I am a thinker...but in the land of Jehovah's Witnesses, thinking is defined as "Here my poor child who cannot think for yourself because you are not in the spiritual paradise, let us teach you how to think by letting a group of men in suits that work for a business corporation think for you. There now, you're thinking for yourself...wasn't that easy?"
I'm amazed that someone doesn't realize we were actually part of this, in my case, for 34 years so we know how it works. Really, I know exactly what Witnesses believe and why they believe it and why some of them love it and why I don't. I didn't just wake up one morning and find the secret JW decoder ring in my box of Wheaties and go, "OMG, this explains everything! It's all a lie, it's right here in the ring!"
It took a good many years of slow realization that what I was being taught by Witnesses and what I was experiencing in life and what I knew was logical and reasonable and what I read elsewhere did not mesh in my brain.
Being here and talking to ex or faded Witnesses here isn't like talking to those people you meet in field service who don't know inside and out exactly what Witnesses do and believe...we've all been there and done that.
You know, I used to go to "apostate" sites like this and think, "Oh, if I could just reason with those poor misled people, they'd come back in no time!" I was that arrogant, the WTS taught me to be.
It took me a long time to find out just how little I really knew. I didn't know half as much as I thought I did. I didn't know SPIT.