I was born in, & i just went along with it for the first few years of my life, i always believed it but never had any real passion for it, never wanted to be 'strong' in the truth but always felt guilty (scared i might be killed at the big A) because i wasn't. And i always hated the idea that our future salvation & eternal life in paradise would be at the expense of billions of lives, that part NEVER sat well with me. I always had doubts about the whole thing but never let those doubts play on my mind too much & just took the advice that eventually all would be revealed.
Then when i was about 16 i really started to think carefully about things, i began studying with an elder (congregation service overseer). I believe that this elder was secretly having doubts at the time (mainly about the credibility of the WTBTS) & many of those doubts were inadvertantly (or possibly intentionally) transmitted to me.
When i was 18 i finally decided that i just didn't believe it anymore, i still believed in God but not the WTBTS or their version of events, & i didn't think much of other Christian ideas either. I became an unbaptised publisher in January 2006 (mainly with a view to getting baptised later in the year so that i could eventually get married to some young virginal sister and have sex without feeling guilty about it LOL), but then i quickly decided that the best way was out. I stopped going out in the ministry in February 2006, last memorial that spring, last DC that June, last meeting that August, stopped reading their literature around that time too, then finally ended my study with the service overseer in March 2007, intended to go to the memorial that spring but decided not to at the last minute.
Since then i've become an atheist & have learnt a lot about evolution, abiogenesis theories & astrophysics. Suffice to say, i now consider it ridiculous that i ever believed any of it & my only excuse is that i was just a kid, now i'm 21 years old & am old enough to know better.
It just confuses me that my dad, born and raised an atheist, started studying at 18 & came into the truth fully (was baptised) at the age of 20 or 21, then marrying my mum (who was a born in) at 23. I know that i personally would NEVER come in as an adult, so i find it strange that my dad did, as he has an inquiring mind like i do. Although when he came in (mid-1970's) there wasn't the internet at that time, and he never really had much exposure to the 1975 fiasco as he wasn't baptised until 1976 or 1977.
Thankfully i was never baptised, so i'm not disfellowshipped & am therefore not a family outcast, but there is an eternal elephant in the room & it does cause some trouble at times :(
