Yeah, it's double talk, and it just doesn't make sense.
Today, we are blessed with much knowledge of Jehovah’s works of creation
And the reason we
have such knowledge of the "creation" is because of "higher
education and advanced learning". The org regularly appeals to the works
of those with higher education. Without higher learning, we’d know nothing of
the process of photosynthesis which the org points to as evidence of a creator.
We’d know nothing about the heavenly bodies or what light is or what the stuff
around us is made of. There would be no advanced math or understanding of the
beauty, mechanics, intriicacies, and subtleties of langage. Etc.
the experience of many shows that pursuing such things often leads to loss
of faith and loss of love for God.
So to what
conclusions does that lead - that faith and love for God are only (or mostly)
for the ignorant, for those who remain in the dark - that if people educate themselves
they will no longer believe in God?
It seems to me
that if a creator exists, then the more one learns, the more he
should believe in that creator. Why would more learning cause one to believe
less in the creator if he actually exists?
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So what do
JWs think they're going to do in the "new world"? Are they going
to deliberately remain ignorant and only engage in lower learning
(whatever that is) so they won't have their faith destroyed? Will JWs in the
new world be forbidden from studying advanced math, science, etc.?
The Bible, however, urges us not only to love knowledge but also to acquire
wisdom and understanding. That means to learn how to use the knowledge that God
has given us so that we can benefit ourselves and others.
So we are supposed
to "love knowledge"? What knowledge - only that provided through
the Bible? Without higher education and advanced learning, we wouldn't have the
knowledge the Bible gives. For example, it takes advanced language skills to
translate the Bible from the dead languages it was written in.
I can't help but
think of my mother. She is totally clueless. She knows nothing about science.
Her math skills are limited to addition and subtraction and some multiplication
and division. She would be stumped if you asked her what 1/2 of 1/3 is; she
wouldn't even know how to find the answer to that using a calculator.Yet she
has strong faith
I actually want
to believe, yet I struggle. I do have some higher learning (mostly math,
chemistry, physics and some biology), but that didn't give me a "bad
attitude" or cynical outlook. There were actually a lot of things I
learned that made me believe more - for example all the square laws and inverse
square laws in physics, the way the number π seems to be related strangely
to so many things in the natural world, and Euler's Identity (e^iπ + 1 =
0). It actually wasn't secular higher education and advanced learning
that made me start doubting. It was higher education and advanced learning
about JWdom that got me.
Sure, I always had
questions and doubts about some things like the flood and the fact that
many animals seem "designed" to kill, yet only a few thousand years
ago they were all vegetarian according to JWs. However,
I thought JWs were right and that I would get the answers to those issues
later. But when I started my advanced learning about JWdom, well... you
know.
