Did you have to try another church or religion on your way to unbelief?

by donny 26 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  RAYZORBLADE

  Good thread Donny.

  I hesitated for a few years after I left the Jehovah's Witnesses for good. I visited a Protestant church for an extended period of time and even a synagogue. I spoke with various religious groups over the phone on occasion. Eventually, they just annoyed the hell out of me.

  We're SO lucky nowadays. As you said: no need to dress-up or wear a tie. Just click here; enter words there: PRESTO! all the info you needed.

  Yes, I have been in other churches since and more recently with a family funeral. The sermons were hollow and meaningless; sitting there listening to mindless drivel that couldn't even comfort a flea. I remembered the man in the casket, only a foot away from me thinking: 'this is NOT you they're talking about is it?'.

  It made me re-confirm my resolve to 'Go it alone!'.

  I've been godless for eons: couldn't be happier.
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  smiddy

  I left in the early to mid 1990`s and as you say their was no internet ,so the library was one avenue I went to , no churches . One book I found which had a profound impact on me at that time was by an ex jesuit from Melbourne Aust. To catergorise it now I would say it was a crisis of conscience of a jesuit . I could relate to this mans experience in what he was going through and how he felt about religion . I think the title of his book was " The Rise and Decline Of Christendom " but for the love of me I cannot recall the name of the author , I keep thinking of Braithwaite or Bartholomew or something like that , I just dont know.What I am sure about is he was married ,lived in Kew , and was an ex Jesuit . If any of you Aussies can shed some light on this book I`d much appreciate it.I`d love to read it again .Strange but the library I borrowed it from could not help me locate it years later.

  smiddy
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  never a jw

  I jumped out from born in catholic straight into full blown atheism. Later, in an effort to please my JW girlfriend and later my wife, I tried the Bible. I found the Gospels very moving but not convincing as a diivine message. The rest of the Bible is no better than the Iliad or the Aeneid, full of myth. Actually, I find the Bible is much worse because it tries to sell a God that is perfect, but acts like a very imperfect human. Today, I am trying to be less radical by calling myself deist, but reality is that I always gravitate towards atheism.
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  MrFreeze

  I will say one thing about the WT... it made me understand that all other religions were BS. Then once I found out the WT was BS as well, it was easy to cast all religions aside.
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  ziddina

  I didn't....

  IN fact, if I hadn't been physically and psychologically coerced into the cult by my blasted JW parents, I would have left religion behind at the age of 7, when an elder read Exodus 19: 16-19 from the podium and I recognized it as a description of an erupting volcano, and that neither the Israelites NOR their 'god' knew what it was!!!

  That pretty much killed the concept of "the bible is the word of god", for me...
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  Sulla

  Heh. I was agnostic / atheist directly after being a JW. It just seemed natural given the near-atheism of the JWs. But I couldn't stick with it: it required too much blind faith.
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  donny

  Thanks for all of the comments so far. I always find it fascinating to read about the different paths people took in leaving the Watchtower. One thing that I noticed quickly while attending other churches was how many of them really have no grasp on what they believe. For them, church is just a social gathering or a required ritual they go through every Sunday or in some cases Saturday.

  One lady I met during that period was upset when I told her about Elisha and his having God kill 42 youths for calling him "bald headed." She said there was no such story in the Bible and when I gave her the verses to read, she blamed my former JW religion as "causing me great confusion" and said she was not going to waste time letting me try to read something into the scriptures that wasn't there. Talk about denial.

  This and few other encounters finally told me that this was a futile effort and I slowly became agnostic.
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  rowan

  Yeah, I did. I tried hard to go back into believing in an invisible sky daddy, this time of the good kind. The Presbyterian services I attended felt cagey and boring like the KH. And I just didn't swallow it. And then I bumped into the "God Delusion" and it made so much sense...
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  tec

  I didn't follow a path to unbelief. But I did check out various religions/beliefs/doctrines. I even let the Mormons in a few times. But none of them were any different than the wts. Most of them claimed to be the truth, all of them had rules and doctrines, none of them had any more insight than the others. That was my problem with religion from the start, actually. "How do they know? What are they following? What makes them right?"

  So I also cast aside all religion, same as all of you.

  I just did not cast away Christ or God. God and His Son, I never doubted. I never had them tied up in religion, though. Religion was just supposed to be a way to get to know them (or so i thought; too often it does the opposite, and is mostly just a way to get to know what the religious leader thinks or wants you to think and do)

  I am at peace with Christ and God... and NO religion.

  Peace,

  tammy
• 

  LongHairGal

  Donny:

  No, I didn't need or want to check out any other church or belief system when I walked away from the JWs.

  I am done with religion.