Also, how would you describe yourself now? Atheist? Agnostic? "Spiritual"?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1950871&forum_id=2#20712744)

The turning point was when I went to university. I worked my way through high school to pay tuition, but there was no way we could afford the evangelical college. To make it worse, the Model Girl was going there, and we'd been looking forward to dating (her parents approved, but only after high school).

After praying a lot for a miracle that never happened, I went to State. My parents believed in the church, but they believed even more strongly that excessive debt was a sin. I found out how far behind I was in the natural sciences. I took a lot of biology and chemistry courses (failed a bunch of them), at first in a retarded attempt to refute evolution and then just out of curiosity. My real passion was literature and history, classes where I did really well.

In one of my history classes, I met Mary, a Catholic. We were both religious, both living with our parents, both interested in Chesterton. She invited me for dinner at her house. Her brother was a Jesuit and literally laughed out loud when I tried high school apologetics on them. He was extremely smart, but very unhappy, and I think he liked cutting me down to size. When I told my reverend I wanted to "court" Mary, he advised against it (even tried to set up a date with Model Girl that summer, but she was already seeing someone else). He went with me to dinner at Mary's house once, got smoked by her Jesuit brother, and warned me not to continue seeing them. I decided to start attending Mass.

I studied Catholicism, but found it unsatisfactory. Intellectually, the Church Doctors were more convincing, but I didn't have that "first love." I was more skeptical, and this made faith in general more problematic. I read more of the existentialists. I also read a few atheists. Some, like Russell and Hitchens, I didn't care for, if only because it was clear neither had had a religious experience. Oddly, the most convincing arguments against religion came from traditionalist conservatives like Russell Kirk, if only because they defended religion as a social artifact instead of a metaphysical reality.

I remember walking back from the library one night, thinking, "What if there wasn't a God? What would that change? It would be lonelier, but I'm already lonely. Would the world be any less beautiful? Would I be any more moral or any less?" I pushed the crosswalk button and when I was on the other side, I was an atheist.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1950871&forum_id=2#20713083)

Describe high school apologetics and your frenzied attempts to refute evolution.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1950871&forum_id=2#20713452)

The one conversation I remember getting mercilessly pwned on was salvation by works vs. Catholic sacraments. Her brother laughed off my earnest sola Scripture method by confusing me with James 2 and asking me detailed questions about the Council of Trent. Then I got dumped with a bunch of Thomist arguments defending the Sacraments. "Trust me when I say you haven't studied this question as closely as Luther, and even he didn't know what he was talking about."

The evolution stuff was even more embarrassing. In my first biology class, I wrote a paper about "microevolution vs. macroevolution." Here are some delicious quotes:

"But while microevolution has been confirmed with experiments in laboratories, extrapolating these results to macroevolution is highly fallacious. Among the more troubling problems is the lack of transitional species. If men evolved slowly from monkeys, where are the man-monkeys?"

"Microevolution points to the divine, to God's providence in allowing animals to adapt to sin. Macroevolution exalts the bestial and tramples upon the Holy Writ."

"Professors at the Discovery Institute have shown..."

"Darwinism has social consequences too, as the Holocaust showed."

Luckily, my professor simply called me into his office and patiently discussed factual claims without directly challenging my beliefs. Over the next few weeks, he explained natural selection, never once using the E-word. One day he just left me for a few minutes in a room with a chart of the various kingdoms. Once I grasped the notion of a "common ancestor," it was easier to see why the micro/macro distinction was fallacious. I felt excited to finally get it. I wanted to study more so that I could refute this elegant theory.

Over the next year, I met regularly with this professor and asked more questions, attempting to trap him. He always answered factually, letting me work out the conclusion for myself. I didn't submit any more papers affirming my belief in microevolution, but I would still argue with classmates and the occasional teaching assistant. Finally, I realized this was a lost cause, especially after Mary's brother piled on.

I was actually more excited than disappointed by this, though. What actually frustrated me was taking organic chemistry and realizing I probably would have done better if I had been properly prepared in high school, instead of wasting time learning about Noah's Flood.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1950871&forum_id=2#20713777)

I didn't read anything in particular that convinced me other than the bible. It was more a gradual process of finding the religion and its texts internally inconsistent and ultimately slapdash and meaningless. It was almost impossible to comprehend the Torah as a deliberate, single, unified text and eventually I realized that was because it wasn't one, it was just a bunch of stories arbitrarily compiled over many years.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1950871&forum_id=2#20715252)

Hypocrisy was an interesting one for me. It's really clear now and absolutely repulsive, but at the time, it was my strongest incentive to stay faithful.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1950871&forum_id=2#20715939)

Evolution was a way out of this nightmare.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1950871&forum_id=2#20715989)

Towards the end of my time in the church, they were putting on "demon plays" to scare people into accepting jesus unless they went to hell for their sins.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1950871&forum_id=2#20743222)

my problem is that I'm just done with churches and churchgoers. part of it is the intolerable expansion of religion into secular life in recent years, and part of it is just that it's all so fake. so many people are there for business networking or to find a spouse, and few are there to actually just learn and worship.

i also think the Bible is a set of guidelines and stories, not a black letter lawbook.

my in-laws remain deep evangelicals who have anti-evolution books prominently displayed in their living rooms, pray loudly and obviously before every meal even at a fast food place, etc. i feel more distant from them, certainly, which is sad. they are good people. but their lives literally revolve around what's going on at church and that is just laughable to me.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1950871&forum_id=2#20743022)

It is incredible how they were CONSTANTLY talking about pagan new age religion and how they saw it everywhere. It is a constant knocking down of straw men, and it breeds paranoia.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1950871&forum_id=2#20743152)

for me, religion is about moral rather than scientific questions. comparatively, the bible spends way more time talking about ethics than science. obviously people love to poke holes in the bible's ethics, but atheists are on equally shaky grounds when trying to debate meta ethics.

if anything, i'm now a religious-leaning agnostic. except when i'm around annoying libs and atheists, when i prentend to be a full-blown christian.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1950871&forum_id=2#20743193)

I can't really do that in regards to Christianity, lol.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1950871&forum_id=2#20743225)

sorry you believed in prole christianity, bro.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1950871&forum_id=2#20743238)

My church was full of people who would go to like university classrooms, not even biology classes, and they'd argue with the prof about god being left out of the curriculum.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1950871&forum_id=2#20743248)

at the same time, it wasn't like the religious upbringing was a solid foundation for adult life. In other words, I've failed pretty hardcore in life so far.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1950871&forum_id=2#20743253)

But...when you leave a religious context, then that doesn't work anymore. Then you realize that you missed out on a lot of socializing activities that other non-fundie people got to enjoy: organized sports, holidays, etc.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1950871&forum_id=2#20745253)