Even though I was raised largely without religious training, I was taught that the Bible was "God's Book," and it was because of that belief that I wound up being a JW - after all, they seemed to know more about the Bible than anybody else, at least to my teen-age mind.
After being a JW for some years, I learned that they had made a lot of false prophecies, and had a lot of dirt in their history. Also, I could see that they didn't have the "love among themselves" that they bragged about. As I started to investigate further, I read quite a bit of "apostate" literature, and was even more astonished to find that the Witnesses not only had problems with their history, but with their theology. Any honest reading of the Bible would not support their teachings. Also, I saw a lot of evidence of dishonest scholarship on the Society's part. Still, it took years for all of this to crystallize in my mind, and even more years to get out of the org.
Why do I believe in God now? Well, I still believe in the Bible; the respect I've had for it all my life has never gone away. But I also think that there had to be some intelligence involved in the design of the universe. Oh, I know the arguments - if God always existed, why couldn't matter and energy always have existed? It just makes more sense to me that the order and functionality we see in creation results from intelligence than from random chance. Also, I have the (admittedly subjective) experience of seeing God at work in my life in a variety of ways.
Can I prove that God exists? Of course not. Ultimately, whatever we believe about issues like the origin of the universe, life after death, and the existence of God come down to matters of faith that can't be proven. I just find it makes more sense to me to include God in my understanding of such things, because without God, none of it makes any sense.
Sounds like you're searching, flower. You still know how to reach me privately if you want to, right?
