Jehovah's Witnesses

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 dolt 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's still an idiotic 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