I'd known for a long time that some of what the WTS taught was really questionable. It was science that proved to me that the WTS was full of nonsense.
In the mid-1990s, while listening to NPR, I heard a couple of stories that I knew would either restore my faith or completely destroy my belief in a literal understanding of the Bible.
The stories had to do with animal bones tens of thousands of years old with tooth marks on them, ancient animals found in tar pits with other animals in their stomachs, and ice core drillings in the four major ice fields that could be read like tree rings, and that went back 140,000 years.
If true, these findings combined would prove that the Bible creation account was just a myth and that there had never been a worldwide flood. With the 1914 Generation change in 1994-95, I went to the library and researched these questions on the Internet, then I went home and read Genesis 1-24. Reading the Bible simply verified what my research had proven to me - Genesis is myth.
No Genesis + no Adam and Eve + no Noah and the Flood = No need for Jesus + no need for the ransom + Bible is not infallible?+ no need for Christianity. The teachings of the WTS collapsed like a house of cards in a matter of hours.
The Internet, and specifically, at first, TalkOrigins, Doc Bob's ex-JW website, Alan Feuerbacher's writings and Randy Watter's site helped me see that I was not alone in questioning many of the things I'd been taught by the Witnesses. It wasn't pride in my own intelligence that was misleading me, it was reasoning and science that showed the WTS was not the true religion.
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Seeker4
JoinedPosts by Seeker4
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Once You Had Doubts, How Long Before You Got On The Internet?
by minimus inthe watchtower society keeps telling everyone to stay away from the evil internet.
they claim that once you surf the internet, even if it's done innocently, it's the beginning of the end.
were you personally affected in your faith because you turned on the computer?
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Seeker4
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Seeker4
Too often it was one-way radio and too seldom two way radio!!
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If you meant RATIO, there were, throughout the congregations I knew, usually 5 to 7 elders for a congregation of around 100 publishers. -
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Accepting my own mortality
by tooktheredpill ini dont know about you, but this is one of the most difficult issues of being a jw (at least for me).
as we were living on a spiritual paradise (totally unreal), we used to believe everything the gb said without questions.
i was not going to get old, or go to high school, or go to college or get married and the "big a" was going to finish the "wicked system" ... and them we were going to have a paradise earth forever.... .
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If midlife is when you begin to discern and (hopefully) accept your own mortality, I got a double whammy of it, because it was at the same time that I came to realize that the Witnesses did not have "the truth" and that I most certainly WOULD grow old in this system and die.
Yeah, that was a bummer, but it also moved me to stop putting off all the things that I was waiting for the New System to do. I quit my cleaning business and got a night job for three years while I established myself in the career I'd always wanted - writing. I got a pilot's license. I seriously started listening to music again. I went to concerts. I made tons of new friends in the art, music and writing world. I completely stopped attending meetings. It wasn't all great - I also had a few affairs, and eventually my marriage ended, but I've come to accept what all that was as well and have made the very best of it.
I find the Buddhist/Taoist acceptance of death as a part of life the most helpful, and I've tried to learn to live without fear of death. I view the overriding religious view that there is "something better" beyond this life as just a result of our fear of death and our ability to comprehend, to a degree, non-existence, which scares the shit out of us. We've created this myth of something better after death to soothe our fear of the unknown. This life and the mystery of it is enough for me. I wish there were more, but see the afterlife as simply a self-delusion.
Learning to live in this day, this hour, and making it the best that it can be, I consider much more satisfying and important than an imaginary heaven or hell.
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How could an ex-Jw become Catholic
by My Struggle ini don't mean this to be offensive to any catholics in any way and believe that they can have true salvation unlike the jw.
also, i know little about the in's and out's of practicing catholicism, as i have never had any interest in being one.
regardless i am always surprised when an ex-jw says that they have found the real truth in catholicism.
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Tom, I'm still in New England - up here in Vermont. I've never been to a DC in CT. Most were in MA (Springfield or Amherst) or Maine (Portland), one or two in NH way back, a few in Canada and one in Rhode Island and one in NY.
Coffee Black - Nice new avatar. Do you have something to tell us??
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Bethel layoffs in 2008 - 300+ and counting
by sir82 infrom the mouth of one of the special pioneers assigned tour congregation:.
at least 300 have been terminated from the us bethel branch in the first month of 2008, and she expects the number to increase.
paraphrasing other comments:.
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Seeker4
How much do you wanna bet that very, very few Special Pioneers will ever miss their monthly time goals??
I had close friends who were SP. The husband said he and his wife stopped comparing time. They'd go out for a day in serivce, he'd end up with 10 hours, she'd end up with six! Me, when I Pioneered, I sucked every second I could count of the day. Somebody asked in one thread if you'd count a study with a two year old - hell, I'd count the time reading the Bible Stories book to the yet unborn!
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Elder's Wife Apologizes In Tears for Shunning Me Yesterday
by Seeker4 inhad a really interesting experience i thought some here might like to hear about.
my jw ex-wife and i still own a house together, (she lives in it and a non-jw adult son is living there with her temporarily), not to mention the three kids and seven grandkids we share, so we interact quite a bit, e-mailing, calling or seeing each other a few times a week or so.
i'm still doing some remodeling to our house.
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" And I remember going into work happy, smiling to myself because I decided to do what I believed was right and not what some idiots on a podium told me to do."
Layla - you got it right there, for sure!
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How could an ex-Jw become Catholic
by My Struggle ini don't mean this to be offensive to any catholics in any way and believe that they can have true salvation unlike the jw.
also, i know little about the in's and out's of practicing catholicism, as i have never had any interest in being one.
regardless i am always surprised when an ex-jw says that they have found the real truth in catholicism.
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Seeker4
There are a few ex-JWs that I deeply respect, who all became Catholics. Tom Cabeen is one. Barbara Harrison Grazutti is another, and I think AK Jeff (I'm probably off on this, but I'll get it right eventually).
I completely disagree with their decisions. I've become an active atheist, and see Christianity as just another myth-based attempt to control people and give us a placebo for our fear of death.
That having been said, for many years, even as a JW elder, the writings of Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk, were very influential on me, and Merton was close friends with Thich Nhat Han, a Buddhist monk who was even a greater influence on me.
I'm not too quick to dismiss these Catholics that I've come to respect.
Tom - glad to see you post here. I think, as I was looking through some old district convention programs a few months ago, that you and I were on the same district convention program somewhere here in New England at one time. Who would have dared guess then where we would be today!!
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'Sup Yo?
by IP_SEC ini'm back from a quarter year break from the web.
well i lie, not a complete break.
i've kept tabs on you in the background.
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Seeker4
IP! Glad to hear from you!!
I've eased up posting here somewhat, though I think I'll probably always stay active here - sometimes more so, sometimes less.
To each their own, it's just that I liked your posts and glad you're checking in.
I hope you find what you're looking for - or maybe you already have. I think so...
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Have a couple of questions about JW funerals..
by juni inhas anyone else heard of a funeral memorial talk done on a sunday evening?
also, this person was not active in field service or a regular mtg.
attender.
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Seeker4
The day of the week is probably meaningless.
It was probably done as a favor to the anointed wife. I've done that before. Did a funeral for my JW grandmother-in-law's husband, who was a smoker and didn't like the Witnesses much. Also a vet, and I had no problem allowing the local VFW to do a ceremony at the funeral. Obviously, this wasn't at a Kingdom Hall, but that might be allowed for the Witness wife in those circumstances, if the elder body wasn't a bunch of assholes.
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Elder's Wife Apologizes In Tears for Shunning Me Yesterday
by Seeker4 inhad a really interesting experience i thought some here might like to hear about.
my jw ex-wife and i still own a house together, (she lives in it and a non-jw adult son is living there with her temporarily), not to mention the three kids and seven grandkids we share, so we interact quite a bit, e-mailing, calling or seeing each other a few times a week or so.
i'm still doing some remodeling to our house.
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Thanks for all the comments.
Hey, Cognac - Glad to hear from you, and welcome! They kind of gave you crap when you came here, but I was rooting for you. Where in MA are you? I'm in Vermont, just up I91 from MA. PM me. Actually, I may know you. I gave lots of talks in MA congregations, and spoke at the district conventions down there in Springfield many, many times.
Homer - I would LOVE it if they started lovebombing me! There is about as much danger of me returning to the JW fold as of me becoming 11 again! But, the opportunity to talk to a JW, that would be something. I can be VERY persuasive in an argument.
But, there is little danger of lovebombing. I'm sure I'm considered a very dangerous person by the local congregation. Ed was the one I handed an eight page letter to when I was invited to a committee meeting after having been out of the congregation for 6 years. You can find the letter on my list of threads, as I posted it here and it has been bttt many times. Ed knows very well what I believe.
Dave: I've met Min, and he's not that bad. Just remember that in every conversation he will ask three questions like: Have You Ever Got It On With the DO's Wife on the Roof of the Assembly Hall While She Was Sunbathing During the Sunday Talk? He's only allowed three questions a day, so tough it out. I don't think that was the sister - I'll PM you with the name.
A couple of the comments got me thinking. Min was right, I was well liked in my congregation, and in lots of congregations for that matter. My ex told me that when the CO told an elder in the northern part of the state who knew me well that I had left the Witnesses, the elder pulled his car off the road and cried. I hear a lot of those stories. A former elder friend, who gave up being an elder to pursue a career as a psychologist, yet still remained a Witness, recently told my wife that he missed me because I was the only brother he could ever talk freely with - and boy, we sure had some amazing conversations over the years.
I think it scares people to see someone who leaves the Witnesses and doesn't immediately end up in the gutter. That's the myth we were told.
It would have been so much easier on me if I had just moved out of this area. I still struggle when I walk into the local supermarket, knowing I may very likely run into an old Witness "friend." Yet, I wonder how my staying here is affecting people, as someone mentioned. In the time since I left the JWs, I've become the editor of this area's most popular and widely read weekly, I have a very successful writing career, I've been living for 3.5 years with a beautiful woman who is an artist/athlete, I'm in the best physical shape I've been in in 20+ years, and I walk around with a smile on my face and a relaxed approach to life, very well known and liked in the community at large.
When Tina came into the living room, I was just standing there, relaxed and smiling. There was sort of this moment of recognition for me in that event where I figured out that I was probably more comfortable and at ease with myself and the situation than most Witnesses I run into. And I am still surprised how many active JWs stop and talk to me, or at least smile and say hi.
It was a moment, for sure!
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