It's always good to see someone who "used to be a YEC" or "used to be a Creationist" or "Used to support Intelligent Design" but has learned that all of those are simply fantasies built on misrepresentations and unfortunately, all too often just plain lies.
What I do hate is that such an awakening also often leads to a person abandoning Christianity once they realize that what they were indoctrinated into under the label "Christianity" is as false as YEC or Creationism or ID.
That is a shame (although I admit is is far better to abandon the Christianity being marketed than to try to maintain it) since not all of Christianity is part of the Christian Cult of *********.
Not all Christianity falls for the same illogic and irrationality
to the same degree as what you term the "Christian Cult of Ignorance," but Christianity is still at its core a faith-based set of beliefs. The rationalist "awakening" that tends to drive people away from fundamentalism is most often an examination of evidence...and there is no flavor of Christianity (or Judaism, or Islam, or Hindu, or Scientology, or Pastafarianism) that can stand under honest scrutiny when evidence rather than bare assertion and apologetics is required to justify belief.
I'm sure there are many people who convert from the worst offending denominations to more moderate Christian beliefs, abandoning disbelief in evolution, abandoning condemnation of homosexuality, etc. You just wouldn't be as likely to
hear about such conversions, at least on a web debate forum like this one.
I would imagine that the reason is simply that a conversion from one Christian denomination to another is not as significant a change in one's worldview as a deconversion to atheism. I had relatively fundamentalist views when I was younger (6-day Creation, Flood, all of that), and moderated my Christian beliefs over time. I thought little of it other than that I no longer got on as well with my grandfather and others who retained zealous faith in the beliefs I had abandoned. When I eventually deconverted to atheism, however, I felt a
significant change. It was like moving to a different apartment in the same city in the US vs moving to Japan.
The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.
- Francis Bacon
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers
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