I rememeber a trip with my parents to the Waitomo caves in NZ when i was about 10. When the guide spoke of how slowly the caves formed, how old they were, my parent were shaking their heads with the knowing superioirty of JW truth. What they beleived was the very limestone had been created by the flood compessing the sea bed under all that extra water, as had all the coal deposits etc.
I started wild caving when I was 15 years old. These are caves in their wild state, sometimes previously unexplored.
It didn't take long to start to see things that rasied questions about the age of the earth. Seeing whale bones preserved in the limestone. When exploring for caves we found layers of sea shells, with soil under the shells, on top of hills made of limestone, ccording to my dad these shells were proof of a world wide flood.
I asked "but Dad then how was the limestone formed - i thought that was suppoese to have been formed in the flood?"
His reply "Jehovah must have created the limestone before the flood"
My reply "But Dad you saw the whale bones?", to which he siad "well we don't know for sure they were whale bones".
OK so I wasn't going to get any sense out of my Dad, the borg could not be wrong so no reasoning based on logic would shake him.
Finding that there were coal deposits under the Limestone, coal, undistputed old trees and things, hell my own Dad had shown me tree rings in a peice of coal, so my paticular patch of NZ had been above the sea, had vast forrests form, these had been burried and turned to coal, it had gone under the sea, see creaters had formed huge sheets of calcifeid limestome which had risen above the sea, soil had formed, it had then gone under the sea again [of the sea level was 200 feet higher at some point] and put those sheels apon the hills. It didn't take a rocket scientist to work out the whole creative period [which the Witnesses by then thought were 7000 year long each] or a mere 49,000 years just didn't add up. So based upon onservation of the natural enviorment this formerly good little JW boy started to harbour DOUBT. If the JW's could be wrong about this... what else could they be wrong about.
Interstingly I raised this topic with one of the most genuine JW's I have ever met and he agreed that there was at least 20% he couldn't understand, and that my points were valid, he even rasied points haddent even considered. he talked without fear, with intelligence, and still had faith. His attitude was that he would go on the 80/20 rule, the last 20% was where faith came in. To illustrate how cool this brother was I was staying [he had 3 sons I were friends with] and it was his eldest sons 21'st birthday. About 2pm he brought down a dozen 750ml bottles of cold beer, hugged his son and wished him happy birthday in front of us - we then got to have our 1st quiet birthday party. He expalined later that there was no scriptual reason not to cellebrate a birthday - but he didn't make a big thing of them as it might stumble some who thought birthdays were not Christian. His 3 sons are still JW's too this day. If the JW's had a lot more like him I think it would be a much cooler and tolerable religion.