Rewriting History

I made a mistake on February 8th. I decided to delete all of my posts from the blog that I didn't want family and friends reading, particularly those people I had been in church with as a congregant and/or worker. I took 100+ posts off the blog, nearly all of them, with the exception of those that I had presented to carnivals or that had been linked to a bit. I kept a hard copy of all of my old posts as .txt files in HTML, but I didn't date them [didn't keep the original posted date information]. I see those actions now as a mistake, and I want to correct them.

A major part of my decision to mothball this weblog had to do with the fact that I was a Christian, and an informal minister [youth pastor] at a couple of different churches. When I found out that those in my family were reading my site, I tried to rewrite history. My deconversion was something I didn't really know how to deal with at the time. I had, after all, been working as a youth pastor even during this transition, closeted as an agnostic/atheist.

I realize now that I should not have attempted to rewrite history. Those who are offended will be offended. Those who wish me well and respect intellectual and spiritual freedom [which entails complete lack of belief in a "spirit"] will do so regardless of what they read on here. Besides, I am not important enough to influence that many people. Deconversion experiences, particularly within a marriage, are quite gut-wrenching and often take quite a toll on one's social circle. Thankfully, the impact upon my own network is minimal, compared to what I had erstwhile predicted.

So, I thought (a LOT) about what I ought to do with this site. I've decided to undo my quasi-revisionism of this site's history. And, despite my efforts to the contrary, which were paltry and not well thought out, my hometown and former church communities have heard the gossip. I suppose I thought this site would somehow remain undiscovered for a longer amount of time, but I'm not really sure as to what I was thinking...or if I really was. I really didn't want to try to continue writing, feeling censored by the unintended audience. The realization has swept over me that then, as now, I should have written nothing to be ashamed of. And it is in this spirit that I will continue to post items here, doing my best to avoid self-censorship, or worse--pandering to people I know.

Ergo, I've decided to repost the deleted items, sans a few poor-quality, flame-oriented, and hastily-written articles, and try to retro-date them as well as memory allows. I really don't have the time I'd like to devote to continuing to write here, so I will basically just be cross-posting material here that I contribute to Debunking Christianity, Out of Christianity, AAFSA at UF, and on the CreationTalk forum. Therefore, I'm going to copy those articles here, along with the old ones, over the course of the next few days (maybe a week or two). Don't expect much in the way of new material, not for a long while.
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