Mine was probably when I relapsed towards religion at age 15-16 and joined my mom’s conservative megachurch, naïvely thinking I can convince them to be less bigoted and more “christ-like” as well as accept science
Annoying atheist who tried to argue with religious people with Facts and Logic.
Not Op but atheist who accepts that some people would actually be unhappy without religion.
Not OP, but also an annoying adolescent atheist. After actually giving it some thought, I realized I was contextualizing the concept all wrong. Just because most people seem to contextualize God as a Santa Claus figure (bearded man who lives above us and judges our conduct, with fitting consequences) didn’t mean I had to accept that context.
There have been many very intelligent people across history who had many interesting things to say about deity. Few of them were using the Santa Claus model.
Same. At some point I became friends with pretty religious people who were also some of the most intelligent and nice people I had met. My beliefs that religious people are just dumb people who cannot understand the complexity of the real world kinda fell apart then.
I returned back to my pre-teen opinion, still an atheist but with compassion for other people’s beliefs. No need to constantly force my opinion into it or needlessly be a dick because we disagree. I’ve had many interesting discussions since then with very religious people. I still don’t fully get it, and to me it still reeks of indoctrination, but I’ve accepted that it’s fine to disagree.
When I was like 12, I thought chain wallets were the shit. Unfortunately my parents wouldn’t let me have one. I ended up hooking a bunch of Disney keychains together and wore that as my chain wallet. This was often worn with my favorite sleeveless neon green shirt and my lucky black and white checkered shorts.
When I was 14-15 I wanted a wallet chain, but they were banned at my school. I made one of of safety pins that looped down past my knees. Somehow my linked safety pins were ok…
I went through a pretty big libertarian phase way back in my late teens.
Not the ‘deregulate everything’ type, but rather more of a ‘everyone’s place in society is governed by the choices they make’ social-darwinist sort of angle.
Once I got out and experienced real life more (and learned about all the little nuances behind everything) I realized just how wrong I was.
Nowadays I’m a big leftist/socialist
seems like i’m mostly telling people in this thread not to feel bad about their prior cringe…
i really didn’t follow this closely AT ALL. but i feel like back in the day libertarian ideas were much more left of center than they are now. to my inexpert perception, it feels like libertarianism (and alot of other things) have been co-opted by conservatism over the years.
Maybe it’s just me, but libertarians have always been a weird bunch, because there are some large gaps between those who fall under its banner. I’ve seen anarchist commune types as well as the ‘government better watch out because I’m the only owner of THIS land’ prickly sorts at the same event. It’s not so much that the ideals of libertarian thought have been taken into conservative realms, but that the sorts of libertarians who could align with the ‘conservative’ drive to make the government small and speak up loudly are now getting their moment in the spotlight.
I was that nerdy kid that would tell anyone at every possible opportunity that thier iPhone was locked down garbage and they should switch to Android. Now I find any kind of vocal brand loyalty incredibly cringe as it just reminds me how I used to be when I was 14.
I was convinced a was a Werewolf with psychic powers. Also that the hollow earth is real, because that’s where the mole people aliens come from. And I also thought the Big Bang Theory was funny.
which version of the hollow earth are we talking? if you mean a giant hollow shell, then yeh i’m not sure how well supported that is.
if you mean the honeycomb earth idea, where there could be myriad of huge deep caverns. then i’m kinda open to that possibility.
(not that my geoscience knowledge extends beyond highschool geography and the odd wikipedia article - so would welcome an opportunity to discuss with someone adept.)
I believed there was a big hole in the north pole where the magnetic field comes out
may i ask why you believed that and why you stopped believing?
what piece of knowledge changed things for you?
surely you already knew all the reasons why that sounds pretty fantastical, even back then?
