Response to the Argument that Jehovah's Witnesses are not Cult Members

by bluecanary 27 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  LucyA

  Fantastic rebuttal!
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  dgp

  As a non-JW, it's quite obvious to me that only a person with absolutely no information about JW's would believe this. Unfortunately, most people don't really know what the WTS is like. This forum helps with that.
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  pixiesticks

  The very fact that he's deleting comments that disagree with him says a lot! So much for "rational thinking" and "thinking for yourself".
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  dgp

  Bluecanary, your article should get published somewhere.
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  bluecanary

  This is the response I received from an administrator:

  Thank you for the e-mail. Unfortunately we do not allow links to websites within the comment section of an article.

  I might suggest trying to contact the author using any links within the article or on the author's website.

  I don't see any links like that with the article. Does anyone else?

  Any other suggestions?
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  diamondiiz

  Article is full of half truths and lies. If one cannot question the leader(s) of one's religous order without a fear of retribution that one is in a CULT. It's that simple. Just because someone hides behind the bible that doesn't mean shit.
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  Mary

  I might suggest trying to contact the author using any links within the article or on the author's website

  Given my experience with the author of this tripe, I can tell you that it is utterly pointless in contacting him. When he had no rebuttal for any of the facts I presented to him (which basically showed him to be a liar), he deleted my comments. This is very common amongst Witnesses who post their defence of the Borg on the internet. They do not like it when you expose their lies and so they do what the WTS does when you piss them off: They get rid of you and your evidence.

  My strong suggestion is that you start your own blog on that site and call it something like: Proof That Jehovah's Witnesses Are a Cult or simply Are Jehovah's Witnesses a Cult? If you're the author of a seperate blog, there's nothing that this guy can do about it. :-)

  Actually, I just checked the "Comments" on there and it looks as though they've been allowed through. It's probably only a matter of time before the author deletes them though, so if you want to read them, now's the time.
• 

  Terry

  The word "cult" is always used as a pejorative.

  We live in a climate politically and socially of careful avoidance of pejoratives (regardless of merit).

  Political correctness is eveywhere.

  We should not be surprised at anybody's reluctance to apply the term "cult" to a public institution such as Jehovah's Witnesses.

  Here is a brief excerpt from a wiki article on the term "cult"...

  In the late 1980s psychologists and sociologists started to abandon theories like brainwashing and mind control. While scholars may believe that various less dramatic coercive psychological mechanisms could influence group members, they came to see conversion to new religious movements principally as an act of rational choice Most sociologists and scholars of religion also began to reject the term "cult" altogether because of its negative connotations in mass culture. Some began to advocate the use of new terms like "new religious movement", "alternative religion" or "novel religion" to describe most of the groups that had come to be referred to as "cults", yet none of these terms have had much success in popular culture or in the media. Other scholars have pushed to redeem the term as one fit for neutral academic discourse,while researchers aligned with the Anti-cult movement have attempted to reduce the negative connotations being associated with all such groups by classifying only some as "destructive cults."

  Historically, a cult was the devotion by a group to a given set of rituals which identified them as particularly serious about separating themselves from a mainstream of some sort.

  What sets Jehovah's Witnesses off from the rest is their EXCLUSIONARY practice of being CONTRARY in most oridinarly benign practices such as celebrating Christmas, Easter, birthdays, etc.

  The average JW is taught to view non members with either disdain or fear of contamination!

  The only survival hope of a JW revolves around the rituals of door to door ministry and attendance at the place of worship (Kingdom Hall.)

  They substitute the Governing Body (as a mystical channelling of divine contact) for a charismatic leader. But, corporately, it is as charismatic as any Jim Jones.