused them.
Me: "Okay, so basically you ignore that because it's not a major issue." (What the heck was I thinking? I just answered the question for them! Oh, well I think I was going somewhere.) "But what if it was something really major?"
"Like what?"
"I dunno like something REALLY important."
"You'll have to be specific."
"Me, Okay, what if I found out that the 1914 date is incorrect?"
"You meen what if there wasn't a war then?"
"Me no, I just meen that if it was the wrong date."
"But all the evidence proves that it happened that day."
"Not really, WWII would have been a lot MORE impressive."
"Yeah, but that's world war II, the first on was the important one."
"The second one was bigger."
"Yes but the first one is what there would be a prophecy about."
"Well not always, if someone has their first baby, that's not something to predict, but if someone has a second gigantic MUTANT baby then THAT is worthy of a prophecy."
laughs "I guess."
Not wanting to get into the whole 587/607 thing and show that I've acctually researched this, I get back on topic: "But either way, What if, hypothetically, I did have evidence that 1914 was an icorrect date. What would I do?"
"Well if you had a good attitude you should go to the elders and they would try to correct you."
"You're still assuming that the elders are right though..."
"Well yeah!"
"My point is: WHAT IF they're not right? What If they are WRONG and I have evidence that 1914 is incorrect? Then even if I had a good attitude, AND I went to the elders, it wouldn't change anything because I'm RIGHT. Right?"
Somewhat impatiently: "Well no, I guess if they're wrong they wouldn't be able to change your mind."
"So I would be right, and then I would leave the religion. How would you [my parents] react?"
"If you're right?"
"Yes."
"And you figure this out, and we don't?"
"Yes, I'm a genius."
"Then I'd want to know why."
"What if I told you?"
"What do you meen?"
"Well... if I told you my reasons for leaving, then that would technically make me an apostate. Then you wouldn't even be allowed to TALK to me. So I sure as heck wouldn't tell you my reasons!"
laughs: "OK. Makes sense."
"So I'd be an apostate, I'd be right, and you wouldn't be allowed find out if I'm right or not. In fact, if the apostates are right, we'd never know, because we aren't allowed to listen to them."
"Well if the apostates are right, why haven't they made their own religion?"
"Well acctually, that already happened once, that's how Jehovahs Witnesses got started! Russel was an apostate, he saw something wrong with his religion, so he started a new one. "
"But he was basing it on the Bible."
"Acctually, what if that's flawed?"
"You meen the Bible?"
"Well that's a possibility. But I not even that. What if he was a Jew? They don't accept Jesus as the messiah, so they don't use the New Testament. If someone like Russel where to sit down and painstakingly create a new religion based entirely on the Bible, but he didn't know he had to include the New Testament... that religion would be based completely on the Bible, but not all of it!"
(I had hoped to mention the non canonical books, and ask: what if one of those books is just as important as any other Bible book... you could make a bible based religion, and since you don't have the whole thing, it would APPEAR to be correct. But it wouldn't be.)
"He would have figured out that Jesus was the messiah."
"How?"
"Because there are prophecies about him in the Old Testament."
"But they're really vauge. Most of them can't even be recognised as prophetic because, when read in context, they apear just like every verse around it."
"Not all of them, and he would have figured out that they were talking about Jesus."
"How? There were plenty of other people who claimed to be the messiah." (I didn't want to go into this too much because it would show that I've done research on this.)
Okay, I'm gonna stop there.... I forgot how long it was until I started typing. We went ALL OVER the place. In the end, I finally got BACK on topic, and reiterated the fact that "If they're wrong, they wouldn't know, because all of their knowledge comes from one source, and they aren't allowed to listen to different views." And "If one of us kids found something out that caused us to believe it wasn't the truth, what would they do?" They never acctually answered. But I'm pretty sure they're gonna shun me. I also found out that they're not very good at hypothetical arguments.
In conclusion: Now my parent know I'm thinking... that's probably not a good thing.
I have basically confirmed that they are willing to shun me.
They are totally uninterested in questioning their beliefs.
And one really good thing... they haven't done much research at all outside of the weekly meeting. So if I'm ever in a serious debate with them, I have them beat BIG time. (But then I'll be an apostate and they won't be allowed to talk to me so that sucks.)
Oh well, just thought I'd update everybody.
Lore