How exactly can a thinking Jehovah’s Witness, without any real scientific background, make sense of the science that contradicts Witness teachings and a literal understanding of the Bible? How can you know what to believe?

Part of the struggle on the path of a Jehovah’s Witness (JW) becoming a rationalist, is the fact that most JWs have little or no scientific training. Yet most freethinkers and atheists would agree that science is the biggest factor in their rejection of Bibles as supernaturally inspired texts, religious stories as literal truth, and the actual existence of invisible, supernatural gods, angels and demons.

That was true for myself.

I had taken a lot of math in high school - geometry, algebra, probability and statistics - but only limited science courses. So I was faced with the dilemma, as a questioning JW, of how to sort out the conflicting information I was receiving on subjects like evolution, how long humans had been on the Earth, whether or not there was a worldwide flood in Noah’s day, and so on. Understanding what science is and how to use it was a great aid in this journey. Science, I would come to find, was not quite what the Watchtower Society (WTS) leads one to believe it is.

The WTS would have you believe that a lot of science - the part that disagrees with the Bible, for instance - is part of a vast international conspiracy to discredit religion and the Bible. We were always given the impression by the Society’s literature and in parts on the program at JW meetings and assemblies, that scientists went out of their way to suppress evidence against evolution or that supported the Bible stories, mainly because it would make them look bad.

But what becomes obvious when you really begin to investigate is that just the opposite is true. Any scientist who could disprove a previous theory, or expand on it, or develop a new theory that proves to be verifiable, guarantees themselves a certain level of immortality, and certainly fame and other rewards in their own lifetime. A scientist who could provide evidence of the Bible’s literal truthfulness or of God’s existence would be considered one of the greatest people who ever lived. Exactly opposite of what the WTS would want one to believe, there is an incredible incentive for a scientist to find support for the Bible.

Alas, that evidence simply does not exist.

That was one of the first things I began to realize once I gave myself permission to research the questions I had about Witness beliefs and teachings, and about the Bible itself. Science is one of humankind’s greatest achievements, and it should rightly be held in high regard. In a recent essay (www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/science/27essa.html?_r=1&th&emc=th) Dennis Overbye wrote that science is what "people do to look for the truth." It was a joy to hear President Obama say that we needed to "restore science to its rightful place" during his inaugural address (www.whitehouse.gov/blog/inaugural-address/) and the new president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Peter Agre, promised in a recent interview that he would work to "put a human face on science."

Scientists themselves have helped create the problem of science being suspect and misunderstood, as a scientist I interviewed a couple of years ago told me. Scientists are in the field or the lab or the classroom, and very often not doing anywhere near enough to support and champion legitimate science understanding in the public schools or among the population in general. Scientists should be shouting in the public hallways, campaigning for office on the local boards, writing letters to newspapers and magazines and certainly not letting ignorant religious fundamentalists take over state and local boards of education simply to push a creationist agenda (www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/121307dnmetevolution.2af0951.html). In fact, scientists should take a page or two from the intelligent design advocates play book and get involved.

Americans in particular are hugely ignorant of science. Conversations in my office over the last two days have included comments about Nostradamus and the Mayan calendar predicting catastrophe in 2012, suggestions that scientists should be "stopped" from operating the Large Hadron Collider at CERN on the border of France and Switzerland because it was going to suck Earth into a black hole or some similar disaster, and comments about predicted increased solar flare activity in 2012 creating "havoc" or even "destroying the Earth" - phrases that were actually used in Internet headlines. Turns out the increased solar flares will likely affect weather satellites and other wireless transmissions, but will hardly destroy Earth, as the cycle of increased solar flares repeats every decade or so, and has for millennia.

So, what is a non-scientist to do? How do you know what to believe? If you’re a concerned JW and want to start examining some of your questions, where should you start?

Not being a scientist, I found it helpful to approach this using three intellectual tools:

* The first was, where does the preponderance of expert opinion and the evidence lie? I am very unlikely to ever get the scientific education I need to personally examine all of the arguments for and against evolution to prove that to myself. So, what can I do? I can read the popular literature available and I can find out what the majority of experts in the field know that the evidence supports. An excellent science resource is www.talkorigins.org, a great site where evolution and biblical myths are openly debated.

* Secondly, Occam’s Razor (www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor) is a principle I use all the time. Basically, the principle is that everything else being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the best. Anyone who has ever used a troubleshooting guide in a motor manual sees Occam’s Razor in action. I’m restoring a 1966 Honda Dream motorcycle. If it doesn’t start, the troubleshooting procedure proceeds from the simplest and goes on to the more complex. Is the key in the ignition? Is it in the start position? Is the battery charged? Are the plugs getting spark? Is the fuse in the line from the battery to the ignition blown? Are the plugs getting gas from the carburetor? And so on. But you start with the simplest explanation and move out from there.

Occam’s Razor is the main reason I dismiss the vast majority of conspiracy theories. They are invariably far more complex than the reasonable and accepted explanation, and generally have far less or even no evidence to support them. Take the World Trade Center attack for instance. The generally accepted story is that two fully fueled jet airliners were pirated by terrorists who flew them into the WTC, the burning jet fuel and the crash weakened the structures and they collapsed, pancaking floor onto floor. Simple, makes total sense, and we saw it all with our own goddamn eyes!

It’s far easier to logically accept that than to believe that our own government had dozens of people involved in wiring the building top to bottom with explosives, which were set off to make it look like the jets conveniently crashing into the buildings did it. Yet no one saw the explosives being installed or wired, no one involved in doing it has stepped forward, and no one in the highly unpopular Bush administration has written about the conspiracy in their tell-all "this administration sucked" memoirs.

* And finally, I study the principles of critical thinking and frequently review the concepts in logical fallacies. There are any number of websites that discuss these. A few of my favorites, www.logicalfallacies.info/, www.fallacyfiles.org/, www.criticalthinking.net/, are good places to start, and www.austhink.org/critical/ is a good resource for a variety of critical thinking links. WTS literature is a treasure trove of logical fallacies. In fact, WTS "science," as presented in articles and in books like the Did Man Get here by Evolution or by Creation?, are pretty much based on logical fallacies and unethical journalism. Here are a couple of my favorite reviews of the book: www.talkorigins.org/faqs/jw-book.html, by former Witness Corey Carroll, and www.talkorigins.org/faqs/jw-evolution.html, by my friend Alan Feuerbacher, also a former Witness. Alan’s writings, many of which can be found online here, www.corior.blogspot.com, were a great help in my coming to grips with my questions on WTS teachings.

It’s the subject for a future blog, but it’s a breach of the Journalist’s Code of Ethics to quote someone in such a way as to misrepresent what they are actually saying. The WTS does selective quoting all the time, pulling quotes out of context so that they say something that the author never intended, and it was a major factor in my eventual complete rejection of Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Watchtower Society as anything but a manmade false religion, just like all the rest. As a long time professional journalist, I found the WTS’s unethical and dishonest journalistic practices completely unacceptable. They leave a bad taste in my mouth.

How ironic is it for a person to leave the Jehovah’s Witnesses and become an atheist due to moral and ethical issues with the religion?

RFS

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