by minimus 30 Replies latest jw friends
Its good to have an open but critical mindset upon available information.
Religions usually dont like that for the obvious reason they want to take control over people for their own means purpose and for that reason they use selective information biased to their intent.
At this stage, I’m more skeptical and don’t feel I need to follow the leader. If something sounds wrong then I will check it out . If something sounds too good, I’ll review that too.
Very frequently when assertions are questioned I hear "Everybody knows 'X'"
Fine if everybody knows it, finding proof should not be hard.
If we are being quite honest, we delighted in insisting we were rational and had "real" science and history on our side when we believed in the mother of all conspiracy theories.
When broad scientific consensus and wide academic acceptance of biological evolution or the geological age of the earth is heard by those whose world view is threatened by the conclusion, the same consensus represents proof of international conspiracy by agents of evil. Proof can therefore be inverted, evidence of the scale of the evil, the sheer malevolence of the conspirators in minds unable to accept the obvious conclusion. In fact, quite often a scientific denial necessarily involves some cabal of evil agents determined to rob them of faith or take over the world, etc. Without these agents of evil the explanatory power of these conspiracy theories evaporates. Fundamentalist Christian leaders have sunk to this approach. They did and do disseminate misrepresentation of science to preserve their influence and religious perspective while conjuring a world filled with lying scientists and demonic masters. Some deniers are a bit more clever. Tobacco companies did and do try to dismiss or diminish the well established link between their product and health problems. To expect any different would be naïve. Just how they went about the disinformation campaign was much more insidious. Rather than directly attack science they hired their own scientists to seed doubts about the evidence. In this way the generally high opinion of science could be abused.
we delighted in insisting we were rational and had "real" science and history on our side when we believed in the mother of all conspiracy theories.
Did we though? I think there were occasional attempts at "proving bible science" but they were pretty occasional and usually rather laughable, did anyone actually genuinely believe them? (vs nodding along so as not to stand out)
The most notable exception as an attempt was probably the Creation book, and I wonder how many people that helped to wake up instead. I remember reading about "a branch of the human family that died out" and thinking "uh?!" and other pieces where you think "erm, that smells like bullshit!"
In the end, the proof is what you determined it to be.
Did we though?
It's easy to look back and give ourselves more credit, as if we were too smart or immune somehow. Sure we had moments when we experienced discomfort resulting from being exposed to confuting information but for years we would have disowned our children or parents to continue believing as we were. We had all the 'proof' we needed to be certain the 'proof' of evolutionists and historians were lies.
Congratulations, Minimus
You’re showing signs of progress and personal growth.
Well done!
It's easy to look back and give ourselves more credit, as if we were too smart or immune somehow
Honestly, that wouldn't be giving ourselves "credit", it would be admitting that we deep down knew things weren't "true" but were too lazy or scared of making the change and stepping away from it.
I still have a hard time understanding that some people genuinely and thoroughly believe some of the beliefs, because I think there is a substantial number of JWs that attend meetings and either don't know what their beliefs really are or if they do, don't genuinely believe them and are there because of the social aspect and friends and family links.
Anytime I expressed my beliefs as a JW, I felt like a fraud because I didn't really believe them and I thought it sounded stupid. But there I still was.
