Well, my approach to this has evolved over time. I don't much see a point in attacking, say, Russell and Rutherford themselves as men. I think understanding the Biblical issues, for me, was a vital part of this. I came to see that many verses that made up JW doctrine were taken out of context, and that reading the full context really sheds a lot of new meaning on things. This was a somewhat comforting thing to learn, that it wasn't necessarily the Bible itself, but the JWs' abuse of the Bible that was the problem.
Of course, in time I began to question the validity of the Bible itself as an absolute guide for morals and as an absolute guide to understanding the concept of 'God'. But I generally don't see a purpose in attacking the Bible itself, certainly not if I were speaking to a JW. The walls will go up even faster that way.
It's mainly the corrupt attitudes--as reflected in Watchtower literature--that I think are at the heart of the problem, in my mind. There's this sense of one's absolute rightness and everyone on the outside being absolutely wrong even if we agree with them in some ways. The idea that even if the GB royally f---s up, we're still supposed to just trust that they've got it all figured out.
The only time I can really recall even discussing apostates myself was in a talk I gave, in which I struggled to find any sort of meaningful discussion of what apostates actually said to people. Beyond that, it wasn't a topic I was particularly into talking about, since there were so many other things I considered more worthwhile to discuss (ie. the example of Jesus).
But you know, it came to a point for me where I just felt something was wrong, didn't know what for sure, so I started looking, and that was it.
--sd-7
