Cautious as Serpents

It's difficult to be dispassionate, especially with respect to fighting against something that may have cause traumatic pain. In some way or another, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society has left each of us with a scar and it tickles us intimately to see it falter. However slight their missteps may be from time to time, it raises a cheer among the discarded and downtrodden to see their humanity laid bare.

It is beyond contesting to say that it is a human organization. Whether or not it's God's spirit directed organization can neither be proved, nor disproved, and therein we invoke Ockham's Razor and discard it as a causative force. Also beyond contesting is that they have repeatedly made mistakes at the institutional level. Doctrines shift. Policies change. Embarrassments occur.

It's easy to kick a person or organization when it's down. These exposed flaws and their attendant restructuring often appear to be gaps in the armor which we are prone to attack. This is perhaps the worst possible tactic to employ. Chinese General Sun Tzu wrote in his military strategy, The Art of War, to "fight the enemy where they are not". This philosophy meant to attack in the place where the enemy dedicated the least attention.

Events like the Australian Royal Commission inquiry may seem like the right place to attack, particularly in light of Geoffery Jackson's controversial comments about presumptuousness. However, Witnesses around the world are already viewing the inquest as proof that they God's chosen people.

Why else might they be subject to persecution? Certainly not because they negligently allowed people who had admitted to abusing children to pose a continued risk to their brethren. The humiliation of the many seemed to have outweighed the rights of the few, and there really is no rational way to justify withholding such information from secular authorities. Rendering Caesar's things to Caesar would not have violated God's law in this matter.

Justified or not, Witness will have entrenched themselves in the dogmatic position that these accounts are lies and there's no reasoning sufficient to penetrate the armor of willful ignorance.

Another worthy consideration is that they are callused against a number of technically correct attacks. Conversion of faith is an art. Whether that's toward or away from religion, it seldom works to apply pressure directly to a facet that has received repeated exercise and toughening. Witnesses are quite used to impassioned rants from apostates. They are also very familiar with many of the topics and buzzwords that appear in anti-Witness activism. Cognitive dissonance, 587 B.C.E., UN NGO, ad infinitum, all bounce off those calloused minds because the phrasing is well practice and often repeated. They know what we'll say because it's been said before and it's easily identified as apostate in origin.


I, like many apostates, have a grudge. However, it is against the doctrine rather than the people who uphold it. They are following a faith, as much as I am following the faith of non-theism, and if they do so in good conscience, then I do not fault them.

Remember that most of us were brow-beaten into conformance with the faith. That inevitable chip that we carry on our shoulders might make it seem reasonable that brow-beating people out of the faith is an effective approach. Unfortunately, their indoctrination is reinforced at every meeting, their callouses thickened, and their armor layered. They have carefully prepared for a toe-to-toe battle.

Fight them where they are not.

My father was an elder and a very good teacher. The best way he found to reach people was to approach subject from a different direction and get them to reason on it themselves. When particularly difficult concepts would come up in the Kingdom Hall or Ministry, he'd avoid providing the answer before providing the reasoning. He understood that it was often counterproductive to start with a conclusion and massage facts to fit what was believed to be true (insert ironic comment here).

My most effective conversations with Witnesses have started from the perspective of ignorance. They are instructed to teach and so they do what they're trained to do when one seeks information. And this is where I have chosen to be cautious like the serpent. I invite them to enter my space willingly and expose themselves to the exchange of information. The longer they can feel as if the ideas exchanged are in the vein of corrective instruction, the more open to discussion they will remain.

Keep in mind that they already view apostates as 'mentally diseased', so they will do as so many other have done and begin with the end. They will expect a certain behavior and cherry pick until they see what they've been trained to interpret at apostasy. Those well practice phrases and facts that were mentioned before will be our biggest weakness because they've heard them all before. Every move we telegraph will be met with a skilled riposte.

Becoming experts in our own knowledge, however, makes us far more flexible. Growing in knowledge beyond reflexive repetition of known fact allows us to approach a conversation from almost any direction and that can be one of the best ways to disassemble rote learning.

It's not enough to know that 1914 C.E. is wrong. We have to know that C.T. Russel first published in 1894 that Armageddon would end in 1910. We also have to know that in 1911, he republished his previous work with new data that pointed to 1914 as the year Armageddon would end. We have to know that his prediction was based off of measurements of the Pyramids of Giza, not the return of Jews to Jerusalem. We have to know that he was absolute in his belief that he was right. We have to know that in the same book where he published those failed predictions, he also disclaimed to have been inspired by God. We have to know that this comes from the very hand of the first Bible Student, and we have to know where to find it.

Knowledge is a beautiful tool, but understanding provides the skill to use it wisely. When dealing with people who are still captive in the Organization, brute force is going to have little impact. They're prepared for bitterness and hatred. Perhaps reaching out with finesse, understanding, and compassion will reach more people. After all, were not out to break people down. Just the system that holds them down.

Ockham's Razor and 1914

Religion is a philosophy, which is the study of the nature of something, be it thought, existence, creation, or divinity. Study usually involves the examination of evidence. Curiously, there is no evidence of deities, let alone a single Christian God. Even so, an overwhelming proportion of the human population claims a belief in a higher power. Generally speaking, this involves some loose association of moral tenets, some type of worship, and a preference for one afterlife story or another. The largest justification for this kind of devotion are holy books written by people who are dead, making claims of events for which there were no living witnesses at the time of publication, and no evidence of even cursory peer review.

In short, God is an urban legend.

Logically speaking, he's the equivalent of the Boogie Man. Everyone always knows someone who knows someone who's claimed to have seen him. If we place the bible in the construct of completely second-hand accounts, there is very little that can be proven to have occurred. Certain historical events are accurately represented, though we only know that from independent verified sources. But it's the ecumenical bits of Christianity that are suspect.

Moses, for example, was the only one present when he received instruction from God through the burning bush. He was also the only one at the top of Mount Zion to receive the Ten Commandments (and the remainder of the Mosaic Law). In fact, a lot of what Moses claimed had no witnesses. Eve was deceived by a serpent, but there was no one else around to hear it. Every prophecy that was delivered by God was written down by the only person to hear it and then delivered as fact. But the kicker here is that it's true because it's in God's word, the bible. How do we know? The bible says so.

Figure. 1

Claims that religious truth can withstand any scrutiny are common. Depending on one's particular slant, this can be either a defensive or offensive bit of rhetoric. However, when put to the test, religiosity often finds itself backed into a corner without an explanation. Whatever the matter under review is, contrary evidence sends believers running to the comfortable haven of faith, wherein they cling to their belief, confident that the real proof (that which was not made up by the Devil) will be revealed to them when the time is right. However, when even minute facts exist, they become unshakable evidence of the divine and any disagreement is heresy (see Figure. 1).

 But what if we got a fact wrong?

There's an old joke about a Cardinal at the Vatican who goes into the archives to do some research. He's found hours later weeping over an ancient text. The Legate that finds him asks what's wrong, to which he morosely responds, "It said 'celebrate'".

It's a cute story that pokes fun at the doctrinal celibacy of the Catholic clergy, but it clearly illustrates that a widely held belief, no matter how central to a faith, could be subject to revision. In this particular instance, there are many liturgical reasons why priests are to remain celibate. However, the fact of church politics is that priests who were allowed to marry passed on estates to their legitimate heirs. Celibate priests with no heirs reverted their estates to the church. Celibacy for the sake of Christ had nothing to do with it.

This brings us to Ockham's Razor, which originated, ironically, with Franciscan friar William of Ockham. He was a logical man who had a strong faith in God. Even so, he insisted that "entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily." Scientists adopted this in the centuries that followed to explain that simplicity was necessary for an honest examination of a theory.

Austrian physicist Ernst Mach coined the Principle of Economy, in which "Scientists must use the simplest means of arriving at their results and exclude everything not perceived by the senses." In his version, no distinction could be drawn between something that you could not perceive and something that did not exist. In other words, if there is no way to observe a thing, it can have no bearing on your findings. In a religious application, divinity cannot be the basis for the assumption of fact.

Why do I mention this? Well, it's simpler than this preamble would have you believe.

Jehovah's Witnesses have a belief that Jesus was enthroned in 1914. At that time, their faith says that Satan was confined to the earth to await Armageddon, and that human society has declined ever since. Their evidence is the rather conspicuous outbreak of World War I. Their originators had predicted, on more than one occasion, that there would be unprecedented events in a number of different years. 1914 happened to be the one time they were right.

Arriving at this date took a bit of simple math, and some creative interpretation of bible prophecy. In fact, the basis of one prophecy has to be derived from another. I truthfully don't even know where to begin with how wrong this is.

In broad strokes though, it is assumed that Babylon destroyed Jerusalem in 607 B.C.E. and that the prophecy would then identify 1914 C.E. as a turning point in human history. Secular research does not support this. Witnesses, as described above, retreat to two things when faced with this information.

Primarily, they question the integrity of the ancient historians Ptolemy and Borosaus, from whose records they freely accept other established dates. In fact, they are prone to answer questions with questions as proof that contradictory evidence is false.

Secondarily, they hide behind that wall of "brighter light" which requires no proof, validation, or even logic. It is a magical force field which no apostasy may penetrate. It is ignorant of reality. Period.

The truth of the matter is that there is far more evidence to support 587 B.C.E. as the date of Jerusalem's overthrow by King Nebuchadnezzar, and to say otherwise is to violate Ockham's Razor. The point of the Razor has always been to cut away unnecessary criteria, assumptions, and scotoma which blind us from reality. 1914 is far simpler than what Witnesses believe it to be. However, stubbornly clinging to proofs that cannot be found, or observed, they pervert the nature of truth. For a people so adamant about preserving and disseminating truth, their avoidance of it is ironic.