[QUOTE=badchad]
I’m glad to have been a factor, if not an overt one. As I said, I’m not sure you would give me any credit, since I recall you didn’t like me none too much. And yes, I realize our claims about my influence are of the unfalsifiable sort, so I’ll just say the timing was very coincidental, and so was our subject matter, as I don’t recall anyone else putting the screws to your type of faith at that time.
[/QUOTE]
This will be the third time I’ve attempted to post here - so forgive me if my responses are short.
I would give you credit for my deconversion if I thought you deserved it. To be quite honest though, I don’t really think our interactions were terribly influencial on me. That’s probably because although I thought I was quite open minded about my religious tendencies, I really wasn’t.
To put it simply, the Christian you targeted in our discussion simply wasn’t the Christian I was and further, you didn’t seem to want to engage the Christian I, in fact, was, so I pretty much shrugged a lot of what you had to say off.
As for anyone else putting the screws to my faith - people putting screws to my faith only reinforced it (that sounds odd, but what I mean is that they made me defensive, but not critical) and as a matter of fact, quite a lot of people were grilling me about my faith at the time. For instance, I would consider the people at the baptist board as being prime grillers. I went back and forth with them for months and believe it or not, but even though they were stark fundies I could relate with them better (and therefore I was more receptive to them).
Also, I’m not entirely sure we talked prior to my atheism. I deconverted in Sept 03 and didn’t “come out” until after my wedding in November (I did tell my wife prior though) and I seem to recall coming out in January, but I could be wrong. I do recall being secretly an atheist while reading some of your posts though - I’m just not sure if I remember reading all of your posts as an atheist.
[QUOTE=badchad]
No, we did have numerous discourses. I think I remember them pretty well. I think you took offence to having the gall to say faith was a bad thing. I bet that sounds funny to you now.
[/QUOTE]
Perhaps our definitions are different. At the time I wasn’t putting in all that many hours at the Dope. I was primarily engaged at baptist board, the vampire forums, Christian forums, darwintalk, and another forum that I can’t recall anymore.
I remember a few engagements with you.
As for faith - I still don’t think it’s a bad thing. Well, at least not definitively. I don’t think it’s quite as useful or helpful as I once did. Granted I can definitely see the appeal when people die. I think in that sort of situation faith can be an emotional solace and can be useful and good in that kind of context.
[QUOTE=badchad]
Yeah, you did.
[/QUOTE]
Fair enough.
[QUOTE=badchad]
You know I’d be inclined to take you at your word, however when I read the second link you post above, I don’t see you talking much about astrology
[/QUOTE]
I have no reason to lie to you. As I said, the astrology link shows what shook my faith. Without that shaking, I would probably still be a theist today. The important point was not the information, it was the fact that it was the first time in my life I considered the proposition that I could be totally and dreadfully wrong (not just wrong in my* interpretation*).
The second link occurred after I had spent quite an intensive period reading philosophy and Christian history. I found, at the time, those were the stones that took the giant down.
[QUOTE=badchad]
but rather a list of objections which look very familiar to the ones I was making to you in our discussion and right beside you (in the same thread) as I was talking to Polycarp and others. I’d encourage anyone to go back and read that stuff, as I really think that was some of my best work.
[/QUOTE]
I certainly didn’t plagarize from you if that’s what you are implying and I don’t recall discussions of that sort with you. Maybe we had them, but those objections came mainly from the readings I had done in those few weeks.
[QUOTE=badchad]
Glad to see you back, and lets chalk up $14.95 to the SDMB, for me. You will admit I was the primary influenced there, right?
[/QUOTE]
Heh, yes, I’d chalk that up to you - but I’d have to give credit to my friend who still posts here. He’s occasionally told me about some interesting discussions on the dope that made me really curious - but I don’t know, it wasn’t until I realized that not only do some people still remember me, but some people are remembering me incorrectly. 
Well, since we’re sharing…