Apologies for the lack of funny
Grew up (as far as any man can say he grows up, in that he gets older but no more mature) in a Christian family, the most lovely people in the world, went to church every Sunday and joined in all of the activities related, was great fun. When I got to uni, the world at my feet, I get heavily involved with the Christian Union (you know, those annoying people in hoodies who smile too much and unsuccessfully try to sue the Guild of students over something which the CU were clearly in the wrong for). I also become heavily involved with a very conservative, fundamentalist evangelical church, and between those two almost my whole time at uni was spent doing "Christian" things. Now I shouldn't complain, nobody forced me to do these things, and certainly nobody forced me to get married because living together and having sex before marriage would have been "wrong", but I can't help wondering how different my life would have been had I just spent the last 10 years of my life making decisions because they made sense, not because "the church" said so.

Happily I'm now the atheist side of agnostic, not because of some terrible event (Christianity actually helped rationalise my mother's death from cancer, and really didn't shake my faith at all) but because I was finally forced to ask myself why exactly I believed what I did. The default position, and I think a lot of Christians fail to realise this, should be to refuse to believe something unless given a good reason to believe it. Far too many Christians think it's the other way around, that we should believe whatever people tell us unless someone can come up with a good reason not to. Why, after so many years of rejecting other religions on the basis they had no proof, I hadn't realised I wasn't applying the same standard to Christianity I will never know.

Maybe later I'll come up with something funny, am sure there's a lot to be said, but this little rant has been very cathartic (in a Greek sense, not a medical one!)

Length? About 23 years which was plenty long enough!
(Liberal, Sat 21 Mar 2009, 15:42, 3 replies)

The default position, and I think a lot of Christians fail to realise this, should be to refuse to believe something unless given a good reason to believe it. Far too many Christians think it's the other way around, that we should believe whatever people tell us unless someone can come up with a good reason not to.

YES!

Oh - and - Guild? You were at Bunglingham, then, I take it?
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Sat 21 Mar 2009, 16:32, closed)

not necissarily
We have a guild in Liverpool too y'know.
(Zem flolloping floopily around Squornshellous Zeta, Sat 21 Mar 2009, 18:10, closed)

Nope
Exeter. A CU of at least 250 unfortunately has quite a bit of clout, but luckily not so much that they could bully the Guild into bending to their will.
(Liberal, Sat 21 Mar 2009, 19:15, closed)