No, you are not an idiot. The Watchtower Society deliberately held back information that they knew you would need to make a proper decision, and you made what you thought was the right decision based on what they wanted you to know. Then, once you made that decision, they made it impossible for you to leave and take the bad move back. Worse, they insist on "marrying in the Lord" and bringing your parents and relatives into the cancer, which would make it all the harder to leave. And they knew it--but you didn't.
The doctrinal lies were so well protected by other lies that one cannot blame a member for believing them. The Trinity is one of them. They even tampered with the Bible itself, and then initiated fraud to get people to believe their lies with specious logic. And they continually reiterate their lies. Any discussion beyond that little circle is forbidden. It is no wonder you could not see the lies.
Before I looked at my first apostate Web site (and I had been inactive for better than a year), I did not know:
- Christmas is a scripturally approved holiday (Luke 2:10-14)
- Birthdays are also approved. Perfect angels celebrated a birthday (that of Christ), and they did not get in trouble.
- Field circus is not necessary for salvation (Ephesians 2:8,9)
- The witlesses had a major problem with pedophiles in the ranks. Their efforts to hide this rivaled the Catholic Church.
- 1975 was not the first fouled prediction. They did that before in 1874, 1914, 1925, and 1941. Worse, they did encourage people to sell out for 1975. All I heard was that people read too much into 1975,
- The Watchtower Society was a NGO member of the organization that they bashed so much: the UN.
- Rutherford was a drunkard (and the Bible explicitly condemns drunkards). He was also not railroaded on criminal charges--he deserved to rot in prison.
How can anyond find out the real truth as long as one does not use independent sources to research the Bible, the New World Translation, or Watchtower doctrine? You can't, and they know it. Hence, they banned it and cracked down this past September. This assures them that anyone that obeys them will never find out what is really going on. Those who do disobey and use independent research sources will be threatened with getting disfellowshipped for "apostasy". They have a death sentence, plus busting up families, to force them into going along with the Tower.
Now, you might be turned off by the Bible. Aside the Bible, I highly recommend looking through the Internet for sources like Aristotle's philosophy and Ayn Rand. There are a number of good research projects about this (I think you will like it if you ever find the core of Aristotle's philosophy--it's about freedom's being liberating). If you can find books by Eric Savage online, you can read those as you see fit. That will give you a new perspective about being happy and fulfilled versus stagnant and enslaved to let others do your thinking. Then, you might be able to re-read the Bible or portions thereof and draw your own conclusions.
Perhaps a search of the word "Atheism" on Google is in order. There are a ton of sources there that will help you make up your own mind. You can also look up other churches--totally without having to join or commit yourself to believing any one of them. I recommend doing research on several, including the Catholic and several Protestant denominations, as you see fit. But, do not make any commitment either for a church or for atheism until you have done enough research to validate such commitment.
