Jehovah's Witnesses

While I've read my Bible, one facet of religious debate I haven't followed deeply is that of Biblical historical accuracy. Which is something I need to rectify, as every brush with the topic suggests that the Bible and its believers often come up short in that department. 

The Answers in Genesis: BUSTED blog offers up an Amazon review of I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be An Atheist, a book what wants us to see the Bible as a fine historical textbook. Unfortunately for that tome's authors, the review rips its conceit to pieces, showing where its claims are unsupported, self-contradicting, or demonstrably wrong. There are plenty of examples to be found – and it's the short, simple ones that strike me the hardest. Like this one, which I'd never heard before:

[The book] says that John 19:17 is accurate because it was indeed customary for crucifixion victims to carry their own crosses, just as John says. Cool. The same reasoning chips away at the accuracy of Matthew 27:33, Mark 15:21, and Luke 23:26 which all say that Simon of Cyrene carried Jesus' cross for him.

I checked the Biblical passages. Sure enough, we have John telling us that Jesus carried his own cross, while the remaining Gospellers report that someone else carried it. Oops!

Now, I don't see this as some refutation against anything in the Bible being historically accurate – after all, while the conflicting cross reports can't both be right, one of them still might be. And it's hardly an important detail within the broad Gospel narrative. However, does the example above – and many more like it – refute claims of the Bible being divinely, infallibly accurate in all that it reports? Yes! Any believer who wants to be honest would have to agree.

Inconsistencies like the above are exactly what you'd expect from human authors (especially authors removed from the event they describe by a century, all in an age before word processors and collaborative email and Wayback Machine archives). Moreover, even if the accounts did all agree on who carried the cross, well, so what? That, too, would be the perfectly normal result of humans jotting down history, if said humans were to put just a wee more effort in corroborating their tale.

Along the same lines, I never have understood the point of believers triumphantly proclaiming a faith-confirming victory when archaeology discovers a Bible-cited city or king to have been real. Again, mention of real cities and rulers is exactly what we'd expect of documents authored entirely by humans. My Stephen King novels keep mentioning a place called Bangor, Maine, which turns out to be a real city... and which doesn't suggest divine power to me. Someone please tell me, again, how it is that we require a Yahweh to explain this complete non-mystery.

Forget the tales of who bore the cross, or what body of water was the Sea of Galilee, or when the Pool of Bethesda existed. The I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be An Atheist authors are wrong on those points, and even if they weren't, the examples demonstrate nothing about supernatural beings. Where's the Biblical goodness that could only have come from sources superhuman? Knowledge that could not have been known to ancient humans? A millenia-early peek into how genetics works? A Biblical revelation of the distance from here to Betelgeuse? Some casual anachronistic name-dropping in scripture, like "Golgi apparatus" or "Wankel engine"? Or even a loving Commandment opening the path to life-saving medicine? ("Disease comes from germs, not evil spirits. Thou shalt wash thy goddamned hands.")

Ack. I don't know how the "Scripture is all divinely accurate!" believers try to whitewash the inability of Biblical writers to stick with the storyline on even basic details, but I for one am taking an increasing interest in such inconsistencies. After all, it's a bit humbling for me as well. While I think of my Jehovah's Witness upbringing as having provided me with (for what it's worth) a pretty thorough knowledge of scripture, I've come to discover how inaccuracies in the Testaments somehow got thoroughly overlooked during 12 years of thrice-weekly Bible study meetings!

Time for me to really study the Bible.

Although I love my fantastic fiction as well as the next geek, I'm not that well-versed in the swords-and-sorcery fantasy genre. Other than Tolkien, my experience with fantasy series consists of all 13 (to date) books of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series and, just recently, the first book of George R R Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series.

As the latter gains huge exposure through its jump to TV, PZ Myers reports that he's read all of the series published to date, and – minor spoiler here – found them ultimately frustrating in that by the end of the fourth book, nothing much has happened in the big picture. Martin's major plot lines stay where they are, treading water.

Anyone who's read Jordan's mega-series knows exactly how that feels. I count myself a Wheel fan and am glad to have gone through the whole series, even during its long slow stretches... but that said, here's my nutshell summary of Wheel of Time:

Book 1: "OMG! The Last Battle (tm) is coming any day now!"

(...many books follow...)

Book 13: "OMG! The Last Battle (tm) is coming any day now!"

It's truly sad that Jordan himself didn't live long enough to find out exactly how his series ends (the final books are in the hands of cleanup writer Brandon Sanderson, armed with Jordan's notes). Let's hope that Martin has a plan that'll let both him and his readers enjoy a wrap-up to A Song of Ice and Fire while the author is hale and hearty.

Anyway, what's all that got to do with religion? Just this: My Wheel of Time summary above reminded me an awful lot of something else. Whatever could it be? Oh yes, my Jehovah's Witness upbringing. By way of comparison, here's how the JWs' series runs:

1914: "OMG! Armageddon is coming any day now!"

(...many, many years follow...)

2011: "OMG! Armageddon is coming any day now!"

Eerily similar to Wheel of Time – except there's no end-of-series capper drawn up, by anybody. This one plans to go on forever, with several million "readers" still buying its Neverending Story about a Return of the King to vanquish the Lord of Chaos and leave a Feast for Crows at the site of The Last Battle.

Now that's what I call high fantasy!

Humans have a sad propensity to bomb, beat, and strangle each other over just about anything. Religion extends the list of potential conflict triggers, with novel contributions like "your God is false" or "your Book is blasphemy". Yet deep within humanity there's also a fragile desire for peacemaking, and no one can deny that religion is capable of working that noble goal into its doctrines too. Whatever our quibbles with religion, we can't criticize pacifism inspired by faith.

Usually. Readeth thou more

Time for another bit of Jehovah's Witness nonsense:

A few weeks back, PZ Myers pointed out a scan from the sect's Watchtower magazine, warning young people of some of the temptations that might lead them into sin. It includes some "dangers" you'd expect from a religious bunch, including

• Someone dares you to smoke a cigarette
• You are invited to a party where alcohol and drugs will be freely available
• "Why don't you post your profile on the Internet?" someone suggests
• A friend invites you to watch a movie that features violence or immorality

No need to laugh that off just yet. Some of those do pose potentially real concern, not just of the scriptural infraction variety, to people sufficiently young or careless enough. Pretty mild dangers (with the exception of drugs and alcohol), but still things that, say, parents of young kids have to grapple with. 

But then there's the one that provokes the ire of PZ and his readers:

• A well-intentioned teacher urges you to pursue higher education at a university

Yes, that's right: The Jehovah's Witnesses genuinely do discourage their followers from getting (non-JW) education.  Readeth thou more

I had a throwaway comment I wanted to add in regard to PZ Myers' post on a kook who's been "updating" Norse creation mythology. The Pharyngula site won't take comments now without registration, and currently won't let me register either, so here's the gist of my rejected comment with a little added padding:

It appears that a Norwegian musician named Varg Vikernes is "updating" Norse creation mythology with elaborate ties to modern cosmology. That makes for a blending of two awesome themes, and I'm all for their illicit coupling – assuming there's a proper sense of tongue-in-cheek goofiness behind it all, of course. Based on Pharyngula readers' comments about Vikernes' mental state and his apparent seriousness about his religion, though, I think I'll wait for someone else to meld Odin and the Big Bang before I jump aboard to play along.

Anyway, a commenter named Greg F took note of the relative mediocrity of the Abrahamic creation myth. That's so true; of all the wild and woolly origin myths out there, Genesis' tale is about the most boring I've come across. The rest of the Bible doesn't get much more exciting. That's why any kiddie Book of Bible Stories is always so dull too; it's working with pretty bland material, and all a bored kid can do is read the Ark story, and David & Goliath, over and over. The magic gets pretty thin after that. Readeth thou more

What kind of daydreams do religious kids have?

They start with the usual, I imagine. As far as I know, I was pretty normal in the drifting-off department. While I wasn't a sports kind of kid, I'd entertain the occasional fantasy of wowing the classmates with the home run they never expected, or knocking that ol' kickball all the way over the big tree in the grade school yard. Sometimes I had more exciting daydreams of gaining awesome superpowers. And, of course, there were no end to the fancies involving That One Girl in the next row or next classroom or whatever – just little secret stories that were clean and cute in grade school (less clean and cute in high school).  

But uber-religious kids have got to have their own special brand of daydream – or at least, those kids with the "funny" religions that put them in the camp of outsider. I was a Jehovah's Witness kid, and that was considered a crackpot variant of the hometown's generic Christianity (when it was understood to be Christian to begin with!). As you'd expect, there was the occasional wisecrack to put up with, plus those embarrassing everybody's-staring-at-me moments when I had to publicly opt out of the Pledge of Allegiance or of a Christmas piece in band. To be fair, I can't say that I was treated awfully because of the wacky religion, but there were just enough jibes to spur a typically overly-sensitive and imaginative kid into irregular "I'll show them all!" fantasies. Here's how one of mine went. Readeth thou more

A trip back to my JW past: For all the negative things I could say about the Jehovah's Witnesses, I can think of a few good things as well. First, like Mormons, they tend to be "good neighbor" types. And on matters Biblical, I think there are actually areas in which they come to saner, back-to-the-original-intent readings of scripture than do sects hanging on to fossilized readings set in stone by long-ago pontificators.

That said, those things make for really weak praise. A Witness may be a friendly neighbor who'll return your garden shears on time, but he's still a gullible goof who returns the shears along with an unasked-for copy of The Watchtower and the question, "So, do you ever wonder Who made shrubbery so beautiful?" And having a more "accurate" reading of scripture is like having a more "accurate" insight into the truth of The Three Little Pigs – it remains a wacky acceptance of utterly unbelievable fiction as reality. (On top of that, there are indeed areas where JW interpretation of scripture is more loony than the average: blood and birthdays are good starting points.)

But regardless of whether or not it stands as "correct" interpretation, there's one bit of proprietary Biblical dogma that scores the JWs more marketing points than I think many realize. Simply put, Jehovah's Witnesses offer the best eternal reward package in the religion industry. Readeth thou more

Hello, former (or current!) Jehovah's Witnesses! Or former and current religious folk, to cast the net wider. I was once one of you – and like most believers, so self-assured that I was right in all of my beliefs.

Commence rambling.

My immediate family entered "the Truth" (as the JW's humbly call their brand of faith) when I was only about five, so I don't have a memory of how the change came about. My parents were young, poor, beset by life's troubles (like a bunch of wailing kids), and lacking in the critical analysis skills that a university education (sometimes) provides. They were ripe pickings, in other words, for the evangelicals. Readeth thou more