Ramblings

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~~Title:Jehovah's Witnesses~~
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Avoid independent thinking [...] questioning the counsel that is provided by God's visible organization.
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<WRAP centeralign>~Watchtower, WTBTS. January 15, 1983. p. 22., recited from [[RationalWiki]]</WRAP>
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The [[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Essay:I_thought_this_was_supposed_to_be_RATIONALWiki|"rational"]] people over at [[:RationalWiki]] have an article on [[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Jehovah%27s_Witnesses|Jehovah's Witnesses]].
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The content of this page may, by the strict meaning of its words, be inaccurate. I am writing this with the intent to inform, not to distract. Please read the full article on [[ramblings:accuracy|]].


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Strategic Notice: Witness teachings differ, in details, from standard Christian doctrine. Also, JW tend to be painfully precise with their doctrines. Here are two examples:

(Remember that these are just two examples and more like this is hidden in the article.)
I write that JW teach to reject secular authorities as much as they can (well, as far as they can before getting into //too// much trouble). Strictly speaking this is //not correct//. Witnesses are taught to "respect" the secular authorities. Here is what my former best friend would have considered to be accurate:

//JWs are taught to listen to the secular authorities insofar as the Bible, and more relevantly, the Governing Body agrees with them. They are also taught to be no part of the world (John 15:19), and to reject worldly people and ideas. That is, unless they are preaching, where they have been commanded (Matthew 28:19) to convert people into their cult.//\\
Now, while this is what one could perhaps consider as the "full truth", the is not the "real truth". The real truth about what JW teach, and even my friend agrees with this, is the following:

<wrap em>**//Fuck those demons, we’re gonna be as compliant as we have to be to maintain survival.//**</wrap>

The basic premise of JW is that everyone who believes in Big J is good and anyone who refuses to is bad. Unfortunately for them, 99.9% of the world does not believe in YHWH, which means we're all bad. We are seen as a disgrace who reject the truth and we are all Satan's personal demons trying to steer good and faithful people off the path. Almost EVERY witness doctrine teaches to hate and loathe secular authorities, to defy them and their pesky ideas, keep away from it as far as possible. Only those "in the truth" are real and valuable human beings that deserve to be treated fairly (and even then they still just bully each other), everyone else is a tool of Satan himself. You and me too, and we didn't even know. Just because they have this one line in the bible to hide behind is not enough for me to say that they //actually// want anyone to respect the authorities - it's what they specifically built as something to hide behind, not a teaching they actually adhere to. And, and let me inject my own bias here, probably meant to protect JW from the total meltdown as complete defiance with secular authorities would probably thin their numbers rather quickly.

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The second example is about the usage of the word "heaven". Strictly speaking, witnesses do not believe in heaven or hell. Their own, specially handcrafted version, ehem "version", of the Bible does conveniently not include/wrongly translate that part as to reflect what the founders of JW wanted to believe. You will get them kicking and screaming if you talk to them and act like they believe in this, because it's one of the few things they have going for them in terms of actually being different from mainstream Christianity.

The full truth here is that witnesses believe that demons will die in Armageddon and faithful believers get to live on in paradise or whatever. Something. It does not fucking matter. Just like in Christianity, good things if you are nice, bad things if you are not, exactly what is good and bad is up for debate, but witnesses believe that rejecting Jehovah is bad.

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<wrap em>I will continue to claim that they reject secular authorities and I will continue to use the word heaven in spite of this. These argumentations are specifically designed by witnesses to run conversations into the mud by focusing on irrelevant details while, at the end of the day, it's still "heaven" all over again, just with a bit of special JW flavor attached to it.</wrap>\\
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<fs xx-large>Jehovah's Witnesses</fs> are a [[Christianity]]-based cult with headquarters in Warwick, New York state. At about 8.5 million members strong, it is one of the most influential cults of the modern day. Conceptually, JWs reject the secular authorities and advise their members to avoid them as much as possible (except when knocking on doors) to form a parallel society((Trying to paint themselves as following the bible as closely as possible they will "respect" the secular authorities because of that one paragraph in Romans. In reality they will defy and exploit them as much as possible (flag saluting, for example, which got them into many, many legal problems and has cost lives) and will, at every opportunity, instruct witnesses NOT to reach out to secular authorities. Instead, witnesses are told to put faith into the bible and pray their problems away. Apologists as they are, they will defend an abusive husband, telling wives to do more bible study and to persevere through it. When he beats you so bad as to break your ribs, you are to NOT call the cops and you definitely are NOT to take him to court. Please don't, you WILL be excommunicated. Obviously JW just cherry pick the lines from the bible they //want// to follow, like every other scripture-based "religion", and they choose this one because rejecting secular society //completely// would be extremely bad for their numbers.)). This cuts off members from being exposed to "worldly" people and their dangerous, dangerous thoughts((Except, again, when knocking on doors, which is never done alone so that even the smallest display of dissent on behalf of a witness is caught by other witnesses to enable early and swift intervention.)). The cult operates largely on indoctrination (as early as possible!), discouraging independent research((They will tell you otherwise, but then always point you to learning resources specifically written by JW. Please do NOT talk to actual experts and if you do then never do it unsupervised, and if you do THAT and don't end up disagreeing with them then you will be shunned.)) and, most importantly, peer pressure. Ostracization, shunning and spreading rumors are the strongest weapons in one's arsenal, as all it takes is calling someone gay to get them to be considered for "disfellowshipping". Or talking too much to worldly people. Or surfing on the wrong websites. Or watching porn.
Disfellowshipment is the special weapon of Jehovah's Witnesses. Witnesses born into the cult are trained to not make friends **outside** of the ranks of witnesses, must **not** marry wordly people, are cut off from real-world education or any kind of academic degrees/diplomas etc., in short they are raised in such a way so that they depend, physically, psychologically and economically, on JW. Witnesses must not gain any sense of independence so that, once they **are** disfellowshipped, the victim cannot sustain themselves. Without school degrees or friends in the real world to speak of it becomes virtually impossible to leave. Trying to GET friends or GET a diploma will see you shunned and rejected even before the formal excommunication, as <del>gaining means to escape the cult</del> engaging with worldly people is BAD.

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Always nice to be reminded of my place as a woman and a child and that mental illness isn’t real and that I’m a worthless fuck up and all. Medication is for heroine addicts and I deserve to be struck down by Jehovah for considering depression medication. I’m a coke head now. Maybe I wouldn’t be so fat if I had an ounce of discipline. Speaking of which we need to have more discipline around this household, my mom and I are slacking off. Perhaps he should get rid of both of our electronics and beat us for a couple days to remind us [[WOMEN]] how to behave.
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<WRAP centeralign>~They are nice people, though, if you don't ask too many questions.</WRAP>
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====== Inner Workings ======
Witnesses will, as much as possible, withhold from each other whatever they could use to get out of there. One of the strongest weapons //here// is education, as school degrees are an extremely strong starting position to work with (financial independence!). Obviously this will vary on the individual, but in general JW are instructed to maximize their time spent focusing on "spiritual stuff". Children are not sent to school, if possible, and in countries where there are compulsory school laws they will find whatever is the least degree of education that still, from a legal perspective, qualifies as "school". In the US of A, for example, this could mean virtual school courses by JW for JW, teaching anything but definitely NOT propaganda and indoctrination. If you're lucky and don't get homeschooled then you may be sent to public schools ("the dark, pesky caves of Satan himself!") but your education efforts will be pro-actively sabotaged by your parents - they may be intentionally lax about actually sending/getting their children to school, may force them to do spiritual stuff all day to stop them from doing homework or learning for tests, cut them off from the internet or learning resources for whatever excuse they can come up with and much, much more - all the way up to the point where, for the child, learning becomes utterly unsustainable. They may be "going to school", but are intentionally set up for failure by sabotaging whatever their parents can to prevent actual results((Not that school itself, as is, is already often overwhelming enough for many people.)). There again, making friends at a public school is strictly frowned upon and will get you shunned by fellow witnesses if discovered.

On that note, the second strongest mechanic that keeps witnesses IN is constant pressure. Witnesses are continuously judged, supervised, monitored and controlled by other witnesses. Not keeping up with latest events and not doing enough spiritual work (like knocking on doors) will see you shunned. Children are continuously kept busy with whatever the parents can come up with to prevent them from even getting a second for themselves to //think//. They are kept on a continuous cycle of work and exhaustion where they aren't even given the time to sort their thoughts and make conclusions. Children are to be present and in eyeshot of the parents at all times, must never rest, never do anything that isn't related to Big J and must always, //always// be kept busy.((Again, the exact dimensions of this strategy and how its employed lies with the parents and therefore your mileage may vary, but the concept is there.))

As I already touched upon earlier, "disfellowshipment" - excommunication - is the ultimate control mechanism of witnesses. Being strongly against violence (at least in official proceedings, it is tolerated and actively encouraged((striking your children etc.)) when done in private), withholding love, attention, support and care is how witnesses squash dissent. Families are instructed to throw their children out of their house and refuse talking to them if they come out as not believing in JW. Obviously this is beyond extremely manipulative, especially when done by parents against their own children, and puts their love and care and attention on a conditional basis: We love you if you love Jehovah - if you don't, we will show you how much we //actually// love you.\\
The congregation tries to claim that this is purely some kind of "tough love", because obviously it is impossible to solve these differences in a healthier way or just to accept them as facts of their life. Not believing in JW deprives you of a spot in heaven((Witnesses will scream at this one and whine that their heaven equivalent DEFINITELY is not like heaven.)) once Armageddon finally happens (it will happen eventually, we're sure!((JW leaders eventually stopped making "predictions" after the twentieth failed as well and they realized that keeping on making predictions kind of hurts their member retention. Now it's just "Any day now!" and whatever bad thing happens in the world is seen as proof that It is coming.))), but instead of letting that be a problem of the affected individual, witnesses will instead make sure that your life beyond this will be as insufferable as they can possibly make it for you (while remaining faithful to the bible, of course - murder isn't in).

====== Jehovah Hates... A Lot ======
Essentially being fundamental Christians, are primarily marked by their hatred for things, a list imported directly from the bible, always with a personal spin depending on the specific witness and their biases. In general, however, witnesses hate everything pagan (people, traditions (FUCK YOU [[Christmas|CHRISTMAS]]), whatever), they hate gay people, people not yet part of their cult, people who are part of their cult, equality, [[woman|women]], doors (!!), blood, education, non-nuclear families, everything not yet mentioned on this list and especially everyone they //want// to hate, they usually //will// find some bible verse that they can spin around enough until it vaguely supports their hate, all in the name of Big J whom they do their utmost to make happy by hating things so much they get a [[Hateboner|boner from the excitement]]. It seems to be that the general concept of JW day to day life is a cycle of self-reinforcing hate cycles balanced with the occasional bit of being a nice person every once in a while to reach the quota. If only someone told them that YHWH hates hate (WTBTS would never tell them, that's one of the most important things to keep a witness busy and distracted).

====== Ideology conflicts with Reality ======
===== 1: We respect secular authorities =====
Witnesses claim that doctrine is to respect secular authorities - provided the  <del>governing body</del> biblical teachings agrees with the authorities. It's a euphemism banking on the fact that //most// people recognize Christianity/The Bible as a message of good and peace and therefore don't think about this too much. The truth is, however, that a words-based, **literal** reading of the bible disagrees with effectively every single aspect of modern law and society and - unfortunately for the witnesses - since Jehovah's Witnesses are a cult with the [[Biblical Literalism]] doctrine, this means they follow they bible not //as it means//, but //as it says// and, oh boy, the bible says a lot of things.

There are a lot of specifics to unpack here, but the TL;DR is that witnesses "respect" secular authorities in nothing but conclusion. They will attack every aspect of a secular authority, will call them institutionalizations of [[Satan]] (!), they say we will all eventually rise up, turn against witnesses and attempt to eradicate them, they say that we will all die a horrendous death, that we are a disgrace and that our minds are poisoned and that we need **them** to be saved from eternal damnation (by converting us into their "flock", they are so nice to us).\\
Obviously, a cult that respected secular authorities as much as the Bible told them to (by the strict meaning of its words) would be a militant terrorist organization with much fewer adherents than they currently have, so what they do is to //cherry pick//. Of course they are a biblical literalist cult, but because witnesses all agree that they are all unable to actually interpret the bible correctly, they have the governing body (the WTBTS) who tell them how to interpret what, which passages to ignore, and occasionally drop in with what they call "new light" - insight they take from outside the bible; because obviously nothing is better than a biblical literalist cult that then goes on to agree to disagree with the bible. Those new lights usually tend to be ideas some governing body member pulled out of his ass, presented as a message from god himself((Unfortunately, according to the governing body, god only talks to //members of the governing body//. If you're a normie witness and think he has been talking to you, you are the victim of [[moving the goalpost]].)), and then accepted as true and override any and all the bible says. They are usually introduced as damage limitation. For example, once defending flat earth made witlesses look //too// stupid and lost them too many members, the governing body eventually decided that god told them that what the bible says is actually //too vague// and that it leaves room for so much interpretation that the world could actually also be near-spherical.

===== 2: We agree with science =====


===== 3: The world is spherical =====


===== 4: We believe in evolution =====