# Has anyone met an educated Jehovah's Witness? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 25, 2014, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-met-an-educated-jehovahs-witness/686991 "2014-04-25T21:06:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![vontsira](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/51bf81/32.png) [@vontsira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vontsira)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2014, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-met-an-educated-jehovahs-witness/686991/21 "2014-04-26T16:32:36Z")
> [@Claverhouse](#): > > The famous Philip Gosse, hero of _Father and Son_, was a member of the notorious obscurantist Plymouth Brethren, a sect so strict and weird it is amazing it didn’t expand into the 19th century American crazy. He also believed: > > - Thus, Gosse argued that the fossil record—even coprolites—might also be evidence of life that had never actually existed but which may have been instantly formed by God at the moment of creation.\* > > _The general response was “as the Westminster Review put it, that Gosse’s theory was ‘too monstrous for belief.’” Even his friend, the novelist Charles Kingsley, wrote that he had read “no other book which so staggered and puzzled” him, that he could not believe that God had “written on the rocks one enormous and superfluous lie for all mankind.”_ (Off-at-tangent bit, as I tend to) – Kingsley, an Anglican clergyman and among many other things, author of _The Water Babies_, was by the standards of his time, liberal on most issues; but, for sure, he didn’t like the Catholic Church. I hold no brief for Mr. Bergoglio’s outfit – but even I had to abandon Kingsley’s 16th-century-set novel _Westward Ho!_, not very far into it, because of the incessant virulent anti-Catholic bigotry. > [@](#): > > **[Wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Henry_Gosse)** > Even then, this was considered nutcase in religious Britain. However, earlier: > \*In 1856 Gosse was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, which, because he had no university position or inherited wealth, gave him “a standing he otherwise lacked.” \* > > _In fact, during the next three years Gosse published more than thirty scientific papers and four books._ > > _Gosse’s study specialized in birds, and Gosse has been called “the father of Jamaican ornithology.” With no racial prejudice, he easily hired black youths as his assistants, and his Jamaican books are full of praise for one of them, Samuel Campbell. For Christian companionship he enjoyed the company of Moravian missionaries and their black converts and preached regularly to the Moravian congregation._ > He was the father of indoor aquaria, studied sea-life, snakes, Assyria and birds among other things, and must have been an all-round scientist. Few of us will ever do so much. > > So long as I wouldn’t have to live alongside him, or any other religious, he was an admirable scientist. His beliefs did not preclude inquisitive intelligence Never underestimate human beings’ capacity for cognitive dissonance – harbouring (sincerely) mutually contradictory notions / attitudes. For sure, George Orwell did not invent the concept of “doublethink”. ---
**Author:** ![JWT\_Kottekoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ec8ea/32.png) [@JWT\_Kottekoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JWT_Kottekoe)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2014, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-met-an-educated-jehovahs-witness/686991/22 "2014-04-26T16:33:48Z")
> [@FriarTed](#): > > Are you sure? I thought Witnesses believed that the Six Creation Days were 7000 years each, and that we are roughly 6000 years since Adam into the Seventh Day, so that the Universe is at least 48,000 years old. No, I am not sure about the 6,000 year part. That was a misconception on my part. What I know is that he accepted the JW mythology, while at the same time accepting modern cosmology, evolution, etc, as a puzzle created by god. He explained this to me one day when I asked him about what I thought was a complete disconnect. ---
**Author:** ![butterfiles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b3f665/32.png) [@butterfiles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/butterfiles)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2014, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-met-an-educated-jehovahs-witness/686991/23 "2014-04-26T16:35:30Z")
> [@Vaevictis](#): > > Yeah see that is not the terminal degree… you get the MA in that field if you just don’t have what it takes for the doctorate. Not necessarily. ---
**Author:** ![butterfiles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b3f665/32.png) [@butterfiles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/butterfiles)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2014, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-met-an-educated-jehovahs-witness/686991/24 "2014-04-26T16:52:53Z")
> [@Erdosain](#): > > Isn’t the lack of highly educated Jehovah’s Witnesses simply a result of the Witness’s past discouragement of higher education? I know that they’ve since softened their stance, but for a long time going to college was seen as a waste of time and energy (that could be better spent on JW activities). It shouldn’t come as any surprise that the cultural views influenced the behavior of the members. > > Mormons put a relatively high cultural importance on obtaining higher education, so it wouldn’t surprise me if American Mormons had a higher than average post-secondary education. It also doesn’t hurt they have a massive Mormon university system moving enormous numbers through all levels of education in a church-friendly manner. > > It has everything to do with culture and nothing to do with the relative absurdity of the faiths. This was the impression I’ve had of both groups with moderate anecdotal evidence. But I find it interesting how many people here have had contact with more educated witnesses. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-met-an-educated-jehovahs-witness/686991/25 "2014-04-28T23:00:20Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > _Especially_ engineering in fact; I’ve read in the past that of the highly educated disciplines, engineering apparently has the most religious people and the most religious extremists (including religious terrorists). Engineers also tend to be more politically conservative. > > As for why, no one is sure. My favorite hypothesis is that since engineering by nature focused on the practical questions of how to build and do things, it’s attractive to people who are highly intelligent and educated but who want to avoid subjects that will question their religious or political dogma. A creationist for example can go into engineering and for his whole career easily completely avoid any tasks that will undercut his creationism, while that’s far more difficult for, say, a doctor or biologist. I’ve heard that a lot of woo proponents/pseudoscientists are engineers by background and that it may come from having a grounding in a lot of scientific knowledge but not having the rigor and skepticism that one would get in a research science program. In other words, you know enough to know that there are tools that say that there’s more out there, but you can’t use them effectively. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-met-an-educated-jehovahs-witness/686991/26 "2014-04-28T23:02:35Z")
> [@Vaevictis](#): > > Yeah see that is not the terminal degree… you get the MA in that field if you just don’t have what it takes for the doctorate. In Soviet universities at one time, if you failed your thesis defense they would take you out back and give you a MK degree - Magister Kalashnikova. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-met-an-educated-jehovahs-witness/686991/27 "2014-04-28T23:14:42Z")
I have not met a JW who was particularly worldly or sophisticated, but I have known some through school. To be fair though, there many (if not most) mainstream Christians who don’t know much about the history of their faith, including highly educated ones. Believers don’t usually seek out texts that are critical of their faith. And good historical texts to be critical. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-met-an-educated-jehovahs-witness/686991/28 "2014-04-29T00:26:57Z")
As usual, it depends. Many Jehovah’s Witnesses reject education as “worldly.” As a university instructor, I’ve had a few JW students that I know about. When it came to my attention, it was always because they had a religious objection to something we were studying and wanted an alternative assignment. My JW grandparents were very pro-education, but in a limited way (only half of their children finished high school). Their view was that you could and should learn to read and write, but that you could educate yourself. This conveniently allowed them to avoid challenges to the religion. My current JW relatives certainly view my university education as a strong negative, and my ex-witness cousin was actively prevented from seeking a university degree when he was a teen in the late 1990s. Edit: JWs really are a special case when it comes to their anti-intellectualism. With most other sects it’s a cultural phenomenon that doesn’t extend to rejecting the entire system. JWs are quite separatist and view themselves as different from the rest of society, and society’s institutions (universities, courts, etc.) as irrelevant to them. Double edit: I’m trying to be fair, here, but I have a strong anti-JW bias so do filter my post(s) accordingly. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-met-an-educated-jehovahs-witness/686991/29 "2014-04-29T01:10:07Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > … > > My JW grandparents were very pro-education, but in a limited way (only half of their children finished high school). Their view was that you could and should learn to read and write, but that you could educate yourself… > Edit: JWs really are a special case when it comes to their anti-intellectualism. With most other sects it’s a cultural phenomenon that doesn’t extend to rejecting the entire system. JWs are quite separatist and view themselves as different from the rest of society, and society’s institutions (universities, courts, etc.) as irrelevant to them… The Amish are very much like this. They run their own schools and reading and writing are absolutely required. They want kids to be self-sufficient, able to make a living and able to read the Bible. They are really good at language education - it’s typical for them to grow up speaking fluent English _and_ German. What they don’t care for is heaps of scientific knowhow and education for the sake of being cultured. They are renowned for being not only some of the best farmers on the US east coast, but some of the best farmers in the world, but they don’t know jack about calculus or general relativity and don’t know who Beowulf was. Nor do they really care, for the most part. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-met-an-educated-jehovahs-witness/686991/30 "2014-04-29T01:16:07Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > I’ve heard that a lot of woo proponents/pseudoscientists are engineers by background and that it may come from having a grounding in a lot of scientific knowledge but not having the rigor and skepticism that one would get in a research science program. In other words, you know enough to know that there are tools that say that there’s more out there, but you can’t use them effectively. For example, your typical random person looks at the Great Pyramid of Giza, thinks, “wow, neato”, reads a bit about it, its structure, and its accepted historical explanation, then goes off and finds something else to do. An engineer learns about the Great Pyramid and starts to study it from an engineering perspective. He tries to think about details about how it was built and how he would build it if he had to, and realizes that there are some complex questions still to be solved. Since he can’t figure out a construction plan, he figures that humans couldn’t have done it and maybe it was space aliens. Maybe those space aliens with the green heads and ray guns, yeah. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-met-an-educated-jehovahs-witness/686991/31 "2014-04-29T14:03:06Z")
Michael Jackson and his family were Jehovah’s Witnesses. I can’t speak to their level of education, but obviously he and his siblings were enormously successful in the wider world. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-met-an-educated-jehovahs-witness/686991/32 "2014-04-29T14:06:31Z")
I can’t say I ever met him properly, but one time that our house was visited by JW’s it turned out that one of them was a former classmate (business school) and coworker of my father’s. Dad invited them in and his pal and him had the grandest time debating theology, medical practices and the virtues of different Biblical translations while the other guy sat on the edge of the sofa and looked terribly constipated. ETA: the guy was a convert, his college years were pre-conversion. I understand he’d always been particularly “hot” about religious discussion and willing to use bulldog tactics of debate (grab an argument tightly and keep repeating it). ---
**Author:** ![OneCentStamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/13edae/32.png) [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-met-an-educated-jehovahs-witness/686991/33 "2014-04-29T14:07:35Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > Okay, I’m curious as to why you say JWs, 7DA (I’ve never seen it abbreviated that way before, by the way), Mormon, and SBC are “narrow” and “not being likely to explore the larger world”. Maybe you and I have different definitions of those terms. Could you explain what _you_ mean? I can guess “narrow” as applied to the JWs would apply to their stance on transfusions. The other faiths you mention don’t have that stance. Having grown up Mormon, I’d distance them a bit from the other sects mentioned here. Mormons in general tend to be educated people. I’m sure they skew above the general population for completion of every level of education: high school, college, graduate school, PhD/MD/etc. They also tend to be successful people in real-world occupations. Plenty of very successful Mormon businessmen out there. Mormons are neither insular nor anti-science. ---
**Author:** ![OneCentStamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/13edae/32.png) [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-met-an-educated-jehovahs-witness/686991/34 "2014-04-29T14:11:01Z")
Don’t we have a JW here on the boards, by the way? Is **Raindog** still around/still JW? ---
**Author:** ![OneCentStamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/13edae/32.png) [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-met-an-educated-jehovahs-witness/686991/35 "2014-04-29T14:28:01Z")
> [@nevadaexile](#): > > My aunt has a Masters in Philosophy and can speak four languages fluently. She has been a JW for the last 40 years. She can rationally discuss everything EXCEPT her faith. Ah, a compartmentalizer. I was one for many years. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-met-an-educated-jehovahs-witness/686991/36 "2014-04-29T20:59:13Z")
They don’t know enough not to ring my doorbell. I once spoke to one who told me that “Two years ago, I was an ardent evolutionist.” I asked him whether he rang doorbells and preached evolution. He didn’t answer. My MIL once told one at her doorstep that they had been trying to get her for 2000 years and hadn’t succeeded. They actually apologized for bothering her. I guess they are really trying to convert Christians. ---
**Author:** ![OneCentStamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/13edae/32.png) [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-met-an-educated-jehovahs-witness/686991/37 "2014-04-29T21:01:20Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > They don’t know enough not to ring my doorbell. > > I once spoke to one who told me that “Two years ago, I was an ardent evolutionist.” I asked him whether he rang doorbells and preached evolution. He didn’t answer. My MIL once told one at her doorstep that they had been trying to get her for 2000 years and hadn’t succeeded. They actually apologized for bothering her. I guess they are really trying to convert Christians. My wife is Jewish. Pointing out the mezuzah on our doorframe usually gets Jehovah’s Witnesses either to leave, or to quickly shift gears, share a scripture from the Old Testament, then leave. And thus I am a flint-hearted atheist who nonetheless reaps the benefits of religion when it suits him. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![raspberry\_hunter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@raspberry\_hunter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raspberry_hunter)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-met-an-educated-jehovahs-witness/686991/38 "2014-04-30T17:25:43Z")
I’ve only ever met one JW, and she was a student at Cambridge University. So, yeah, she was pretty educated. She was devout (like, she would go every week or two to hand out flyers / knock on doors) but sort of cheerfully acknowledged that many people found a lot of her religion to be somewhat absurd. I can’t remember what her take was on transfusions; I think she might have said she would do it if it were a life-or-death thing. And yeah, echoing what everyone else has said about Mormons being culturally (and, heck, for that matter, doctrinally) very into higher education, although in my anecdotal experience they tend to skew towards the more “practical” disciplines – business, law, medicine. Though Mormons are hardly anti-science – for example, we tend to hear a lot about Henry Eyring the chemist, the father of Henry B. Eyring who is basically the second-in-command of the LDS church right now. Many of the Mormons I went to college with did go into scientific fields, and one of them is now a professor at MIT. ---
**Author:** ![Sister\_Vigilante](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de0a6/32.png) [@Sister\_Vigilante](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sister_Vigilante)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-met-an-educated-jehovahs-witness/686991/39 "2014-04-30T19:34:52Z")
If you tell them to take you off their list, they are supposed to - they have assigned maps. Don’t just say you’re not interested; specifically tell them not to come back. They keep a list, seriously. And yes, they’ve changed their minds about a lot of things over the years. They used to celebrate Christmas. They began as an end of the world cult but when the end never came, despite several predictions, they quietly stopped talking about it. When kids come of age, they are encouraged to research the information for themselves, then kindly handed a list of research materials specifically chosen by the elders for this purpose. I’m married to an ex-JW and his family still talks to him despite not being allowed to. We met Raymond Franz once (he was a very high up member until getting disfellowshipped). He helped my husband a great deal. Should have been there the day Mormons came a-knocking at our door… ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2014, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-met-an-educated-jehovahs-witness/686991/40 "2014-05-01T11:27:50Z")
> [@OneCentStamp](#): > > Don’t we have a JW here on the boards, by the way? Is **Raindog** still around/still JW? I think Raindog decided to either leave or go on lurk status. I really liked him &, tho I’m a traditional Trinitarian, we had more in common against the general trends here. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-met-an-educated-jehovahs-witness/686991.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-met-an-educated-jehovahs-witness/686991.md?page=3)