That is a good excuse/reason. We didn't have a thing to compair it to. Our common sense was formed by the WTS from birth, for a lot of us. Remember that the only association many of us had were other JW's who shaped our common sense and everything we knew. We really didn't know how the world worked since we were forbidden to go out into it and learn from it. Satan and the demons were to be morbidly feared as he was going to subtly entice us from serving Jehovah. If we let that happen, we would get an eye rotting, tongue falling out of mouth, firy, buildings collapsing on us death. We were scared of that! On top of it all, we would never see our loved ones again because we would be forever dead. Some, like myself, were raised this same way and only knew this way of raising kids. No, WTS keeps our common sense warped and under thier thumb. I knew it was uncomfortable but thought it was necessary. The only thing we can help is what we do about it now. We do know better now.
White Dove,
With all due respect, this is a lame effort to avoid personal accountability for one's own actions. Neither the WTS nor any other entity can "form" one's common sense for them; as common sense refers to native intelligence that is unaffected by one's training, education, etc.. Nothing the WTS could have said or did would likely have convinced you that walking on coals would not result in burns, right? Similarly, nothing the WTS said or did should have convinced you that beating your infants because they naturally could not sit perfectly still and quiet at meetings would not harm them, or retarding their social development by limiting their association to JWs only would not adversely affect them. I too, was raised in this cult by extremely zealous parents, yet never understood why parents would shut off their common sense simply because a NY corporation told them to.
The WTS is certainly blameworthy for its role in the misery that most JW children experience in their crucial developmental years. But too many people want to solely blame the WTS, whose responsibility for the horrendous treatment of JW children is obvious, instead of accepting that they too, were at a minimum partially responsible for the harm inflicted on their children, for ignoring what should be common sense to anyone of average intelligence.
