As A Xtian, How Did You React To Xtian/atheist Comments To News Stories?

[LongWayAround]

Inevitable, if there is a news story online that has religious related content (origins of life, discovery of papyrus fragment, etc.), the comments on the article get fairly heated between the believers and unbelievers.  When I was a xtian and was reading the comments, even though I didn't agree with the unbelievers, I usually felt like they posited better arguments and usually felt embarrassed by the stupidity of many of the believers posts.  I think there was a subconscious feeling that I was playing for the wrong team.

 

How did you react to these type of comments?

[Leo]

Before I had access to the Internet, I could come off as smart but had very limited access to information. So I followed the RepubliChristian thinking of my upbringing, only was smart enough to make it sound smart. Then my mid 20s everything changed. But I was still a Xtian, albeit a reconverted / newly converted one in the late 90s. Part of that "maybe I wasn't really saved before" thinking.

And, like you said, I agreed more and more with the scientific assessments of things. Especially as I was coming along as a software engineer and learning critical thinking skills. I knew I was batting for the wrong team, because I could even convince other Xtian guys of the reason behind what they were saying, and then both they and I would take the newfound knowledge home and cause tears and upset on the home front with our respective wives. We were a threat to the social order and stability Xtian systems claim to maintain.

After my couple of odd fiery years in my early 20s, I never did believe the end times stuff they put out there, this idea that we were living in the worst of times. Again, I knew I was batting for the other team, deep down, because She hearkened to a simpler more black and white time in my life, when I was more 'on fire', a condition I attribute to youth and lack of knowledge more than anything else. The more years of my 'reasonable' Christianity that went by, the more She would hearken back to those times, remembering how I was, as though it was yesterday. Five years later, ten years later, fifteen years later ... And none of the Xians who were powerful around me ever found my way of thinking very convincing.

I was convinced most of those people were caught in a cycle of crises that they needed in order to uphold their social order and faith system. I, of course, tried to say that faith could be different. And, naturally, proved myself wrong and ultimately deconverted. I'm convinced if I had remained a Xian, and never challenged my own personal Xianity to the level that I did in the last couple years, I would have died trying to defend the reasonable state of Xians, and She would have hearkened back to those couple of fiery years of ming, when we first met, which I believe in some ways probably helped Her, or She wouldn't have looked back with fond memories on some of that stuff. Those times helped Her break out of a cycle of some things that were truly dragging Her down. But many other things could have as well. It's just sad it was that.

In summary, I was always the black sheep, since my mid 20s. The one who didn't have any trouble with gays. The one who, when She was trying to work it all out biblically and stay compassionate, I had a friend who's got a wife and daughter, but her marriage was not recognized most places. I was not, as the accusation typically went, just out to try and learn about this or that group outside the church. My world was simply that much more expanded, and I knew people in situations I hadn't know before. You can't unknow what you know. And I read heartfelt responses to my friend's situation, things she wrote on Facebook and Twitter, when both those networks were relatively new, new to me at least. But, I was on the wrong side. Instead of others wondering about things, about how real people in real situations were handling things, basic things like where she could have her daughter go to school, how she and her wife were going to travel out of state. I'm not much in the way of an activist person. But when I run into another living breathing human being struggling with things, I notice. I simply am unable to not notice. And I used to be so FRUSTRATED as a Xian, that I was supposed to believe things that were clearly diametrically opposed to a little girl's well-being.

Meanwhile a pair of Xians at the church were keeping their separation a secret, not letting the kids tell anyone, because one of them was working for the church, and they were upheld as model citizens for homeschoolery and other familial activities. All this activitiy didn't make me so much angry at the Xians, though I had strong feelings about those poor kids in that situation. What it did was show me I in fact wasn't one of them. I didn't struggle over homosexuals: I'd quit being a gay basher since my early 20s, and knew that was just fool-ass young punkery, and made no excuses for it. But I didn't struggle with the homosexual thing, or any of the other many things, because at heart I'm a humanist, and didn't know it then. I was just a very internally conflicted, troubled, conscience-ridden individual. Support what the Xians want you to support, and your real human conscience feels seared by the psychopathy of their texxts. Support what you know objectively is right, and you're guilty of upsetting things on the home front and local orthodoxy.

It was only when I took the glasses off, and looked at myself in the mirror, I realized I couldn't rightly claim myself to be one of them.

That conflict over modern affairs, the lies about middle eastern history promulgated from pulpits, all of that is in my past now. But at one time, as a young, ambitious, fiery, uninformed person, I bought the whole line. I understand not everyone has a desire for the pursuit of objedctive knowledge, but I realized for those of us who did, who claimed to be reasonable, we couldn't just go along and support all that.

It was only when the Daughter moved out, and we moved, and then discussion of changing churches, when I ultimately had to figure out how I was going to do this. Evangelicals were quite unconvinced of me, and I frequently caused upset on the home front, by either presenting a dissenting view, or by simply not going along readily. I know now, it wasn't the views that upset Her, maybe some, but it was the security I was upsetting.

Since I started really having access to knowledge due to the Internet, I really started learning, and you just can't go back after that.