I was raised as a fairly conservative Christian, but there was never any real insistence on Biblical literalism. My parents always declined to engage in any sort of debate. I was the one who proposed such non-literal interpretations and acted as the apologist in the family. The rest of my family believe in literalism, but accepted my interpretations so long as I still believed Jesus died for my sins. These are the beliefs I held when I actually joined this site.
I still became an Atheist. My deconversion was caused by the critical thinking skills I picked up on this site and others, and examining the problems of logic in my own reasons for believing. The book
Misquoting Jesus helped clear out the last vestiges of faith in anything dependant on the Bible. I basically realized that the only reason I was Christian was because I had been raised that way. I realized that the Bible was so riddles with translation errors, contradiction, and based entirely on the cherry-picking of books to be included in the first place that it was a poor basis for my life. I actually read the Bible with a critical eye, and noticed for the first time all of the horrific violence and disgusting content they gloss over in church, or even (as with the Revelation) try to paint the eternal torment of
billions of people as a
good thing. And then I realized the only reason I remained a Christian was becasue I
wanted God to exist. Since there was no reason other than my desire to actually believe, parsimony dictated that I discard the extraneous entity.
So for me, an environment that was at least tolerant of non-literal interpretations and apologetics made no real difference at all.
Every time a fundy breaks the laws of thermodynamics, Schroedinger probably kills his cat.
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