Regaining religious faith: Why would an Atheist return to church?

[Phillip McCleod]

3. i never went back to *church*..

.. but i did flip-flop for a few years as i've mentioned elsewhere around these parts. that said i don't expect that my 'reasons' for flopping back to belief could be generalized any more than my reasons for flipping over to atheism. for instance i have heard many atheists express a desire to continue having the sense of community they enjoyed when they believed.

not me.. not even sort of. other than the wiccan coven when i was 19, all my post-atheist religious practice was solitary to the point of hermeticism. last thing i wanted was someone telling me i was doing it wrong .. or right.. and i usually identified as 'agnostic' so i could remain vague in my responses when the topic did come up.

.. my point is that there is no one set of reasons why people drop their religion like a hot tater .. or why they think it's cooled off. me, i kept thinking.. 'well, that tater was hot, but maybe *this* one isn't'.

it was.