This was inspired by that thread Marvin did on the "ECTOPLASM".
In something of a confession - I actually gave that hour public talk on this subject. More than once. And it was very popular with the JWs.
I did not believe a word of it - even at the time. Did not believe in the "demons" either - with or without the slime.
It got me to thinking - how much of this did a small back room of your mind reject? Mine worked on me from the time I was dragged into this religion as an 11 or 12 year old kid.
The first and most obvious was the 7,000 year "creative day". Impossible for even a kid, if you were a top of the class science student as I was.
Another one was evolution - even if I still held on to god-belief, it was pretty obvious that selection and development of the species happened.
Another was the whole "paradise earth" scenario - I knew the Sun could not last forever, so the planet earth could not last forever. I knew that many species simply canot exist as vegans, and that this vision was silly. I also did not believe it would come in my lifetime - even before the 1975 fiasco - which I also did not believe.
I did not believe that the human heart was a second brain controlling your sex emotions.
I have to admit that I just sat there and suppressed all this (and more) just to get along with them. Just like a little kid who had figured out years ago that "Santa Claus" was your dad but still went along with the game to get presents. This was long before I actually did the research and learned about the fraud that it all really was - these were just everyday teachings that they had which I had to sub-consciously reject out of logic.
I think a lot of witnesses today are still doing this - pretending to believe the patently unbelievable just to get along and get the group-approval presents.
Anybody else look back on the JW existence with these kind of subliminal doubts and belief rejections?