I think that we have a similar background, actually. I was raised in an Assembly of God home, my father was a minister at the time. (He's since "resigned his credentials") I was always under the impression that God was a very legalistic, unmerciful God, and if you sinned without asking His fogiveness, and then you died, or the end of the world came, and somehow you didn't have a chance to "repent" (a very religious word that meant nothing to me) then you would go to hell.
Like you, I grew up hearing Bible stories that sounded too good to be true,
and I was always told that "God answers prayer" although I never experienced that myself. And when I was about 12 or 13 I got fed up with
being embarrassed of my beliefs and home-life and upbringing, and spending all my time and patience serving a silent God, so I decided to abandon Christianity altogether. I still believed in a God, but I was really not interested in thinking about him. Ever. I thought "what good could it do me?"
I spent the next year or two of my life doing whatever I wanted, acting how I wanted and saying what I wanted. But when I was 14 I got another Bible
(for traditional and sentimental reasons, mainly) and I read in it occasionaly.
After a while I started reading it more and more, even hours every night.
And that's really what brought me back to Christ, not just reading words on a page, but the way they spoke to me was different than anything I had ever known. There is something in Christianity that is in nothing else I have ever looked into since. I can call it nothing but a feeling or a knowing. Or (drumroll) the Holy Spirit. Don't ask me to explain it, because it is was possible for me to understand it, then all of the Christian philosophy would be nothing.
Years later, talking with you made me wonder about what was really true, so I started to search, and eventually basically became a scientologist. After spending hours a day reading and researching things on the web, my views on alot of things changed. (Don't let it go to your head, btw.
) But eventually I realized that in science, anything can be disproven, all you need is some evidence, so what I believed would be limited to today's headlines.
I couldn't live my whole life in ignorance of absolute truth. It's not like I'm going to life forever. I did alot of thinking and nothing really has given me enough reason do disbelieve what I already believed, so I became content.
As an afterthought, I think that alot of our religious arguments were caused by miscommunication- I was normally in defence of Christianity as a philosophy, you were, I think, usually talking about Christian individuals or actions.
I apolgize for any rude or curt things I have said to you, and I honestly tried to be patient with you for a long time. Just as a disclaimer, though, I'm not going to reply to anything you say to me anymore unless you can talk civil about something. I enjoy a friendly debate or even just a conversation, but I don't like having my intellegence insulted (as if that were a valid couner-argument) and I don't respect someone who thinks they need to rely on mudslinging to win an argument, because I've seen 5 year-olds who behaved themselves better than that. I hope we can be at ease with each other now, and if you don't feel the same, well then I'm not going to subject myself to any more swearing, shouting or mudslinging.
It gets me down.
Yet this is not a "belief system" forum. It is a quote-"Faith/Religion"-forum.
And last I checked, Atheism is the opposite of both.
Please show me were I said that this was only for Christians. All I meant to say was that you shouldn't go around raining on other people's parades just for the heck of it.
Do you get annoyed when Christians keep trying to convert you? Same difference. Hypocrisy swings both ways.
I don't need to reply to this, but since you seem to like accusing people of dodging your questions, or ignoring what you say, I decided not to leave any of your post out.
P.S. : I
didn't hop on any bandwagon.