Foxfyre wrote: I am pretty darn sure that I have looked far more deeply into that box than most Atheists have looked into Christianity or any other faith system without prejudice.
Here is where the rubber meets the road. Sorry to have snipped the rest of your response but you have explained all that well enough earlier to my satisfaction.
However, looking "far more deeply into atheism than most atheists have looked" into other faiths strikes me as presumptuous. It bothers me that those on the other side of the table often so cavelierly dismiss atheism, as if it were the default position which required little or no thought.
What was in the box you dismissed or didn't find to your liking? Was their a unsettling fear when you moved back the paper wrappings? Did you not like the impersonal nature of nature, or perhaps the concern of losing a moral anchor?
For my part as a former Christian, I was scared. Scared I might be wrong in questioning fundamental beliefs. But in the end I simply had to get to the bottom of the box, the consequences be damned.
This is what I want to explore with you...your experience into the realm of atheism. I have a hunch you instead had an experience familiarly called "backsliding" in Christian lingo. Not really atheism, just having life and all its distractions get in the way of your faith. Am I right?
