Knowing is good.
Not knowing is bad.
Knowing that you don't know leads to inquiry, research and education. That is good.
Assuming you know the validity of your research material is bad.
Sometimes you are stumped but you don't KNOW that you are stumped. You proceed anyway.
This is the foundational problem with the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society from its very beginnings!
1.William Miller was a self-taught "bible-scholar" who investigated the 2nd Coming of Christ.
2.Miller's failures in prediction spawned more self-taught ignoramuses (ignorami).
3.One of the most ignorant was C.T.Russell
Russell knew the men's clothing business. That was his field of expertise. He knew business!
An honest man would be stumped when confronted with "experts" on the 2nd Coming.
For awhile Russell was burning with curiousity about the subject!
All that is well and good. Where did he go wrong?
He invited EXPERTS on the 2nd coming (Stoors and Barbour) to teach him the field of knowledge on the subject.
Catch 22: Russell was too ignorant to correctly identify what such an EXPERT might actually be!
Like what? Self-taught amateur. Ignoramus expert.
Using only curiousity and above average intelligence, Charles Russell accepted most of what he learned and made THAT his foundation.
Later, C.T.Russell merely imitated the error of William Miller the amateur bible sleuth. He tried to figure it all out himself!
Martin Luther expounded a crazy idea that anybody can UNDERSTAND the bible all by themselves...because god would send His spirit to help!
This is Sola Scriptura.
The result of all this? NOBODY IS STUMPED! Everybody convinces themselves their own wacky idea is GOD's spirit talking through them!
Pastor Russell was just one more sucker playing the game. Sola Scriptura+his own imagination!
Russell began an almost tragically laughable project that carried him into international awareness and fame.
Russell, the expert in men's clothing business--EXPLAINED the MEANING of the bible!! Divine Plan of the Ages.
Russell was not stumped--he was UNstumpable. There was no field of ignorance to be found in his writings.
Largely, it is to be admitted, Russell "borrowed" ideas left and right from various Adventists. But, the good Pastor innovated his own spin.
With the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society from that time forward nobody was ever STUMPED!
As long as Russell's TRUE expertise: Business was followed--the movement grew. The ideas, however, were soon proved bad guesses!
All this lack of admission of ignorance is apallingly evident in the constant FAILURES of predictions and changes in their "knowing" explanations.
We might well ask: IF IT IS TRUE---WHY CHANGE IT?
For any statement of Truth to change is automatically a red flag of ERROR.
The absence of Ignorance of one's LIMITS always leads to many errors and---worse still----HUBRIS!
The attitude of PRESUMPTIVE ARROGANCE.
Leadership in the Watchtower religion is eaten up with the presumption they are not only filled with knowledge--oh no--not enough----they are filled with the hilariously redundant: ACCURATE KNOWLEDGE. As though knowledge isn't good enough for them!
The lack of ignorance awareness in the Governing Body inflates their arrogance into unusual displays of the presumptious use of power.
Not only is it great for THEM to know the mysterious purposes of Almighty God---these arrogant braying asses insist the rest of the world AGREE WITH THEM---or DIE!
In fact, they've invented their religion around that very idea!
1.We know---and you Don't know.
2.Listen to us and agree---or die.
Slowly, for over a century, the Society has been an anaconda tightening around its membership. The very purpose of the religion has become THEMSELVES: their own authority.
What is their authority? THEY FORCE MEMBERS TO ACCEPT IGNORANCE AS TRUTH.
The failure to recognize the limits of their expertise has rendered them utterly incapable of seeing their own failure or admitting it!
The Governing Body not only insists what they say is TRUE--they claim all authority on earth for regulating and administering it.
No counter-argument is tolerated.
No dialogue is permitted by the knowledgeable---only those admitting ignorance are allowed to question them.
Evidence is only evidence when THEY say it is evidence. All falsifying facts are ignored or damned without a hearing.
For 133 years the pattern has not changed of avoiding responsibility for their failures. How? It is the trick of a rascal: we are only humans transmitting
the Truth of Jehovah. Does that not sound humble?
Hardly!
What is left unsaid in public is this: you must treat our errors with the same all-accepting faith or die!
Leadership at gunpoint is tyranny. Armageddon is the engraved manufacturer on the rifle butt of Watchtower doctrinal authority.
What would honesty sound like?
"We are only guessing."
That would be honest ignorance.
Instead, they are "chosen by Jehovah as the mouthpiece of the Truth".
So, the facts become like crushed cigarette butts stamped out in the dust by the boot heel of false dates gone wrong.
The are so full of themselves!
They are never stumped.
The Watchtower religion is like the guy who gets lost driving in unfamiliar territory who refuses to stop and ask for directions!
He not only wastes his own time--but, everybody held captive in the family car along with him has their time wasted too.
If they complain they are scolded--or sadistically threatened with being abandoned on the roadside.
Why not admit to being stumped?
What not begin with ignorance?
You can't recognize what is true unless you admit your limits first.
There is an old saying among professional writers that you can't write smarter than you yourself already are. That is why writers are
instructed to "write what you know" or risk being laughed at.
Pity that the Watchtower writers don't follow this advice. They have been writing out of their depth from the very first issue.