*blink*

Whoah.

How many siblings do you have, then?  I thought Catholic families were insane, until I encountered the Quiverful Movement.  The Catholics don't seem so crazy, anymore.  At least they use the counting method, or whatever it's called.

Well, hell, most Catholics nowadays just ignore the church when it comes to anything that actually impacts their lives.  I don't know why most of them even bother calling themselves Catholics.

Hmm, I thought the Presbyterians were a bit more sane than that.  I got the wrong idea, when you talked about a non-denominational church, partially based upon that.  Or was the Baptist influence a Freewill Baptist influence?  :-D  Those guys are freaking nuts.

Your family's interest in apologetics sounds guaranteed to spin off a few of the children into atheism.  If you learn anything about actual logic and philosophy, you can't help but learn of the 5 or 6 huge holes in every one of the Christian apologetic arguments.  Or, given the threat posed by the Internet, for the past decade or so, you're bound to encounter the counter-apologetic arguments, for which there are no real responses.

Glad to have you on our side.  :-)

Ooh, and nice article.  I check out his blog from time to time, but I miss a lot of them.

I think my 5 year-old rejection of the stories in the Bible was a result of influences on my young mind, not any inherent character.  You give me way too much credit.

I mostly thank my father.  He was a major science geek.  He bought a bunch of National Geographic and Time Life science books, when my older brother got into kindergarten.  I was taught to read (before kindergarten) off of that sort of thing.

I was also exposed to a lot of Greek and Norse mythology, through him.  I think that had a major impact.  So, here are all of these stories that no one believes, and a lot of them have a lot of similarity to these stories out of the Bible that they want me to believe.  ???  Something screwy's going on here.

Then, I saw a lot of stage magic and developed a love of that, after it initially scared the hell out of me ... starting around the age of 4.  After I'd seen a woman sawn in half and put back together, with my own eyes, the stories about the miracles of Jesus just completely lost their ability to amaze me.

Ohhhhhhhh.  I see how that could happen.  You thought you were a Christian, growing up a liberal Christian, until you met some of the real Christians?  I bet you ran headfirst into the man-is-the-head-of-the-family-and-the-woman-must-submit-to-her-husband types at Liberty U, huh?

Reminds me of how Matt Dillahunty of The Atheist Experience talks about the Westboro Baptist Church.  He has more respect for them than he does for liberal, fuzzy Christians.  At least the Westboro Baptist idiots realize that the holy book is all or nothing.  I just hope that the Westboro types eventually drive a much larger percentage of the liberal Christians over to agnosticism or atheism.

Yours sounds a bit more exciting than my Catholic upbringing.  I never believed any of it from the age of 5 or so.  The only exciting event was in my teens (right around the age of 14 or 15), was when I tried to convince my mother to stop making me go to CCD (Catholic Sunday school, essentially).  She said I had to go until I made my Confirmation (at roughly 18), and I told her that I had no intention of making my Confirmation, since I didn't believe in any of the nonsense the Church was pushing.  That was a fun conversation.

Nice.  Which denomination did you break out of?  I guess the panicky, Christian-college propaganda pamphlets are right when they warn about secular colleges turning people into atheists, huh?

My pleasure Suzanne! =)  We've got a pretty good community here, look around and see where you fit in. Hope to chat with you soon!