Hi Michel & Freedom: welcome to the board.
Michel - nice introductory post! Are your parents still JW's, and if so how are you getting along? I too was an MS, now disfellowshipped. My parents treat me as if I have a deadly disease. It's sad all around, because I feel that they probably don't want to act that way but don't have the courage to go against the organization.
As far as the "quiet in heaven", I too have had that feeling of being all alone in the universe. Between that and the presence of unchecked evil on earth, I moved toward agnosticism slowly but surely after I made my way out. (I'm even farther along that spectrum now - but that's a different topic.) Nice to have you here on this board of support!
Freedom - Like you I spent way too much of my adult life under the influence of the men of Brooklyn, New York. It was frustrating for me because for many years I had a vague feeling something was wrong but I always convinced myself "the good outweighed the bad" in the JW organization. It's clear that was wishful thinking.
I remember when the Awake magazine started publishing favorable articles about the United Nations in the 1990's. I was still a loyal JW, and I seriously wondered why they were doing that, since in my younger years they always portrayed the UN in their literature as a cartoonish evil beast. In 2001 when the news broke that the WT Society was affiliated with the NGO - their hypocrisy became so very clear.
Did you realize that the news of that scandal first broke on this website, and was picked up by The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom?
Here is a link to the thread that revealed the WT-UN link: http://jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/scandals/10732/1/UNITED-NATIONS-NGOs-and-WTBS
Shortly after The Guardian article, the Watchtower quietly disassociated itself from the UN, similar to an embarassed child who just got caught with his hand in the cookie jar!
Welcome aboard to you both.
