deconversion

Introduce yourself to the d-C community.

I'll start!

I was a Christian for 30 years. I've been a doubter for 20 of those 30 years. All of you who are former christains probably understand what I mean. So I really don't know what to call myself now.

The thing that started my doubting (other than my natural skepticism) was an event in Texas in the late 1980's. There was a church bus that got caught in a flash flood and washed down stream. Search & Rescue was plucking people out of the rushing water. On live TV, a helicopter grabbed a girl and was winching her up when, 5 F----ing feet from the chopper, she ran out of strength and fell to her death. 5 FEET! god couldn't help her hang on for 15 more seconds? He just sat there and watched as one of HIS children plunged to her death? That hit me like a ton of bricks! 5 feet? 5 feet?

I couldn't shake that image. I still can't (can you tell?).

That was the start. There have been many other things over the years since then, but that's a post for another time.

I think most people here already know my story, but just to recap: I grew up in an evangelical household, was sent to a pretty fundie Christian school from 2nd grade through high school. When I was about 16/17 I realized that I didn't "feel" particularly Christian, whatever that means. I guess I didn't "feel" the presence of God. Around the same time I became really upset by the way those around me were treating homosexuals. Kids at my school got kicked out on the mere suspicion of being gay. I heard normally loving people saying really hateful things. Shortly after, during a Bible class where were being "taught" "evolution," meaning the theory was being both misrepresented and mocked ("If we evolved from chimps, then why are chimps still around today? Why aren't chimps giving birth to humans? Why don't we see any chimps evolving into man?") and it struck me how ridiculous what I was being taught was. Not knowing anything about evolution other than the trash I was force-fed, I realized that it really made a lot of sense. I grasped the concept of extremely gradual change over time, and the idea of evolutionary niches absolutely on my own, and started learning more about it.