It's official - JWs have least common sense of any religious group in US

by slimboyfat 45 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

  • Frazzled UBM
    Frazzled UBM

    I found this very interesting - clicking on the trend button was illuminating - it shows that a lot of those who identified as JWs with doubts or had a semblance of independent thinking have left or been pushed out so the remaining people who idetintify as JW's are more hard core - so numbers who attend meetings, pray, rely on the religion for right and wrong and who absolutely believed in God etc. all went up since 2007, as did the proportion of those who are poor, uneducated and not white.

    It seems like they have circled the wagons and become more inward looking and weeded out dissenters or possible dissenters.

    They are also generally older and less have children under 18 (a very good thing). As noted, at 78%, they are the group most likely to rely on the religion (read the organisation) to know what is right and wrong. The number for Muslims was less than half (37%) with common sense being the commonest way Muslims worked out right from wrong.

    I found this very interesting given how much vilification of Muslims occurs on this site based on selective extracts from Muslim religious texts.

    I always felt that this way of viewing Muslims was a result of looking at Islam through a JW prism i.e. if the religion says it then the believers must believe it and act on it whereas my view has always been that it is only the extremists who act in this way and only on the basis of a very narrow selective version of the religion propagated by extremists.

  • FayeDunaway
    FayeDunaway
    Another thing I learned from this study: don't move to Wyoming! What the heck, 3% of people there are witnesses?? That's like, a guarantee that every class you are in in high school has a witness in it. One in 33 people?? I remember there were some small island nations with that kind of percentage. At least in Wyoming the people are few and far between...
  • LoveUniHateExams
    LoveUniHateExams

    It's official - JWs have least common sense of any religious group in US - really?

    They are so stupid they will probably announce that they were ranked the #1 religion ... without the qualifying criteria of course.

  • LoveUniHateExams
    LoveUniHateExams
    I always felt that this way of viewing Muslims was a result of looking at Islam through a JW prism i.e. if the religion says it then the believers must believe it and act on it whereas my view has always been that it is only the extremists who act in this way and only on the basis of a very narrow selective version of the religion propagated by extremists - despite me and you seriously clashing on this in the past, Frazzled, I think you have a point ...
  • Splash
    Splash

    According to the trends, JW's are getting older, use less common sense and are getting poorer compared to 7 years ago. Specifically, 18-49 year olds are declining and 50+ are increasing.

    As the group ages, the number of parents who have children under 18 is also reducing. This indicates the young families are drying up.

    Men are on the decline, with women growing as a %ge.

    As a group, the number of whites is dropping, being replaced largely by latinos.

    Interestingly there continues to be an equal split between JW's who believe the Bible should be taken literally, and JW's who believe that not everything in the Bible should be taken literally. If JW's can't even agree on this basic thing then the GB have failed entirely in their role of 'steward'.

    There is a slight growth in those who think homosexuality should be accepted, from 12% to 16%.

  • done4good
    done4good

    Splash - Interestingly there continues to be an equal split between JW's who believe the Bible should be taken literally, and JW's who believe that not everything in the Bible should be taken literally. If JW's can't even agree on this basic thing then the GB have failed entirely in their role of 'steward'.

    The reason for this has to do with how they interpret the question. JWs often do not process these types of questions according to the same context as joe/jane public.

    In this case, JWs were taught to believe that they are not "fundamentalists", even though everyone else knows they are just precisely that. The only difference between JWs and other fundies in this manner is what they chose to take literally, not if they do take things literally. It is a matter of confusing their JW vocabulary and semantics with the question as posed.

    d4g

  • FayeDunaway
    FayeDunaway
    Done4good, I agree. When I was a witness I probably would have answered 'no' to the literal question, and my reason would have been, because JW's believe the creative day was not a literal 24 hour period.
  • pixel
    pixel

    Educational distribution among Jehovah's Witnesses

    High School or less: 63%.

    That's how the Borg likes it.

  • slimboyfat
    slimboyfat
    It's amazing just how poor, uneducated and bigoted JWs are. It would be great to have comparable figures for the UK and other countries.
  • joe134cd
    joe134cd
    It's interesting to find out just who JWs are.

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