I was brought up in a loving, but very conservative evangelical home. Went to Uni and then got a job in a church. But after three years working for a church I slowly started to see a greater difference to what I believed and life.

Now in my late twenties I have accepted that I’m not longer an evangelical, and I’m still recovering. I haven’t explicitly told my parents, but they know I’m no longer interested in faith issues. They also put a lot of pressure on me to married to a nice Christian girl.

Now I feel I’m in recovery mode. I still beat myself up for not being who I think I should be and constantly seek approval from others. I don’t feel I can accept myself for who I am, because I’ve always been taught that I am sinner. I feel inexperienced in relationships and feel others won’t understand.

Now trying to build a more honest life while recovering as an evangelical.

Thanks for reading.

After returning from active duty I enrolled in a community college and then transferred to University of the Pacific. These were my first experiences in non-SDA schools, and I found the biological and geological information available did not fit with the YEC perspective I had been taught. I continued through graduate school at UC Davis and a research post-doc at U of Washington, and have had a very rich and fulfilling life as a zoological curator, scientific editor, and scientist (applied psychology and primatology). I am now a semi-retired independent consultant, living comfortably with my wife of 40 years in rural south-central Pennsylvania.

I also had not realized that the Newtown shooting is a mere reflection of our society as a whole. Here, I thought it was just one sick person committing one unfathomable act. Nope. I was wrong. We’re all potential homicidal maniacs without god. How can we possibly know that the murder of children is wrong if we don’t read and abide by the 2,000 year old book that tells us so?

I’m also relieved to see a Republican disagree so fervently with Ronald Reagan.

“We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.”

-Ronald Reagan

So, since society is clearly to blame for this incident, Mike, I’m sure you will agree that the government needs to step in and take the guns out of the hands of us homicidal maniacs. I look forward to watching you practice the words you preach.

***RETRACTION***

Well… this is embarrassing. Turns out, god as not so anti child murder. Maybe Mike was reading a different Bible that I don’t know about. I guess it’s just no so simple, is it, Mike?

Leviticus 20:9 “For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him.”

Lamentations 2:20-22 God gets angry and mercilessly torments and kills everyone, young and old. He even causes women to eat their children.

When I turned 15 my sister was abused by a church member’s son. But because she was a female she was the one in the wrong. We left in search of a new church. We soon found a new fundamentalist church which believed in even more new and radical concepts of god. A pentecostal, “spirit filled” church. I went from being told that not only was I supposed to be saved, but that I was supposed to “feel” god and show his works in my life. I spent the next 6 years working to try and experience this new level of god. By this time I had heard of evolution but been told it was a lie and that most scientists were deluded and blind to the truth. I had christian science given to me by pastors and lay people in church sponsored meetings and youth rallies. Never once was I told the other side of the story. I was encouraged to believe that when others tried to show proof to discount it immediately and not give the arguments any weight. To realize that those people were just lost and I needed to live a faith filled life in front of them so they would see how lost they were.

However, over the next 6 years, I continued to feel no answer. I prayed with fervor and intensity. I submitted to a 9 month intensive ministry training and discipleship program 3 times in the hope of growing and becoming that kind of super christian that I have been hearing of for years. I fed the homeless, I went on missions trips. I got theological training. I read christian texts on the historical evidence for the bible. And still I felt nothing.

At the age of 21, after years of indoctrination and study, I struck out for the real world and go my first real job. I was in over my head. I was the one who was lost. I finally started hearing the arguments against what I believed and thought. Still I maintained my connection to the church. I went as often as I could to bolster what I thought was a spiritual attack against me.

At 24, after fighting against the lack of response from god and suffering a massive anxiety attack, I quit my job and left the home I had known my whole life. I still believed that my lacking was my fault but I had come to the realization that I would never know that level. My sin was just too great. As a 24 year old guy in a church that refused to acknowledge the differences and challenges of young people, you can imagine the sins that weighed so heavily on my mind.

I got a new job in a new state. Working in an academic arena, at the age of 28, I met my first agnostic friend. They didn’t push me or call me names. They respected my beliefs. But they challenged me respectfully. I started by reading Thomas Paine’s “Age of Reason”. I thought it was hilarious. My christian mind poked holes in almost all his statements. However, for the first time in my life, I left my mind open at the end. I wanted to know what the new arguments were and how christians answered them.

This led to a spiritual journey from one form of religious thought to another. From christianity to buddhism, to mormanism and wicca. I began to realize how stupid they all sounded. I made friends with atheists, gay people, lesbians, buddhists, mormons and started to challenge all my previous thought patterns. I became a huge Star Trek nerd during this time and began to long for the scientific utopia that I watched and wanted to know if science was as good as fiction said it could be. I became introduced to the scientific method, falsification, and evidenced based knowledge. Undergoing massive cognitive dissonance, 6 months ago, I sat at my computer and opened up the wikipedia page on atheism and read everything.

From there, I compared all the arguments for and against. I stopped looking at things from a purely christian perspective and placed the evidence for both side by side. I learned about logic and used my “god given mind” to evaluate them both. God lost. It scared me. I was petrified. I vacillated back and forth between belief and non-belief for weeks. Each time I tried to go back, ran into another impossibility for faith. At times, I still look back. I sometimes worry that I missed something. But all I have to do is check the facts again and realize, if even one thing about god (any god) is wrong, then he/she/it is not possible.

i left home at 17, to get away from the smothering – i’d wanted to leave for some time, after being frequently told – ‘my house, my rules’

at age 11, my best friend since forever told his ‘rents he no longer wished to attend the meetings. they listened, he stopped going & i wasn’t allowed to associate with him after that. i prayed to jehovah to let me have my friend back

around that time, i was offered a scholarship to a private secondary school. my mother & father, however, did not see the value of education & denied me the opportunity. later, they took me out of school at age 14. in the days following, i ran away from home & was returned several days later. to this day, i enjoy long walks/runs

i became very good at lying. bluffing to non-jw’s that i knew their worldly ways, faking to anyone else that i didn’t. most of all i lied to myself that i could just leave home & be ok. i spent the next year a drug-addled mess, ending up in rehab & moving in with my grandma. aged 19, i convinced myself to really give “the truth” a good go & spent a year studying hard

in the end, i sent my family a letter breaking down why i couldn’t bring myself to believe in it all. too many unexplainable doctrines etc. i moved in with a friend i’d made whilst “in the world”. my family would get in touch only to say they were praying for me. i tried to commit suicide & spent several days in hospital as a result of my confusion

i was the only one in my immediate family (mother, father, 2 boys, 2 girls) not to get baptised. my brother, younger sister & father have all since fallen away, becoming “apostate”. it must be even harder for them in many ways

anyway, enough of the moan-fest! i have tried to keep this brief but there are countless incidences i could mention that defy belief (no pun intended). i don’t want to be one of those that go around for the rest of their lives crying ‘i had a bad childhood!’

i’m 27 & only coming to terms with dealing with my life-view very recently. my mind has been heavily tainted & the beliefs that were forced on me still linger in the shadows. upon deep reflection, i can see that i have adopted some very self-destructive habits as coping mechanisms. trust issues, perfectionism, dissociation, power-plays, anti-authoritarianism to name a few

the comparable reflections i have found on this website are comforting to a small degree. i hope my experiences expound further the jw stories that already exist here. it can be hard for others to understand what it is like – a few times, when recounting my upbringing i have heard things like: ‘at least you had a dad’ or ‘it could’ve been worse’ – doesn’t help!

being told explicitly what to do, what not to do, what to wear, how to speak, how to think.. in your formative years! the words can’t describe how damaging this is to the psyche. not to mention the missed opportunities, ruined education & mental anguish

staying positive is a struggle. i have a tendency towards feeling quite useless because of the brainwashing received. in my opinion, the inculcating of any form of fundamentalism in children is dangerous

independant living organism who claims to have an own opinion, into a raging berzerk who feels, hmmmmm …… FOOLED !!!
A democracy based on two choices ??? A country based on the principles of freedom of speech, the country of unlimited

possibilities, the place where dreams come true …. a damn WWF show including ladders, chairs, some smalldicked anabolica

clowns and a referree is, and writing this makes me almost throw up, more likly to be called a realistic sports event based

on the skills of the opponents than the elections have to do with competence, credibility and honest meant politics,

informing the voting population in a neutral way about the pros and contras of the candidates. Of the 2 candidates. What of

u do not like the choice between Sodom and Gomora ? Then the special trick kicks in …. you have the freedom not to

vote!!! Vut if u do so, then better not complain about the outcome, u could have influenced it. Every strange Japanese

entertainment show including school girl uniforms, living sea fruits, used underwear and half naked table soccer challanges

against blindfolded silverback Gorillas has more class than the bullshit we have to read and hear about the 2 guys who r

running for the position of the President of the United States of America.