Sorry to resurrect a thread that is slowly dying, but it takes a while to get registered on the forum. Funny that I've been reading this site off-and-on for almost 2 years, but this topic finally motivates me to register.
First, as an aside, since this is my first post .. I was born and raised one of JWs, and baptized as a teenager. I'm now in my late 20s, married, career, house, etc. I started breaking free from JWs over 2 years ago. For any current JWs lurking on this site, let me just say: "If you want to keep your faith, don't check your references." I embarked on an innocent project to better understand the anti-evolution argument, as I realized that many of the points in the Creation book were out of date. Unfortunately, I came to realize that most of those points were specious when they were first written, and the book is riddled with quotations out of context. (A trick, I believed, that only apostates used.) From there is was a very fast and head-spinning slide to the blood issue, doctrinal concerns, the ugly parts of JW history, and so forth. Most people on this forum know what I'm talking about. It's like becoming a new person through a series of car crashes.
Fortunately, my wife followed me to freedom, and we are now both pretty well-adjusted secularists/athiests who are trying to re-integrate ourselves into "the world" while trying to avoid issues with our JW family. We are both happier and more tolerant people than when we started.
Anyway .. the point (sorry), during the first year after I escaped the JWs I became really obsessed with organic food, global warming, impending economic doom, anti-vaccine, anti-modern-medicine, etc. What I gradually realized was that I had substituted the Watchtower propaganda for the alternative-medicine/economic-collapse propaganda. I had gravitated toward the same sort of easy answer, the same fear-based motivation, the same egotistical "I know something that everyone else doesn't want to hear!" sort of world-view. I believe that 25+ years of witness programming makes us especially susceptible to poorly backed arguments of impending doom. I mean, we've been trained that virtually all scientists are either idiots or lying to us and that all governments are operated by the devil. We've been trained to focus on the 1 person dying of HepC from a blood transfusion and ignore the 100 dying for want of a transfusion. From there, it's easy to become a cynic who can be easily leveraged by fearmongers to join their causes.
If you asked me a year ago, I would have said that vaccines cause autisim. Today, as I work to demand rational arguments for all my beliefs, I realize that there is no evidence-supported link between the two. Yes, the number of austism cases and the number of vaccines has increased during the last 50 years (and yes, government-mandated immunizations are great for corporate profits), but correlation does not imply causation. As pastafarians will tell you, the number of pirates has decreased as earth's temperature has risen. There is no connection there either. I'm just glad I didn't withhold vaccines from my kids (no kids) or push someone else to do the same. It's hard to accept any argument which ignores the incredible number of lives that have been saved by vaccination or the result when people choose to stop using them.
What I've learned from this is that examining one's beliefs is not a one-time action as you escape from the JW world. It has to be a continuous process. Evaluate new ideas using multiple credible sources, and do not be quick to accept "global conspiracy" as an argument. Some of my beliefs have stayed, and others had to go. I've found that the hardest thing at times is just to be humble enough to admit that I was, once again, wrong on something.
