Methods Used to Draw Witnesses Away from their Faith Part I

This post is a spur of the moment, mainly experience based look at some of the methods that opposers of Jehovah’s Witnesses use to ‘break’ their faith and get them to leave the group. This author thought that it would be an interesting discussion, mainly because most of these methods are inherently hypocritical when used by an opposer who publicly espouses perfectly contrary principles, and because these methods almost never rely on any actual discussion of the Bible or doctrinal points and yet are effective at destroying faith anyways. In fact, most opposers will outright tell you to completely avoid discussing the Bible and its doctrine with Witnesses until after they have already destroyed the Witnesses’ trust in his friends, family and congregation, while the Witnesses themselves always begin the teaching and conversion process with Bible discussion.

Here are two things that an opposer will tell a weak or fading Witness very soon after their first encounter:

Step 1: Do NOT tell any other JWs about your doubts.

Ah, the classic “don’t tell anybody anything or they will turn on you and attack you” demand. The purpose of this suggestion is not to protect the fading JW from other JWs, as much as it is to shut down the other side of the argument and get rid of any competition for the anti-cult crusader. It is a very convenient thing to get the fading JW to believe.

·         It shuts down and prevents any potential counter-argument, help or evidence coming from the pro-JW side, leaving only the arguments and persuasion of the anti-cult crusader. This in itself is ironic, considering that the anti-cult crusader often encourages open discussion and research of all sides, but then in the same breath effectively shuts out an entire side of the argument, leaving only HIS side and HIS opinions.

·         It also helps the anti-cult crusader in that the suggestion implants fear and mistrust in the mind of the fading JW. The anti-cult crusader must at some point completely destroy and severe the bonds between the fading JW and his spiritual brothers and sisters in order to be successful, and getting the fading JW to ‘hide’ his true feelings as if it were dangerous to talk about them (and getting him to keep up this paranoid behavior for long periods of time) is a useful first step in creating that mistrust that will ultimately destroy the bonds and friendships.

·         In reality, a JW with doubts about his own beliefs and ideals should discuss his feelings openly with his parents first, and then with elders or other mature Christians in his congregation if his parents cannot provide enough satisfaction. The parents and the elders in the congregation have been around the block a few times, and will not be shocked at hearing such things. They also will not ‘pounce on’ and ‘attack’ a brother or sister for expressing such doubts, but rather will seek to readjust such a one in a spirit of love, reason and understanding. They do, after all, deal with these kinds of things far more often than one may realize.

So do not jeopardize your friendships and relationships by ‘hiding’ these feelings and by letting feelings of mistrust and paranoia secretly grow out of control in your heart – you will do far more damage to yourself by keeping it bottled up inside than you will by simply giving your parents and your elders a chance to help you, to explain things and to sort out any confusion.

Step 2: Look up Witnesses on Google, then read and research.

Of course, when the anti-cult crusader says to “read,” and “research,” he really means read and research only anti-cult propaganda. And when he says to “think” and “ponder,” he means think and ponder only on anti-cult propaganda. Try showing him any kind of research that paints even the slightest positive picture of the group in question, or research that contradicts the anti-cult propaganda and shows it to be misleading, and the anti-cult crusader will abandon his “read and research” stance in a heartbeat, and will instead rant and rave and tell you not to waste time with such things. They don’t have to come out and say this directly however, because oftentimes they can just take advantage of the overly slanted nature of Google and the obsession of a few fellow anti-cult crusaders.

What is the best way to hide a needle? Bury it under a pile of straw. What is the best way to hide the pro-JW information? Bury any positive online sites and information under a mountain of repetitious anti-cult propaganda. That is certainly far easier than actually addressing the substance of the pro-JW points with reason and logic.

Even several years ago, the number of anti-Witness websites brought up in a Google search was estimated at over 300,000 (likely several times larger today), while the number of substantial pro-Witness sites was probably less than 50 (to the knowledge of this author). Of course, that 300,000+ number doesn’t indicate a higher quality or a higher volume of unique negative information – really most of it is exactly the same information and exactly the same talking points, but just repeated and parroted on a far grander scale than the pro-JW information. One can easily visualize how such a disparity happens with examples such as this obsessed individual and his very real comments:

WARNING TO THE WATCHTOWER RELIGIOUS RACKET

To the best of my knowledge their is only ONE unique ~ in cyberspace the ~ clan is all over the world we go back to medieval old English.

The point is any search pages shown here and there are TENS OF THOUSANDS are going to be 98% anti-Watchtower cult pages, as this is my (~) primary mission.

These are links made by me in a 5 1/2 year period all pages created individually and loaded up on the net by hand.

~

YAHOO SHOWS 75,000 PAGES

~

GOOGLE SHOWS 31,000 PAGES

Theses results are INCOMPLETE and UNDERRATED as the indexing is slow keeping up with me

I make dozens more everyday and NETWORK with other apostates ( this is the real scary part for you Watchtower) I actually promote other colleague links like ~, ~ and ~, ahead of my own home page ~

Theses pages are on countless different servers and are cached forever as long as the Internet exist as long as civilization continues.

We have IMMORTALITY yes the Watchtower lied when they promised me everlasting life, but I will get it anyway!

Watchtower I will haunt you from beyond the grave!

A beautiful arrangement for the anti-cult crusader isn’t it? He knows that his side already has an information stranglehold on the internet. And when he tells his fading JW ‘victim’ to go and “read” and “research,” he knows that the internet is going to be very first place that they go to. So the anti-cult crusader gets to look like the advocate for the free research and evaluation of all sides, when in reality he is doing the exact opposite.

It is like a local car dealer encouraging a customer to go shop around town and compare prices with and talk to all of the other dealerships; however, the catch is that all of the dealerships in the area are owned by the same person, and all of the prices are over-inflated, so even the best deal in town is still a rip-off overall (and the customer doesn’t realize any of it). The dealer creates the illusion of being objective and selfless, when really he is still only saying and doing things that are to his personal advantage. The customer in turn, never sees the real competition and the real alternatives, because they have all been crowded out of town.

This author is of the opinion that the “read, research and ponder” suggestion would not be nearly as appealing to the anti-cult crusader if the fading JW was handed links to 15 anti-JW sides right alongside links to 15 equally substantial pro-JW or even neutral scholarly research sites (such as the ones this author links to on this blog). This author thinks that the anti-cult crusader would have far, far fewer ‘successful de-conversions’ in such a scenario.

Interesting Closing Quotations

It is always helpful, in the author's opinion, to know the true, deep seated motivations and drives behind the behavior of opposers. They will throw in all kinds of things related to dangerous psychological tricks, historical quirks, actions of individual men, ect., but could all of that really just be a cover and a round-about way to getting to their real goal?

“In general, we consider the conflict between alternative religions and their “anticult” adversaries to be essentially a religious conflict. The “anticult movement” (ACM) can be viewed as a sort of revitalization movement for conventional or modernist instrumental rationality and utilitarian individualism… Conflicts over cults thus entail fundamental value conflicts and are more akin to earlier “religious wars” than to a polarity of objective psychological science exposing induced psychopathology…What the anticult perspective boils down to after such empirical disconfirmation is a pseudo-scientific, all-embracing value perspective or ideology. Shorn of its scientific pretensions, the anticult ideology is a fundamentalistic, arguably totalistic, version of the modernist worldview that targets competing worldviews as in effect tools of the devil.” – Conversion and "Brainwashing" in New Religious Movements by Dick Anthony and Thomas Robbins (preliminary draft; final version published in The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements, edited by James R. Lewis, Oxford University Press, New York 2004)