This is a wonderful thread and I want to thank Giordano for starting it. Like so many other posters, it was being a voracious reader that played a big part in my escape. But there were other factors that were just as important. I am a free-thinker with a deep love for geography, history, mathematics, and science. I am not, however, an evolutionist, at least not in macroevolution. However, I believe that microevolution has indeed occurred. Moreover, I don't buy the young earth nonsense that so many creationists embrace.
It was an elder whom I highly respected who got me to question WTS doctrine and orthodoxy. He introduced me to scholar-writers like des Prez, Milton Terry, John Stuart Russell, et al, whose thinking was far deeper than anything I had read in WTS publications. Their writings convinced me that WTS chronology and Bible understanding were hopelessly incorrect and woefully inadequate on many issues. So when my judicial committee told me that the only way I could be reinstated was to accept the WTS as God's exclusive channel of communication for humanity, that ended any effort to return.
But just as vital as any of the foregoing is another fact. I am a gay man; and there is no place for me in the organization. Being taught to hate myself, to view myself with loathing and disgust, is something I have decided I want no part of. The WTS advances these kinds of teachings. I have seen the destructive effects they have had on other gay Witnesses. We were unloved, and our contributions were not wanted. We were told that a life of loneliness and unnatural celibacy is what we should embrace. We cannot love, have a partner, build a home with someone we love, intertwine our life with that person, have a family, or enjoy any of the other things human beings have a right to. The homophobia of the organization is intense and will always be a part of its fabric.
Now I am out and putting ever-widening distance between me and the organization. There are many challenges yet ahead, but at least I can face them without the burdens of Witness philosophy impeding my progress. Finding JWN has been a real blessing for I have benefitted from the interaction and encouragement I have found here. I still believe in God and want to serve him, but I now understand that I must seek my own path in that regard and not be forced onto one I don't wish to travel.
Quendi