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Aye @mriana. I brainwashed myself in to the chiliast cult of Armstrongism from age 15 as a shallow, wee-wee end of the pool bright, lower middle class English child of The Bomb. The cult did the astounding thing of deconstructing itself 25 years later. Not far enough for our rich tastes obviously. 25 years on my deconstruction continues. Only in the last three, looking out the window, walking, looking at the scales of nature, feeling the Earth beneath my feet did I realise that it is utterly self-sufficient as @write4u says. In the decade before I still had a side bet on Eden in the midst of full on evolution. Can you believe that? That didn’t finally go until 2010 at the superb Musée d’Angoulême. I still felt that God had my back around that time. Emergent Christianity sustained me; Rob Bell, Henri Nouwen, Brian McLaren, Steve Chalke.

It still does. Along with the blessed St. Dickie.

Children, including teens are easy to hook (I think this was also covered in The God Virus). Long story short: I was raised in the Free Methodist and Church of God (Anderson Indiana, not World) cults. My great uncle was a FM preacher and my grandfather was a preacher assistant in CoG, so I was a PC. I hated those churches and really didn’t want to be there, so when my mother was saved again, she took me to the Lutheran Church as a teen. When I left home at 19, but my mother demanded I must attend church even though I wasn’t living at home. I went to the Episcopal Church, first marriage was there, kids baptized there, had my marriage annulled by the church, and left when my oldest was 14 or 15. I like to say he led the way (And the children shall lead). I never looked back. Can’t say I miss much about it. When I told my mother a couple years out, I had just lost one of my cats. Not only was I going to hell, but I somehow condemned my late cat to hell too. My cat I guess was riding on the back of my “faith”? I don’t know, but there was a lot in between all of that, of course, and I’ve always found “communing” with other animals and nature far better than any neuro-stimulating church ritual and preacher shouting to the rafters.