Greetings. I am by nature a reticent soul. I am perfectly happy to watch from the sidelines as others debate and contest, poke, prod, and cajole one another. As an observer, I still gain. In the past year or so of lurking, many of you have provided me with profound insight and more than a few chuckles along the way. Just don't expect much in return; I like to watch, as Peter Sellers so aptly put it in "Being There".
I am an active Witness and will probably remain so the rest of my life. I value my family over my principles. I will never do anything to alienate them from me or to cast doubt on their own cherished beliefs. So I am a closet agitator with an audience of one--me.
However I think it is worth stating (and breaking from my cocoon for the first time) that one of the ironies of the Witness religion is its insistence upon personal reading, studying, and meditating upon the Bible by its members. As a born-in, I had somehow successfully avoided reading the Bible in its entirety until about 5 years ago. As most JWs, I took it one or two verses at a time; provided to me on a silver platter by the FDS. The irony comes, in my opinion, in that a cover-to-cover reading of the Bible is the very thing that convinced me that the Bible itself, along with this very literally-adhering religion that promotes it, can only be false.
You have covered the details of this far better than I can; topics on the subject abound on JWN. I stumbled upon a thread recently, that provides a link to a definitive work: "The Atheist's Book of Bible Stories", by Fred Titanich. This is not only my first post on JWN but my first post on any sort of forum like this, so I won't even pretend to know how to link to this or to point the reader toward a download of this wonderful book, but I do know that googling the title will put you in the right place if you've not already discovered it. It is a worthy read. Couple it with "Crisis of Conscience", and I think you have a good start toward educating yourself on the JW religion.
The purpose of my introductory post is to thank Fred for his book, if he is still reading this site, and to express my appreciation to all of you for your contributions to my continuing education. Maybe I'll gain courage to continue the dialogue.
Socrates Wannabe