(September 19, 2013 at 9:08 pm)Zazzy Wrote: What's different about you, Tonus, since I assume most of your family and old friends are still in the faith? What do you think happened with you that doesn't happen with other believers? I'm always amazed that ANYONE gets out, when I hear a description like the one you just gave.To be clear, I have not been formally removed by the organization. But I have not been active for more than ten years, and three years ago I stopped going to the annual memorial service that they practically consider mandatory. I get the impression that for those like me, who drift away quietly, they take the "see no evil" approach. Perhaps to pad the numbers, I dunno. In the past, they would've sent a committee to speak to me and formalize my removal from the organization.
I was probably lucky to grow up in the situation that I was in, which is to say that it must have helped created doubt. All of my siblings left the JWs early in their lives, and my desire to prove my faith against any possible assault probably was in response to that. And since my deconversion was very slow, I was able to develop friendships with non-JWs. So that by the time I was ready, I had the necessary support network and was not really attached to the cult.
I have read from many former (and even some current) JWs who suffered through a very painful process of wanting to get out but worrying about being cut off from their network of support (friends and family-- the JWs insist that non-JWs are to be cut off completely even by immediate family) which would force them to rely on the same people they'd been programmed to distrust and look down on. For some, taking the plunge proved to be as harsh as they feared, and some even bit the bullet and went back.
One of my closest friends has been on the bubble for a long time, and I think that he's ready to make the break but is clearly concerned about the fallout. He's planning to move out of state, and I think one reason is to break ties. I haven't pressured him to make a decision, but I am joining him on that move, which we'll make sometime next year.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
