Although I was never baptised, I have a background similar to that of a JW kid. My parents were SA officers and I spent the first 16 years attending the church 5 times a week and being told that "the time is now, get saved before you are run over by a car and spend eternity in hell." That can make a big impression on a child.
After leaving the SA the JW's "found" me and reiterated that if I wasn't following a certain set of rules that I'd be destroyed and because of my earlier indoctrination in the bible I believed them and studied on and off with them for 10 years.
YES - when the twin towers came down I thought OMG this is it I better start being good before God strikes me with a bolt of lighting. (Althought I wouldn't say my life is particularly evil.) I can see why they believe this is the end cos of all the mad stuff that is occurring. BUT if you are a student of history you can see that if you had a time machine and went back and questioned lots of people from lots of different times across the planet that they thought the same thing as the JW's do eg. The plague and the Great Fire of London. People thought that was the end and went to some very desperate measures to persuade people that it was.
In the whole picture of the universe, anything is possible, so the JW's may be right BUT if what is in the bible is remotely true, God is not gonna pulverise you just because you asked questions and wanted some sort of understanding other than what a bunch of fundamentalists say. This is also good for JW's cos he will hopefully forgive them too. I suppose some might think the "blasphemous" part of my argument is - would I really want to spend eternity in a world that the only people are JW's and in which let's face it we've got a 1,000 years to prove ourselves and even then we might fail. I personally have decided to take my chances and listen to evidence of the Universe.
Part of the reason all of us want subscribe to religions is self-preservation and it's natural to want to believe that someone, somewhere has the answers. If we're gonna look at things in a logical and scientific way, religion started for some reason so somewhere amongst it all there are smatterings of truth.
A small child right now in Afghanistan is being told right now that Allah is their god and if they don't do this or don't do that they will be punished by Allah as are children globally of other religions. I believe that this is called Mind Virus. It would be just as hard for that Taliban member to realise that they are wrong and when and if they did leave would spend the rest of their lives wondering if Allah is gone strike them dead. But you can't live the rest of you life wondering. You have to make your peace with God (which is fact yourself) and do what you can while you are here. The fact is that a lot of religions do not let you do the best for yourself and the people around you and that is why you CAN rest assure that they are not right.
My latest pieces of evidence are this:
I watched the video that the JW's have made called Jehovah's Witnesses the people behind the Organisation (I think). In it the narrator said, from Bethel millions of publications have been published that have changed the minds, hearts and PERSONALITIES of millions. Hmmm.
And secondly the JW lady that still visits me refused to acknowledge that religion is all about Faith. She recently told me that Faith plays no part in her understanding of what the JW's are about. Hmmm again. To quote the the bible that the JW's use, it is Faith, Hope and Charity that are the most important things that exist. Faith that we are making the right decisions about our actions towards ourselves and others, Hope that we haven't fucked up and will find the answers to all this stuff when we pop our clogs and the Charity to allow the JW's and other to bleat on about prophecies and understand that they are just as confused as rest of us parasites that are occupying this beautiful planet.
Best wishes
Spacegirl
