Minimus complains: What r u guys talkin about?
James Woods has sucked my thread into the embodiment of Wibble because his own Wibble topic is only fifty thousand pages long!
My DEATH as an Intellectual
by Terry 63 Replies latest social entertainment
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Terry
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james_woods
James Woods can neither push the bull through the gate, nor pull him through the gate.
The bull can only do what all bulls want to do.
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Finkelstein
I think most people can relate to your own experience Terry, including myself.
Self induced analytical thinking is frowned upon in the Borg, you were more enforced to regurgitate all the
information that came from the Mothering publishing cult leaders in Brooklyn.
To this day the Borg discourages higher education (why) because they don't want people to develop critical thinking skills and any
outside information is considered a threat to them.
They rather have people spend their entire lives pushing and distributing their literature toward the public.
Better to dumb down the flock and keep them dumbed down is you want to control people's minds to your own discretion..
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minimus
I am who I AM.
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Terry
The Watchtower theology is more of a closed system of social control with pseudo-data premises.
Immediately upon stepping outside of the recursive nature of "proof" inside the system one is struck by the contrived nature of it all.
It stands or falls on two premises.
1.The bible is the inerrant word of God revealing His will to save mankind from eternal death.
2.The leaders of the Watchtower Society are specifically and exclusively tasked with interpreting and publicizing the correct understanding of #1.
By their own history #2 is falsifiable.
I actually and truly believed their were "original bible manuscripts" still in existence when I was a JW.
Imagine my shock when I discovered there are none!
So, #1 (above) has to be assumed rather than proved.
Simply by insisting something must be true it magically "becomes" true? No. Sorry.
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Ding
I've asked myself many times why I was so gullible... why I found the WT study so attractive and didn't ask more questions.
Here are some of my conclusions:
1. The WT anticipates a lot of questions and objections of householders and has worked out plausible answers for all of them. This gives the appearance of great scholarship and is very intimidating.
2. I thought I knew the Bible a whole lot better than I did and felt foolish at my own ignorance compared to the JWs who seemed to have answers for everything.
3. They cited me all sort of Bible texts I had never heard of, and I had no awareness of alternatives to their chronologies, proof-texts, and spin.
4. When I sought answers from friends or clergy, none of them seemed to take the WT seriously; they just told me the WT was a cult and not to study with them. They thought that would be sufficient to dissuade me. Of course, it had the opposite effect. It made them look intellectually bankrupt (no answers) and petty. This reinforced the WT's derision of "the clergy of Christendom."
5. The JWs I studied with had warned me that well-meaning people would try to dissuade me from studying with JWs. When this happened, it gave the WT credibility and made me determined to proceed.
6. I didn't know where to go to find rebuttals to WT arguments (no internet back then).
7. I didn't see that by the third or fourth study lesson, I had gone passive and let the WT provide all the questions to which they were giving answers. I was under the illusion that they were still answering MY questions.
8. I got puffed up with pride at all the things I was learning that none of my friends knew anything about. The more they pleaded with me to break off the study, the more convinced I became that they weren't as serious as I was about understanding and obeying God.
9. It didn't occur to me to check into the history of the WTS, and wouldn't have known how to do so. Moreover, by the third or fourth lesson, I'm sure I would have considered anything negative about the organization to be "hate literature."
10. The writers of the WT seemed to know a great deal more than I did, and I wasn't aware at the start that I would be expected to accept everything they said without question. They condition JWs to accept their control by making unity such a high priority and by conditioning JWs to accept that everything in life is a loyalty and endurance test by Jehovah.
In retrospect, I'm certainly not proud of my own intellectual laziness and gullibility... just trying to be honest with myself about how it happened.
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Terry
James Woods can neither push the bull through the gate, nor pull him through the gate.
The bull can only do what all bulls want to do.
No, but James Woods can sure shoot the bull!
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Twitch
The bull can only do what all bulls want to do.
Yes, bull. Indeed.
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prologos
terry put all your essays in one volume.
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Twitch
Zen and the Art of Discussion Board Topics.
lol