There wasn't a particular moment for me, because my deconversion was very gradual. Even as I picked apart my beliefs and kept running into dead ends, I didn't doubt that god was there because it was such an ingrained belief. By the time I finally admitted to myself that I didn't believe in god, I had long since stopped believing.
During that time, I guess I was more suspicious than anything else. Having spent decades convinced that the JWs were the conduit for god's will, it's difficult to separate at which point I was deconstructing the JW beliefs and at which point I was doing so to general Christian beliefs. I may have felt some measure of anxiety, excitement, and relief, because I think that I had subconsciously started to give up on my beliefs for some time. My lack of enthusiasm began to make sense as I realized that what I thought I believed was probably not true.
How do I know it was baseless? Well, that's another factor of my beliefs being ingrained from childhood. Among the things I "knew" to be true was that Christian/JW/Bible teachings had to be 100% true. Even so, the presuppositional beliefs were so strong that it took quite a few examples of fallible beliefs or teachings before I even considered letting go. But at some point there are so many leaks in the dam that you can't keep the structure from collapsing around you.
During that time, I guess I was more suspicious than anything else. Having spent decades convinced that the JWs were the conduit for god's will, it's difficult to separate at which point I was deconstructing the JW beliefs and at which point I was doing so to general Christian beliefs. I may have felt some measure of anxiety, excitement, and relief, because I think that I had subconsciously started to give up on my beliefs for some time. My lack of enthusiasm began to make sense as I realized that what I thought I believed was probably not true.
How do I know it was baseless? Well, that's another factor of my beliefs being ingrained from childhood. Among the things I "knew" to be true was that Christian/JW/Bible teachings had to be 100% true. Even so, the presuppositional beliefs were so strong that it took quite a few examples of fallible beliefs or teachings before I even considered letting go. But at some point there are so many leaks in the dam that you can't keep the structure from collapsing around you.
"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
