I see you changed your question AFTER I responded; as I said, I do not accept your perjorative labeling system, or your attempt to Poison the Well with terms like "strictly literal interpretation" or "blind" faith.

Your Straw Man definition is obvious; your Wikipedia article does not really help as its Factual Accuracy is disputed.

So far, besides perjorative labeling, you have been Changing the Goal posts, trying to "Poison the Well", and building Straw Men to knock down.

Is that really the best you can do?

This isn't some kind of football game and you should stop viewing this as some kind of a contest.

I asked the question out of a sincere curiosity, because as a child, I feel like I was indoctrinated into a belief system whereby I spent a great deal of my childhood and early adolescence believing in things that were not true.

That may have been your experience, but please stop trying to label me with your perjoratives.

But if as an adult you now believe that all existence, life, mind, and reason itself are the result of mindless forces I am afraid you are still believing things that are not true.

(By the way, you are the one who started with the sports analogies...golf, I believe...but if you really want to be serious just dispense with the ridicule and logical fallacies and deal with the issues.)

Brian,

What do you hear from Christians about how strong your faith was while you were a Christian and now not? Do any of them understand reasons for you leaving? Are these reasons interpreted by them as Satan's work or god works in mysterious ways and all planned for or you rebelled? Do you have some stories about that?

Thanks for sharing. I can't relate directly. I was born and raised in the Episcopal Church. While I remember reading adam & eve, and noah's ark stories when I was young, I was never indoctrinated in biblical literacy. I stopped going to church with my parents in high school. In my mid-twenties I went back to Church on my own. After a couple of months I realized that my reasons for originally leaving were pretty solid. I just didn't believe it. I don't find the story of Christ to be inspirational or compelling.

[Paragraphs deleted later]

These events all unfolded after, and thus had no influence on, my decision to bail on christianity.

Brian and Henry,

I just started "God and His Demons" by Michael Parenti. Your accounts resonate with his methodical analysis of the concept of Judeo-Christian god.

Very interesting story.

I grew up, nominally, in the Episcopal church. Up until ten or so I went to church and Sunday school, but I never really bought into any of it, I don't think - it just didn't seem believable. My lovely grandmother was a fervent believer, and I felt warmly towards her belief, but that didn't add anything to my own. Eventually my family quit going. As I got older, through high school and college, I read various philosophers (including some famous existentialists) as well as lots of comparative religion. As an anthropology major, my main interest was in religion, belief systems, and socialization of children into the culture. All of this laid the groundwork fro most of my currents perspectives on religion.

Interesting that these subjects were studiously avoided during the era of the Evolution Hearings.

As I understood it, the hearings were supposed to be about science, not a person's personal religious beliefs. Though it did seem the 'Intelligent Design Creationist' folks tried their best to get religion into the standards.

A scientist's religious belief has absolutely nothing to do with the scientific work he/she does. Despite what you would like us to believe.

Harry, I agree that a scientist's religion has no place being a factor in science. In this case what changes things the most is the public hearing was citizenry/scientists not a strictly scientist to scientist, and there were questions in regard to group-think type bias which made knowing a little about their religion of interest to the general public. It's not the usual lab procedure that make religious views irrelevant to result of experiment. It was a K-12 hearing where there was religion versus religion conflict going on too, which of course made it more than a scientific dispute that can be settled with an experiment. Have no choice but do your best to address the concerns of the citizenry who had their reasons to call for a hearing, even though it's not the type of problem a scientist and/or educator is used to having to solve, in their day to day work.

Great topic.

DangnyWener's classifications are not worthy of comment in this case.
For goodness sake Obama claims to be a Christian, obviously for political reasons. It doesn't mean a thing.


You say as a child you were mentally indoctrinated, can you explain that?

What caused you to accept your present view of the Bible and evolution?

ABO,

You have not heard of Christianists? But you have heard of Islamists? Just make a wild guess (or hypothesize) who could be called a Christianist? May I ask to think for a short while to see who could qualify to be a Christianist?

Surely, these Christianists are Christians. But not every Christian is a Christianist. And of course, it's quite obvious, that not every Christian is a Follower of Christ and doesn't have great faith as stated by Jesus they have to possess in order to qualify to be his follower and be blessed eternally by entry into heaven. Because if they were, they'd be moving mountains if their faith was that strong - Matthew 17:20 Matthew 21:21 - by just word alone

He replied, "Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you."

Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and it will be done.

In fact, in 2,000 some years there has not been a single documented case of anyone with "Christ" in their name or religious affiliation move mountains. I am not sure if Jesus ever moved a mountain. Out of billions of Christians who have lived and died in times of film, photographs, video, cell phone cams there should be at least one or two who'd be on par with Noah as righteous people? I'd think that toddlers and pre teens would be the least corrupted by the evil world, so we may need to look into their paranormal abilities?

That may create a rather interesting development of who'd be claiming these people with exceptional gifts - Christianists, Christians, or Followers of Christ? Or maybe the parents of these kids who'd like to sell their story for movie rights?

So, are you sure, there is no difference between Christianists, Christians and Followers of Christ?

Sure, and thats why the Anti Theists here constantly use their version of science to attack religion, and why we are discussing this on a thread titled "I was once a Fundamentalist Christian" on the Kansas Citizens for SCIENCE Forums.

Right.

I know that pointing things out to Mike that might contradict his standard, somewhat obsessive, boilerplate points will do no good, but I'll note, again, the disclaimer from the main page of this forum:

I was replying to Harry Gregory, who is a KCFS member, and who was claiming that religious beliefs had nothing to do with science.

And I was pointing out that this does not stop the Anti Theists was using their verison of science to attack religion.

For example, Jack, you say you did not find religion "believable" and talked about your scientific interests. Well, I don't find the claim that existence is explained by mindless processess believable. And the claim is certainly not demonstrable.