In the interest of seriously contributing, my point of view from when I was a Christian.
The existence of God was taken for granted in my home, and I took it for granted, too. I took it more seriously for a while than my father, a lapsed United Pentecostal, I spent a fair amount of some of my summers reading modern translations of the NT in my pre-and early teens. My father 'de-lapsed' when I was about twelve, so we were becoming more compatible on the matter. Meanwhile, my mother (Church of God, another Pentecostal sect) was a regular church-goer and I got involved in the Royal Rangers (the boy scouts were too 'of the world' for the CoG). I was taught how to speak in tongues (amounted to 'open your mouth and babble, and trust that God is speaking through you'). I went to church camp (slightly less political than the Jesus camps of today). I got baptized (full immersion) at fourteen (Pentecostals don't go in for infant baptism). I really took this stuff seriously, and it still never occurred to me that God might not exist. I'm not sure I'd heard of an atheist at that point.
I decided to make a project of reading the Bible cover-to-cover (KJV). I thought if I learned enough, I could be a better Christian. Maybe I could even be a missionary. It left me troubled though, so I read it again in a modern English version. The experience didn't make me an atheist, but I certainly wasn't a Pentecostal anymore. I won't get into that more because it's more like the opposite of this topic.
The existence of God was taken for granted in my home, and I took it for granted, too. I took it more seriously for a while than my father, a lapsed United Pentecostal, I spent a fair amount of some of my summers reading modern translations of the NT in my pre-and early teens. My father 'de-lapsed' when I was about twelve, so we were becoming more compatible on the matter. Meanwhile, my mother (Church of God, another Pentecostal sect) was a regular church-goer and I got involved in the Royal Rangers (the boy scouts were too 'of the world' for the CoG). I was taught how to speak in tongues (amounted to 'open your mouth and babble, and trust that God is speaking through you'). I went to church camp (slightly less political than the Jesus camps of today). I got baptized (full immersion) at fourteen (Pentecostals don't go in for infant baptism). I really took this stuff seriously, and it still never occurred to me that God might not exist. I'm not sure I'd heard of an atheist at that point.
I decided to make a project of reading the Bible cover-to-cover (KJV). I thought if I learned enough, I could be a better Christian. Maybe I could even be a missionary. It left me troubled though, so I read it again in a modern English version. The experience didn't make me an atheist, but I certainly wasn't a Pentecostal anymore. I won't get into that more because it's more like the opposite of this topic.
