From: alanf@tekig6.PEN.TEK.COM (Alan M Feuerbacher)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: JW discourage education (was Re: dawkins/_the selfish gene_)
Date: 19 Aug 92 00:24:09 GMT
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton,  OR.

In article <1992Aug18.195929.4206@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU> amorgan@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Crunchy Frog) writes:
>In article <6598@tekig7.PEN.TEK.COM> 
>  alanf@tekig6.PEN.TEK.COM (Alan M Feuerbacher) writes:
>
>Re: The Jehovahs Witlesses think college is a waste because
>
>>4.  Waste of time, given world will soon end.
>
>Just a quick question (I'm bored): How long have these characters
>been around?  They are the "millions now living never will die",
>right?
>
>C Frog

Quick history:  They started in the 1870s, predicting the world would end
in 1914.  When that didn't happen they predicted it might end in 1915,
then 1918, 1920, 1925, and implied, without quite predicting, that it
would end in the 1930s.  They really thought that WWII would be IT.
The last major almost-prediction for the end was 1975.

The "Millions Now Living Will Never Die" theme was started in 1918, and
by 1920 had become the focus of a major advertising campaign.

When the 1914 predictions fell through they quickly came up with a whole
new set of doctrines based on the idea that some of the things they had
predicted really did happen, only it was invisible.

See _Apocalypse Delayed: The Story of Jehovah's Witnesses_, by M. James
Penton, University of Toronto Press, 1985, for a reasonably unbiased
history.

Carl Sagan made an interesting comment on the 1914 doctrinal
transformations in _Broca's Brain,_ pages 332-333:

"Doctrines that make no predictions are less compelling than those which make
correct predictions; they are in turn more successful than doctrines that make
false predictions.

"But not always.  One prominent American religion confidently predicted
that the world would end in 1914.  Well, 1914 has come and gone, and - while
the events of that year were certainly of some importance - the world does
not, at least so far as I can see, seem to have ended.  There are at least
three responses that an organized religion can make in the face of such a
failed and fundamental prophecy.  They could have said, 'Oh, did we
say `1914'?  So sorry, we meant `2014.' A slight error in calculation.
Hope you weren't inconvenienced in any way.' But they did not.
They could have said, 'Well, the world *would* have ended, except we
prayed very hard and interceded with God so He spared the Earth.'
But they did not.  Instead, they did something much more ingenious.
They announced that the world *had* in fact ended in 1914, and if the rest
of us hadn't noticed, that was our lookout.  It is astonishing in the face
of such transparent evasions that this religion has any adherents at all.
But religions are tough.  Either they make no contentions which are subject
to disproof or they quickly redesign doctrine after disproof.  The fact
that religions can be so shamelessly dishonest, so contemptuous of
the intelligence of their adherents, and still flourish does not speak very
well for the tough-mindedness of the believers.  But it does indicate, if
a demonstration were needed, that near the core of the religious
experience is something remarkably resistant to rational inquiry."

Alan Feuerbacher
Tektronix, Inc.