In 10th grade, my sophomore year in high school, I was already a strident proponent for evolution because I thought it supported my atheistic beliefs.
 
People (especially my atheist friends) who have only known me since I became a Christian don’t usually believe that I was really an atheist for a long time. I was.
I have discovered a similar phenomenon with my Protestant friends who have only known me since I became a Catholic; they don’t believe I was ever really an Evangelical Protestant. Well, I was.
 
I understand why people feel this way. They themselves believe firmly in X and have trouble believing that if I had once believed in X as firmly as they do, I never would have converted to Y.
 
I have felt similarly about people who have converted from Catholicism to other faiths or non-faith; there must have been something that they didn’t quite understand or believe in that the Catholic faith taught, I think. And maybe that is true, but I don’t deny that this person believed they were a Catholic and very well could have been one.
 
I dug out an old partial auto-biography that I began sometime back and found this story from my sophomore year of high school:

In my first years in high school, I continued to excel in all of my subjects, making A’s in everything, doing UIL competitions in math, science, and writing. During my sophomore year in English class, two assignments I was given made impressions on me that I will never forget.
 
The first was a research paper on a topic of our choice. I was excited because I longed to do an in-depth study of evolution, and so I went to the library and read books about evolutionary theory, including Charles Darwin’s initial discoveries as well as fossil evidence in prehistoric man. One of my favorite quotes of Darwin, which I read aloud in class when we presented our research papers, was “I once intended to be a clergyman; I never doubted the literal truth of the Bible.”
 
I went on to explain the irrefutable evidence supporting evolution, and how we had evolved from lesser creatures through mutation and natural selection. The way I reasoned in this research paper left little room for the possibility that a God had created us.
 
At the end of the presentation, we had a question-answer time, and one of my classmates, a very quiet boy who I had known for years but didn’t have much contact with, with a voice that trembled in anger told me how his good friend was on the verge of committing suicide but that Jesus had stopped her from doing so. I stood at the front of the class and didn’t know what to say, for clearly I had struck a deep nerve with him in claiming that God did not exist and in showing evidence to the contrary.
 
Everyone in the room was very quiet for a few moments, and then our English teacher motioned me to return to my seat. I sat down and glanced over at this boy, who looked as if he was almost crying, in anger, not in sadness, and I wondered at the strength of his emotions about this. Did he really believe that Jesus had saved his friend from killing herself? How delusional can you get? Well, I couldn’t help it if the truth that I had just told him hurt.
 
—
I wonder if this classmate of mine, whose name I still remember, would believe it if I told him that I was a Christian now?
 
My high school reunion is in about 8 months, so I might just get the opportunity to tell him. If I do, I will also tell him how sorry I am for the way I used to be.