# Notes from a failing evangelical fundamentalist **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [April 26, 2009, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/notes-from-a-failing-evangelical-fundamentalist/494428 "2009-04-26T20:01:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![lavenderviolet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/cdc98d/32.png) [@lavenderviolet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lavenderviolet)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/notes-from-a-failing-evangelical-fundamentalist/494428/21 "2009-04-28T22:02:24Z")
> [@Determinist](#): > > feel free to comment or ask questions as much as you like, but try not to hijack it with irrelevant debates and crap. You might want to start a journal over on livejournal or diaryland. Thread drift is pretty much inevitable on issues like this. I agree with those who say that it may not be as black and white as choosing between fundamentalist Christian or “Fundamentalist atheist” (so to speak). If you find that a belief in God is comforting to you during the hard times in life, good for you. Perhaps this is just another example of the very common phenomenon of someone’s passionate convictions as a youngster becoming more nuanced and mellow with the experiences of getting older. Kind of like how my darling boyfriend used to consider himself a communist when he was a teen but has more nuanced views on government now that he has a grown up job with the accompanying taxes. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2009, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/notes-from-a-failing-evangelical-fundamentalist/494428/22 "2009-04-29T01:08:48Z")
> [@lavenderviolet](#): > > You might want to start a journal over on livejournal or diaryland. Thread drift is pretty much inevitable on issues like this. True. However I think the OP means he doesn’t want the thread to turn into an argument about whether or not faith is rational or whether there is or is not a God. Those topics belong in Great Debates. If people want to discuss the OP’s experiences and their own, that’s an MPSIMS thread. ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2009, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/notes-from-a-failing-evangelical-fundamentalist/494428/23 "2009-04-29T01:48:25Z")
Obligatory link to the [Atheists in Foxholes Monument](http://ffrf.org/foxholes/). ---
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2009, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/notes-from-a-failing-evangelical-fundamentalist/494428/24 "2009-04-29T12:01:06Z")
> [@Determinist](#): > > My cousin died of cancer a couple years ago. Later, about a month after another relative my age found a lump in his armpit, he too was dead. A few weeks after he died I found a lump in my armpit. > > The moment that I noticed it, my heart sunk. I didn’t freak out or panic, but when I suddenly though I might die, my perspective on many issues changed really fucking fast. For example, whatever skepticism I had developed about God and Christianity was suddenly irrelevant. The next day I prayed once while I was in the shower to let it be something simple. Of course, like most armpit lumps it was merely a painful swollen gland and it went away in a few days. But it still left me with the fact that no matter how much I intellectualize my beliefs, when the shit hits the fan, I ultimately still believe. > > I was raised in an extremely sheltered conservative evangelical home. The first 6 years of my education occurred in a tiny private evangelical Christian school. In high school I was the weird super-religious clean-cut guy who was trying to preach to everyone. In college I was mostly unphased by 5 years of liberal social science education as I worked toward becoming a history and social science teacher. I understood the secular side of things, and some things I simply assimilated into my faith. I had rationalizations to maintain my core beliefs and I was still a very strong believer after college. Since then, for the last 7 years, my faith has been moving in a gradual downward direction. I’m not sure if its going to just level off or if I would really be able to ever openly come out of the closet and reject Christianity. > > I’m going to use this thread as a journal to occasionally explore how an extremely devout evangelical Christian loses his faith and any other musings and observations I have on the subject. This is mostly for me so I can examine my own thoughts. But feel free to comment or ask questions as much as you like, but try not to hijack it with irrelevant debates and crap. One should be able to believe as they wish,I do not think a person loses it’s faith; if one sees things differently. Just like one doesn’t lose it’s faith in Santa Clause. Faith is just that. It is a help to some and like others it isn’t needed. A woman can believe her husband is faithful and it may or may not be true. The one thing that changed my beliefs was Matthew chapter 16 where Jesus promises to return in His glory with all His angels and some standing there would not see death until it was fullfilled.There are no 2000 year old people here, so I figured He was mistaken, or misquoted. I know many people who are helped by their faith and some who are fanatic. Faith is a personal thing and each person should be able to believe as they wish as long as they do not use it like some radicals do (or did) to cause other’s harm. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2009, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/notes-from-a-failing-evangelical-fundamentalist/494428/25 "2009-04-29T19:08:22Z")
> [@The\_Hamster\_King](#): > > If you’re reminding yourself of the reasons behind your belief, you’re not practicing faith. You’re REASONING. Faith is not about confronting doubts and convincing yourself that they’re unwarrented, it’s about ignoring them. > > This is only necessary if you’re continually confronted with evidence that your belief is in error. But if that’s what you’re experiencing, the correct response is not to attribute it to a passing whim, but to deal with the evidence. > > I’ve been an atheist for 30 years now. If I was presented with evidence that called into question my beliefs, I would question them. But since that hasn’t happened, I don’t. It doesn’t require any faith at all to sustain my lack of belief. Faith is about incomplete knowledge and uncertainty, not ignoring evidence. Reasoning is a part of an active faith. Any reasonable person is constantly updating their beliefs as they learn new things. Unless you stop learning new things, faith is constantly changing. ---
**Author:** ![GargoyleWB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gargoylewb/32/199_2.png) [@GargoyleWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GargoyleWB)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2009, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/notes-from-a-failing-evangelical-fundamentalist/494428/26 "2009-04-29T19:40:45Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > I have faced death on a few occasions, and my atheism has never wavered. Myself also, not once have I felt any need to pray or think that external spiritual forces selectively intervened. It was pure “oh shit, I almost died” and what was most emotionally shaking to me was how little control I have over the larger random events of the environment around me. It’s very interesting to me how the OP’s belief-pendulum automatically swung the other way when facing near death though, with the assumption that the event was either personally selected for him by a higher power, or that a higher power could defer slecting him for such events in the future. ---
**Author:** ![Drain\_Bead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e47774/32.png) [@Drain\_Bead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drain_Bead)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2009, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/notes-from-a-failing-evangelical-fundamentalist/494428/27 "2009-04-29T20:49:27Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > I have faced death on a few occasions, and my atheism has never wavered. When I was in the ambulance on the way to the hospital for an emergency c-section, where five minutes would have made the difference between my daughter’s living and dying, I remember thinking that I was the lone atheist in the foxhole. I didn’t pray, because I knew then it was pointless. After it was all over I felt strangely proud of the security of my convictions (or lack thereof, I suppose). I wonder if I would have felt the same way had she not survived, or had the lack of oxygen caused serious brain damage. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2009, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/notes-from-a-failing-evangelical-fundamentalist/494428/28 "2009-04-30T02:05:23Z")
Sorry for what you and your family are going through, **Determinist**. A little more from the foxholes: my younger brother has been dealing with cancer for more than two years and never considered adopting any kind of faith. The rest of my family hasn’t either. I’ve found religion in a deliberately unconventional way, at the times it’s useful. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2009, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/notes-from-a-failing-evangelical-fundamentalist/494428/29 "2009-04-30T07:47:19Z")
> [@Rigamarole](#): > > I admit to supplicating in my head. Why does that sound like something your mother should have warned you about? ---
**Author:** ![RiverRunner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/977dab/32.png) [@RiverRunner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RiverRunner)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2009, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/notes-from-a-failing-evangelical-fundamentalist/494428/30 "2009-04-30T17:31:06Z")
> [@The\_Hamster\_King](#): > > None of this makes sense. > … > Secondly, holding a consistent position on a subject hardly requires faith. In general people tend NOT to change their minds about important matters on a whim. Indeed, they will tend to discount facts and concepts that don’t agree with their current position. It takes a great deal of hard evidence and hard argument to shift someone’s beliefs once they settle upon them. My experience differs from yours. In any case, the thread has been hijacked enough, so I’ll leave it alone. RR [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/notes-from-a-failing-evangelical-fundamentalist/494428.md?page=1)