The Jehovah's Cometh Back

In the past I've had some visits from the Jehovah's Witnesses. I blogged the last visit back in April, titled An Interesting talk with the Jehovah's Witnesses. To cut that longer story short, I gave them a rather strong but friendly introduction to why their beliefs are nonsense and the two very pleasant ladies promised to send reinforcements. Reinforcements just arrived! Yippee!

Now, even more than I enjoy blogging about religious insanity I enjoy exploring it face to face with the insane. I see it as a great opportunity to try and broaden their horizons and a it's also a great opportunity for me. I learn a lot about how religious people think or avoid thinking. It also motivates me to improve my memory and make my arguments more precise.

A few minutes ago a lone Jehovah's Witness came to my door. He told me that he's come to follow up from the conversation the other two women had started. I wanted to talk with him, but Saturday morning is not the best of times to interrupt the sort of atheist that does all the things that atheists feel absolutely morally free to do on a Friday night. He's going to be a little uncomfortable anyway so it seemed cruel to invite him in before cleaning up the wreckage that I and my godless friends had caused the night before. The half naked woman asleep on my sofa, the marijuana on the table and the quantity of empty bottles strewn around might have put him off. Being half naked myself and probably wreaking of the last three bars/clubs I had finally exited 5 hours earlier already seemed to be a little unsettling for him. He's going to come back another time during the week.

Now, last time I wrote about the Jehovah's I had some pretty good feedback. There are a lot of people who don't like the Jehovah's, often through direct experience, having lost their families to this particular cult. Once again the offer is on the table to everyone in internet land to send me the questions you'd like me to ask. I'm going to keep notes and I promise to post a full report here.

Happy Saturday everyone - peace =) Maybe I'll write some more when I've woken up.

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An interesting talk with the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

I’ve just had two very pleasant visitors from the Jehovah’s witnesses. They wanted to talk to me about Jesus.

“Ok, no problem, let’s have a chat”, I said.

We started with a discussion of whether the bible is literally true or not. They were certain that it is and so I pointed out in their bibles the blatant contradiction between the two different versions of the creation myth in Genesis. Their only answer to this, despite me reading the relevant parts aloud to them, was to deny it, but I could see on their faces that they weren’t convinced by their own argument – or lack of one really.

We then took a brief stroll through the history of the bible, focusing mostly on exactly how inerrant a book would be that was edited and transcribed numerous times starting off from a most ancient Hebrew work that completely lacked vowels, spaces, punctuation of any kind, capitalisation of first letters to demark sentences and the first book of which was entirely based on oral tradition and some pictorial etchings in leather. None of these facts are disputed by any of the Christian sects as far as I am aware so we were on pretty solid ground.

“But when you read it you know it is true. But some of it is allegorical” they said.

“OK, so you’re admitting that you do not believe in the literal bible?” I asked. You see Jehovah’s Witnesses do indeed believe in the literal bible. “And even if some of it is allegorical how do you know which parts? What makes you so sure the creation is true, pick which ever version you like, and not just allegorical?”

Some smiles and worried looking eyes but other than that silence. Let’s move on.

“What about the numerous failed predictions for the return of Christ since the founding of your organisation in the 1870’s? Are you at least able to consider being less certain about all of this?”

“There have been no failed predictions of the return of Christ”, they said.

“Yes there have, at least seven. The last one of which was the predicted visible return of Christ in 1975 and when that didn’t happen the prediction was changed to an invisible return of Christ. Membership dropped considerably directly after that last failed prediction”

“Oh but we have lots of members, millions of them” they said.

“That’s right, approximately 6.5 million door to door preachers and around 16 million in total. So doesn’t it bother you that only 144,000 of you get to be saved and live forever?”

“That’s right, only 144,000 and they will be part of the 1000 year reign”, they agreed

“That’s less than 1% of your current membership”, I said, “and 1000 years doesn’t seem like very long.”

From that we moved on through God’s various massacres – they denied all of them. And I moved on to massacres commanded by God, starting with Joshua’s massacre at Jericho and skimming over the 170 year murderous bloodbath that ended with David’s conquest of Jerusalem at the cost of the complete destruction of some 400 cities and the murder of pretty much everyone living in them.

They told me, “That wasn’t God. That was the devil.”

“But you told me that the bible is literally true and it says very clearly in the bible that it was God’s command”, I answered.

Now, this wasn’t an argument. We were being nice to each other. I wasn’t aggressive and the tone was genuinely friendly. As we moved on to the flood and the fact that a number of civilizations failed to notice their complete destruction and left records to prove it, the absolute lunacy of supposing that two of every animal on Earth could fit inside the ark along with food for a years voyage, or for that matter enter two by two through a single door (I believe for the number of known species that would require about 30 species per second to have achieved it in the stated seven days) it became obvious that I was making sense. This was reinforced to me by the fact that one of the two ladies was nodding in agreement with practically everything I said and the fact that the smile of the other one was becoming increasingly more desperate and she was edging towards the elevator door.

We continued our chat with a brief discussion of the age of the Earth, the dubious history of the Watch Tower organization, the logically fallacious idea of an all good and all powerful God, the fact that there is a great deal more to learn than only what is in their bible and that context is important, as is evidence, and I finally allowed them their get out of jail free card by letting them get away with suggesting that maybe I wasn’t fully understanding them because Spanish is not my first language.

We agreed that they would send someone to talk with me in English. For some reason they seemed quite keen to stress that it would be a girl and I said I’d be only too willing to welcome her or any of their colleagues again for a chat if they’d agree to at least have a think about things we’d discussed and reread Genesis looking for the contradictions I’d already pointed out.

I wished them a good day, they wished me one and I very much doubt I’ll ever see the same two ladies again (I did invite them to come round for a few hours on Sunday to learn about evolution as they seemed a little confused). But I shall look forward to meeting their reinforcements. Let’s see if I can’t get another deconversion or two under my belt.

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The Jehovah’s Witnesses have invited me to a meeting

Somehow I’m on the radar of the local Jehovah’s Witnesses. They nabbed me outside of my house by saying (in Spanish) “You’re English right?” which I found quite interesting since I hadn’t said a single word.

I know the local Nuns now understand to keep clear after two rather unfortunate incidents when they came to visit me to discuss helping the poor and I suggested that they may find all that money they spend encouraging Africans to die from HIV might be useful to their cause. But somehow the Jehovah’s Witnesses know where I live, that I am English, and that I’m not very impressed with religion and now they want to “save” me.

They’ve invited me to come to a talk they are giving on Monday, which they describe as the anniversary of Christ’s death. It’s actually the most important day of their year and will be used to begin the brainwashing process of various fops that will also attend their cult’s event. I’ve agreed to attend on the proviso that I can ask questions. They have very foolishly agreed.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are an interesting lot. For starters they’ve firmly predicted the return of Christ and the end of the world seven times in their short history (they began as the Bible Students in 1870) and they’ve watched each and every one of these dates pass. Ripe fruit for the picking, I must say. How can they claim such certainty when their track record is 100% failure?

They also firmly believe that Heaven will be on Earth and that God will be in charge with Jesus as second in a government over the Earth. Their religion is really a political doctrine, waiting for the return of the great dictator to whom they will obligingly subjugate their every thought and right. Another ripe fruit. I wonder how clear they make it in their preliminary talks that they are anti-democratic. But it gets even better than that.

They absolutely believe that 144,000 people of all those that have ever lived will be in heaven and everyone else will just be dead. They have no belief in hell or an after life for those outside of the select group. There are currently around 6.5 million actively preaching Jehovah’s Witnesses on Earth and it is estimated that there are around 16 million in total. So what exactly is the hook to get people to join up? Well, absolutely fucking nothing if you can handle a little simple mathematics, since even if you are one of the really active, gung-ho, motivated, shout it from the hill tops, piss people off by interrupting their hangovers by knocking on their doors in the morning, Gawd-fearin’, word spreading, numbskull believers then you still only have a 2.2% chance of getting into Heaven if you are willing to ignore all the non-preaching members and all the ones that have already died. And of course, everyone before this nonsense started in 1870 is just fucked anyway. Hahaha, you’ve really got to laugh.

So I think I might take them up on their offer and head over for a chat on Monday night. I might mention the topics above or I might have chat about the morality of withholding blood transfusions from children and the fact that the incidence of death during labour within their group is 100 times as high as that from people that don’t have a hard time accepting some life giving blood. If I do I’m sure they’ll get rid of me pretty quickly since they immediately shun anyone from within their own ranks that raises any issue of doubt.

If I go I’ll record the lot and transcribe it here. Feel free to add any tips or useful arguments you might think make good ammunition between now and then.

If I go then I’ll have succeeded in making the danger list of the local Catholics, the Muslims and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. That only leaves the local Hindus but I’ve already met them (there are only about 5 of them anyway) and they don’t mind at all that I completely disagree with their religion and we get on pretty well.

UPDATE: 2007-04-02 10:28
Due to an absolute failure to sleep last night and the fact that I'm almost certainly going to have a really shitty Monday at work, I suspect that I will neither have the energy or the patience to attend the Jehovah's Witness meeting tonight. We'll see, but it's really not going to be productive if I turn up tired and pissed off as then I'll play right into their hands by appearing to be the angry, evil atheist as opposed to the pleasant, good natured, atheist. There'll be plenty of other chances.

The lack of sleep was due to an unusually severe bout of unhappiness. I usually don't suffer from it having become quite comfortable with meaninglessness. Recently however I've been realising how at most times in my life I've at least had some chance to still meet and talk with people that at least are aware of some of the things I'd like to talk about even if they don't agree with my opinions. For two years now I've not met anyone that doesn't seem utterly uninterested in their own existence and I think the angst was just another bout of feeling irretrievably isolated. Just another reason to move somewhere with more options and also time to dust off the CV and change jobs.

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