Help! Spouse thinks JW religion the most logical

by bittersweet 33 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  Buster

  Yup they think they are sooo logical. To me, the most amazing part is how bright (and some are well-educated) many of witnesses are - and they still have this attitude. If they could just pull their heads out of their endless study of those pulp books and get some perspective. It would be most helpful if they would read some articles on false and deceptive logic and maybe even some books on propaganda. If they could just get the perspective to take a fresh look at all that solid spiritual food flushing at them from New York, our job would be done. Of course it is not possible for those that will not see.

  But I like something Simon put out on a thread some time ago. He suggested that one should ask a person just what would the FDS need to do that would break that person's faith.

  1. The odds are pretty good that we have plenty of documentation on just about anything one might say.
  2. If that person feels there is nothing the FDS could do (very possible answer in my opinion) to dissuade hi/her faith, then I would start right there.

  Either way, you get right back to the absurd devotion to a group of men. If it still makes sense to him, you lose.
• 

  bittersweet

  Thanks so much to everyones replies. I am going to check out all the links you've added tomorrow .I have to go to work now, otherwise I'd check them out now.

  Btw Analysis, hubby went to college before he became a witness. His mom became a witness when he was a teen, but his father wasn't one, so it wasn't pushed on him. After he graduated college, he started studying, then got baptised. He actually gave up a job offer to go out on the research vessel from WHOI because it would keep him away from the meetings and such. So sad. Right now he's really into a project at work ( making a virtual herbarium for seaweed ) so he has missed a lot of meetings working on that. I'm kinda hoping if I can show him info while he's not as active as he feels he should be,that maybe I'll get somewhere. It's worth a try. I do love him, we've been married 15 years and have 3 kids together. I really don't want my kids growing up with all the jw bull$hit.But I'm certainly not willing to break up my family over it.

  Thanks again all!
• 

  hooberus

  Analysis said: Hamas you asked; "Can you please expand on some of the things that you wrote? Why is all that important?"

  The reason I would ask those questions is that it helped me to determine the proper perspective of the Bible itself.

  Was man created 6000 years ago and placed in a Garden of Eden where all of creation lived in harmony? Then did a Global Flood wipe out mankind and all of the animals except those in the Ark? Thereby causing the Polar Ice Caps.

  Scientist from Woods Hole and other locations have done a great deal of research on the age of the Ice Caps. In addition to Radio Carbon dating, they can now date certain events via the layers of Ice. DNA Scientist have also used changes to date DNA to determine how long man has been on the earth.

  I came to realize that man has been around for a great deal longer then the 6000 plus years of the Bible. I also found that a few Scientist have proved that a major flood did occur in the Middle East about 7,600 years ago and could be the event that the Bible’s Global Flood was based. But, it was not global in nature!

  This caused me to realize that the Bible maybe based on History, but it is not a History Book. After carefully reading the Bible after this realization, I came to see that it was not even written by contemporary authors. And much of the prophetic portions of the Bible most likely were written or edited after the fact.

  That is not to say I do not put any value in the Bible.

  While we are on the subject of logic, I believe that the arguments that you have presented here are based on a logical fallicy. That is:

  • Using arguments based on uniformitarianism (such as Carbon dating) in order to disprove a catastropic flood event which if true would invalidate the uniformitarian assumptions.
  • Using arguments based on the assumption of evolution (such as the assumption that humans and chimpanzees shared a common ancestor 4.5 million years ago, and using this assumption to calibrate DNA "dates" in order to disprove a Biblical chronology in which humans and apes were created separately, hense no common ancestry.)

  I would strongly recommend studing both models of origins, and then comparing both of them, based on the data. One must be careful not to use apriori assumptions of one model in order to disprove the other.

  I say this to help. I have found that creation/evolution debates are generally unprofitable here, (thus I have retired from them). I think that this is often due to the fact of people not understanding what others believe as well as faulty argumentation. The site that I gave earlier http://www.answersingenesis.org is a credible resource for those who wish to understand the scriptural and scientific point of view of creationists.
• 

  Jim_TX

  You might first ask if he believes in evolution.

  (Of course they don't - I knew that! <slaps forehead>)

  You might ask if he believes in the 'flood'? and Noah.

  (Of course he does... silly me...)

  Then ask how - if he doesn't believe in evolution that the different 'types' of bears, lions, tigers, etc - all got to their current state - if they didn't evolve?

  Whether he knows it or not - he believes in evolution.

  Regards,

  Jim TX
• 

  UnDisfellowshipped

  Definitely visit http://www.ajwrb.org and show him about the Blood Policies, the most confusing thing I have ever read!
• 

  A Paduan

  A wholly different logic - scriptures are about spirituality - jwism is about physical (temporal things).

  Jwism looks at what is theo-logical, but that is not spirituality.

  Fear is very contagious.

  paduan
• 

  bittersweet

  Thanks to everyone for their input. I just finished checking out all the links ( got a bit sidetracked reading everything ).

  Runingman, your thread on jw logic fallacies was great. I intend on printing that out and leaving it hanging around. We'll see what happens.

  OMG, Garybuss, you cracked me up with " The Truth ( as I see it ) ". I actually laughed out loud reading the second paragraph. I always wanted someone to explain the logic of the ressurection for me. Growing up, we were taught other religions were silly for believing that people's souls went to heaven. I thought it was awful starnge how god would keep someone's memories and then make a new body and plant their memories ( although not all their memories because they weren't supposed to remember the old system ) or their personalities back into these new bodies. And if it was so silly to believe in a soul leaving a body to go to heaven, then wasn't it silly to believe that the 144,0000 would go to heaven? I never found any of those teachings to be logical at all, but I was taught that was the way it was, so accept it or else. I also couldn't understand why the dead sinners got a second chance, but if a sinner was alive at Armageddon he had no second chances. No one could ever give me a logical answer on that one either. If I questioned the logic of jw, then I was questioning Jehovah, and god forbid that happen!

  Thanks again all! You're the best!!
• 

  Analysis

  hooberus

  You have read too much into what I have written. I am not attempting to prove or disprove Evolution. I am not attempting to prove or disprove a global flood.

  My point was that Modern Man is older then 6,000 years and that the last large flood took place 7600 years ago. And it was not global. JW’s believe that the flood was about 4600 years ago, man was created 6000 years ago and that the flood created the Ice Caps.

  The Ice Caps prove that the World had a warming period and a wetter climate at about the same time the Radio Carbon Dating dates the objects found near the suspected flood site between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. That is not me making things up, it is People from noted research organizations such as Woods Hole.

  The rate of change in DNA allows Scientist to place an age range on Modern Man. Whether one believes in Evolution or Creation the Rate of Change in DNA proves that Modern Humans have been around for more then 6,000 years. Research has been done on DNA samples and they have proven that all of Modern Man is derived from less then 50 females (I think it is actually 37). This is documented the Book Seven Daughters of Eve.
• 

  unique1

  I have always wondered and it may make him think as well. They say Christ's rule began in 1914. We know Jesus only gets to rule for 1000 years so why would he waste almost 100 years of that short reign watching things deteriorate? Doesn't make sense to me. That is what first made me start questioning things.
• 

  Tyler

  Hey Bittersweet, to be honest I know where he is coming from. Compared to other religions he is right – to a point.

  Other fundamentalist religions are all emotion based, while traditionalist churches like Catholics and C of E are very community based. JW’s are certainly not very emotional, their community sucks, so all that leaves is logic, which it purports to have. It does! It has “a” logic to it, but it is not about encouraging rank and file to use their “own” logic, rather you are meant to conform to the WBTS’s logic.

  My advice (I know you’ve had a lot all ready, sorry!) is to argue whether ‘logic’ is always the best course of action, rather than ‘ethics’. JW’s are defiantly not very ‘ethical’ even though they ‘rationalise’ their cruelty with ‘reasons’.

  My twopennuth!