One time I was asked to leave because during my confirmation interview, the pastors and elders asked me questions like, 'have i smoked, drank, and such'.  I told them the truth!  When I got home 40 minutes after the interview, my dad knew everything - those guys told my dad the answers I gave them.  haha.  So my dad, who was an elder, and couple of other elders asked me find another church.

I never really got started. It just always seemed ridiculous to me, even as a child.

Ouch! You own father.

Were they supose to share that information? Good thing that during confession I'd leave out the parts about porn/sex. Never did trust those guys.

If I remember... there's micro and macro evolution... one of them isn't random at all... the other is based on random events. Your probably talking about the one that isn't. Anyways togther they both make of up evolution...and I think the more fundumental parts of evolution are based on random events. It isn't just about natural selection, it's also about a big bang and how all these substances got mixed because of huge number of random events we have ourselves a functional human being with impossible odds. Evolution is definitely based on random events.

In another words, stuff happens.  That's which survives will survive while that which won't won't.

Unless one wants to believe that evolution is guided, then it is random.  The key issue regarding what matters with evolution is how new features appear in a species.  The natural selection part doesn't cause new features to appear, it merely cuts out certain members of a species that is less fitting.

"she refuses to be "anti-gay ... anti-feminist," and "anti-artificial birth birth control." "

It doesn't sound Ann Rice was a Christian to begin with. Those are not reasons to lose your faith, ever.

Fascinating, we have lots in common.

I don't think I ever did believe.  Just family was that, so I called myself that.  After I was 5, I never went to church (family couldn't find the time or at least that's what they told me... parents are still adamant Christians).  So kinda hard to quit when you never fully believed in it the first place or didn't have enough pressures that be making you into that mold.  But I finally completely broke away with it when I started studying mythologies, other religions, and of course different sciences.  The more I diversified myself in other studies and gained new opinions, I just didn't find it logical to think that I could possibly know the intricate details of this universe.  Why make illogical truth claims.  Although, I would still call myself an atheist, I have a very strange way of labeling myself that haha.

Simming through the chat I believe it should be more of a question who quit catholoscism.

Because Christianity is the general belief of Christ and God. I beleive it's this whole western ideal propaganda that is ruininf its own religion. Only Roman Catholic priests are pedophile because they have to devout themselves to god (a rule which they made up). I think other than groups in America and UK most of the world stays devout because they evolved or stayed "orthodox" (right) the past few centuries. We never here any complaints about Mainland european religious leaders and apperently the eastern rite does end up  being the better "rite".

On a side note I'm still Greek CATHOLIC a small denomynation of some 10 million of people of different races world wide but I have refined my views a little and tried to understand the religion Im following, abondonding what you don't really know is a quitter way out. An interesting doc/interview I would reccomend is this 9hr peice called (if you google vid search it).

Interview with an ex-vampire

Hope you'll enjoy.