I’ve realized something.

I’m not an ex-Christian.  I’m a “never-was” Christian.

The first attempts to introduce me to it were done by force by my father when I was a child.  That force was justified as moral … which immediately makes it invalid for me.  If that can be justified, well … what else can?

When I no longer had to go to church, I didn’t.  I wasn’t happy or sad.  I was simply relieved.  When my mother attempted to reintroduce me to it (i.e., the “kinder, gentler” non-fundie versions), that was done by coercion.  “Hey, we’ll get lunch afterwards.  It will be an ‘experience’.”  An experience that I didn’t want or choose, of course, and was massively resentful of, but that didn’t matter.  If someone could “sweetly” and “kindly ” make me do something I didn’t want to do, what else could I be made to do?

The atheist “movement”?  Meh.  I listen to some atheists/skeptics/humanists and I don’t listen to others.

Islam?  It’s got the same problems with fundamentalism that Christianity has, but they don’t affect me directly, so I’m not qualified to criticize it.  I’ll step out of the way and watch ex-Muslims take a swing at that.

What’s the point I’m trying to make?  I guess it’s that I’m not a joiner (in no small part because I was never asked what I wanted to join in the first place).  Assumptions made on my behalf then are decisions I keep full control over now.