I don't think it should really be a mystery. I was raised a Christian, so I did all of the standard things- behaved in line with Christ's teachings, prayed every day, read the Bible regularly, went to religious services regularly, and so on. I behaved, not as one who was seeking god, but as one who had found him and followed him faithfully. This is pretty much the way I noticed that most Christians (JWs or otherwise) lived their lives; they knew that god was a part of their lives and developed what they felt was a real relationship with god.
It's only for those who leave religion and stop believing in god that some line is drawn. It was long after I began to have any kind of doubts that I finally accepted my current views; for many years I simply rejected the notion that god did not exist, even as my faith was falling away. But for a good 25-30 years I lived with no doubt at all and all of the biases that come with believing in god. If there was something that I missed, I don't know what it was.
It's only for those who leave religion and stop believing in god that some line is drawn. It was long after I began to have any kind of doubts that I finally accepted my current views; for many years I simply rejected the notion that god did not exist, even as my faith was falling away. But for a good 25-30 years I lived with no doubt at all and all of the biases that come with believing in god. If there was something that I missed, I don't know what it was.
"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
