I wanted to make a few comments to those of you that have recently begun to question or have already left the WT and made their way onto this site. Welcome! This site is a great resource to learn how others are coping with leaving the organization and moving on into a fulfilling life.
I wanted to write this post because I think reading something like this would've been helpful to me to understand where a lot of people that comment on this site are coming from. You are going to hear from a wide range of people that have moved on to a diverse range of beliefs. The most common types that I have found are those that have, due to the organizations destruction their thinking abilities become New Christians, and those that have not lost their rationale , but have moved on to a closer use of their critical thinking skills. You can learn a lot from each type of person you encounter here. One of the nice things that you will find after coming out of the organization is that it is ok to have a difference of belief with other people. You don't have to ignore them or be afraid of hearing what they have to say. You are an intelligent person that is capable of making your own decisions on every sort of matter.
That being said, here comes the controversial part of my post. I myself am not Christian. I dont go to meetings anymore since I was DFd 15 years ago or so. However, I had a new love of the Bible and what it teaches about God, which has turned out to be very different from what the WT teaches. When I first began posting on the site I was troubled by how many I saw that had left the organization and completely lost their faith in God. But EVERYTIME I brought up anything about Jesus or the Bible I had multiple CHRISTIANS condemning my views and either directly or indirectly calling me arrogant, evil, faithless or lost for not believing in the Bible.
That being said, I through some Bible research the other night, I found what the Bible does not say about why people turn atheistic in their beliefs. Actually it doesnt say anything about the reason. This commentary is not meant to be insulting. It is merely what the Bible does not say on the issue. And I really do think it's insightful to what you new non-believers to JWN may encounter here. Psalm 14:1 says "The fool says in his heart, "There is no God." They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one that does good." So WHY does the man say "there is no God"? The verse answers that they are corrupt. Verse 3 expounds on this and says, "All have turned aside" and "there is no one that does good." But the interesting part is that in those days there were no Atheist as we know them. And this verse was misleadingly use by The WT and other religions as to prove why people buy into the atheistic philosophy, but back then there was not such a philosophy. And how Believers falsely assume that people who dont have a belief if God want to eliminate the ulti mate judgment on such sinfulness, consequently, they elimi nate God. And they arrogantly state that for Non-believers want to philosophically get rid of God so that they don't have to live under the guilt and the fear of a coming judgment. When in deed what happened is that due to the fact of evidence they couldnt believe in a Deity anymore.
So can Believers REALLY have contentment in their belief (or unbelief, or unbelief in non-belief)? They will claim that they are content. There are all kinds of people that try to find contentment in just about everything imaginable. But they will claim that REAL contentment only comes from knowing God, stating thus that if you are happy but are non-believer you are lying to yourself, there is no way to be happy and not believe in a deity. Notice what Jeremiah said in Jeremiah 9:23,24. It says, "Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice, and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight." In other words if you are wise or strong or rich means nothing if you dont believe blindly in an unjust God who is self righteous all throught the old testament. If that doesn't characterize the attitude of our modern day Believers, I don't know what does. What do smart people glory in? Their intelligence. What do strong people glory in? Their strength. But what SHOULD we glory in? That we know God? That we have the truth? That we can not use our reasoning?
According to the Bible mans purpose is to know God. That's our sole purpose. What a thought! So forget about gaining knowledge of life, of enjoying the world, yourself and the family, why worried about anything else but just get to know God. how can you do that? well you can pick any of the holy books of the world and get to know him. It doesnt matter which one because all he wants you to do is get to know him. So if the book is innacurate or a fake like the mormon book or the scientology books it doesnt matter. Just get to know God and forget about wisdom. God initially created man to know Him, but something entered into man's world and turned the light off. What was it? Sin. So that explains everything. I mean God in all his knowledge couldnt think of it before hand, so he created many religions so depending on where you were born you would find a way to get rid of that sin, many many flavors of atonement. Different strokes for different folks.
Romans 1:18,19 describes this. It says, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men." Watch. "Who hold the truth in unrighteousness." Can you believe that? maybe not. Wow has wrath against you his own creation for using the brain the he created... oh well thats what believers think. Yes ALL BELIEVERS believe in the bible. Isn't it amazing that men have the truth. Everybody does. WE have the answers for humanity's problems and know we know the why of things..... Well gladly we know that to be a lie. We are happy not knowing, we are happy discovering and learning how things are not what we were told. We think. We question. We investigate and are open to change our minds as new evidence is discovered. We are open minded even to the thought we arent.Every man who ever lived in this world was born with no religion no knowledge of God, with abscence of belief. Unfortunately our parents in all their ignorance sought to indoctrinate us in their beliefs when we were little and since we trusted them, we werent gonna challenge their claims. Besides we thought they knew better. We were intellectually abused and by things like these: Look at verse 19. You say where is it? Well,"because that which may be known of God is manifest" where? "In them." Yeap when you were little and you asked, ok Where is god? your parents told you, in heaven.. and you ask up in heaven? but up for me is not the same as up for the people in china, so where is God Mama? oh well later on when you grow up you will understand.... but Mama I want to know now, well God plants the innate knowledge that He is in men. It is instinctive for men. yeah and we believed the lie. Go to any classroom of children and ask them who believes in God. I would be surprised if most if not all raise their hands. and of those who raise their hands ask them if their parents believe in God too. and you will see why... you can also ask them who believes in Santa clause.... and ask them who told them so... yeah the same guys.
In conclusion, these are just my musings. Yeah I know am not being very original but thats just me. I will probably get a lot of flack from the believers about this post, but it's ok with me. For those of you who are non believers and new to JWN I hope it will be ok with you to. I personally think this forum would benefit from a stronger presence of non believers. I know that there are MANY aTheists that lurk on the board and read the posts, but are afraid to post because they feel that the Christians will hijack their threads. This isn't something to be afraid of. We can respect each others differences of opinions, yet hold fast to what we believe. Sometimes that changes over time. But I hope no one continues to be afraid to post here for fear of others beliefs (or unbeliefs).
Since Terry said that everybody is free to post what they believe, i then post what I believe.