What was the "logical straw" that broke your camel's back?

by Pacopoolio 35 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  dozy

  Just a series of discoveries that proved the WTBTS were dishonest. Until then , I always though they were well meaning.

  Included would be...

  607 , of course ( though I always new that the society were on very weak ground , but never realised just how weak. )

  The change in the 1989 Watchtower from the original to the bound volume.

  The plaigarism of pictures from liquour adverts & christendoms books into JW publications. The lies when these were discovered.

  Deliberate mis translations in the NWT that supported JW doctrines.

  The gradual stretching of the generation doctrine until it was clearly no longer viable.

  The agreement reached with the Bulgarian government not to DF JWs who accept blood and the production and then scrapping of the blood card that allowed transfusions of ones own blood.
• 

  punkofnice

  2 Big things:

  1. In a JC why are 7 days appeal given if the original judgement was from Jehovah's(R) Holy Spirit?

  2. Overlapping Generations(TM)
• 

  CWstudy

  I really think I started to wake up when 1975 came and went without issue. But I was young and I think I just thought "well they were off a few years but its right around the corner". Then they pulled the "overlapping crap" and that caused me to look into the 1914 theory and well that was it for me.

  Since then some of the other things that truly hit home:

  Michael is Jesus

  144,000

  The blood doctrine

  Reading:

  The Finished Mystery

  Crisis of Conscious

  NWT errors

  Millions now living Will Never Die

  JW Facts

  Researching the history of JW's
• 

  alonein321

  As simple as it may be, the logical fallacy of praying was one of my first clicks. After some time praying in a mechanical way I started to analyze it logically. Here is the reasoning:

  Lets suppose that two witnesses in different parts of the world pray to Jeohovah at the same time asking for protection before going to service field. What are the possible outcomes?

  1) Both come home safely after service field.

  Possible Conclusions: Jehovah protected both; Jehovah protected only one of them and the other was lucky; both got lucky.

  2) One of them comes home safe but the other one get robbed.

  Possible Conclusions: Jehovah protected one but not the other (Why???); Jehovah did not intervened on both cases, letting one be robbed and the other not (Why???).

  3) Both get robbed.

  Possible Conclusions: Jehovah did not intervened on both cases (Why???).

  Here are my thoughts:

  The answer to a prayer is nothing more than selective human inference.

  In case #1, one or both witnesses may assume that God answered their prayers, but thinking on the side of the robber, God would have to change his mind or the events in his life so he wouldn't have the chance to stole them, so God is interfering in his free will. (Do we have free will?)

  In case #2, the witness that returned home safely may assume that God answered her prayer, but it implicates that for some unknown reason God didn't do the same for the other witness, which means God may have different plans for us. (Do we have free will?)

  And considering all the hypothesis, if we assume that God did not intervene in any case, why do we pray for his protection? (Do God answer our prayers?)

  If we pray, but its up to him to decide whether he will protect us or not, do we command our lives? Do the other person involved in the thief, car accident, etc, command her life? (Do we have free will?)

  So I got my wife going in circles when I exposed this to her. The same will happen with every witness.
• 

  Comatose

  Alonein321 I think like you! I love your logic. I've thought the same things before. I like the issue of free will.

  I love you, I want you to love me on your own because you want to.

  So I give you free will so that you can choose to love me on your own.

  But, if you don't do what I want with your free will, I will kill.
• 

  cognisonance

  Pacopoolio,

  Sounds like you came across, independently perhaps, with the idea of determinism. You might enjoy reading this book: Freedom Evolves by Dannel Dennnet.
• 

  rebel8

  Not one thing--I had tried to believe the entire time I was in.

  In the 1980s, they published 2 batshit insane books we had to study--one on evolution, the other on Revelation.

  I hadn't been allowed to take science courses, but the little I did know conflicted with what was in the evolution book. I looked up a few original sources and found wts had deliberately misquoted them.

  Later, we studied that big red Revelation book. It reads like something a person wrote while suffering a severe delusional, disorganized psychotic episode. Word salad.

  The math problems were hilarious. This year plus this holy number times the number of times Moses took a dump in the desert.

  I tried doing the math problems myself and it never even added up to the number they thought. It's as though they couldn't be bothered to put any effort into inventing doctrines that were internally consistent.

  I remember telling people they don't add up, and people looked at me wide-eyed, saying I might be losing the spirit if I can't understand. What masterful brainwashing, that.
• 

  cognisonance

  The flaw(s) for me were in how they misrepresented science and secular sources.

  I was born in and the mind control was strong with me unfortunately. But the two brochures on Was Life Created and the other one dealing with 5 questions got me really thinking. I decided I wanted to independently study evolution (read the book "Why Evolution is True") then came back to those brochures, then looked up the references. Then I took a look at the evolution book, reasoning book, and Is There A Creator book. The later had a quote about intellectual honesty, and what they failed to include was that in addition to having an open mind about views contrary to our own, we should also disclose opposing views to others when talking about our own. In short, we shouldn't sweep with Occam’s broom inconvenient truths under the rug. Of course they didn't talk about that, choosing to sweep that inconvenient point away as well. I also became more aware of the logic fallacies being used in the literature via doing my indepenpent study (specifically studied logic fallacies).

  Also there was an article on higher education that insinuated that going to college isn’t correlated with getting a good job. They quote an article incorrectly to essentially say this. What the article was really saying was that going to an Ivy League private prestigious school isn’t correlated with getting a better job than if similarly bright students were to go to public state colleges. Quite a different thing than comparing going to college vs not going to college.

  As regards doctrines aside form evolution, I just went along with them even if sometimes they didn’t make much sense to me. Again the mind control was strong with me and I just followed what I was told most of the time. It’s really a shame since it took a while for the damage to be undone. I found myself after being out of the cult, consulting scientific literature to form my opinions on things, not bad per se, but still my critical thinking was a bit dual because I still found it difficult to think fully on my own. I took about 2 years to undo the damage from the cult. Good riddens!
• 

  punkofnice

  
• 

  LongHairGal

  pacopoolio:

  There were a lot of litle straws all along but the thing that really ended it was their 1995 changed teaching on Generation. Mentally, this was the last straw for me. It was over.

  However, I will say this: the idea that I was supposedly responsible for other people being "saved" never sat well with me since the beginning. Well, then who was responsible for me being saved? This was nothing but a hook and a guilt trip to keep people enslaved to the religion.