I wasn't raised a JW. I was raised with an atheist father and an agnostic mother. I didn't have some inborn notion of a god. Then a neighbor who used to babysit me tried to teach me that God was the father, and Jesus was the son. It seemed very important to her that I got that right, and I kept mixing them up. But it was like a game, so I kept trying. All I really got out of it was she was saying some person lived in the sky. It kind of felt like Santa and the Easter Bunny stuff. But I still didn't feel any inborn desire to seek and worship some god.
Then we moved, and when I was in second grade (I think) my neighbor asked my mom if she could take me to church. So I went to a United Methodist church. I didn't understand most of what they were saying, and still had no inborn desire to seek and worship this god. But the concept was firming up a bit more. My first Sunday school, we had a little worksheet to fill out and color. Another little girl had to help me fill it in. The answers were things like God, Jesus and angels, heaven. I simply had no concept of this.
As I grew up, I kept going with my neighbor and eventually got old enough for their youth groups. We sang and played games and they did talk about god some. But it just didn't click much with me. They gave me a bible. I didn't understand it.
Then in Junior High, I went to a Catholic School to escape bullies. This school scared me. Not the school, the masses we had to attend. The ritual, the dark church, the smoky smells. Made me really nervous. Plus everyone was always responding in Latin and it was stand, kneel, sit, stand kneel, sit. Then there was that genuflecting and holy water. We had to attend religion classes, and this is where I learned about the Trinity. It is also where Hell fire was made more real. So that we could grasp the concept of burning for an eternity in our young brains, the nun explained eternity this way:
Imagine a solide steel ball as big as the sun. Every million years a bird flies by and brushes it with its wings. When that ball is worn down to nothing, eternity has only begun! So that's when I developed a kind of neurotic fear of Hell.
Then in High School we moved, and I attended The United Church of Christ. It's a pretty liberal church, and they weren't big on talking about hell. But the fear was still there because there were a lot of fundamentalists in my school. I got into the youth group again, and really liked the parties, the bike rides, the music, the retreats etc. I would go with friends to their churches, and they were big on Hell. And tongues! And healing. I was just as uncomfortable with people babbling in tongues as I was in the Catholic Church, and the flames of hell were being stoked for me again.
Then I became a Certified Labor Assistant and started working with midwifes and attending home births and getting to know a broad spectrum of people. Home birth seems to attract a lot on the extreme right and the extreme left. So there were plenty of fundies, but also Pagans, Wiccans, Buddhists, Astrologers, you name it.
I used to play at a commune near me where there was just a total mishmash of religions, mostly Eastern and Pagan.
Then the Fundies started making headway with me, because of my fear of hellfire. I started reading my bible, attending bible studies, listening to Christian radio, but never having this born-again experience. My fear of hell became pathological and it was always on my mind. I would think about people I loved who had died and just be sick with grief. I prayed all the time for God to show them some mercy. I even read about Fatima and the messages Mary passed on. And I waited to go to Hell, cuz I couldn't have this conversion no matter how hard I tried.
In this state, JW's showed up at my door. They were going to Hell of course, but they showed me scriptures that convinced me there was no hellfire and I was a lump of clay that they molded easily! I was so relieved. I studied about 10 months and got baptized. Fast forward 20 years.
I finally had the confidence and courage to consider that there was no god. I was actually unaware that my brain was breaking it down for quite some time, and one day, I just KNEW it. I was incredibly relieved and felt like I was floating! I'd finally had that born-again experience! LOL
Anyway, I continued investigating and reading, and I am more convinced than ever that there is no god. Fear in my life has been reduced by 90%. I don't even know how I made it through so much of my life believing that trash. And I don't believe in the happy god either. There is just no evidence.
I'm good with it. I was born an atheist, and spent my most tender years oblivious to any god concept. I am an atheist again, and it feels quite natural and complete. I don't miss it at all. I did not debunk JW's. I had not felt mistreated except in retrospect. I was not so disillusioned with my religion that I decided to lash out at a god. He just wasn't there anymore, and I realized, he never had been. It was later that I learned how dishonest the WT was and how the org had treated others.
Once the critical thinking kicked in, it was impossible for me to turn it off.
