I have moved the "Walk Away Project Forum" to its own heading.  It is now the 5th forum down under the heading "Walk Away Community Project."  I encourage all who wish to assist with this thing to post their ideas and suggestions.  Specifically, I need help with producing content for our web page.  I need members to go through the back posts on this board and give me some "gems."    I'll be needing helpful, links to articles and web sites.  Also, please give any specific information on any topic you think would be good on a web site.

Bottom line is, when I get a critical mass of information, I'll start putting it on a web page and put the page on the server.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.   Thanks.

Hi, Everyone!

It has been some months since I last visited here as well, and now I find this interesting re-design project in process.

I like the idea of having a walk-away resource website. I'll jump to that thread next and offer any suggestions I may have.

It has been quite interesting reading all the ideas offered in this thread. As usual, I think ExMissionary and Zara hit it exactly on the mark! (God! I love the way you two think!)

Bhoff

Well...

I might dust off my notes about Noah's ark and submit a scribbling synopsis of what I dug up.  Drawings and all.  This would constitute the genesis of my walking away, pre forum.  I never finished it, I started laughing too much when I came to the conclusion that, by the strict creationist model, the dinosaurs must have perished on the Ark.  In my thinking, they must have been penned on the bottom deck, and they must have drowned in the urine from themselves and all the animals on the decks above...

ewwwwww. 

Artistically , past and future contributions are there for the asking. 

The humor that has been volleyed about here, blowing off steam and fear, is something that I think should be represented as well.  Humor is and has been a great healing mechanism here.  Stuff like Merchandise thread, and Pool of feculent cess, etc...  Plus various bashings on trolls where all hands united in general mockery of impolite and unwelcome trolls, Specifically, the story of MOG.  Because the scenario played out as a great display of Walk Aways standing their ground against someone lobbing fear threats.  just a thought.    Maybe a synopsis, "What and what not to do when a Troll comes calling"...  I think some of these instances do show a lively lighter side to the whole issue of deconversion and emotio0nal healing.

I have cut and pasted fomr anothe rpost of mine as I feel it is relevant to this thread...

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I will admit that when I first found this board, I was largely intimidated by the dominant voices of the Atheists and Pagans here.  It seemed that the dominant voices on this board were impatient and actually somewhat intolerant of outlooks that were not as 'far away' from fundamnetalism as they were.  I guess that goes to show that this board is populated by some people who are still in pain and perhaps just as insecure in their new found ideoolgies as they were in their fundy ideologies.  But not everyone on here was like that of course.  Anyway, I was not ready to make the leap to some kind of neo-paganism or atheism and so found that most of the 'support' I got on this board was not really much help at all.

Perhaps, some of the more agressive atheists and pagans on this board could remember that this board is about walking away and not about walking towards anything in particular.  There are many paths out of fundamentalism...

HJS

In the future,

Trolls should rule the show and others should just shut-up

I've left a couple of notes in another thread (last week) but no one has 'believed' me ? There's another troll post behind mine if you look.

Perhaps it could be removed sometime....

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I haven't been given moderator privileges in this section of the forum; otherwise I would have removed the rest of the troll droppings.

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Edited to just say how impressed I am with this community. I had nothing to add, after reading the entire thread.

Heads up!....

What you are not considering is the purpose of this forum, and what you are not validating is the need to receive support when leaving fundamentalism.  Forums with specific purposes, with paying members, run by private persons, are under no obligation to entertain all points of view, and freedom of speech is nonexistent on the internet.  I should know; I recently got banned at a jewelry forum simply for asking other people what other websites they visited.  If the powers that be say that we can't talk about Play-do or leaves or global warming, well then we can't.  I find it hard to believe that you really think that you can change that, but I do smile each time you try to appeal to decency you claim we don't have.

I personally have no problem with other points of view, and I am not threatened by false information.  But I am totally recovered from my fundamentalist experience.  There was a time when I came here because my best friend told me that Jesus wouldn't allow her to be friends with me anymore, when I thought my longtime boyfriend was going to break up with me over my deconversion, when my family members put pressure on me and made me feel like a bad person.  During those times, this was a place of comfort and solace.

Now I come to this forum to support those who are on the lonely journey I once was, or I come to share how my fundamentalist past cropped up in a surprising way.  I don't come here to debate my beliefs.  Frankly, those beliefs just aren't interesting or relevant enough to me anymore to devote any more time to.  There are forums out there where you can do that.  If I wanted to have theological debates, I would go to one of those forums.

The equivalent of what you are doing would be for me to show up at your church and interrupt the service to present all the inconsistencies and logical fallacies of your faith.  Would you sit back and let me do so in the name of truth?  I mean, surely we can have a civilized and friendly debate instead of a church service just because I don't have anything better to do than to bother you, right?  No!  It's just a ridiculous idea, and yet you keep claiming that it applies here.  Why won't we just let you preach at us?  Oh boo wah hoo, you showed up at a support forum that didn't apply to you and weren't immediately worshipped for trying to convince us that we are wrong and you are right.  If that's persecution, then what I suffered at the hands of fundamentalists was torture. 

The problem is that you want to have your cake and eat it too.  The world wide web is, well, world-wide and far-reaching, and there are countless places where you could go to debate.  But that's not good enough for you.  For some reason, you want to visit a support forum and turn it into your own personal debate, where you can sit on a little throne entitled "Lone Christian Lucky Enough to Interrupt Former Fundamentalists Trying to Provide One Another With Support." 

You talk a lot about the title of this forum, and what it means, and why can't we interpret it in a way that means that you can receive a megaphone and shout all your ingenious insights at us.  I think we should just cut to the chase and rename our forum "Group of Former Fundamentalists Just Pissing All Over Themselves With Excitement to Provide a Captive Audience and Tailored Debate for one Poor Don Sharp Who Can't Find Fulfillment by Spending His Time Actually Acting out the Faith He Claims to Have and Loves to Share with Those Who Have Already Been There, Done That, by Filling His Time with Charitable Undertakings and Christian Fellowship and Sharing the Gospel with Those Who Might Actually Accept It, So Who Must Therefore Crash a Support-Oriented Forum Rather Than Face the Horror of Being Just One of Many Apologists at One of Those Debate Forums with All Those Scary Atheists Who Spout Arguments That He Can't Understand, and Who Should Just Admit That He'd Take an Antagonistic, Anonymous Relationship over a Face-to-face Friendship Any Day Because, After All, Negative Attention is Preferable to No Attention, and He Isn't Quite Sure the Christians He Knows Would Give Him the Positive Kind."

It's catchy, don't you think?

Don, I really do hope you can find somewhere to spend your online time that is a good fit for you.  I know how the internet can seem so real.  I was so sad when my jewelry forum banned me (and the email notice got sent to an email I don't check very often, so I didn't know why) that I cried and felt really rejected, and then I felt really stupid for caring that much about a forum, and a forum that doesn't really matter much in the grand scheme of things at that. 

But this just isn't some special interest forum where we talk about special equipment or fairs for our hobbies.  This is a place of support, and it's the kind of thing where you either qualify or you don't.  And buddy, no matter how you slice it, you don't qualify.  Sure, I can poke some more fun at you for wanting to belong to a group that you don't qualify for, but the truth is that the forum isn't going to change just to suit you, so you're going to have move on.  Don't you feel a little silly at how difficult that seems to be for you?  Why do you like us so much when, if we take what you say at face value, you think we have completely missed the boat and are misguided, bad people? 

You are getting something out of this, for sure.  I suspect that if we all had a collective change of heart and decided to allow you to stick around and said, "Wow, thank you so much for enlightening us!" at everything you said, you'd tire and move on.  Well, here's the test.  Where's that decency that we, Christless people going straight to hell, are supposed to somehow still have, so which you, Christ-filled ambassador to the rocky soil, must have in abundance?  Because if it's in you, because if you really believe that we all need to accept Christ or bust, then you will stop wasting your time trying to see what retorts we damned will come up with and will start living like this world doesn't matter.  If it's not in you, then maybe you belong here after all.