Former Fundies: What were YOUR darndest things?

[Dragon Zachski]

As the topic says, this is a topic for the former fundies among us and the darndest things you did that, if it was on the internet, you would shamefully, yet gladly submit to the main page.

Here's one of my darndest things:

Once, while I was at Christian Life Fellowship, an Assembly of God church (and surprisingly Pentacostal Lite, despite the AoG title) I was kinda involved in some of the skits we'd do.

I once wrote this skit that showed wiccans in a bad light. It showed a Christian and a Wiccan talking, the Wiccan had VERY stereotypical language, insulted the Christian for no reason, talked about her crystals (where the Christian girl said "But... they're cold and lifeless!") and blah-de-blah.

The entire reason I wrote that was because I was fighting urges to explore Wicca at the time. And they actually did the play, and I was so happy that my brainchild got to fly.

(On a side note, interest in plays and skits and stuff should have been a sign...)

Looking back, I am deeply ashamed at having written such a thing.

So, other former fundies... any darndest things from you past you'd like to mention?

[Mira]

Well, I was never too fundie, my dad was an atheist after all, and atheists clearly weren't as bad as fundies made them seem. I know that when I was ~11-12 years old I was having a small doubting period. When I was told that evolution was against god I went through all the apologetics to try and justify denying science (something I have always respected even above the church). I even read a Ray Comfort book. Yeah.

I also have written skits and such. They weren't anything serious, I mostly just tried to go for laughs (which I was successful at ^_^).

[The_L]

I was a vocal YEC. Need I say more?

[Hades]

Jun 20, 2010 20:44:04 GMT -5 The_L said:

I was a vocal YEC. Need I say more?

Me too :/

[Lady Renae]

I decided that the creation of the universe happened when God thought really really really really hard to the point where the little electric pulse on his brain went boom and started the big bang, which was how God could exist in the first place, and we were all a thought experiment.


Then I stopped trying so hard and just admitted I thought the whole thing was absurd to begin with, though it was a few years after I attempted the above hypothesis.

[tolpuddlemartyr]

I never went through a fundamentalist religious phase but at one time I was very "fundamentalist" in my politics when I was a young punk rocker.

I was reminded of this when I noticed the F&B thread aimed at Above Athletics, I hated cops at one stage of my life too. I actually said "never a good cop born" in front of my sister once and she threw a mug at me yelling "well you go get the drunk drivers off the road you wanker!"

I love my sis!

[Magnizeal]

I own, and believed, Unlocking the Mysteries of Creation by Dennis Petersen. It's a highly YEC book, which makes Vene cringe. My parents got it when I was asking too many questions about how people could believe something as 'silly' as humans coming from apes.

I also first befriended Oriet in some kind of attempt to get her closer to Jesus so she would stop playing D'n'D.

[Haseen]

I've never been a fundie in the sense of religion, but in terms of clinging to a belief, I believed in Santa Claus for a really long time. Mainly because they did this Santa flyover when I was really little. Some guy in a helicopter flew a sleigh and reindeer all over the city. For some reason, my brain deleted out the whole "helicopter" thing, and what's left is a memory of flying reindeer pulling a sleigh. I still have that memory stored in my brain, of Santa's sleigh complete with 8 reindeer flying, but their legs moving as if they were running through the air about 50 feet overhead. It's funny how the brain works, because that memory still seems so real to me, even though it couldn't have happened that way.

In grade school I'd get into embarrassing arguments over the existence of Santa Claus, and I stopped arguing more because it was unwinnable than because I stopped believing. I didn't give up the actual belief until probably the 8th grade, because that memory was so vivid and seemed so goddamned real!

[Mlle Antéchrist]

Not fundie in the religious sense, but when I was 14ish I remember arguing with people online about the existence of ghosts, calling anyone who was a skeptic "closed minded". It was pretty hypocritical of me, too, since I would give devout Christians a hard time for their beliefs (mostly just bible literalists, but it was still a dick move). I eventually realized that skepticism and outright denial are two different things, and came to the conclusion that believing in something without evidence -- whether it's god, ghosts or flying spaghetti monsters -- is not virtue, despite having been told otherwise during childhood. I also stopped being so antagonistic towards religious people (unless they're being total dicks, in which case, all bets are off).

[elwoodwv]

Where to begin? I've traveled far and wide to participate in weekend-long "deliverance ministry" conferences where various demons are exorcised. I attended a fundie Bible College in the U.S. Southeast and took courses in young-earth creationism, evangelism and apologetics. I had a hand-made tee-shirt that said "Sodomy is Sin" that I wear on gay-pride or outreach days. I spoke in tongues. I have been "slain in the Spirit" more times that I could ever count. I was on local Christian television. I taught the "Alpha Course." I was convinced that I could "see" demons lurking in various places and discern what they were up to.

Now, after healthy doses of PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins, and Michael Shermer, I am a liberated atheist. Life has been infinitely more satisfying since I snapped out of it about a year ago. I stopped wasting time at church, went back to college to finish my degree and started making sense of the real world. I'm not even sure the guy who went to Bible College exists anymore.

[Tiger]

I never did anything publicly embarrassing, but I spent many a day arguing to one of my liberal friends that Bush was a fantastic president and everything about his policies was perfection itself. I also advocated turning the U.S. into an Abrahamic theocracy (I actually seriously entertained the idea of a conversion to Islam throughout most of this phase, strangely enough) and fervently believed that STDs were God's punishment for premarital and gay sex.

[Dragon Zachski]

Yeah, I did the tongues thing, too, as well as prophesy/word of wisdom (which ironically was what led me out of the church, so I believe that IF anything was actually "divine", that was it, and not for the reasons I understood at the time. Then again, that's IF it was divine.)

Furthermore, I was a YEC, and even convinced my mom, when I was young, to be a YEC, too, even though she was having doubts. I was more fundie than my mother .

I was also saved at least... 5 times, I think. Emotionalism will do that to you.

[The_L]

Jun 20, 2010 23:11:55 GMT -5 Magnizeal said:

I own, and believed, Unlocking the Mysteries of Creation by Dennis Petersen. It's a highly YEC book, which makes Vene cringe. My parents got it when I was asking too many questions about how people could believe something as 'silly' as humans coming from apes.

I also first befriended Oriet in some kind of attempt to get her closer to Jesus so she would stop playing D'n'D.

I started a pro-life rant at a great-aunt's funeral when I was 7.

And people praised me for being so precocious.

Fuck you, Alabama, just....fuck you.

[Sigmaleph]

I once got sort of sucked in by ID rhetoric. While I wasn't full-blown ID'er, I wrote an essay that at some point was a weird "teach the controversy" thing. Somewhere along the way I toned it down and the final version it basically said "evolution's probably right, but the debate is cluttered by fanaticism". Luckily enough, because I'm pretty sure I'd have failed biology that year otherwise.
It's actually through researching that essay that I came across FSTDT.

[Chi Shiro]

I told a wiccan friend that she was going to hell and couldn't she just come to Jesus so we could be in heaven together.

I was so deep in the closet that I smacked one of my best friends when he came out to me.

I thought I was going to hell because I didn't love Jesus enough... and I was five.

Same year I offered up a Barbie doll as a burnt sacrifice to the lord. (Never let small, intelligent chdren read the Bible on their own).

I told my health teacher that he was going to hell for teaching about condoms and abortion, because who would ever want to abort the pwecious babahs.

If I hadn't been bisexual, and there for started to doubt my religious beliefs, I probably would have been mainpaged... a lot.