Hello everyone,
(WARNING: Long story with many scientific details!!!)
I'm currently 26 and have been rasied in 'the truth' for all my life. I've never questioned the basic teachings of the society before and always believed that everything that said was at least partly inspired, until just recently. My story, I think, is a unique one. I'm university student currently and have 2 degree's (physics and math), I'm currently studing for a graduate degree in biochemistry. When I started my courses in biological evolution I was not supprised to find a great deal of evidence to support the subject, since I never really discounted it being a scientist, but the issue never really came to the fore until recently.
I was having a discussion with an elder who was a friend of mine, and he mentioned to me "there is no evidence for evolution". I stated that in fact this was no true at all, I went on to give simple easy to understand examples like how you can put a culture of bacteria under a microscope and watch it mutate into hundereds of different forms, that things like AIDS and birdflu are examples of how new forms of life are constantly evolving all the time. He replied by saying that "that's not what evolution is!". He was quite firm about this, I assued him as a person who studies the subject in great depth that this is very much a form of evolution. Then he pulled out the book "Life: How did we get here?" in the book it gives a definition that "evolution is the process of life coming from lifelessness". I assured him this was not the case, that evolution is concerned with real things we can see everyday, and that there is a seprate branch of scientist doing research into abiogensis (life arising from basic chemical elements). He recluntantly admited that evolution could happen at a small scale, but that animals, expecially humans never evolved. I said this also was not true, for example, whales as embryos have teeth and legs, which are latter recapulated while the embryo developes, in fact sometimes whales are even born with feet. Whales have a pelvis bone which serves no purpose and have lungs and swim like other land mammals (in fact whales are mammals too) like dogs and seals, I pointed out that the further we looked back in the fossile evidence the more we find whales that did in fact have feet, and legs. Also, the DNA of whales has more in common with their land ansestors than anything else that lives in the ocean. From all this evidence I stated, we can conclude that whales have evolved from land animals and over the course of millions of years adapted to life in the ocean.
This clearly upset the elder who responed "there are no such fossiles, its clear that all fossiles were deposited during the flood, why else would their be fossils at the top of moutains?". I responded that the fossiles were at the top of moutains because of the way plate techtonics works, at the earths crust moves, sometimes the earth is pushed up to make moutains, the layers that are pushed up are very old that may have one time existed at the bottom of an ocean or lake. He responed with the usual retoric about following empty decptions of men and told me my sprituality was at stake and I should quit school and pioneer if I wanted to be able to get into the new system. I got mad and left his house after that, later I did a lot of research and emailed him a list 17 pages long dating how there is no evidence for a world wide flood (since he told me there was so much evidence for the flood no one could rightfully deny it) and asked him to show my any research that would refute such claims.
Now to me at this point in time, this was all a matter of pure ademic interest, but I never heard back from the elder, instead a couple of weeks later I get called into a back room with two elders holding the email I had sent him (the elder I sent the letter to was not in the room). They asked me if I had sent the letter and I told them yes, I had. They went on to say that the material was apostate, I was shocked, I replied that all the information I had given him was from scientific journals and articles and I could in no way see how this could be said to be apostate. They went on for over an hour trying to reason with me that evolution could not be true, I answered all their objections they brought up very calmly. I wont go into details on all there questions, but they reflected such a large degree if ignornce and sterotypes that you'd think these people never finished high school. For example, one question put to me was "if humans evolved, why is it that we only use 1% of our brains?" I pointed out to the elder that this statement was rediculus and in no way reflected scientific evidence as shown by CAT scans and other tests, I explained to him that we use 100% of our brains, and we simply map new neurons as we need them.
In any case they told me not to talk to anyone about my view points and that I was no longer allowed to go out in service anymore. They said that they were going to have a study with me to help me correct my erring view points. I agreed to this, as I have no wish or desire to change anyones beliefs. After that I went to the circuit assembly with three of my friends, during the trip one of my friends was talking about a workmate of his who kept trying to prusade him of evolution and asked for my help. I didn't know what to say, we had a brief discussion about the subject and that was it. After the assembly, I heard back from the elders, but not about studing with them, but about a comitee over what I had said in the car. I had to sit in from of them as they brought my friends in one at a time and asked them leading questions because it was clear they wanted to disfellowship me. But it didn't work, my friends told the truth that I didn't bring up the subject and despite their best efforts to imply that I did. The elders decided to just publicly reprove me, they told me I should drop out of school and stop reading any books on biology and evolution.
I am so disgusted by everything that has happened, that I want to disassociate myself, but at the same time I don't want to not be able to talk to my parents or alienate myself from all my friends (as I have no friends that arn't JW's). I also have a roommate thats a JW and I can't afford to lose him right now as I wouldn't be able to pay rent without him. I'm very torn at what to do right now, I don't want to live a lfie I know to be a lie (the society dilibertly misused quotes and information in the Life book), but I don't know where to go from here. So I look forward to getting to know all of you here, and I hope this to be a start of a new life for me.
~ Sick of Lies