Another Ex-Jehovah's Witness here. I left at 18 when I discovered that evolution wasn't the nonsense I'd always been taught. There was a period where I searche

Another Ex-Jehovah's Witness here. I left at 18 when I discovered that evolution wasn't the nonsense I'd always been taught. There was a period where I searched desperately for any credible arguments against it, and found none. When I started talking to the people who had been telling me it was wrong, I realized that they had no idea what evolution actually was. In some cases, they didn't know the distinction between natural selection and the theories of the origin of the universe. People accuse the JW's of being a cult with good reason: members are discouraged from associating with non-members. They're also told to avoid all contact with anyone who is 'disfellowshipped' (thrown out). This means that the penalty for disagreement with the church is losing everyone you care about. 'Shunning' is a tactic very common to cults. This also means the price for being intellectually honest with yourself is very high. That's how smart people manage to continue believing in something so demonstrably false. For me to give up my faith, strong evidence wasn't enough - it took overwhelming evidence, and even then it was a very emotionally trying time. The reason their income is low is simple: the church has noticed that education is anti-correlated with membership and so they continually discourage it. Very much like a corrupt government tries to bury information injurious to itself.