my skeptical past pt1

Despite having just laughed at the skeptics, they are an organisation I appreciate. With my childhood lacking in all things spiritual (unless you consider spending time with horses can be a spiritual experience) and full of all things British Comedy I came to the Christian Church with (what I consider) a healthy dose of skepticism, which I have managed to maintain. I probably suppressed it a bit during my AOG years (after all when did you ever hear anything about whether faith is divinely-inspired or self-generated? The difference between 'God helps those who help themselves' and undeserved grace? Debates on things like theistic evolution vs long earth or short earth creationism. Or any big theological questions to excite the imagination and inspire further study.1)

My skepticism was aided and abetted by an ignorance of the creeds and forms of religion, which became obvious to me when I started attending churches and often ended up singing the wrong lyrics to the hymns or reciting the wrong creeds. My favorites amongst these religious mondogreens, I will now quote here...

Firstly there is The New Creed
(just called Creed on Not the Nine O'Clock News' Hedgehog Sandwich LP but also known as Creed (The New Revised Version) on a later (American?) release).

I have been unable to find the text for this, which was a reworking of the Apostle's Creed and I think was inspired by the modernising of the creeds within the Church Of England. How much this affected me, will be seen by the fact that now (25 or so years after I first heard it and at least 15 years since I last heard it) I am able to remember this much of it.

I believe in God the father almighty
maker of heaven and earth
and in Jesus Christ his son our lord,
who was born of the Virgin Mary.
No Don't laugh, it could happen.
After all they can do it in a test tube these days,
can't they
and that proves it,
doesn't it.
I believe in...
[my memory will fill in this gap with time, but it then went on to include]
extra terrestrials
water divining
there must be something in astrology
copper bracelets for rheumatism


1 part of that paragraph was stolen from a post by Lance on Signposts.org.au