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 But I find as I read your posts I? become tempted to join in the conversation. And that just would not work out well. This is a safe house for you and I fear I would offend you. This is a support group and one that I defiantly don? belong to.

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Christianity made me feel guilty.  My religion told me that I had to believe every non fundie Christian was damned to eternal torture in Hell.  That did not seem fair, I felt bad for those people.  One thing I hear fundies say all the time, even through their preaching against Muslims or Homosexuals is "Oh, I have many Muslim and Gay friends", but I don't buy that.  How can I relate to a world where I have to believe the vast majority will end up being tortured at the hands of a vengeful God?  A Buddhist who does not know Christ has done nothing wrong, yet I had to believe he was damned.  It is sick, and wrong.

In addition to that, I have always been good at and enjoyed science, and evolution and an old earth theory just made too much sense.  Snakes don't turn into sticks.  God doesn't cause rain.  Science has made god useless.  He has no role to play anymore.  I am too intelligent to believe in supernatural nonsense.

Well, there are various things that believing in Christianity suppressed or augmented or perverted in my life.  However, I wouldn't say Christianity has "done things to me" -- people did things to me, I did things to me, shit happened, etc.

The reason that I left Christianity was the realization that I had believed a lie . . . that the god I believed in was too self-contradictory, was too similar to all the other religions found in this world, was patterned too much after the morals and customs of people we now consider primitive, to be the one true deity out of the lot.  When I realized that what I had believed didn't hold water, then the negative effects those beliefs had on my life became clear . . . the suppression of many facets of my person, such as my sexuality, my ability to protect myself through anger or aggression, etc; guilt as the main reason I did anything; judging other people too harshly; twisting my brain in a knot trying to reconcile irreconciliable ideologies found in the Bible; etc.

So the reason that I left was that I knew as much as I'll ever know anything that  it wasn't true.  You should check out the thread where we tell how sure we are that there is or isn't a god (probably in the Lion's Den).  As a result  of leaving, my life got a lot better, as you might expect when someone stops believing the ludicrous, but there were also difficulties to overcome, such as finding my own moral compass and more like-minded friends (didn't have a choice on this one, since most of my former fundy friends went a-runnin'). 

I like this Onion Article because it makes fun of how silly believing in the Bible is even though, like in "The Emperor's New Clothes," it is generally accepted as fact.

Speaking of fact, I wouldn't I have stated my opinion as such fact if we were having an amiable discussion on neutral territory, but you came into our support forum, so that's what you get.

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Christianity made me feel guilty. My religion told me that I had to believe every non fundie Christian was damned to eternal torture in Hell. That did not seem fair, I felt bad for those people. One thing I hear fundies say all the time, even through their preaching against Muslims or Homosexuals is "Oh, I have many Muslim and Gay friends", but I don't buy that. How can I relate to a world where I have to believe the vast majority will end up being tortured at the hands of a vengeful God? A Buddhist who does not know Christ has done nothing wrong, yet I had to believe he was damned. It is sick, and wrong.In addition to that, I have always been good at and enjoyed science, and evolution and an old earth theory just made too much sense. Snakes don't turn into sticks. God doesn't cause rain. Science has made go

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So if I got this correct your initial loss of faith came from damage done from people or maybe something self destructive and that lead you into doubt. From there you logically concluded that you had been believing a lie. If I got the right there is no need to rely and dredge things up if you would rather not

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No, I wouldn't say that was correct at all, that's backwards.

In May of 2001 I was watching a documentary on cults at my boyfriend's parents' house, and I had the epiphany that the kooky things these former cultists had believed were really no different than what I believed.  I guess that when you insulate yourself from other viewpoints and beliefs, it's easy to think that you are the only true believer who is absolutely sure of the tenets of your faith.  A lightbulb went off in my head . . . hey!  They sound like me, and they were absolutely sure of their faith, and they were wrong . . . wait a minute!  Once I allowed myself to entertain the unthinkable question, basically everything that I reconsidered about Christianity fell to pieces, although like many people here I tried to read more liberal, less literalist Christian books at first to keep one foot in my old faith and one foot in reality.  It didn't work though.  Once I weighed the evidence and arguments, my faith disappeared.  Incidentally, so did my imaginary god friend (a Christian friend asked me if I felt like I'd lost a father or a friend . . . despite how much I constantly communed with my perception of God, no, it just went poof!)

I'd say that the harm I have suffered at the hands of some Christians was after my walking away . . . like my best friend who told me that her relationship with Jesus prevented her from being friends with me.  I know this sounds like something your parents tell you when you're in high school, but even the lost relationships were for the better.  I know who really liked me for me, and who just used me to reinforce his or her beliefs.

I didn't realize that I was suppressed or doing mental gymnastics until I had gone through the painful process of accepting the fact that I had believed a lie.  I didn't realize that I wasn't really cared for by my former friends until after, so no, I did not walk away because of anybody mistreating me. 

Is that your thesis (that we are whiners who have decided to ignore the truth because of being somehow mistreated) that you are trying to prove or did I really explain myself that poorly?  Read the Personal Introductions section if you're really that curious, but if you have a thesis ahead of time, why waste your time and ours?  That's what I did for ten years . . . I assumed that the answer was that God and Christianity were right, no matter what the question was:  Evolution?  I don't know, but I know there has to be some answer, something about carbon dating and the moon, and dinosaurs being leviathans.  Really, it makes sense, really.  Contradictions in the Bible?  See, God wrote the Bible, but He, the mysterious sugar-daddy in the sky, let us horrible, sinful humans be the conduits, and we tainted it with our imperfections, but see, the message is still the same.  Other religions and resurrecting god-man myths?  Ok, here's the good part, see Satan, the father of lies, he wants to deceive us, that's why it seems like there are so many reasons to look at Christianity just like any other religion or cult, but really, he's just damning your eternal soul to hell.  I know you might think that a God who would send you to hell eternally for a temporary condition which you did not bring on yourself might be a little unjust, but really, He is, really.  It all makes sense, see!  Hallelujah!

So anyway, if you are here to prove to yourself that we all have problems with things other than the validity of Christianity, then just pat yourself on the back and go away.  If, however, you really suspect or will at least consider that there might something wrong with what you believe, then we can help you, but we're not lab rats.  We're busy people who come here to get away from questions and suppositions like yours.

P.S.  The forums at Internet Infidels are much more suited to people on the outside to pose questions.
P.P.S.  If I have misinterpreted your questions, and you are trying to get your feet wet here as part of your own walking away process, then I'm sorry, and I hope you'll be comfortable here.  However, the purpose of this forum is really for fellow ex-fundies to support one another.  I didn't feel that your reading into my post that I was "self-destructive" and that's why I walked away to be very supportive.  When I said that my life has been better since, I didn't mean because I was a nut case while a fundy.  I meant that it was better because I was no longer brain-washed and believing kooky things.

Actually, what happened was that I assumed that when I quoted you, you would realize that I was criticizing your posing the question in terms of "what Christianity did to you." I felt that just by the phrasing of your question you were stating a position -- that somebody or something had done something (bad) to us, and therefore we left.  I wasn't saying that t people, myself, or the universe's sense of humor had done things to me; I was just explaining that we don't all view Christianity itself as an entity capable of harming us. 

I quickly pointed out the fallacy in your phrasing, and then moved on to why I walked away . . . the utter absurdity of the Christian myth.  Christianity is true or not true despite what it has "done" or hasn't done to us.  Investigating what it has done to us does not answer the question of whether or not it is true, which is why we walked away in the first place.

Again, this may not be the forum for you, as it is a support forum for those "who have left or are in the process of walking away from fundamentalism."  Would you show up at an AA meeting just because you're curious and don't know why those drunks can't hold their own liquor?  Couldn't research be done without infiltrating a support space and pigeon holing the particpants?

But let's not leave all the inquiring up to you . . . you say you know why you walked away and why you walked back.  So why? 

P.S.  I really don't mean to sound rude, but if you are crafting a reply to my question, I would appreciate it if you wouldn't write with so many run-on sentences.  I'm an English teacher, and I try to figure out where people meant to have pauses or stops for a living, so in my free time, I'd appreciate separate sentences.  I sound like a bitch, I know.  That's just if you're writing back to me, and how you write is entirely up to you, of course.  Just as a review, the ways to combine two or more sentences are:  actually create separate sentences, a comma plus a conjuction, or a semi-colon.

The answer to your question is that we do not live in an emotion-free world.  We do not interact with entirely logical people.  If we did, there wouldn't be faith in anything we couldn't prove at all.  Ba-dump-bump.

The pain that we experience varies due to our background, reasons for converting in the first place, temperament, and experiences post-walking away.  Fundamentalist Christians, as a rule, do not see "believers" and "non-believers" the same.  If these were your closest friends, then you will most likely lose them.  Going from Mother Teresa to Ted Bundy in the eyes of your closest friends for having the courage to admit the truth is painful even when you are right.  Most aspects of one's life are affected.  In addition, Christianity was familiar, and there may be the loss of a paradigm that was formerly a way of coping with the ups and downs of life.

The best thing you could do to answer your question and satiate your burning inquisitiveness would be to read Marlene Winell's Leaving the Fold, which takes a walk-awayer through the whole gamut of the deconversion process.

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That? why I am curious your not just atheists (some of you are even deists) I understand them I was one.

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I personally have nothing against Christianity per se.  In fact, I don't entirely reject the concept.  The image of a God taking human form with human limitations to show us how it should be done is appealing actually. 

My problem was with fundamentalism itself, which is only a small portion of Christianity really.  The Bible is too much of an angry document to represent any notion of justice I've been presented with.  The idea of hell specifically.  The fear and anger that permeates the Bible, even the New Testament.  Can you think of even one joke in the whole book?  Anything that suggests that God has an respects a sense of humor?

And it comes out in many of its followers.  I mean, there are a lot of fundamentalists who seem to believe one thing with their mind and another with their heart.  Technically they believe that homosexuals, Jews, atheists, and other "non-repentant" sinners are going to be tortured by their God for eternity.  But they don't really believe that.  Not in the way they treat the same individuals.  Not in their lack of desperation in trying to convince people they obviously care about.

Then there are the others.  The Jack Chicks.  The Fred Phelps.  The Jerry Falwells.  The Rios Monts.  I couldn't reconcile being in "fellowship" with these hateful individuals.

By the way, feel free to tell your story, but do it in the Lion's Den because although you aren't trying to convert, it could be interpreted that way by people for whom the wounds are still fresh.

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PG, you'd hate my essays, they frequently contain sentences that run on for six of seven A4 lines (typed). Of course, there is punctuation, but I'm a master of the subordinating clause, and the subordinating clause of the subordinating clause.

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Actually, that doesn't bother me at all.  I just think that our communication skills have gone to crap.  My students write these garbled messes of a sentence and assume that I can magically predict where every pause should have gone or new sentence should have begun.  What we are saying in our heads usually seems clear to us, but without proper punctuation, it literally runs on and on in the reader's head.  Commas and subordinating conjunctions don't bother me.  Sentence fragments used for emphasis don't bother me.  However, if you don't know how to combine sentences, then don't . . . just start a new sentence every time. 

Sorry, maybe it's just on my brain because my students have to take the standardized writing test next week. 

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if phoenixgirl and others are interest I will tell that tale in the Lions Den when this thread is done

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You already answered my question, so don't keep writing on account of me.  I am self-aware enough to admit that based on the phrasing of your question and your possible motives for coming here, I had an idea of what kind of things you would say led you to deconvert and then reconvert.  You did not disappoint me.

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What specifically did Christianity do to you? In other words what was the reason you left?

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Hi, Verne, and thanks for stopping by. 

I'll do my best to be succinct.  Christianity, in and of itself, is as harmless as any other myth.  It did nothing to me.  Christians, on the other hand, did quite a bit.

First, they convinced me at an early age that Christianity was not a myth, that the events recorded in the Bible were indeed God's words.  Everything from The Garden to Calvary were absolutely historically accurate and, therefore, the Apocalypse would be an eventual reality.  I even went to college and seminary to become a teacher and preacher of this message.  I closed my minds to the realities of this world and it's marvelous history and bought the..to be polite...ancient Hebrew and Christian myths as true histories while rejecting the claims of science, archaeology, anthropology and other sciences as 'lies of the Devil'.  My mind was closed and my attitude was bigoted.

I left Christianity because I exposed myself to the Bible for a time without guidance or benefit of others commentaries.  I approaced it from a standpoint of understanding the entirety of the Bible on my own.  I incorporated a serious study of the texts that were rejected as non-canonical along with other religions from that time and region as well as eastern religions.  I concluded that Christianity is the distillation of ancient Canaanite, Egypitian, Hebraic, Mithraic and eastern religions that gained status as the first major state mandated religion under Constantine and from that point was evangelised with the sword and terror.  I also began teaching the non-canonical books of the Bible to adults in the church that brought down the wrath of the elder leaders as, basically, an act of heresy. 

Now Christianity is accepted as some kind of an accurate historical account of events that transpired in Jerusalem and that region.  Christians reject every other religion as cultic or Satanic.  They reject atheists/agnostics like myself as Satan worshippers.   From my experience, I can say that any fundamental religion is a position of superstition and abject ignorance. 

As an American I am mostly offended by Christians who insist on removing subjects like evolutionary biology from school curricula.  I am offended by Christians who falsely claim that the US was founded on "Christian Principles" and wish to mandate a State religion.  I am offended by the Church's general inability to make a true impact on society in a positive way.  That the Church must continually choose enemies such as "Harry Potter" to oppose in order to give itself meaning through fear and intimidation.

I think if more Christians would listen to men like John Shelby Spong Christianity might gain at least a modicum of respectibility.  But, as he is spurned as Satanic by a large portion of the powerful Right Wing, I'm sure that this won't happen.  Let the schools teach it in the mythology classes along with Roman, Greek and Egyptian mythology. 

The problem with Christianity is  (most) Christians.

Good day!

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What specifically did Christianity do to you? In other words what was the reason you left?I hope this question is not annoying to you I suppose that if I read the entire group I could get the answers myself without bothering you. But I find as I read your posts I? become tempted to join in the conversation. And that just would not work out well. This is a safe house for you and I fear I would offend you. This is a support group and one that I defiantly don? belong to. As one who has been there {Fundi} walked away for 15 years then came back your group is not for me. And only a fool would come here to evangelize those injured by my faith. I have my own reasons why I turned my back and ran from Christianity all those years ago but my personal experience does not tell me why others do the same thing and never come back.So honestly I will not argue with your answers n

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The Christians I met were among the finest people I have ever known and the church I attended was one of the finest voluntary organisations to which I have ever belonged. I left the church because the teachings of the bible are demonstrably false and the philosophy underpinning Christian theology is immoral. I feel sorry for those still trapped within the clutches of christianity.

Reply to Verne44:

In any case, I noticed that you said you had left xtianity because of "desire I could not fulfill as a Christian", yet you returned because "all was useless"?   Tell me, if your desires could not be fulfilled the first time you were a xtian, why do you think they will be the second time through?  Methinks you may have some unacknowledged doubts going on within, which may be the real reason you are drawn to this forum.  I would be interested in your response to the above question, though perhaps this thread should be moved to the Lion's Den; or you could simply post your answer seperately there. 

Yep, belongs in Lion's den.

This is the tactic that we used to use to get people talking.  "reaching out to the dissillusioned and disenfranchised".  Making a positive mark where negative marks exist.  Moving them one step in a 'positive' direction.  Maybe being the only christian friend the person has...

Yes, I understand your intentions are well-meaning.  But I also understand something else.

If you want to find reasons, you can read all the "personal introductions" section.  That should pretty much sum up many people's stories and why they left.  I dont think it needs a discussion and a brief summary.  What one thing made us start? 

Well, what one thing made you realize that you were a person?

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So were you actually a fundamentalist Christian? If so what was it specifically that started you thinking your religion illogical and evil? Really what I want to know was specifically what started to brake your faith

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First off the religion I was in calls itself evangelical rather than fundamentalist and claims that since they think a few minor passages were not literally true they arent fundamentalist. Part of what caused me to realize the evilness of religion was the idea that simply for not being of the right faith you get tortured forever. first off what kind of regime would torture infinately and eternally someone simply for thinking differently than his followers. Also as I studied the sciences and other areas I found that the creationist claims were nearly always distortions of actual science when they werent just fearmongering or completely garbled nonsence. This is what started me on the path to my beliefs.