Correction: I should not have included "(especially ones who made huge sacrifices because of such hope)" within quote marks of my earlier post, but the idea fits the subject matter.
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Sea Breeze, you seem to be equating the meaning of the word "hope" with the meaning of the word "believe" but the words do not have the same meaning. Perhaps you are saying that which atheists (including ex-JWs) hope for is also what they believe. But I for one do not hope to die, even though I know and believe I will die. Furthermore Jesus, according to the Bible, did not teach that "after you die that you will be conscious and unable to shut your consciousness off, no matter how hard you try." According to the New Testament Bible Jesus taught that instead of staying dead for forever, people can return to life if they believe in him prior to their death. According to parts of the NT Bible Jesus also taught that if people believe in him they will never die at all. Those teachings are very different than saying everyone, including non-believers in Jesus, will continue to live forever and will experience unending consciousness after the death of their physical body. It is true there are some NT passages about Jesus, according to the Bible, saying some people will be tormented forever in an Gehenna, but there is more than one interpretation of what those passages mean and some of those meanings conflict with other passages that purport to be teachings of Jesus.
I, for one, do NOT hope to die. I hope to live for 120+ years in excellent health, and if I thought it was possible to live for much longer than that in excellent health then I would hope for that. [If my body later becomes severely damaged while still alive or if some humans torment me tremendously in future, I might then hope to die soon in order to escape such misery, but I do not currently want (or hope) to die.] I do believe that when I my body dies then so does my consciousness and my mind, and that belief is firmly based upon well known scientific facts. Those facts include what happens to people's consciousness when they are in a deep dreamless sleep, when they are under anesthesia, and when they receive brain injuries.
Regarding NDEs it should be kept in mind that those who claimed to have had such were not brain dead and thus their brain probably hallucinated (or dreamed) such experiences, and other cases people were probably lying about such experiences.
Though while I was a very young child the WT (and my parents under the influence of the WT) and the OT Bible gave me my belief that the mind ceases upon death of the brain, after I learned what scientific knowledge says about mind (probably partly during my late preteen years, and I learned more in later years), my belief became based on that scientific knowledge instead of upon the Bible. After I learned the scientific knowledge regarding what happens to the mind, what the Bible (and the WT) said abut death ending consciousness merely collaborated that scientific knowledge.
You keep implying that the WT teaches/promotes atheism, yet you ignore that the WT teaches that Satan the Devil, demons and evil demonic activity, angels, and a heavenly Christ are real, as well as Jehovah.Those WT teaches conflict greatly with atheism and scientific naturalism! Yet at least since my late preteen years (despite considering myself an unbaptized JW and despite later becoming baptized as a JW in my early teens) I had very major doubts about the existence of demons and evil demonic activity. That is because I saw no convincing existence of demons and of evil demonic activity and because scientific knowledge very strongly suggests such does not exist. It is knowledge of science (combined with my personal experiences of the universe), and not the WT, which lead me to atheism.
Regarding what scientific knowledge says about the ideas of a devil, demons, an afterlife, alien visitations to humans, witchcraft, ghosts, superstitions, prayer, magic, UFOs, etc., I invite people to read the book by Carl Sagan called The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.
If I had been raised in a way that was neutral about religion, I would never ever had become a believer in the supernatural (except maybe briefly as a very young child) and I would never had joined a religion! Being raised as a JW (under the influence of the WT) delayed me in becoming an atheist (except for the fact that all human babies are born without any belief in any god whatsoever).
Regarding the idea of "several old men in Brooklyn were God's sole channel of communication on earth" I never fully accepted that WT teaching. That WT teaching, for as long as was aware of it, was one which was very hard for me to accept. As a JW, when participating in meetings which discussed it, I sometimes paid lip service to it (such as when answering questions in the WT literature, since such was expected of JWs), but I was never thoroughly convinced of it. Furthermore as a teenage JW and as an adult JW I resented the WT teaching that "several old men in Brooklyn were God's sole channel of communication on earth" - especially since I knew that they admitted that many of their (and/or the WT's) former teachings were false!
When I am at work I long for getting off work so that I can fully indulge my conscious mind in thinking about subjects of interest to me. When I am awake and starting to feel sleepy I try to fight off the sleepiness and to stay awake, until it becomes futile to resist the onset of sleep. I wish my body didn't require sleep because to me sleep is kind of like death in that it deprives me, though only for awhile, of conscious thought. Sea Breeze, I do NOT want my consciousness to be turned off each day - I wish I keep it on all the time (without any detrimental effects) that I am alive (but I realize I can't keep it on all the time)! See Breeze, you are VERY WRONG in saying regarding all ex-JW atheists that "The greatest hope of the ex-jw atheist is to die and experience nothing thereafter." I live to think; I live to have conscious thoughts, as well as to have various conscious experiences.
