Expert: Andrew - 3/30/2007

Question
QUESTION: One major Bible scripture that describes who you are says that"God has hidden the truth from the wise and itellectual ones"This is the class you are in and because of this the god of this system of things has blinded your mind from the truth,but God allows you to go on believing the lie.Does any of this sound familiar to you?I think it is a disgrace for you to had been selected to Bethel when there were so many others more solid in their faith and their integrity to Jehovah than you ended up as not having.You speak of lies
supported by what,rumors and innuendos or heard it through the grapevine?You want to let me in on these so called lies
as you say they were that caused you to lose your faith?Are you sure they were lies and not something else?I will tell you that there were no lies when the organization had it's beginning or up through the ages either.It was people like you who started questioning the theocratic arrangement and had your doubts and constituted them as being liars to you.
You want to tell me that the Governing Body made up of the anointed along with the faithful slave there is corrupted
and all that is put in place at Bethel is corrupt as well?
Give me a break!I guess you never heard of a refining or a sifting out process?You are not the only one who left there and became an apostate.Others have even written books about the lies and deceptions with all that corruption going on there.You know most of everyone who comes into the truth usually does an extensive background check when changing religions,as many have done before becoming a JW.Many have
become a true believer because they know it is the truth without checking anything out.All of what you are trying to do is to no avail as we are ever so much bigger and stronger
than when you were there.We have almost seven million door-to-door witnesses today and growing.The handful you might be able to sway into believing you is but a mere drop in the bucket and will be all in vain in the end.By the way your prayer was not in harmony with him in asking him to show you another way and he did.Do you know how ludicrous that is.That is the number one rule not to do because that is the very moment that Satan sneaks in there with his voice
the same way he was able to tempt Eve.All he needs is a morsel of doubt and he has already won,then he will had lured you,hooked you,then landed you and then your soul belongs to him with no looking back.
ANSWER: There are several mental gymnastics demonstrated in this message from John, under the influence of cult mind control as practiced by the Jehovah's Witnesses. I will attempt to detail these behaviors for any interested readers...

One of mental gymnastics Witnesses use is a leap of logic in  application/interpretation of scripture. That is, they identify a situation in their immediate experience, and interpret a scripture as applying to that situation based on personal judgement, then present such application/interpretation as though it carried the weight of the scriptures themselves; as if forgetting that it was a private individual who made the application/interpretation. For example, "the Bible describes who you are." Obviously, having been written 2000 years ago or more, the Bible obviously does not mention me or anything about "who I am", so this is obviously an application/interpretation, yet John evades ownership of the application/interpretation in order to make the argument appear to have greater weight than it does.

Some of the lies endorsed by the Witness leaders which I mentioned previously are documented in the book "Crisis of Conscience" by Raymond Franz, a former member of the governing body of Jehovah's Witnesses. However, another mental gymnastic which I can easily anticipate at this juncture, should a debate continue with this person, involves evaluating veracity by source rather than content.

That is, Witnesses follow the ethic that one does not need to consider the weight of an argument or the cohesiveness of a line of logic or the overall pattern of available evidence in order to determine veracity, but rather one only needs to consider the source. If a source is considered approved, then whatever comes from that source will be considered true regardless of how outrageous. If a source is considered disapproved then whatever comes from that source will be considered false regardless of how cogent. This convenient ethic among Witnesses makes them keenly interested in hearing first where an idea comes from, and later, if at all, the idea itself. This conveniently relieves them of responsibility for determining veracity, and makes them vulnerable to embracing errors from those who they identify as approved sources, and makes it easy for them to dismiss substantial evidence that comes from sources they identify as disapproved.

Another mental trick the Witnesses use is to reframe origins based on outcomes. For example, this bit about a "sifting out process" is meant to imply that I am a disapproved enemy of God, somehow removed from the Witnesses by God against my wishes because God supposedly knew early on, even during my years of faithful service, that there was a seed of evil within me. So as the logic goes, it was inevitable that I would end up cast down from an approved standing with God because I was supposedly defective from the beginning, as now determined retrospectively. This is fallacious reasoning because it reverses the time sequence of cause and effect. It is also incompatible with the spiritual doctrine of free will. And above all, it is meant as a form of pressure to coerce me to capitulate through shame. The supposed shame is that I am inescapably disapproved in God's eyes because I chose to leave the Witnesses. This is a logical non-sequitur because the organization does not represent God, therefore being outside it does not represent seperation from God.

One of the universal vulnerabilities of new recruits, persons becoming Witnesses, is that they have absolutely no training or understanding of the nature of cult mind control. Although the Witnesses will claim vigorously they are not a cult, and point to superficial evidence that seems to support their claim; they are completely unaware of what cults are, that is, what tactics cults actually use to control their members. (There are only a handful of core tactics employed by all cult organizations, so they are not hard to learn.) The Witness leadership does not educate the members on what the tactics are so as to "disprove" that Witnesses actually are a cult because if the Witnesses were to learn what the tactics are, as employed by all cult organizations, they would see too many parallels to their own experience, and the Witness leadership recognizes this danger and therefore does not endorse such education for Witnesses.

Not knowing what to watch out for, even the most sophisticated persons are vulnerable to the tactics of cult mind control as practiced by all cults including the Witnesses. Therefore, claims to have "done one's homework" and researched the issues on becoming a Witness are insubstantial, because those persons "doing the homework" missed the most important homework of all: understanding how they can come under the control of another and gradually give up their autonomy gradually in a way that, had it happened more rapidly or been disclosed in advance, they would have resisted vigorously.

Another mind game illustrated in this message is the rough scriptural citation "God has hidden the truth from the wise and itellectual ones". This is meant to imply that, although the argument against the Witnesses may be well researched and appear sound or educated, the truth cannot be known in this way. Witnesses do not ask themselves by what superior method the truth can be known. Again this becomes an excuse to dismiss substantial arguments which do noa)port their preconceptions.

I hope this has been a helpful illustration of the mind games that are employed, intentionally or unwittingly, by persons influenced by cult mind control. The more we are aware of the mind games, the more we can consciously avoid them.

Best wishes,
Andrew

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: What is this so called mind control device JW use?I don't get it.So you want me to believe that nearly seven million
door-to-door preachers are under some kind of hypnotic trance or mind control as you put it?We are all free moral agents to make up our own minds,but when we have a Bible trained consience it makes a world of difference when it comes to right and wrong.If you had any kind of Bible trained conscience you would have seen it all coming and been able to deal with it in a rational way.So actually your saying that we are all mind controlled somehow,but with what premise?Well our whole mind control theme is based on the number one quality of God himself,love.I know if I wanted to be controlled by some device I am glad it is love.Since you have turned your backon us that means you support the world and have become an enemy of God.This means
if you were ordered to go kill your fellowman because of a war,you would go do it with no grounds of a conscientious objector to get you out of it.To think you would even give
a response to what was written in a book by a former JW who became an apostate is beyond me.The Bible mentions how former brothers would do things like that to make their name known.Just like you they develop their own ideas on how things should be done instead of allowing the theocratic
arrangement by God do it's job.You would make a good hypnotist ans pyschiatrist too.You are the one who is using mind control not us.It sounds like you have a degree in those fields and probably making out quite well by it.All the books and former brothers and sisters who left our organization are the real liars here that they put out there for the public to view.There is no factual truth to any of what you are saying or from those apostate books and all this garbage on internet sites.Believe you me the truth will come out in the end and if you honestly think that your name is written in the scroll or book of life instead of a anointed brother,then you are sadly mistaken.

Answer
Robert J. Lifton
Thought Reform & the Psychology of Totalism
http://www.freeminds.org/psych/lifton2.htm

Steven Hassan
Releasing the Bonds
http://www.freedomofmind.com/stevehassan/biography/

Leon Festinger
When Prophecy Fails
http://www.jwfacts.com/index_files/cogdiss.htm

John D. Goldhammer
Under the Influence: The Destructive Effects of Group Dynamics
http://www.goldhammer.com/publications.htm

Margaret Singer
Cults in Our Midst: The Continuing Fight Against Their Hidden Menace
http://www.csj.org/infoserv_profile/singer_margaret.htm

Janja Lalich
Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults
http://www.csj.org/infoserv_profile/lalich_janja.htm

Madeline Landau Tobias
Captive Hearts, Captive Minds: Freedom and Recovery from Cults and Abusive Relationships
http://www.skepticfiles.org/fw/counseli.htm