Confessions of a former Christian fundamentalist.

[Delicate]

So you never believed. You were just going to pick up chicks?

Sounds like the thread should have been titled "Confessions of a current atheist sexual predator"

"Yes and No"; I would best describe it as being cognitive dissonance.  On the one hand, I really wanted to be part of that church, for the community, and especially, yes, for the youth group and the chance to meet other adult women who were my age.  I was not a member of any fraternity and the school that I went to did not have a very big Greek system anyway.  Now, as for the "atheist sexual predator" part, again, the answer would be, "Yes and No."  On the on hand, I would never, ever force myself upon another individual (and, as I am heterosexual, that other individual would be an adult woman who was my age), but, yes, I was lonely, and so, yes, I attended church to be around other women who were my age (early 20s), with my goal being to date (and, perhaps, even marry) some (and, one)  of them.  But, on the other hand, I was not a complete hypocrite, say, "An American atheist in the Bible Belt."  I did truly, for a few years, sincerely try to embrace Christian Biblical fundamentalism, but I could no more believe in that than I could hold my hand on a hot stove.  Finally, if I had succeeded and found a lifelong mate, well, it's easy to see how people get involved in Christian fundamentalism in their early 20s and stay in it in order to "please" someone.

Perhaps the problem is that you didn't understand what religion was. You seem to have desired not truth, but membership in a community and relief for loneliness (not to mention coitus with a female). Whether you would be upfront about your lack of belief upon finding a girl to date is an open question. 

But nevermind all that. The real salient point here is that your interest was primarily in socializing, and the question of the truth claims about reality which Christians (yes, even fundamentalists) purport to express hardly arises. So you weren't ever a fundamentalist.

Did you make an effort to grapple with what was being said as a question of reality? Was the inability to touch the hot stove something of an emotional resistance as opposed to a purely rational one? What worldview did you come into the church with, and how did you arrive at the worldview?