A recent article in the Journal of Philosophical Psychology titled: 'How convenient! The epistemic rationale of self-validating belief systems' by Maarten Boudry says that one of the defense mechanisms of self-validating belief systems is "multiple endpoints and moving targets" and cites JWs to illustrate the point. Here are the sections that discuss JWs:
5.1. Multiple Endpoints and Moving Targets
In astrology and in prophetical works such as those of Nostradamus, it is typical to be presented with a series of ambiguous statements having what psychologists call “multiple endpoints” (Gilovich, 1991 , pp. 58–59; Hines, 2003 ), as in the parody prediction by Woody Allen: “two nations will go to war, but only one will win.” In fact, typical astrological descriptions are amenable both to a specific interpretation and a range of broader and more metaphorical ones, e.g., “a father-figure stands behind you.” This creates an asymmetry between what will count as hits and misses of the predictions in question, allowing the astrologer—or gullible believer—to switch back and forth between specific and broad interpretations. In this way, practically any outcome will be perceived as a fulfillment of astrological predictions. In a variation on this theme, a belief system consists of statements that are specific and exciting on first inspection, but when running into trouble, they are belatedly modified so as to make them trivial or uninteresting. The deflationary re-interpretation of a failed doomsday prediction is a standard example of this move: a typical solution for apparent prophetic failure is to reinterpret the promised events on an invisible and spiritual level (Melton, 1985 ; Tumminia, 1998 , p. 168; Zygmunt, 1970 ). For example, when their prediction of the Second Coming of Christ in 1873–1874 failed to come true, Jehovah's Witnesses argued that Christ had returned as predicted, but as an invisible spirit being (Zygmunt, 1970 , p. 931). We also find the strategy in the use of conceptual “moving targets” in the writings of pseudoscientists (Boudry, Blancke, & Braeckman, 2010; Cioffi, 1998 ). More generally still, the indeterminate and mysterious nature of many religious and pseudoscientific propositions ensures that they are closed to normal epistemic evaluation (Sperber et al., 2010), and that contradictions and adverse evidence will go largely unnoticed to the believers (Sperber, 1996 , pp. 91–92; see also the discussion of “quasi-propositions” in religion in Atran, 2002 ). ...
6.1. The Development of Resilient Belief Structures
The central claim developed in this paper is that beliefs that develop into systems which are more successful in withstanding empirical failures and in “surviving” the onslaught of critical arguments, be it from the inquisitive believers themselves or from skeptical outsiders, will be more readily acquired, remembered, and selected among their competitors. Of course, beliefs do not “develop” into self-validating structures all by themselves. Beliefs are entertained by individual agents, and they are modified and revised by individual agents. Over time, the problems these agents encounter within their system of beliefs will inspire solutions in the form of modifications, reinterpretations and elaborations. Not all of these changes will be equally successful from a psychological point of view, and hence not all of them will tend to survive. We claim that certain “successful” configurations of beliefs may be expected to become recurrent in widely different domains, despite huge cultural and interpersonal variation. 4 Thus, rather than turning into full-blown self-validating structures all at once, we maintain that beliefs crystallize into such systems after a number of successive modifications and elaborations, which result from attempts to resolve inconsistencies and to rescue the belief system from apparent refutation. Consider again the case of doomsday cults, which are literally confronted with the problem of surviving the day on which prophecy fails. If the day of truth arrives and the predicted events are not borne out, the belief system is faced with serious institutional crisis (Zygmunt, 1970 ). If, on the other hand, the system is flexible enough to cope with eventual failure, by allowing for some convenient escape clauses, excuses or reinterpretations, it may withstand the impact of reality (Balch, Domitrovich, Mahnke, & Morrison, 1997 ). For example, the cult of Jehovah's Witnesses has a long history of what outsiders perceive as blatant prophetic failures, but the movement does not show any signs of disappearing. This is partly because, as Zygmunt's study on Jehovah's Witnesses makes clear, the prophecies of the cult were phrased “in a manner that made them only partially open to disconfirmation” (Zygmunt, 1970 , p. 944). As they allow for enough “wiggling room,” the failed prophecies can always be retrospectively related to real historical events, and thus be “converted into partial successes” (Zygmunt, 1970 , pp. 944–945), strengthening the conviction of the followers and renewing their proselytizing efforts. In other words, the belief system of Jehovah's Witnesses has made use of the defense mechanism of multiple endpoints and deflationary revisions which we described above. Of course, these reinterpretations do not present themselves spontaneously, but that does not mean that they are deliberately constructed by believers with strategic purposes in mind (see section 8 ). In the doomsday cult, a plausible post hoc rationalization of prophetic failure is typically suggested by the group leader and taken up by the other members (Dawson, 1999 , p. 65). Alternatively, group members may entertain different rationalizations and reinterpretations, in the full conviction that the prophecy must be true in some sense, and the solutions that emerge as cognitively “optimal” are adopted by other believers. In this way the belief system may slowly develop an increasing resilience in the face of adverse data. Thus, if the believers succeed in constructing elaborations on or carrying out reinterpretations of their belief system that make it impervious to empirical failure (to which they will often be strongly motivated), the belief system will survive the day on which the prophecy fails, and live on in this more resistant form. All other things being equal, the weird belief systems that reach a cultural level of dissemination tend to be the ones that have stabilized on a form that is immune to the empirical refutation and criticism from outsiders. Those that are too fragile wither away and are simply no longer there for us to observe. 5