Did You Know A Lot Of Elders That Simply Weren't Too Bright?

minimus

I did.

Most of the elders were decent men but I'd say a third weren't the brightest bulbs in the sky.

cofty

Yes I would say 4 of the 7 elders in my old congregation were as dumb as a box of rocks.

Worryingly they also had a very poor grasp of the thing they were supposed to be teaching.

elderelite

Yea.... There one in partiular who keeps following me around thats a reall dumb ass....

Yeah my step father. Drove at truck all his life didn't know much about anything but following driving directions and whatever the watchtower said. Was about as well read as a third grader. He did like to yell at the TV during sports

Glander

I could write a book.

cantleave

I was in a body of elders where there was 5 graduates,( a Geography teacher, a deisgn and technology teacher, a Chemist, A software programmer, and Financial Consultant), and 4 total morons who must have shared a communial brain cell.

edit: actually 6 graduates we also had a chemical engineer!

rip van winkle

Glander, I can offer a few chapters!

raymond frantz

Not a surprise ,most elders in most Kingdom Halls are below average IQ .

Reasons :

They are chosen on not how bright or how well versed are in the Bible but for how loyal they are to mother organisation
70% of the time they come from the same family i.e. if your dad is an elder you will find it twice as easy to become one compared to one who has no such affiliations
Critical thinking left the building after '75 ,so you will find JW's are become more stupid every year
GB is against higher education so things will get worse

Band on the Run

All of them. To be fair, though, I attended a ghetto KH. Most of the JWs were functionally illiterate and held menial jobs. The WT promoted these brothers over the few brothers who could read and had some independent thought.

When I was in fifth grade, I could read the WT and other lit with no problem. They could not. I thought the Holy Spirit would strike me dead for realizing they were giving incorrect answers to the WT questions.

why did Jehovah make me realize? it would be easier not to notice.

They had no idea what it was like to raise children, esp. young boys with NO father figure at home. They did not provide any support for the children, only condemnation.

I used to adore attending KH with my suburban relatives. It was day and night. I must say though, that the ghetto KH was so much warmer. They were not evil people. Many of the suburban KH attendees live in the ghetto territory. The racism was quite express. Never from the platform. Peope would go on long vacatins to attend white conventions.

Vidiot

Oh, God.

I remember one (really nice guy, but not too sharp) who, at an after-Book-Study coffee at his house (remember those?), started in when the topic of dinosaurs somehow happened to come up. He subscribed to the idea that dinos went extinct at the Flood and thusly lived side-by-side with human beings.

I rolled my eyes, and asked "if dinos and humans were contemporaries, why are there no cave paintings of them?" and "why are there no human remains in the same layers of rock as Dino fossils?" (even the WT grudgingly acknowledged that one back in the 90s; to their credit, they haven't promoted young-Earth creationist "Flood Geology" in a long time, probably seeing as how it's been pretty thoroughly discredited).

He blinked, clearly stumped, as if he'd never ever considered that. He probably hadn't, but he was decent enough to concede to the group that they were valid questions.

He unfortunately followed that up with the assertion that raptors and t-rexes were vegetarian, but I couldn't let that one slide either.

I asked "if that were the case, why have they found allosaur toothmarks on apatosaur bone? Why have they found tyrannosaur teeth imbedded in triceratops bone?" He laughed nervously, and said to the effect of "I dunno, mating attempts, maybe?" Everybody tittered at that (at him, not me), and I said, "look buddy, I asked a serious question, the least you could do is attempt a serious answer".

I never got that answer, but I knew I'd won the day because everyone else there nodded approvingly at me and I never got into any trouble for it.

No one in my congo ever suggested humans and dinos were contemporaries again, either (at least when I was around).