When I was a kid, I was a true believing book burning End Times obsessed Christian.
I’ve gotten better since then.
Evangelical Christian to strong atheist.
Conservative (at nearly tea party levels of rabidity) to very liberal.
Increased levels of education and knowledge are to blame.
Ditto.
mild woo leanings => quietly pro-science
I blame my husband and Michael Shermer. Oh, and some Cecil guy.
This is exactly what I’d have said except “Methodist”, but being as it was still Southern (although not Southern Methodist) the hell thing was just as strongly pushed. I am still afraid of Hell somehow knowing it doesn’t exist. I guess it’s like being afraid of dark places. It’s what you don’t know. But it’s so annoying because otherwise I feel quite confident that no gods of any type could possibly exist except the kind which defies any definition. But the thought of hell still makes me antsy when I talk about being atheist.
I used to be a fundie fire-and-brimstone, born-again, end-of-times believing Christian. I’m now agnostic. I think I just grew out of it as I gained more life experience and got exposed to different things. Being less judgemental and more open have certainly made life a lot more enjoyable!
Going from gun hater to tolerating guns, and I have to thank this message board.
Before this board, I changed from strict Catholic to lapsed one / agnostic.
On the woo front: I swallowed Paranormal activity ideas, UFOs, ancient astronauts from people like Von Daniken, my only excuse is that I was little, I got better.
The teenage me thought illegitimate children were no big deal and every women that wanted to have a baby should be able to do so. Now my opinions are to the right of stoning and I applaud China’s one-child policy. For me the change was growing up, looking at the real world, and realizing people didn’t have children in a vacuum and that overpopulation is a serious problem. It never occurred to my teenage self that a women would choose to have a child she couldn’t take care of. I thought everyone carefully planned out having a family and it was only rare circumstances that lead to people in poverty having children. Yeah, I was naive. It also never occurred to my teenage self that a woman would choose to continue a pregnancy over her partner’s objection. Then I encountered too many women who did this and they couldn’t understand why their former partners hated them.
With you on that one, FG!
It pains me to think of my radio days (70’s-80’s) and how we’d do skits which today would be considered absolutely taboo. Not only did WE think it was hilarious, so did the audience.
There are 2 gay couples in my wife’s family, and every time we see each other at family functions, I am so glad I let that other “me” go.
Q
Does this strike anyone else as being the most ironic thing they’ve ever read on the Dope? 
Congratulations on your recovery, Der Trihs.
I went from being pro-life to pro-choice in 7th grade. Basically I realized that it’s a complex issue, and came to realize that the whole “abortions should be safe, easy to get, and rare” idea (not sure who that quote is from) probably encapsulates the ideal situation, and that making them illegal is not an acceptable way to make them rare.
I also went from total UFO-Area 51-X-Files-the aliens are living among us nut to complete non-believer of that sort of woo around the same time. When the Heaven’s Gate cult committed suicide I thought “those people are (were) crazy.” It just sort of snapped me out of the whole believing-in-aliens thing, and made me realize how silly my obsession was.
I think that age (middle school) is a big time for major changes in thought because you’re growing so rapidly and starting to replace a child’s worldview with an adult’s.
Started out a left wing hippie. Am now a moderate, rational believer in checks, balances, and tech solutions, where applicable.
I was radical feminist - I got better. 
I was radical pro-choice; after one abortion and one son, and reading both arguments on this board, I’m still pro-choice, but I can see better where the pro-lifers come from.
I used to take sugar in my tea - 2 of them. Now I drink my tea the way Og intended: unsweetened. All those years, wasted! I can’t believe what a fool I was!
I’m 20 so my biggest changes are probably in the future. The big one so far is going from eating meat twice a day every day to becoming a vegetarian. If you’d told 12-year-old me, while I was eating a double cheeseburger, that in two years I’d be voluntarily deciding to stop eating meat forever… well, I would never have believed it.
It’s not a huge thing, but over the past ten years I’ve changed my thinking from ‘it’s better to be right than kind’ to ‘it’s better to be kind than right’.
Going from thinking* that God is 100% real, that he is 100% love, and he answers prayers, no matter how insignificant, to a full-blown agnostic. I tell people it’s not that I don’t think God could exist; it’s just that I don’t have any evidence that he does. I can’t make myself feel and believe things just based on someone else’s word . But I am open to a “supernatural” experience of some type.
Also, my attitude has shifted as I’ve grown older. When I was in my 20s, I was worried about too many things, especially revolving around “success”. Now, I don’t really care about succeeding, or pleasing anyone except myself…or doing things the “right” way. Freeing myself from the opinions of others has made me a braver, more confident risk-taker…even though I do think it’s cultivated an internal arrogant streak in me. Whenever someone offers unsolicited advice, I think to myself, “Yeah, but who asked your lame ass? Get out of my way, fool!” It may be a mean thought, but it feels loads better than, “Gee, maybe they’re right. Maybe I don’t know what I’m doing. Maybe I should just give up.”
*Even when I was a “believer”, it was all robotic regurgitation. I never felt all the love they told me I was supposed to feel. So perhaps my shift wasn’t as dramatic as I outwardly make it out to be.
60 a day to non-smoker.
The need for video replays in football/soccer. Used to buy the Blatter excuse. After far too many examples of bad decisions in top games, I very much lean the other way.
I’ve always been a leftie, so nowt politically has changed much. I guess I now openly am agnostic (brought up Catholic), so I guess that is there too.
But mostly the football.
That’s a definite possibility! Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree!
I DO speak my mind more now, but will try to temper it with kindness, because someone here mentioned going from “better to be right than kind” to “better to be kind than right”. And who wants to be the old crank in the nursing home everyone avoids?
Going from pro-life to pro-choice.