By an Alabamian ~

1. I admit that I am powerless to change the fact that I have been Christian for a good part of my life.


2. I realize that I have within me the power to free myself from the harmful part of my Christian past and that I am no longer bound by promises or covenants which I was induced to make based on the false promises of Christianity.


3. I make to myself a firm promise to listen in the future only to reason, rationality, and factual evidence in making decisions about how I should live my life, rejecting all emotional appeals, guilt-inducing threats, myths, pretty stories, promises of castles in the air, and superstition.


4. I make a searching and fearless moral and intellectual inventory of myself with the purpose of recognizing in myself those weaknesses which induced me to remain Christian for so long.


5. I am able to list the specific reasons why I can no longer be Christian.


6. I make the decision to do what is right, and to accept whatever the consequences may be for acknowledging the lies and living accordingly.


7. I begin working through each of my Christianity-related problems of mind, body, and relationships.


8. I make a list of those for whom it would be important to know of my decision and the changes I am making in my life, and prepare myself emotionally to discuss my decision with them all, realizing that many may react with hurt, anger, emotional outbursts, or other unpleasantness.


9. I discuss my decision with them (except in those cases where I think it would cause greater harm to do so than not) in a calm, friendly and loving way, without argument.


10. I continue to take personal inventory, and where I find artifacts of Christianity, I carefully consider whether they should continue to be a part of my life, or whether I should discard them.


11. I seek out truth wherever I can find it.


12. Having had an awakening and renewal as the result of these steps, I try to be helpful to other recovering or doubting Christians, and to practice these principles in all of my affairs.

By John ~

HEBREWS 6: 4-6

4 For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, 5 And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, 6 If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.

The first time I read those words I became convinced it was speaking about me, and I was terrified.

It happened about 3 years ago, during a time I could only explain as my brief sojourn from sanity, into the world of uncertainty, doubt, fear, and misery that I now associate with religious belief.

I've always been slightly obsessive: a mixture of the passion to understand things and my high intelligence. It's both a blessing and a curse.

I first heard about Jesus when I was 6 years old from a babysitter at the prompting of my mother, concerned over my eternal well-being. She sat myself and my sister on the edge of my sister's bed and told us about how we were sinners and needed a Savior, and I accepted Jesus then and there.

Up until that point, I was a happy little kid atheist. Not by choice mind you, but by default. I had no concern over 'spiritual matters' and when I first heard about these things unseen my mind and emotions began their lifelong plummet into the world of uncertainty and fear.

For some unknown reason, the babysitter, I still remember her name: Thina, added as a suffix to our initial indoctrination the grave warning: 'if you challenge the devil, you will explode.'

I remember the next day or two of my weekend was ruined, as I sat on a bench in the park near my house ruminating over the possibility, afraid to death that if my resilience broke for even one moment and I said those words it would mean the end of my life.

Torture.

I quickly moved on, being the child I was, and forgot about it.

My young life was not very devout: my mother being a Christian and my father being a devout unbeliever we rarely went to church. When I was ten years old we moved to a new city for my father's new job.

At 13 and a new high school student, I remember vividly sitting on my bed reading the bible at night when that thought came back into my mind: 'if you challenge the devil you will explode.' Once more I was plunged into the vague world of religious uncertainty and doubt, ruminating day and night over the possibility I might at any moment lose my resolve and be forever shorn into millions of pieces of teenager-kibble. For weeks and months I prayed to God for strength, I used bible verses to 'send Satan away' such as: 'If God be for us, who can be against us' and 'All things are possible through Christ who strengthens us.' Little did I know the solution to my problems was to get rid of the religious thinking altogether. At the time, however, I could not risk my eternal soul at the utter joy of being safe from explosion over a religious loophole.

This might seem stupid to people, but understand I was a child when I first heard about this. This unknown realm of religious possibility was a mental reality for me since the age of 6, and it was impossible for me at the time to get out of it.

It took me about 18 months to get over it. One day after months and months of torture, I finally decided to face my fear and I finally challenged the devil out loud and...nothing happened. Cathartic. A temporary relief from the agony of obsession that I had been in the grips of for at least a year and a half, day and night, nonstop, 24 hours a day.

But that relief was short-lived. My mind soon found new religious things to obsess over. Demonic possession.

If I stopped believing, I was no longer saved and was at the risk of being possessed. So even though I knew certain things must be true about our reality, I held firm onto the notion that Christ died and was raised and that I was saved. That's all that mattered.

A growing pornography addiction and experimentation with marijuana grew at ages 16 and 17 and culminated in my true religious experience at the age of 17. After watching the 'Jesus' film and seeing this man nailed to a cross and for the first time realizing he 'died for ME' I broke down in shame over my problems as a human being, my lying and stealing and pornography and marijuana use, and asked him to forgive me. A rush of peace loving and forgiving spiritual water (only way I can describe it) flowed through me, and I became a Christian, again.

Shortly after I was baptized and when I went under the water something inside my heart 'leapt' at the recognition that this was me being saved, I was very happy for a time and I still have that feeling sometimes. The best way to describe it is a 'holy fire' in my heart. I don't know what it is, but that 'feeling' is probably the thing I have the most difficulty reconciling with my new found agnosticism or atheism.

Something kept me from going 'deep' into Christianity. I only ever put my toes in, because of this deep underlying fear at all things religious. I thought they were all very mystical and to be honest, extremely scary, and so I sort of kept my distance at becoming too indoctrinated into it. I don't think I could do it even if I wanted to. It's just too weird for me, and always was.

So having been saved and having that part of my life handled I went on to accomplish things in my life and did so for 10 years, constantly battling pornography addiction, trying to be clean in a relationship with my girlfriends and often denying them sex because of fear, battling my ongoing obsession with the potential for me to be possessed by constantly reinforcing that I was a child of God and such things were impossible as long as I had the holy spirit inside me.

That is, until about 3 years ago when I came across that verse. Terrified at having been a nominal christian for all these years and that I had 'fallen away, never to return' I began to research just what salvation really was. Much to my chagrin, I found 7 different interpretations of that verse and 2 Peter 2 from 7 different theologians, all saying different things. Some said I was never really saved. Some said I had lost my salvation. Some said I was still saved but 'backslidden.' Why wasn't there an answer? I ruminated in mental torture, watching YouTube videos from different pastors on salvation. I cried out to God for months, every night and day, in pure agony over the state of my eternal being.


not

really

there

at allAnd I received no answer.

The Christian counselor I saw thought I had some kind of demonic influence from the drugs I had taken as a teenager that was making me question my salvation. I stopped seeing him after he gave me a handbook on how to get rid of that. I never understood how drugs like anti-depressants and aspirin were OK for Christians to take but natural drugs like marijuana were not. Even though I didn't smoke marijuana and hadn't in almost a decade, I could not reconcile this. It just doesn't make sense.

I thought I had finally gotten an answer from God, at the pinnacle of my mental fury he had shown me that God did all the work and that all I needed to do was have faith and I was saved. But how did I know my faith was enough? I heard different pastors saying that God gave YOU the faith to believe, and I felt like I didn't really believe it, otherwise I would have developed more 'fruits' over the past years. Was I never really saved in the first place? Was I in danger?

And to be honest this is very hard for me to write. That know of complete terror rises once again inside my heart as I force myself to tell my story here.

How did Jesus' death save us at all? One pastor on youtube said it was god's wrath poured out on him instead of us that saved us. So then, why need him to die that way at all? One said it was his death. Well, how does one day of torture forgive someone who tortured someone else for 20 years, like the father who kept his daughter in the basement as a slave? How does Jesus' resurrection mean anything at all? It just didn't make sense.

Desperate for an answer I cried out to God, and received nothing. And after a long time I was forced to admit the possibility that he was

not

really

there

at all.

I began to delve into atheist literature, and every bit of it made intellectual sense to me. Evolution is actually true. It's not possible to reconcile the evolution of man with mankind's fall in the bible, because evolution is dependent on selection pressures, and those include being tougher, smarter, more logical, and in human beings' case: more social and more moral for success. Mankind was not created perfect and chose to fall (the whole fall in Genesis is a confidence trick anyway), mankind evolved these things. He could not have been successful if he didn't.

I still bounce between atheism and agnosticism. I still have bursts of religiosity and bursts of fear and terror over religious thoughts. I know there are a lot of Christians in the same boat as me. It truly is horrifying stuff.

I began to see most religious people very ignorant of reality in order to hold on to beliefs, either because they must hold on to those beliefs being true because they are afraid, or holding on to those beliefs because they desperately want them to be true.

And to be honest, part of me wishes they were true as well. The thought of a loving God and me being together forever and me living forever is a nice thought. The gospel story is still an amazingly beautiful one.

But so is Santa Claus.

By BP ~

Here's one for the critical thinkers. I swear I'll tie in religion at the end.

Dead=Not Alive; Therefore, Afterlife=Beforelife.

Soap bubble (Photo credit: Raphael Quinet)

In words now: I was not alive before I was alive and I'll be not alive after my death. So how can before life and after life be any different?

See I don't remember the before life b/c I did not have a brain then. I could not carry around this collection of data that we call memories in life. Nor would I have any need for them. They do not apply. How long was I not alive before I was alive? An hour, a day, an eternity? As far as I can remember it was an instant and an eternity all in one. There is no use for time when one is not alive. It is being alive that confines us to this space time continuum. A little like being trapped I guess. Separated from the truth that perhaps we once knew. When we were not alive.

I like to think of being alive as not too much unlike a bubble. All the necessary ingredients for the bubble were always there. However it takes some sort of outside input for the bubble to exist. The ingredients have to be combined in just the right way. Our body is like the shell that makes the bubble visible. Allows the bubble to exist. The way we understand it. The inside of the bubble would be like the soul I guess, or whatever it is that life is made of. Once the bubble is gone all the ingredients still remain. Maybe to be used in another bubble; maybe to be used on something completely different. I don't know. No one does. There is no proof for any theory. What I do know is that it's putting something out of place that makes the bubble. Think of air in water. The bubble fighting to get to the top. Think of a soap bubble just floating around ever so delicate. Much more wanting to pop than to remain a bubble. Everything is trying to reach equilibrium again. That's why the bubble pops and that's why we die. Being alive is not our natural state of being.

Well if that is true, and I can honestly say now that being NOT alive was not so bad, then what's so scary about being not alive again? Only the the physical act of dying? If one can accept that then there is nothing else to do, but to see our current state (being alive) as something like a journey. A vacation of sorts. A vacation from being not alive. So enjoy. We all know vacations don't last very long and for some reason when we are on them all we can think of is how we will eventually have to go back home.

Religions make us comfortable with this eventually having to go back thing. But you don't need 'em. It's like going to the beach on vacation just to see a psychologist for a week to try to deal with the thought of going back to work. It just doesn't make any sense. Enjoy life! Accept not knowing!

By JC ~

I swear I am not making this up.

I subscribe to a priest's FB stuff because, honestly, some of what he posts is really interesting to me. However, in a recent post, we got into a discussion about moral laws (e.g. "Go kill all the Jews and Gypsies") to which I responded that when the law is immoral it's our duty to disobey it. Here's where the conversation went from there:

Priest:

English: The inside of an Orthodox church. Greek Orthodox Church. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

John, let me ask you this: You say "When the law is immoral, it is our duty to disobey," and "the law itself is insipid." On what basis do you call a law immoral? Without God as guide and teacher, ultimately there is no arbiter of morality except oneself.

Your Truly:

Your question is based on a common fallacy. To state that one cannot be moral without god is not well thought out.

For the sake of argument, let us suppose that there are moral laws that are absolute. If that is true, God must be bound by them, yes? But God has committed murder (both personally committing genocide and ordering his people to do so), adultery (impregnating the wife of Joseph), left a murderer and alduterer unpunished (taking out the punishment on the innocent child conceived by Bathsheba instead (and where does the anti-abortion crowd stand on THAT issue?)), instructing his people to steal from other people that they conquered, intentional obfuscation (Matthew 13:13), and coveting (Exodus 20:5).

If we say that the Judeo-Christian god is moral, then genocide and slavery are morally justified and the only thing Hitler did wrong was try to wipe out people without getting god's permission first. Even as late as Colossians we read that a slave should submit to his/her master - not that slavery is immoral.

As a moral guide, any deity you name falls horribly short of a worthy standard.

Indeed, this is why I left Christianity. When comparing "God the Father" to any human father I have ever known, not one man that I could think of failed to be superior to god. If we say "god is good" and look at the god of the Bible, we come away baffled.

What many religious fail to admit is that morality is not strictly a human characteristic. Here's a good example:

http://new.exchristian.net/2012/05/frans-de-waal-moral-behavior-in-animals.html

Indeed, many religious hate to admit that humans are actually part of the animal kingdom, despite all the evidence.

Morality is innate in many species. It is far more complex in humans, to be sure, but what of that? We are complex creatures.

I would also point out that your presupposition is proven erroneous by human history. There is not one theistic society that has failed to screw over anyone of a different faith.

Moreover, 2 Cor 5:17 is a bald-faced lie. Christians are not a "new creature" at all! They have the same nature as every other human being. They just obsess over their human failings more than most. Want proof? Explain to me why the church is so fractured? Even among Orthodox Christians, all y'all are like Scottish clans that war with each other. Same goes for every religion ever known to man. There is nothing "new" about Christians at all.

That said, how can one claim that a person cannot be moral without god? If that was true, why aren't atheists all debauched? How is it possible for us to be moral when we deny that any god exists? The premise is flawed.

Priest:

John, I know you'll take this as a copout, but this forum was long ago designed not for debate. As my info tab explains, "My main intent is to inform and embolden and give resources to Christians to speak out on certain "politically incorrect" issues, such as euthanasia, destructive embryonic stem cell experimentation, cloning, homosexuality, Islam, etc.

I post the truth about abortion, for instance, and inform Christians of what the mainstream media doesn't give coverage to. Additionally, I post because I believe we Orthodox (and clergy in general) need correction for our compromise on these issues. My posts are not for everybody. I don't write them to be, and I don't intend them to be. Those I actively try to find and ask for FBfriendship are Christian clergy (bishops, priests, pastors, elders, ministers, brothers, trustees, deacons, deaconesses, monks and nuns), and serious Orthodox Christian faithful.

But I don't turn down anyone for FBfriendship. So, sometimes my confrontational style and the topics of my posts offend some people I don't intend or want to offend. For instance, I wouldn't post what I post about Islam to Muslims. A different approach entirely is required, just for the sake of kindness. I wouldn't post what I post about abortion to women who are hurting in its aftermath. I would, of course, take a completely different approach and attitude. Please keep this in mind as you consider beFBfriending me. ***It is beyond the scope of my posts to debate about the merits of Christianity or a Biblical worldview. My posts are designed for those who already surrender to Christ and are seeking to submit to God's Word, as the Church has taught it.*** It's not my intent to debate at all, but to inform, correct and encourage."

Again, I'm sure you'll consider this a copout, and perhaps it is, but I don't have the time to debate whether there is a God or whether He is the source of truth or right/wrong for us. Perhaps this forum is not for you. There are many other forums which seek to reach out to atheists with evidence of God's reality. I wish you the best.

Your Truly:

I do find it odd that you would pose the question then dismiss the answer, yes.

I have become too accustomed to ability to speak rationally to any issue and willingness to discuss the things he posts. He and I do not agree on much but I have learned a lot from him and trust his judgment because he thinks first and understands his opponent well. I acknowledge he is a rarity.

Since you and I cannot have such an honest dialogue with one another, I'll keep my yap shut on your posts hitherto.

I will say, though, that what troubles me most about people in general is that they are unwilling to even consider a point of view outside of their own cherished beliefs. Therefore, not only do they not understand the people around them, they don't even understand why what they believe to be true is (or isn't) valid. Hence, they never really grow. To my mind, there is nothing more blessed than to have your opinions and beliefs challenged because, in the end, those challenges wipe away the dross and leave only the pure gold behind (or reveal the material to be iron pyrite).

:::JC passes silently out of your life forever:::

Now, I give the guy full credit for still responding after I stated that I was sick of hearing the religious whine about how they are losing their religious freedoms, citing that the fact that they are able to whine in public is evidence that they aren't.

But I find it distressing that this leader in the church is not interested in answering the questions that need to be answered. These people just want to bitch and moan and feel persecuted.

I would literally pay money right now if anyone could find a Christian leader who would honestly debate "God is a prerequisite to morality" in a public forum with me or anyone else in our little community here. The sad thing is that I am no intellectual giant and even I could easily win that debate.

(BTW - thanks to whoever posted the Frans de Waal video.)

By Carl S ~

We are NOT going away. We have tolerated 2000+ years of being silenced, suppressed, persecuted, tortured and killed, simply because we disagree with religious beliefs. Don't expect us to back down. Over the span of 2000+ years, you STILL have NO evidence to verify your claims. And with every new piece of scientific evidence to back up natural explanations formerly attributed to invisible "supernatural" forces, your god melts like the Wicked Witch of the West. Don't expect us to not keep reminding you of this as long as you arrogantly try to force your will on the rest of society as "the laws of God." You have no more legitimacy than any of the other thousands of religions.

So, get used to our voices. Adjust to opinions and beliefs other than your own: beliefs in the rights of humans over themselves, in the inherent goodness of mankind, and the destructiveness which is caused through blind, unthinking obedience to dogmas.

If you didn’t want us to get so pissed off, you shouldn't have treated us, and continue to treat us, with such indifference, contempt, and prejudice. We are sick of being belittled. We are also sick of the arrogance and domination of your spokesmen, the televangelist millionaires, with your support and quiet compliance eating up monies in their houses of worship, while our fellow human beings die like flies from preventable causes, starvation, and religious sectarian wars. We are sick of watching hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness masquerading as virtue.

We will not be denigrated because we "lack" superstitions, a.k.a. "beliefs," and do not accept invisible, supernatural, ghost-forces in control of Nature.

We will CONTINUE to promote reason, curiosity, and skepticism, despite your efforts to thwart such thinking and reasoning. We shall fight for our right to free expression. If your religious beliefs were truly right, you would never have had to resort to the slayings you formerly engaged in as a matter of policy; such methods are the hallmark of someone in the wrong. Without them and without fear tactics, you would not have been able to last this long. (Remember- the ancient Egyptian gods were in existence longer than your god.)

Without your former controlling mechanisms, you are revealed as the manipulating man behind the curtain, and we will continue to pull that curtain back. Without those methods, you are left to be apologists, and you are looking pretty unreasonable and often silly with those explanations, when not downright cold regarding human suffering and needs.

We realize, as African-Americans, homosexuals, and all others who suffered prejudice have found out, that we also have rights you don't want to recognize, and that we too, must fight like hell to get them. We do not appreciate, for example, being left out as citizens, as you demand your sectarian prayers at public functions. None of us will put up with further bullying. You wouldn't, if a Moslem or Hindu took over beginning a public meeting with his/her prayers, so you understand where we're coming from. The tyranny of the majority is un-American, and un- Constitutional.

If what you believe and maintain is so ultra-powerful and ultra-real, why have you done everything possible to keep yourselves frightened lest you hear any different interpretation of reality than your own? After 2000+ years, the best you can come up with is to tell people to "believe." That's it? What other system except the most repressive, asks that of humans?

We are tired of boring sermons, hearing about a "Jesus", of whom no proof is offered that he ever existed. We do not want any more intransigent inflexibility from any quarter. Life is too short to tolerate these things. No one in the 21st century should be asked to believe without evidence anything claimed to be all-important. In the past thousands of years we have learned and want to pass on to our children and all children what has been discovered and confirmed in that span of time. It would be morally unfair to teach them to return to times of ignorance as if they were founts of wisdom. We will not allow them to be mired in dark, cruel, immoral, scriptural mindsets, and will oppose your efforts to promulgate them. If, for instance, you cannot accept the fact of evolution, stand aside, because your children CAN. Do not teach them that nature is wrong because it doesn't agree with your scriptures. Please.

Our time has come. It is long overdue that we are allowed out in the open, speaking out and known. You have had yours, and have seized it with force, fear, threats, killings, indoctrination, and coercion. The world is going away from those methods. We are not "getting even," we are allowing the free flow of ideas and the quiet voice of reason to speak. Step aside. And listen.

By iwonder ~

I was born into a super-strict church. Outward appearances were the most important things. Not only dress-wise, but attitude-wise also. The church preached 2 works of grace: salvation, then holiness.

Holiness was huge. That was when you emptied yourself of yourself, and were filled with the holy ghost.Proof of this was loss of any negative emotions, the biggest of which was anger. The root of sin was removed, and after receiving the baptism, people did not sin. I had THE WORST time achieving this. Salvation could be lost, and there were so many things that were sins that I couldn't stay saved long enough to receive the holy spirit. I perceived myself as more sinful than most (step over, apostle Paul!) because no one else in my church had the trouble I did.

All I wanted in the world was for god to love me, and for me to be holy. Beginning in my very early teens, I got serious about my soul, but I could not quit sinning. The church had an altar where praying was done, and I was there all. the. time. People began to take notice. It was a very small church; they couldn't help but notice. I was told that my struggles were a result of my unwillingness to die to myself. I began to plead for god to break my will.

I began praying and fasting everyday, and in fact, made myself sick. I thought if I were miserable enough, god would see how much I wanted to be good enough for him to love and fill me. I was miserably unhappy all through my teen years. I thought that was what I deserved.

The church advised me to "pray clear through". When I did that, and my will was broken, I'd know that I'd achieved holiness.

In 6th grade, my sibs and I began attending the church school, and now I was receiving a double whammy of my unworthiness. I was being preached at there about my sinful heading-to -hell-self, then hearing it at church.

Nothing I did worked, and by the time I was a Senior in high school, I'd just about given up. I had high grades, though, that earned me a scholarship to the church bible college. I thought maybe being surrounded by holy people 24/7 could only help me die to myself. It didn't. It only made me see my badness more starkly. At the end of my first semester, I had my first suicide attempt. I mean, what did I have to live for? I was never going to be good enough for god. I could never be as holy as the church said I should be.

I hung in for 3 years. Then, the depression and the desperation to be good enough became too much. I left school, and gradually the church.

In the years since then, I have also slowly let go of my belief in god. I've come to love myself, and realize that dying to myself was just moronic. Ironically, the more I've let go of god, the more peace and joy I have. I never thought I'd experience these wonderful things!

This is a scary journey I'm on, I'll admit. It's also exciting. I have more freedom now than I ever did before. Not freedom to live hedonistically, as the church told me I would, but freedom to love and be loved. Freedom to accept friends that the church never would have allowed me.

It wasn't easy leaving the community the church afforded me, but I'm finding that I belong to a much bigger (and better!) one: humanity.

I don't know where on this journey I'll be tomorrow, but I'm just so glad I am indeed on it.

By Michael Sherlock ~

In the third volume of my ‘I Am Christ’ series, I dedicate two chapters to examining hypnosis and NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), as they apply to most, if not all, Christian Church services.

Hypnosis (Photo credit: heyjoewhereyougoinwiththatguninyourhand)

In the chapter on Hypnosis, entitled; The Magic of Modern Christianity: Sunday Morning Hypnosis, I discuss the five stages of hypnosis as they relate the average church service.

The following is a small excerpt from I Am Christ; Vol. 3: The Ascension – Understanding, which includes a brief background on hypnosis as well as the second stage of hypnosis.

Hypnosis Misunderstood

Contrary to popular myth, hypnosis is not about turning people into chickens! It is true however, that deep trance hypnosis can dramatically alter one’s perception of reality, in much the same way that meditation, prayer, long term fasting, entrancing religious rituals, or walking for miles in the hot desert. Contrary to the title of this chapter, there is nothing magic about hypnosis. A popular misconception regarding hypnosis is that it involves a sleeping state, in which the subject is covertly forced to adopt thoughts and behaviors which they would otherwise, be adverse to. The trance-state can and usually is, induced via hypnosis while the subject is wide awake; this state is known as the ‘waking trance’ and is the most common form of trance. Under this waking trance, it is unlikely even impossible, that hypnosis alone can cause the subject to think and behave in a manner that is contrary to their moral constitution and established principles. Having said that, when hypnosis is combined with N.L.P (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), it can, and quite often does, result in the changing of a person’s ideas, beliefs and behaviors. Subjects under hypnosis will usually remain acutely aware of their surroundings and may not even know that they are in the hypnotic state. The trance-state induced by hypnosis is a relaxing, slightly altered state of consciousness, which is very natural and commonly experienced by everyone almost every day. Whether we experience it during our favorite TV show or driving down a long stretch of highway, we all go into trance daily and we are seldom aware that we are in this state of slightly altered consciousness. Have you ever been in a daze while being asked questions by someone and you ended up asking them what you had just agreed to? Or have you ever walked into a room to get something and then forgotten what you had to get, once you were in the room? Because trance is a regularly experienced state of mind, it makes it hard to tell when we are going in and out of it. It is familiar to all of us yet, just as the deep sea dweller fails to notice the water around them for the fish and the coral, we take this state of mind for granted.

What is Hypnosis?

Hypnosis is essentially, a mental state**, usually induced by a procedure known as a hypnotic induction. The induction is commonly composed of a long series of preliminary instructions and suggestions.(1) Hypnotic suggestions may be delivered by a hypnotist in the presence of the subject, or may be self-administered ("self-suggestion" or "auto-suggestion").
The words 'hypnosis' and 'hypnotism' both derive from the term "neuro-hypnotism" (nervous sleep) coined by the Scottish surgeon James Braid in 1841. Braid based his practice on the earlier work of Franz Anton Mesmer, whose name is the origin of the word ‘mesmerized’. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Franz Anton Mesmer developed what is known as "Mesmerism" or "animal magnetism". He was heavily influenced by the earlier work of Father Maximillian Hell, a Catholic Priest, who had been using magnets and prayer to hypnotize subjects and had some success in healing hysterical conditions, such as hysterical blindness and similar psychologically rooted problems.

Contemporary research suggests that hypnosis is a wakeful state of focused attention and heightened suggestibility, with diminished peripheral awareness. (2) This heightened state of suggestibility is the primary focus of both this chapter and the next. What and how intensely can one be manipulated to believe a given proposition, if one is under hypnosis? And more importantly, if one does not realize that they are being hypnotized over and over again; doesn’t this constitute manipulative conduct on the part of the hypnotist(s)? These two questions underscore the following investigation into the magic of Christianity.


The 5 Stages of Hypnosis

A typical hypnotherapy session contains five stages:]

1. Introduction
2. Induction
3. Deepening
4. Suggestion and;
5. Awakening.


It is the contention of this author that the same five stages can be found within most Christian church services. The hypnotic techniques employed during church sessions have served to further entrench Christian beliefs into the minds of Christian subjects and so demonstrates the mentally manipulative religious package offered by the Christian religion.


According to professional hypnotists, the subject’s mind must contain four primary criteria in order for the hypnosis to work. The acronym is known in the profession as, B.I.C.E:

1. Belief
2. Imagination
3. Conviction and;
4. Expectation


These elements are generally found in abundance in the mind of the true believing, church going Christian. Generally, those who attend church believe that their pastor or preacher is speaking the word of god, which has very powerful psychological implications and satisfies the first criteria of the list above. Further, the church goer’s imagination is engaged at almost all times throughout the service, during the singing, the sermon, the prayer and it is probably the hardest working aspect of the four criteria set out above. Next, professional hypnotists say that the subject must have conviction and the stronger the better! There is almost nothing in this world that inspires conviction, like one’s religious beliefs. The attendee is convinced that the church service is permeated by the spirit of their god, which leads to the expectation, that they will “feel the spirit.” In truth, the elation one gets from “feeling the spirit” may be little more than the pleasure and catharsis of entering a trance.


(Stage one has been taken out of this post by the author)


Stage 2: The Induction: Removing the Filter


The purpose of the induction stage is to have the subject enter a trance state.
A trance state, as mentioned above, is more often than not a state of consciousness that does not involve deep sleep, or a complete alteration of the mind. It commonly involves a slight, almost imperceptible change in focus and a light feeling of relaxation. Listening to one’s favorite music can often induce trance, along with other activities such as; driving a car, washing the dishes, watching TV and many other mundane daily activities that require little participation from the conscious mind. Once the conscious mind is dismissed from the activity, the subconscious or unconscious mind is opened. Much like a key opening a locked door, the induction stage is primarily concerned with accessing the subconscious mind via trance.


In their book Unlimited Selling Power, Donald Moine and Kenneth Lloyd, discuss the trance associated with everyday activities in the following words:


Self-hypnosis occurs frequently in everyday life and can be found in such diverse activities as day-dreaming, jogging, prayer, reading, listening to music, meditation, or even driving the freeways. Once in the self-induced hypnotic state, suggestibility is greatly heightened. Psychological barriers and defenses are lowered, and the person's unconscious becomes more receptive to new programming. (3)


The trance state is one in which the subject’s subconscious mind is brought to the surface. Subsequently, the subject in trance is more prone to receiving suggestions in a less critical fashion. This is due to the absence of the critically analytical conscious mind, which questions and assesses information upon rational grounds.


As stated by William Hewitt, in his book ‘Hypnosis for Beginners’:


The conscious mind does not take suggestions well. It is most useful for thinking, reasoning and putting into action those things it already knows the subconscious mind, however, is like an obedient slave. It doesn’t think or reason. (4)

Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything you do. Try to please them all the time, not just when they are watching you. Serve them sincerely because of your reverent fear of the Lord.
Colossians 3:22

The subconscious mind has difficulty distinguishing between fantasy and reality, which is why our dreams seem real at the time. During the dream state, the subconscious or unconscious mind, is not critically evaluating the probability of flying over a house in pink underwear, while being chased by a vicious dog with wings. It is happening now! It is real! It is only when we wake up that we realize it was all just a silly dream. But what happens when we don’t wake up from our subconsciously inspired fictions? This is the dilemma faced by the conscious mind of the believer. One could view the subconscious mind as the gateway to our conscious mind, allowing it to be manipulated in to believing things which it would otherwise see as irrational. Here in lies the power of hypnotic induction, when it comes to changing, molding, or maintaining irrational and unsound beliefs.


The ‘Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioral Science’ sums up the effect of hypnotically induced manipulation upon the subconscious mind in the following terms:

Hypnosis appears to diminish the ability to discriminate between fantasy and reality, and of course it involves enhanced responsiveness to suggestions. (5)

Accessing the conscious mind via the subconscious is a little like commissioning a mutiny aboard a ship. The conscious mind is usually the captain, steering the ship and making decisions on behalf of the crew or subconscious, however when the captain or conscious mind is bypassed, the crew is given the power to alter the course of the ship. It is however, the captain alone, who possesses the necessary skills of navigation and engineering and so when the crew is directly accessed and given authority over and above the captain, the ship can be steered in any given direction and this can often result in the ship being steered off course.

I have already spoken about factors that may help induce the trance state such as, the monotonous nature of everyday activities, post hypnotic programming, the environmental impact on our state of mind and melodic music. So now, I would like to focus more on the role of music in inducing trance, as it is a common element in almost all church services and has a tremendous power to illicit an emotional response from the listener.


Music and Trance Induction


Music is an extremely effective instrument for trance induction. Most people can relate to the feeling of listening to music that either inspires or relaxes their thoughts and emotions. Music is designed to engage us at both the conscious and unconscious levels. It can make a person angry, sad, happy, sleepy, or even inspire the listener with confidence before a big event. The famous rock and roll singer, Henry Rollins once said that, he listens to a rap group called ‘Public Enemy’, before he performs, because it “gets him in the right mood”. The military uses it to entrance their soldiers and get them ready for battle and so do nations with their national anthems, which inspire an almost religious feeling in some. Members of the Voodoo religion in Haiti use it to evoke trance states and the religions of antiquity would also use music to invoke the “spiritual experience”.


Left Brain Lyrics and Right Brain Rhythm


It has been said by Psychologists that the left hemisphere of the brain is the dominant hemisphere and is responsible for our conscious mind while our right hemisphere houses our creative, intuitive subconscious and is responsible for interpreting music. Referring once again to the ‘Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioral Science’:


The dominant (most often left) cerebral hemisphere is associated with information representation and processing, which is sequential or in series, digital, and abstract. It is characterized by analytical and logical processing that deals with detail. It plays a major role in the processing of verbal information, and in particular digital or abstract linguistic representation. Of the two cerebral hemispheres the dominant one is considered to be involved with consciousness, especially self-consciousness.


The minor (most often right) cerebral hemisphere is associated with information representation and processing, which is simultaneous or in parallel, analog, and holistic. It is characterised by Gestalt, analogical, and integrative processing, which deals with more spatial and global information and with novel (creative) or unfamiliar information. It plays a major role in the processing of naturomorphic or imagistic representations and in particular the processing of nonverbal and emotional information, spatial and pictorial information (symbols), and music and other non-language sounds. (6)


Therefore music with lyrics could be argued to target the listener’s left and right brain simultaneously. It is possible, that the left brain is being distracted by words and messages, while the right brain is being entranced by the beat and melody of the music.


It is little wonder that songs and hymns have been playing an increasing role in Christian worship, especially ‘Protestant Born Again’, Evangelical and so called Charismatic or ‘New Seeker’ Churches, as these churches lack the awe inspiring architecture of their Catholic counterparts.


In an article posted by the Unity Christian Church, called ‘Suggestions for an Effective Order of Service’, they say:

Music has a powerful ability to move our thoughts and feelings. 80% of our theology is learned in the songs we sing. Songs can be chosen that define and apply structure in the worship service so that congregants are more completely engaged in and inspired by the message of the church’s ministry. (7)

If one is to read this with an adequate knowledge of hypnosis, it becomes apparent that what they are proposing, is a more effective method of completely entrancing and evoking an emotional acceptance of the church’s ministry or suggestions. This is not a technique which seeks to impart a simple and universal truth, it is a technique aimed at overcoming the left brained rational and critical faculties, in order to take over the ship, so to speak!


The Unity Christian Church goes on to suggest the following for an effective service. Please pay particular attention to the amount of music recommended:

Here are some suggestions for music as part of a Sunday service and how to use and place other elements of your service.

1. Prelude music –usually instrumental. Prelude music sets the atmosphere you desire; sacred or upbeat. Usually 5 – 10 minutes while people enter. Prelude can also be used to teach the congregants new songs that will be sung during service. (8)

Notice they recommend the prelude music to “set the atmosphere”, while people enter. As we have already discussed this element of trance induction I will not labor the point any further.

2. Gathering song – Or Invocation. Sung by the music team and the congregation as a call to worship or to bless the space and the service. Usually sung every week, this song can be a church “theme song” about why people enjoy coming there. (9)

The dictionary definition of the word ‘Invocation,’ relates to the use of magic to conjure up spirits from other worlds. It is possible that the invocation is doing little more than having the subject enter into a trance state, so that they perceive spirits, due to the hypnotic induction and suggestion, which is compounded by their pre-established beliefs. Whether or not, we do actually contact god or the gods in this manner, is not the issue and may well be the case, however, I am looking at this phenomena from a strictly psychological point of view. As Carl Jung said; “religion is a psychological phenomenon”. Whether there are more meta-physical aspects to these techniques, is not in dispute here, as there may well be, but then Christians would have to admit that Voodoos, Hindus, Buddhists and all other religions that induce this kind of trance, via invocations, also achieve true contact with the gods!

3. Congregational singing – a mix of classic, and contemporary songs with new, message-oriented choruses sung together by the music team and congregation to support that week’s theme and establish unified presence and energy. (10)

This induction is very clever, as it involves the suggestions that will later be reinforced at the ‘suggestion stage’ or sermon and thus, the congregational singing would have a 2 pronged effect. Firstly, it would induce trance and secondly act as the foundation for repetitious suggestions.

4. Recognizing visitors – this can be done at the beginning of the service as a welcoming. Usually underscored with instrumental music. (11)

Here we have the entanglement of introduction and induction with new comers made to feel at ease and comfortable whilst the beginnings of trance induction are underscored with instrumental music.

5. Lord’s Prayer – many churches still use the Lord ’s Prayer as a familiar touchstone for visitors and those from other faiths. Unity is a Christian based faith so it is appropriate. There are many versions of the Lord’s Prayer with updated words more appropriate to our theology. The Lord ’s Prayer can be sung or spoken. It is effective leading into or out of meditation. (12)

Prayer, meditation, Lord’s prayer – contemplative music played under prayer/meditation, Lord’s Prayer can be sung by congregation with music team. (13)

This induction is recommended to occur right before the ‘deepening stage’ of hypnosis or meditation, as it is called. Both prayers and meditation can be used as effective ‘deepeners’ as well as inductions and will be discussed a little later.

6. “Special Music” solo or choir song VERY focused on the ministerial message of the day. Energy is thoughtful and specific. The song can be familiar, but needs lyrical content and musical style carefully chosen to set up the talk. The song can segue into the talk. (14)

Again, one is able to see the use of repetition and in this case the music is being cleverly placed as a segue into the talk, which will then repeat the same message. One of the secrets of successful hypnotic induction is the use of repetition. If we are told something over and over and over, we may not necessarily be convinced of its truth. However, if we have a pre-established belief and the repetition is aimed at reinforcing that belief, it will cause the subject to mentally agree with the repeated suggestion, over and over, causing an almost subliminal rhythm based submission. This is what most Christians might call “submitting to the spirit” but in actual fact, it is more than likely, nothing more than, submitting to hypnotic suggestions which reinforce their pre-established belief.

7. Minister’s message – many ministers incorporate the song lyrics into the message or pick up on an idea from the song that was just performed to “embed” the idea more deeply. You may even want to build your message around a great song’s theme or lyrics. (15)

Here they are even using hypnotic language by proposing that the minister’s message repeat the ideas in the song lyrics so as to “embed” the idea more deeply into the mind of the believer. It does not take a genius to figure out that this technique is mental manipulation at its best.

8. “Offering Song” designed to uplift, entertain and remind congregants of the topic of the day. It’s the post-message de-programming, and doesn’t have to include an actual “passing of the plate.” (16)

This is my favorite part of the service. The “hypnotic snatch and grab,” as I call it! In many services, not all, but many, music will be played while the collection plate is being passed around. During which time, the preacher, pastor or minister, will be saying something like “give to god”, “give to Jesus” repeatedly. Well he did suffer immensely and die for you! The least you could do is give him a few dollars, right! The truth is, as shocking a revelation as this might be to some Christians; Jesus does not get the money! With believers already in a highly suggestible state, the peer pressure and repeated suggestion, “give to god” places both conscious and subconscious pressure on the congregant to pay the church money. This element ties back to the theme brought up by Jordan Maxwell regarding Mother Circe bringing men into her abode, hypnotizing them, turning them into pigs and then feeding off them. Of course, not all churches pass around a collection plate, some just have an envelope in front of the pew, so that the church goer can donate anonymously. However, the collection plate is common enough to mention. Furthermore, relating back to the ‘bread of shame’ discussed in chapter 8, the congregants are entertained, given the opportunity to “get to god”, fed with wafers and wine, and so in the spirit of reciprocity, the church goer often feels compelled to give money to their church, lest they breach the compelling ‘norm of reciprocity’.

9. Children – if you are set up for it, parents should drop their children in the classrooms before service. You may allow children to enter with parents and then dismiss the children with a song toward the beginning of the service. (17)

Separating children from their parents is common to most Christian services and achieves two objectives. First, it allows the parents to zone into the service and receive the full undistracted benefits of the hypnosis session and secondly, it replaces the children’s authority figure with a church member who is practiced in indoctrinating children and takes on the role of the child’s teacher. By placing the children in a new or separate environment from their parents, the child can be influenced to a greater degree and when the child goes home, this indoctrination is reinforced by their trusted parents. There is no escape from the belief, the children are given no choice in which belief system they are to adopt, they will become Christians without ever having a chance to assess the truth of that belief for them self.


There are many denominations of Christianity each with their own slightly unique order of service, however there are commonalities between most Christian services and these commonalities are designed to mentally manipulate the participant via trance induction, so that their subjective beliefs about god and the truth never come into question. The above example illustrates some of the typical elements of most Protestant Christian services. As stated by Frank Viola and George Barna:

With some minor rearrangements, this is the unbroken liturgy that 345 million Protestants across the globe observe religiously week after week.' And for the last five hundred years, few people have questioned it.

Look again at the order of worship. Notice that it includes a threefold structure: (1) singing, (2) the sermon, and (3) closing prayer or song. This order of worship is viewed as sacrosanct in the eyes of many present-day Christians. (18)

So why is this important? Christianity, since its beginnings, has employed various forms of psychological manipulation which is focused on reinforcing the beliefs of passive believers. It demonstrates that religion, as is also the case with politics, is not about truth, but rather, it is about persuasion and manipulation.



This article is the intellectual property of Michael Sherlock, so if you would like to use any of this information, please either send me a message, or at the very least, reference me.


Website: http://michaelsherlock.org

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References:



1. New Definition: Hypnosis" Division 30 of the American Psychological Association
2. Spiegel, Herbert and Spiegel, David. Trance and Treatment. Basic Books Inc., New York. 1978. Pg. 22.
3. Donald Moine & Kenneth Lloyd. Unlimited Selling Power How to Master Hypnotic Selling Skills. Prentice Hall Inc. (1990) Pg. 204.
4. William W. Hewitt. Hypnosis for Beginners. Llewellyn Publishers. (2003). Pg. 5 .
5. W. Edward Craighead, Charles B Nemeroff. The Concise Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioral Science. 3rd Ed. John Wiley and Sons Inc. Pg. 452.
6. Ibid. Pg. 165.
7. unity.org/.../pdf/SuggestionsforEffectiveOrderofService.doc
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. Frank Viola, George Barna. Pagan Christianity. Tyndale House Publishers. (2008). Pg. 85.

By Valerie Tarico ~

If the Catholic Bishops, their Evangelical Protestant allies, and other Right-wing fundamentalists had the sole objective of decimating religious belief, they couldn’t be doing a better job of it.

Testimonials at sites like ExChristian.net show that people leave religion for a number of reasons, many of which religious leaders have very little control over. Sometimes, for example, people take one too many science classes. Sometimes they find their faith shattered by the suffering in the world – either because of a devastating injury or loss in their own lives or because they experience the realities of another person’s pain in a new way. Sometimes a believer gets intrigued by archaeology or symbology or the study of religion itself. Sometimes a believer simply picks up a copy of the Bible or Koran and discovers faith-shaking contradictions or immoralities there.

But if you read ExChristian testimonials you will notice that quite often church leaders or members do things that either trigger the deconversion process or help it along. They may turn a doubter into a skeptic or a quiet skeptic into an outspoken anti-theist, or as one former Christian calls himself, a de-vangelist.

Here are some top ways Christians push people out the Church door or shove secret skeptics out of the closet. Looking at the list, you can’t help but wonder if the Catholic Bishops, Rick Santorum, Michelle Bachman and their fundamentalist allies are working for the devil.

Gay Baiting

Because of sheer demographics, most gay people are born into religious families, and in this country almost half are born into Bible-believing families who see homosexuality as an abomination. The condemnation (and self-condemnation) can be excruciating, as we all know from the suicide rate. Some emotionally battered gays spend their lives fighting or denying who they are, but many eventually find their way to open and affirming congregations or non-religious communities.

Between 1991 and 2011 the percent of women attending church in a typical week dropped by eleven points, from 55 to 44 percent.
Ignorant and mean-spirited attitudes about homosexuality don’t drive just gays out of the Church, they are a huge deconversion issue for straight friends and family members. When Christians indulge in slurs, devout moms and dads who also love their gay kids find themselves less comfortable in their church home. Young people, many of whom think of the gay rights issue as a no-brainer, put anti-gay churches in the “archaic” category. Since most people Gen X and younger recognize equal rights for gays as a matter of common humanity, gay baiting is a wedge issue that wedges young people right out of the church. That makes Fred Phelps a far better evangelist for atheism than for his own gay-hating Westborough Baptist Church.

Prooftexting

People who think of the Bible as the literally perfect word of God love to quote excerpts to argue their points. They often start with a verse in 1 Timothy: All scripture is given by inspiration of God. (As if this circular argument would convince anyone but a true believer.) They then proceed to quote whatever authoritarian, anti-gay, or anti-woman verse makes their point, like, Whoever spares the rod hates their children . . . Blows and wounds cleanse away evil, and beatings purge the inmost being. or Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. In doing so, they call into question biblical authority, because the Bible writers so obviously got these issues wrong. Literalists who prooftext are a tremendous asset to those who would like to see Bible worship fade away – because prooftexting on one side of an argument invites the same in return, and it is easy to find quotes from the Bible that are either scientifically absurd or morally repugnant.

Many liberal or modernist Christians see the Bible as a human document, an attempt by our spiritual ancestors to articulate their best understanding of God through the lens of imperfect human cultures and minds. Suppose such a Christian gets confronted with a verse that says, for example, Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man (Numbers 31:17-18), or No man who has any defect may come near [to God in the temple]: no man who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed; no man with a crippled foot or hand, or who is a hunchback or a dwarf, or who has any eye defect, . . . (Leviticus 21:17-23). He or she can simply shrug and say, “Yeah, that’s ugly.” A couple of years ago a group of liberal Christians even kicked off an internet competition to vote on the worst verse in the Bible. Their faith doesn’t stand or fall with the perfection of the Bible. Biblical literalists, on the other hand give someone like me an excuse to talk about sexual slavery or bias against handicapped people in the Bible – in front of an audience who have been taught that the good book is uniformly good. For a wavering believer, the dissonance can be too much.

Misogyny

For psychological and social reasons females are more inclined toward religious belief than males. They are more likely to attend church services and to insist on raising their children in a faith community. They also appear more indifferent than males to rational critique of religion, like debates about theology or evolutionary biology. I was interested to notice recently that my YouTube channel, Life After Christianity, which focuses on the psychology of religion gets about eighty percent male viewers. Women are the Church’s base constituency, but fortunately for atheists, this fact hasn’t caused conservative Christians to back off of sexism that is justified by – you got it – prooftexting from the Old and New Testaments.

Evangelical minister, Jim Henderson, recently published a book, The Resignation of Eve, in which he urges his fellow Christians to take a hard look at the consequences of sexism in the church. According to Henderson, old school sexism has driven some women out of Christianity permanently, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. For those who stay, it means that many are less enthusiastic and engaged than they would be. Churches rely on women to volunteer in roles that range from secretary to director of Children’s programs to missionaries. That takes a high level of confidence in Church doctrines and also a strong sense of belonging. Biblical sexism cultivates neither. Between 1991 and 2011 the percent of women attending church in a typical week dropped by eleven points, from 55 to 44 percent.

Hypocrisy

Christians are taught – and many believe—that thanks to the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit they are a moral beacon for society. The writer of Matthew told his audience, “You are the light of the world.” That’s a high bar, and yet decent believers (along with many other decent people) try earnestly to meet it. But the added pressure on those who call themselves “the righteous” means that believers also are prone to hiding, pretending, posing, and turning a blind eye to their own very human, very normal faults and flaws. People who desperately want to be sanctified and righteous, “cleansed by the blood of the lamb” – who need to believe that they now merit heaven but that other people’s smallest transgressions merit eternal torture—have a lot of motivation to engage in self-deception and hypocrisy. High profile hypocrites like Ted Haggard or Rush Limbaugh may be loved by their acolytes, but for people who are teetering, they help to build a gut aversion to whatever they espouse. But often as not, the hypocrisies that pose a threat to faith are small and internal to a single Bible-study or youth group. Backbiting and social shunning are part of the church-lady stereotype for a reason. They also leave a bitter taste that makes some church members stop drinking the Kool-aid.

Disgusting and Immoral Behavior

The priest abuse scandal did more for the New Atheist movement than outspoken anti-theists like Christopher Hitchens (God is Not Great), Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), Sam Harris (The End of Faith) or Bill Maher (Religulous) ever could. To make matters worse—or better, depending on your point of view-- Bill Donohue of the Catholic League seems to be doing everything possible to fan those flames: On top of the abuse itself, followed by cover-ups, he is now insisting that the best defense of Church property is a good offense against the victims, and has vowed to fight them “one by one.” The Freedom from Religion Foundation publishes a bi-monthly newspaper that includes a regular feature: The Black Collar Crime Blotter. It features fraud, drug abuse, sex crimes and more by Protestant as well as Catholic clergy. The obvious purpose is to move readers from Religion isn’t true to Religion isn’t benign to Religion is abhorrent and needs fighting. Moral outrage is a powerful emotion.

Science denial 

One of my former youth group friends had his faith done in by a conversation with a Bible study leader who explained that dinosaur skeletons actually are the bones of the giants described in early books of the Bible. Uh huh. Christians have come up with dozens of squishier, less falsifiable ways to explain the geological record: The ‘days’ in Genesis 1 were really ‘ages.’ Or God created the world with the fossils already in place to test our faith. Or the biblical creation story is really sacred metaphor. But young earth creationists who believe the world appeared in its present form 6- 10,000 years ago are stuck. And since almost half of the American public believes some version of this young earth story, there are ample opportunities for inquiring minds to trip across proto-scientific nonsense.

Like other factors I’ve mentioned, science denial doesn’t just move believers to nonbelief. It also rallies opposition ranging from cantankerous bloggers to legal advocates. It provides fodder for comedians and critics: “If the world was created 6000 years ago, what’s fueling your car?” It may produce some of the most far reaching opposition to religious belief, because science advocates argue that faith, even socially benign faith, is a fundamentally flawed way of knowing. The Catholic Church, perhaps still licking wounds about Galileo (they apologized finally in the 20^th Century), has managed to avoid embarrassing and easily disproven positions on evolutionary biology. But one could argue that their atheism-fostering positions on conception and contraception similarly rely on ignorance about or denial of biological science –in this case embryology and the basic fact that most embryos never become persons.

Political meddling

If you look at religion-bashing quote-quip-photo-clip-links that circulate Facebook and Twitter, most of them are prompted by church incursions into the political sphere. A spat between two atheists erupted on my home page yesterday. “Why can’t ex-Christians just shut up about religion and get on with building a better world?” asked one. “Why can’t we shut up?!” screeched the other. “Because of shit like this!” He posted a link about Kansas giving doctors permission to deny contraception and accurate medical information to patients.

I myself give George W. Bush credit for transforming me from a politically indifferent, digging-in-the-garden agnostic into a culture warrior. He casually implied that, when going to war, he didn’t need to consult with his own father because he had consulted the big guy in the sky, and my evangelical relatives backed him up on that, and I thought, oh my God, the beliefs I was raised on are killing people. The Religious Right, and now the Catholic Bishops, have brought religion into politics in the ugliest possible way short of holy war, and people who care about the greater good have taken notice. Lists of ugly Bible verses, articles about the psychology of religion, investigative exposes about Christian machinations in D.C. or rampant proselytizing in the military and public schools –all of these are popular among political progressives because it is impossible to drive progressive change without confronting religious fundamentalism.

Intrusion

Australian comedian and atheist John Safran, flew to Salt Lake City for a round of door-to-door devangelism after Mormons rang his doorbell one too many times on Saturday morning. More serious intrusions, in deeply personal beginning- and end-of-life decisions, for example, generate reactive anti-theism in people who mostly just want to live and let live.

Catholic and Evangelical conservatives have made a high stakes gamble that they can regain authoritarian control over their flocks and hold onto the next generation of believers (and tithers) by asserting orthodox dogmas, making Christian belief an all or nothing proposition. Their goal is a level of theological purity that will produce another Great Awakening based largely on the same dogmas as the last one. They hope to cleanse their membership of theological diversity, and assert top down control of conscience questions, replenishing their membership with anti-feminist, pro-natalist policies and proselytizing in the Southern hemisphere. But the more they resort to strict authoritarianism, insularity and strict interpretation of Iron Age texts, the more people are wounded in the name of God and the more people are outraged. By making Christian belief an all-or-nothing proposition – they force at least some would-be believers to choose “nothing.” Anti-theists are all too glad to help.

By TheAtheistCrusader ~

After the overwhelming comments of support on my opening testimonial letter, I was really touched by most of the support I got. Thank you for it!

English: Logo from the television program The Big Bang Theory (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When I first entered theoretical physics, I discovered the magic of reality. I always loved math, and this was an atheist's wonder.

Recently I elaborated my own little theory about the universe, and I'd like to share it with my fellow non-believers.

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Based on the law of conservation, it is said that "no matter is created nor destroyed only transformed"

From this it is insinuated that every smallest particle of matter (electrons, and even gluons) was and always will be there. From this it is insinuated that in accordance with the Big Bang theory, in the original nucleus was every particle of matter. This of course, is impossible, as density is a factor.

Continuing on this, it is noted in the law that no matter is ever brought into existence nor taken out of existence. Noting this, we can insinuate that the universe has no beginning and no end. The concept of expansion is due to the continuous star expansion and galactic movement. Thus if God, or any force exists, he/she/it must have been the matter, since it's eternal, and eternity is a property of a God.

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Give me your thoughts on this this little theory of mine. I'd love to have your comments!

By the youngest sister ~

I should be doing my homework, or cleaning or working out but instead I’m f-ing around on Facebook, or what I like to call “The Enemy of Productivity”. I saw a post from Ex Christian and it reminded me that I wanted to tell my story for a while. Well, not my story, really, but my sister’s story. Since I’m running low on ways to procrastinate, I figure now is a good time.

We grew up in a catholic home, liberal enough for my parents to let us know that we had to go to college to make it in this world but conservative enough for us to all go to Catechism every Monday night and church every Sunday. My dad was far more conservative than my mother but because they married young and had 5 girls in 7 years, he worked more often than he was home and when he was around he was mostly angry and controlling. I tried to avoid him as much as possible. My mother, who was mostly liberal, was also overworked being employed at an office working the night shift and then coming home to take care of 5 girls. We had it good though, my parents loved us and we knew they loved us. While we didn’t have nice clothes or lots of toys we were close as a family. And I considered the sister one year older than me, my best friend. We slept in the same room, and even in the same bed when she let me sleep with her. We caught frogs during the summer months and made forts inside during the winter months. Until we were about 10 and 11 we were inseparable.

When we both hit puberty we became enemies more or less. All of our lives she had been neat and clean, she liked things a certain way while I was messy and spontaneous. She studied hard in school and made good grades and I didn’t like doing anything that didn’t come easy to me. When we started to mature she got more controlling, while I got more confused and depressed with my struggles to control my hectic mind. She started reading the bible every night, while I gave up god. We didn’t get along any more and fought most of the time. I think she was embarrassed by me the way I dressed and acted and I couldn’t live up to her standards.

I stopped believing when I was just 13. I did it out of spite at first, but the older I got, the more I learned about the inconsistencies in the bible and how much science can answer it became more of a truth than a rebellious phase. But that was a long long time ago, and this isn’t really my story.

Rachel and I stayed enemies and out of touch for all of our teen years into our early 20’s. We still talked sometimes and when we had a good time, it was really good. But she was still very controlling and actually, kind of a bitch. No, not kind of, but really a bitch. If she didn’t like something, or it wasn’t up to her standards, she let everyone and everything know. She yelled or snapped at people constantly, and lost friends as soon as she made them. She alienated her family and being in the same room as her during the holidays was unbearable. I’m not saying that I was a peach or my other sisters weren’t nuts too, but it hurt more coming from her because we had at one point been so close. And I thought we still could be if she could let her standards down a little bit.

When we were in our mid 20’s we started hanging out a little bit more. She was done with college and comfortable in her career, I had left the military and moved back to our home state, working at a job I loved. It was a hard start. She introduced me to her friends, most of who constantly complained to me about her crappy attitude when she wasn’t around. She read all sorts of self help books aimed at using the holy spirit to better yourself but I could tell that she had to force being nice to people. She was happy one moment and angry and upset the next. You could see her moods change at the drop of a dime. It was hard being around her sometimes because you never knew if you were going to do something that offended her. It was confusing to me because she was very successful at her job and generous with her wealth, she worked so hard to be where she was. But I felt like she was constantly trying to live up to a standard that she set for herself that were unbelievably high.

I knew she was religious and I knew she went to church. She made references to god here and there. We had once talked about religion but it ended in an argument. I asked her how she could still possibly believe in a god. She said she just knew that there was one. I said something like “But you’re so smart, usually the smarter you are, the less likely you are to believe in god.” It was probably not the nicest thing to say to her but I personally could not see why she believed in something so ridiculous when she was so damn smart!

Things took a drastic change for the better when one night, pretty much out of the blue, she stated that she no longer believed in god. We were sitting around the table, playing cards with some of her friends and she just sort of stated this. My jaw dropped. Her reasoning, which I’m sure we can all relate to, is that she sinned, but did not feel guilty for the sin. And if god made her the way she is, why did he make her not feel guilty for sinning. She said that most of here life she felt more guilt from not feeling guilty than she ever did from the actual act of sinning. She couldn’t wrap her mind around it. One of her friends started to silently cry but I just smiled and said “Well, if you need someone to talk to about it, you know I’ve been an atheist for years.”

Honestly, I assumed that would be the last I’d hear from it, Rachel wasn’t all about asking me, her less successful sister, for opinions or advice. But she did, day after day she talked about how she felt about suddenly realizing there was no god. At first she thought that it might be a phase, a spiritual slip. But in my experience from meeting other atheists, once you have that epiphany, there’s no going back. For me, the only thing I could do was give her information. I couldn’t really relate to her because I had given up god 15 years prior when I was much, much younger. But I did buy her some Dawkins literature and gave her links to some websites that I like to frequent (this one included).

The transformation from being an uptight bitch to an understanding laid-back women was unbelievable. She laughed more easily, forgave faster and snapped less. We became so much closer and it was awesome. I saw a side of my sister that I never knew existed. We finally had something great in common and for me, it was nice to have an ally in the family.

I asked her about it, too. I told her that she changed and was so much more fun now that she left religion. Her answer to that was that she didn’t feel guilty anymore. She was always so miserable because she thought she was a bad person for not feeling guiltier. She thought she was evil, but it turned out, she just plain and simply didn’t feel bad for her actions. (And let me stress, she’s not a cold blooded killer or a baby snatcher. Most of the guilt, I think, came from the weird Catholic way we’d been raised to feel ashamed about sex. ) She’s happier now. She has said that she is still mourning over the fact that there is no heaven and that we don’t go anywhere when we die. I don’t know what to say about that to her, either. I just tell her being dead is probably a lot like what it was before we were born.

So, I noticed I’ve damn near written a novel. And it might be time for me to get to work. If you’re reading this sister, I love you and I’m happy for you. Please don’t be mad at my opinions of you pre-atheism. And I’m sorry for any inconsistencies. I’m happy you are the way you are now.

By Closet Agnostic ~

Over the past 2 years ,I slowly went through the transition from committed Calvinist to agnostic. What makes this especially painful is that admitting my agnosticism would almost certainly result in divorce from my wife, and isolation from most of my friends and family. The piece below is fiction in its presentation, but its more truth than fiction. It represents the logical problems I have found in Christianity, as well as what's it like to have to go to church week after week in utter disbelief. Enjoy.

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The Preacher is a volcano of boiling, beaded sweat and mercy. Drops and driblets of righteousness ooze from his brow and slide down his cheeks like the slow crawl of black tar. Thin, evanescent wisps of steam serpentine out of his ears, dance a nervous dance of pity and judgement, and vanish. His eyes are like a perfect pane of glass in front of a bright orange flame. They are still as granite. The preacher does not blink. The preacher has never blinked. The muscles that hold his eye lids could sustain a bridge. They are perfect, unwavering muscles. They are a marvel of engineering, allowing the omniscient eyes to scan the rolling sea of pews. The preacher thrusts his hands above the congregation, confidently, penitently saluting the groveling grunts of the army of the Lord. He opens his mouth, booming booms of Amens and Praise His name and hallelujahs. The walls of the chapel vibrate and wince, but they don't crack. They are built to sustain the fury of a benediction. The faces in the pews sway like the pieces of wind chimes. They are gray faces without features. A whitish, dull gray, smeared harshly over each tired, dozing oval.

Lest you forget the power of God, the Preacher belts, Remember that God hath made the world in 6 days, resting in the 7th. Sure, I think. God made sun and moon and stars in a week, and all the creatures that walk therein. With His might He fashioned each creature and called it good. And the world was perfect, and without sin. But just for amusement, just to ensure the impossibility of human epistemology, He formed the creatures as if they'd been born from ages of death and adaptation. The appearance of evolution is among His best jokes, but the creation of all things from nothing? Divine. Glorious. Because we all know that nothing is nothing, and to make something from nothing is, so to speak, really something. I am glad that the stars, which are only 10,000 years old, have tricked us into thinking their light takes millions of years to travel. Stars are more fun when they're duplicitous.

And lest you think that God is patient, the Preacher says, remember the Flood. Remember that God, sickened with what his creation had done, drowned it in whole, saving a righteous man and his family. Yes. Noah the righteous man. The Lord mercifully placed him in a boat, and Noah thanked him by taking off his clothes and getting drunk. I shudder when I think on it. I shudder when I think that, in order for the earth to be covered in the span of 40 days, the waters would have fallen fast enough to boil the seas, to cook the ark like a kettle on a stove. I think on the impossibility of cramming 2 of every clean and unclean creature into a ship of conceivable size. I think about how much God loved the antediluvian infants. How He punished the sins of their fathers by filling up their lungs with the raging waters of His perfect world. Killed the infants and blessed it with the kiss of a rainbow. And our Lord is merciful, the Preacher pleads. He does not punish you, my sheep, for the sins of your fathers. For he says, 'The son will not bear punishment for the Father's iniquity. Each is to die for his own sin. Most merciful, I know. Which is why God also says, I will punish children for their parent's sin up to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me. The third and the fourth, and maybe the fifth is the first stop on the mercy train. I reflect on this square wheel for a moment. I try to roll it somewhere, anywhere, hoping desperately for up to
be up and down to be down. Is that too much to ask from the inerrant cries of the prophets?

And then the Preacher cries, pleads, stamps his beet red fists on the pulpit and spits more words of righteousness. Did you forget how the Lord your God brought you out of the land of Egypt? How His people were enslaved for 400 years, sweating under the whips of Satan and his Pharaohs? How God killed the firstborn in the land of Egypt? How He trapped the armies of the Pharaoh in the Red Sea and closed up the watery gates? Count my memory as foggy. The hard work and sweat of archeologists has come back with cobwebs, frowning as the removal of stone after stone turns up nothing. A whole people enslaved in a known area? No evidence. A whole army swept into the sea? No traces. In an act of grand humility, I am to take historical events as an act of faith. God gave moses the law, the Preacher screeches. The law that is good and sweet as honey. The law that is like honey in a famine, like the medicine dabbed onto an infected, festering wound. I will remember that. When I heed the cry of the Lord to be fruitful and multiply, I will also heed the Lord when my offspring speak words of daggers, and I will take their warm, soft skin and bright eyes, and I will turn their youth black and blue and red. I will stone them.

I will celebrate the glory of the law with the bludgeoned skull of a child, and if God ever asks me to slay a child for His honor, I will do it. I won't dare ask if that violates His law in the first place. I won't care if He has a goat in waiting. If He does I will slay the goat and the boy. Is there ever enough blood for glory? I will be fully prepared to be a butcher. Let the little children come to Him and His butchers. And above all, the Preacher says, be a man after God's own heart. Like David and Solomon. Sing the songs of the Lord your God. And the congregation bursts into song. The sound is like the sound of many waters, piercing the walls of the chapel, peeling the paint off of the walls, turning the chapel foundation to dust. The cries of holy, holy, holy, are the new and improved nuclear fission. Hiroshima has never seen such an atom bomb.

Am I an unclean animal? Am I a man after the heart of God? David was, and in his heart-of-Godness he eyed the beauty of Bashiba, and he, as all righteous men do, kissed and caressed and had her. Loved a child into a her, sending her husband off to die. And I don't pretend to know the infinite mysteries of providence, but I know the child was to blame. It seems as if a child is always to blame. And God punished David by killing the infant, by dishing that infant bastard the full penalty for the crime of the father. But God is good. Another infant got a chance, and what glorious thing. If there was no King Solomon, who would have permitted infant sacrifice in the high temples? Who would have so honored the covenant of marriage by taking thousands of wives and hundreds of concubines? Who else could filled the role of the wisest man to have lived, son of David, man after God's own heart? Who could have caused to Kingdom to split in two? Who could have been responsible for those poor, old, poked out eyes of Hezekiah? Solomon did this, really. He was long dead, but he marched thousands of scared, cold, screaming people into the Babylonian wilderness.

God is the only one who makes things possible, the Preacher says, no signs of slowing, the psalms bubbling forth. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. And the Preacher plays the psalm on his tongue, letting the words fall like the pitter patter of rain: He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. I lie down in the pew and I play another Holy psalm in my own head, and it says, blessed shall he be who takes your littles ones and bashes them against the rock. He leadeth me beside the still waters. Blessed is he who bashes. He resoreth my soul. Blessed is he who bashes. He leadeth me in paths of righteousness. Blessed is he who bashes. For His name's sake. Blessed is he who bashes. Yeah, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Blessed is he who bashes. I will fear no evil. Blessed is he who bashes. For thou art with me. Blessed is he who bashes. Thy rod and thy staff. Blessed is he who bashes. They comfort me. Blessed is he who bashes. Thous preparest a table before me. Blessed is he who bashes. In the presence of my enemies. Blessed is he who bashes. Thou annointest my head with oil. Blessed is he who bashes. My cup runneth over. Blessed is he who bashes. There is no goodness and mercy in the Preacher's psalm. Surely, I will not wait for goodness and mercy to follow me.

I will wait patiently for the Preacher to finish, so we can all herd out and proceed to kiss and eat and sleep and pay our bills and taxes, just like every godless hardworking heathen, God have mercy on their souls. Your souls, Preacher cries, are in the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ. For he came in the flesh as a baby, and Herod was angered and worried for his throne, and he killed the young children of his land. And it's a good thing that I learned this from the holy book, that my immaterial, immeasurable, untouchable, intangible, ungraspable soul was in danger, and that Herod tried to steal my salvation. I'm glad that the Holy book reported the slaughter, another just river of infant blood, because no other historian thought that the great baby slaughter was worth the news, but Herod killed and this I know, for the Bible tells me so. So repent, Preacher scolds, for Jesus came and died, and his sacrifice paved the way, but all I really wonder is when Jesus died. One gospel says passover, another gospel says the day before, and the Preacher says that the Bible is the perfect, inerrant word of the one true God. God died and was risen, the Preacher says. Jesus died, but Jesus is God. So if Jesus died, God died, and dead God raised the dead Jesus. Jesus has given you a gift, Preacher says, and to neglect this gift is to risk eternal torment in the fiery pit. I think on this, the idea that Jesus pays for my cosmic injustice, and that he does so by suffocating in gruesome fashion for three days, and how my payment, if not rendered by Him, is thereby increased to eternity.

Eternity is coming, the Preacher cries, and Jesus will come on a cloud, and the elect will be caught up in the sky, and the just will be rewarded and the wicked punished, and I think that I'm no genius, but didn't Jesus promise that this was supposed to happen during His day, that the elect were the be gathered up, and that the heavens would be rolled up like a scroll, before His audience passed? Didn't old covenant prophets get stoned by getting little facts like this wrong? Jesus died, and the next generation said he was one His way. And another generation said as much, and another, and another, and another, and now we make movies out of it. My bologna sandwich is in a Left Behind lunch pale. It's slick and stainless steel, and best of all, it's rapture-proof. Guaranteed to follow me to the pearly gates.

I sit back up, and I see the preacher beaming, smiling, sobbing, and clenching his teeth toward the end of his liturgy. Let's sing, he says. Let us come to Christ as children, with innocent, unquestioning faith. His voice is deep and beautiful, and he sings, and I sing. Jesus loves me, If a man not abide in Christ, This I know, he is cast forth as a branch, for the Bible, and is withered, tells me so, and men gather them, Little ones to Him belong, and cast them into the fire, they are weak, and they are burned, but He is strong. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus love me. Yes, Jesus loves me. The Bible tells me so.

The entire congregation pauses for air. The sounds of heartbeats and breathing fill the room. The Preacher gently lowers his arms and looks at me. Deacon, he says, would you mind offering a closing word of prayer? With my bible tucked under my arm, I take the long walk to the pulpit. I can hear every bead of sweat crawl down my neck. Every part of my body creaks and moans. I position myself in front of the congregation and look to the people. But instead of the people I see a sea. A large, dark, gently rolling ocean. The waves come in slowly, turning from black to a foamy, calm white. They soak into the sand, thrust back, and retreat into the darkness. I know that there is nothing behind the darkness. The waves go on, traveling under moonlight, and there is nothing but the darkness: the good, welcoming darkness and the sound of the surf. I look down at the good book. I want to open it, page by page, and weep. I want to set it on a raft, push it into the darkness, and sit. I just want to sit and listen to the waves crash against my toes. I look up again, and the sea has become a sea of people. I open the good book and smile.

Good morning, people of God. Let's pray.

By C.R. ~

I was raised Mormon. I wish I could say that it's been easy to get away from it and that way of thinking, but it hasn't been. I never really "fit in" because when I was five I believed that dinosaurs really had existed and I started to love science and evolution. But to this day I have a hard time wearing shirts that don't have sleeves and shorts that show anything above the knee.

In the past year I have been very open about my views and my very obvious dislike of the bible. Lately however I have realized I don't like Christians as a whole. My best friend is Christian, so I can't say I dislike them individually, but as a whole they drive me crazy for the following reasons;

1. They only pay attention to certain parts of the bible. Take gay marriage for example, because the bible says that marriage should be between a man and a woman. Well, the bible also says that we should own slaves and kill those who work on the sabbath. What about those laws and all of the others? Who picks which of the bibles laws to follow? If you're going to follow one, then follow all of them!

2. Have you ever tried to have a logical conversation with a Christian? It's impossible. "No, evolution did NOT happen! The devil put those things in the earth to trick the non believers!" Wow, the devil must be one smart guy then.

3. They think that their religion is better than all others, and if they meet someone who isn't Christian, they automatically put themselves above the other person. If a person isn't Christian, then they obviously aren't a good person.

4. In this country it is considered perfectly fine and normal to be a Christian but not to be anything else.

My family is mostly Mormon. I often get messages from them telling me that I need to be saved and that I am worse than someone who wasn't ever introduced to the Mormon church because I have been shown the right path but I am choosing not to follow it. My fiance's family is Catholic and Christian... some of them even go to the kind of church where they "speak in tongues" and run around the church with a flag, for some reason I don't understand. I won't even get into what a headache that is. "Does anyone want to pay Bible Taboo? Oh... that's right... we have a non believer."

It would be so nice to actually know people who have the same views and an open mind to science and logic.

By Jen ~

For the past year or so, I have been suppressing any inclination to delve into my lost faith. For a while it simply hurt too much. And then, eventually, I got to the point where I knew I didn't believe in God but at the same time couldn't figure out if I didn't NOT believe in God too. It's as though my belief and dis-belief have been tangled up together. But that in itself isn't easy to explain. My atheist boyfriend is sympathetic, but he can't understand the trauma and the broken-heartedness that comes from loosing one's faith. And, I have to be honest, I have kept my, as someone else on this forum put it, 'Paul to Saul' conversion completely hidden from my Christian friends and family.

Image by Thomas Hawk via Flickr

I was a rebellious teenager but I did it in reverse of the way it's normally done. My immediate family was very non-religious. My mother was an ex-Catholic who practiced self-help as a new form of spirituality and my father was an atheist. When I was 12 a friend of mine from school pressured me into attending youth group and that evening I came home to declare I had accepted Jesus Christ into my heart as my Lord and Savior.

Immediately I became very devout. I started a Bible study club at my school. I played guitar in a praise band. I wore a "true love waits" ring on my left ring finger. I read through the Bible twice. I attended church at least once a week, normally twice. I wrote in a prayer journal at least daily.

Then I graduated high school early and moved to Uganda. My faith, by this point, had taken a few beatings as I had become more liberal and studied and was beginning to notice some contradictions in the Bible and the church that were becoming too difficult to swallow.

While I was in Uganda I began volunteering for a NGO in a squatter camp, essentially. Unbeknownst to me, the NGO was extremely religious and mission based. I witnessed multiple exorcisms. Demons were regularly talked about. There were witch doctors rumored to have performed child sacrifices and lived under the water with water demons for weeks on end.

And I began to wonder where God was in all of it. I couldn't match the God that I had a relationship with to the God who would permit everything I saw around me. The leader of this NGO suggested to me that God was testing me, like He had tested Job. I poured over Job to see if I could find any comfort in the story but only found nausea, depression, and an intense feeling of isolation.

Apparently, I failed my test.

When I returned from Uganda I moved to a state across the country from my family and began seeing a therapist who diagnosed me with vicarious traumatization, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and general anxiety disorder (GED). I told my therapist I desperately wanted to regain my faith. But the more I read up on my disorders, the more I realized that to try and shove my former faith to fit into my new world point of view was going to be excruciatingly painful.

So I dropped it. I stopped trying.

The other day I picked up the bookWhen God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God by T. M. Luhrmann. (I highly recommend it). She takes an anthropologists approach to understanding the history and the methods of 'modern American Christianity'. As I'm reading it, I find myself feeling nostalgic for church and my former Christian community, feeling relieved that I shouldn't consider myself naive for believing in the first place, and the sense that no matter how much I long for my former faith, it is no longer mine.

I'm still going to struggle with loosing my faith. It has been a difficult few years and I don't expect it to ever fully go away. In many aspects, my loss of faith has felt comparable to the loss of a loved one. It has been traumatic and heart wrenching and I have shed many tears over this long process.

I think in many respects one of the trickier aspects to this process has been loosing a very well defined identity. What do I call myself now? I'm not a Christian, though I respect those (I'm even occasionally jealous of those) who are. I'm not an atheist because I haven't ever been able say in utter confidence that I do not believe God exists. And the term agnostic has always seemed to not match where I am.

This forum has provided me with my answer. I declare today that I am an ex-Christian. It is a beautiful, terrible, wondrous thing to be.

And there it is. Praise be to God! But also, not really.

Good luck to you wherever you are on this very long path to hell and to freedom. I'm right there with you.

By Peacefully Hiding ~

Mankind can be a very cruel animal. When we think of cruelty it's easy to distance ourselves from that reality because most of us are not actually subjected to cruelty. For instance, who here has served time in an interrogation room being water-boarded? Who has seen their family massacred as part of a political statement? Who among us has had the women in our family raped in front of our eyes for a burglar's personal amusement? These things, these atrocities against one another, are typically headline news that are soon forgotten.

Dante And Virgil In Hell by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1850) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A particular case of this comes to mind. The burglary, assault and murder of the Petit family. To skip to the details, the mother cooperated giving the robbers $15,000 from her savings to their assurances they would leave the family unharmed. Soon after one of the criminals raped her in her living room and strangled her with her fine silk scarf until her face turned purple and eyes literally bulged from her skull. This was after molesting her 11 year old daughter and taking cell phone pictures of it. After murdering the mother the two criminals poured gasoline over the mother's two daughters faces and bodies, one 17, the other 11, and lit them on fire. The two burned alive.

These two criminals are on death row and will be for awhile appealing their conviction, though they were caught immediately after they set the house and family on fire and confessed to the slaughter.

Mankind can be a very cruel animal.What, then, should we do to these two criminals? If you read the full report online you'd be tempted to give them the worst punishment you could imagine, for they deserve no less and no mercy. One member of the jury didn't believe they deserved the death penalty. They even have supporters. Yes, men who rape 11 year old girls and set them on fire have supporters.

Again we return to the question of 'what do we do to these two when death isn't enough?'

Many who oppose the death sentence immediately opt for them being put in jail for the rest of their lives and given 'prison justice'.

We can imagine the details of prison justice but what we fail to recognize is the lack of responsibility on our part to punish these people. Rather than punish we put them in the hands of human 'devils' so to speak, who do their bidding for the eternal remainder of their life on Earth.

Does this sound anything like the bible's description of hell? A place where WE have no bloodshed on our hands. We hand that over to God and his 'hell' device.

Hell, to me, seems like a mirror of prison justice. We need not feel any guilt because 'we' aren't responsible for what goes on inside- right? It's all God's decision.

Just as I feel allowing prisoners to rape and kill one another is fundamentally wrong I feel that the idea of hell is wrong. It is an extension of human thought, clear and simple, and we know human thoughts are not divine, no matter how inspired they may be. If God existed as he is written to be in the bible there would be no hell for there would be no allowing criminals to allow themselves choices which lead to hell. Why allow the birth of a murderer? To send them to hell?

It's more fair to say we do not understand what happens to us when our lives end on this Earth. There may be a god who may punish but the bible does a very poor job in describing such a phenomenon in a divine manner devoid of human interference.

By JSmith ~

First, I would like to thank all of you that have contributed to this site! This site has given me 100% reassurance that I am not losing my mind. To hear the stories here are comforting, yet very disturbing. The question is how is something that is advertised to be so good, so destructive to people’s lives? My story is 19 years long and continuing to this day. I would like to give a brief on my church history and then why I walked away from it. Christians who visit this site, I can imagine, are baffled at what is being said. Looking through their inerrant tinted glasses none of this makes sense other than, “they were never really saved in the first place”. I thought that at one time also, now here I am.

The year was 1993 and my mom talked me into a Billy Graham Crusade. I remember my mom pushing me at the end to go down and accept the lord; I refused. Later that year I got myself into some trouble and ended up in jail for a weekend. At that point in my life I needed a change. I called my mom and told her I was ready to go to church with her. She was over excited to lead me to her charismatic church on Sunday morning. What happened after that has been 19 long years of change. Confusion, guilt, shame, arrogance, and my new found judgmental attitude was not the change I was looking for.

At the beginning of my journey it was just like buying a new car, fresh, clean, and exciting! I couldn’t get enough of reading the bible and going to church. The promises were out of this world! I would drive down the road and shout “Jesus loves you” to people on the sidewalk. I tithed, prayed, studied, and fellowshipped just like every new Christian does at the beginning. I felt like I was floating on a cloud! The floating started to fade after two years into studying the bible, because I realized something was wrong with this charismatic thing (tongues was faked, miracles were always something internal that no one could really verify, prophecies were everywhere and few if any ever came to pass, and everyone just kept on believing this phony stuff without ever questioning it). Great, let’s go to a reformed Calvinist church and get the “real” truth. After five years of crawling through theological mud, at three different Calvinist based churches, and condemning everyone who wasn’t a Calvinist I walked away from it. For the next ten years my family and I moved from church to church seeking out the elusive church that had the truth. Two years ago I threw my hands up in the air with two BIG giant fingers pointed to the sky. That’s right, I flipped god the bird. I have spent the last two years trying to make sense of all this. I have scoured the Internet, talked to Christian and non-Christian alike, read books on church history, the canonization of the bible, Evolution, creation… I sit here today so screwed up in my mind I can hardly function in life. “Seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be opened” really? I sought hard, and knocked a lot, but the more I did the more I fell away from the faith realizing there was no one listening to my prayers.

One of the main reasons I walked away was Christians themselves. The examples I see from them are for the most part enough to make me throw up in my mouth. Sure, there were some decent examples, but then I see that in Atheists and other non-Christians as well (Shhh, Christians don’t realize that there are non-Christians that live moral lives and love people more than they do). My brother’s family was laid to waste by Christianity. One kid ran away, one went to jail, and the other one was forced to marry someone she didn’t want to because of a “prophecy”, and now their divorced with three kids. I am still dealing with Christian neighbors that are absolutely destroying their kids. Their kids come to me in tears so that they can live at our house instead of theirs. I was told they wished their parents would die so we could adopt them. Before you Christians say, “Oh those parents are in the wrong church”, no, they go to a local bible believing non-denominational church where everyone wears big smiles. My dad is a Christian and the most judgmental man I know. To him all homosexuals and democrats should be put to death, and the bible says so. Leadership in churches is nothing more than a power grab and mind control game. There are some decent leaders trying to do what is right, granted, but many are control freaks who only care for themselves and their doctrine. If you don’t believe me go to a church and take a stand against what they believe. Every Christian has an opinion, none of them have answers. I am sick and tired of hearing, “real miracles happen over in Africa”, “if you just ask the Holy Spirit he will lead you into all truth”, “you have a faith issue”, “you’re in sin, that’s why your prayers aren’t being answered”, and my all-time favorite: “Satan is leading you astray”. Christians have canned answers for everything. Over the years you build up this repository of answers to any skeptic’s questions. On the surface they sound good, however, if any thought is put into them you will immediately expose them for what they are, “excuses”.

The bible itself is mass confusion, thus the thousands of different denominations within Christianity. I for many years believed the bible to be the inerrant word of god, hook, line, and sinker; you could not convince me otherwise. A strange thing happened one day. I asked myself why if dinosaurs lived with man do we not find dinosaurs and man buried in the rock layers together. Surely they were all buried by the flood and killed together and therefore should be found together, civilizations, dinosaurs, dogs, cows, humans. Why? My research led me far and wide. The bottom line is the earth is not 6000 years old, and dinosaurs did not live with humans, thus the Genesis story is nothing more than that, a story. Christians are easy prey to brainwashing by the likes of the Creation Research Institute and Answers in Genesis. I was at a natural history museum last year and there was a Christian mom and dad in the dinosaur exhibit. The dad said, out loud, “Boy I am glad we didn’t let our kids in here to see all this old earth Evolution crap”. A few years back I would have been the one saying that. I looked at him and realized he didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, just regurgitating what he has been told or read without ever looking into what evidence science has to offer. It is absolutely sickening to hear Christians working their pie hole out of complete ignorance. What is even more sickening is I did it for 17 years. At one time I believed the flood of Noah destroyed the world and god preserved life on the ark and all these “millions of dead things buried in rock layers around the earth” were there because of the flood. A simple study in geology and fossil order debunks that myth. A man living in a fish’s belly for three days and nights, talking donkeys and snakes, mysterious hands writing on walls, men riding chariots of fire into heaven, the sun stopping in the sky for a day and on and on it goes. All easily believed and yet absolutely no proof of any of it other than ancient texts. Yet, evidence staring them right in the face for an ancient earth and evolution, and they laugh at it calling it from Satan. It is easy to see why people would sacrifice their lives for Jim Jones, David Koresh, and the Heavens Gate crew. The most powerful people in the world are those standing behind pulpits on a Sunday morning; they can destroy lives with a word.

The bible is riddled with contradictions. Yea, I know all the arguments for the “supposed” contradictions, because I believed there were none at one time also. It is unbelievable the tap dance that Christian Apologists have to do to reconcile contradictions. I started looking at these contradictions and then finding the answer to them on apologist websites. I found out that most of them had different answers to the contradictions, and they all believed they were right. I can’t take it when an apologist says, “all we have to do is show that there is a possible answer and the contradiction is resolved”. Are you kidding me? Hell, anyone can come up with a “possible” answer to any contradiction. “The guy is black - the guy is white” Well there’s a contradiction, he can’t be both! Christian answer: The guy that appeared to be black was actually a white guy standing in the shadow of a tree during a full lunar eclipse on a blue moon Tuesday, and he appeared to be black, “no contradiction”. After going through hundreds of these contractions and seeing the answers presented, I threw my arms up the air. My question at this point was why would god so confuse people with his “written word” that no one knows how to interpret it correctly, and no one can really figure out the truth of it? Why is he hiding behind a word that confuses everyone? It is like a bunch of rabbits all running in different directions? I heard a Christian say that god purposely designed his word for confusion so that the message would spread around the world! WTF, they have an answer for everything!

One of the main reasons I walked away was Christians themselves. The examples I see from them are for the most part enough to make me throw up in my mouth. For a Christian/theologian to say that we have an inerrant bible is a JOKE. I know, now the war cry is, “the originals were without error, the bibles we have do have copyist errors”. What part of the word “errors” don’t they understand? Better yet they are never told there are errors, because I never once heard it in 17 years of church going. Christian leaders do not share this with the flock, or they wouldn’t have their steady stream of $$ coming in. Oh, by the way, does anyone have an original gospel so I can examine it to see if there are no errors? Just reading through the book of Matthew (or whoever wrote it) one can see how he so twisted the Old Testament wording to become a fulfilled prophecy for the messiah. Hell, even Matthew couldn’t figure out how to interpret the Old Testament! (NIV)Mark chapter 1 verse 2, “as it is written in Isaiah the prophet”, clearly the rest of the verse is from Malachi, and verse 3 is from Isaiah. Some honor student recognized this when writing the manuscripts that were eventually used for the King James Version of the bible and said, “as it is written in the prophets”. He saw the error and corrected it. Is this what we are to believe is the “Word of God”; they just wily-nilly correct it when needed to hide errors? How much more of this has happened over the centuries without our knowledge? The bible is riddled with problems, but when you’re looking at it through inerrant tinted glasses, it is perfect. My eyes are now open to how much religion, cults, and the like are so deceptive and brainwashing. I believed this stuff with “all my heart” for many years, now I am ashamed to have fallen to such man made brainwashing. I can hear the Christians reading this now, “You just never had a personal relationship with Jesus”. You are greatly mistaken, I did have a personal relationship with him, but he was never on the other end. Now I hear the Calvinist, “You were never one of the elect to begin with”. Answer; if your god condemns people to eternal fire just because he desires to and never gives them the opportunity to be saved, I don’t want anything to do with such a monster. Now I hear the seeker sensitive Christian, “Just give Jesus a chance and he will love you like you’ve never been loved before”. REALLY? He said he would never forsake me, but here I am. He said nothing can separate me from the love of god in Jesus Christ, yet here I am. Do I need to continue? You have all the answers don’t you Christians? Don’t you? Just wait till your writing your letter for this website, and then you won’t be so damn arrogant about what you think you know.

Where does this leave me? I’m pissed off and frankly don’t give a damn anymore about religion of any kind. Christians can leave me alone and stop making my life a f’ing misery. I’m sick of hearing their judgments on mankind; I’m sick of seeing children be ground to dirt because of religious zealots; I’m tired of being told there is one truth and one way when that road is filled with delusion, dishonesty, and manipulation. I want my life back, but fear that all these years of brainwashing are permanent and cannot be eradicated out of my mind. There will always be a fear of mind numbing screaming in an eternal fire. I can sweep it under the rug, throw it out the door, ignore it and say I don’t believe it, but the fact is it will always be sitting back there somewhere haunting me for the rest of my life, if I don’t recommit myself back to lord and go through this nightmare all over again. Can someone please give me a poisoned cup of cool-aid, a compound to move to in Texas, or a comet to live on before I go out of my mind? That may sound a bit sarcastic but this shit has really screwed me up.

By Valerie Tarico ~

Timothy Dolan, Cardinal of New York and head of the Catholic Conference of Bishops, had his prime time career launched by the pedophile priest scandal. Now, despite efforts to distance himself, his role in pedophile protection may come back to bite him. Wednesday the Archdiocese of Miwaukee admitted that during Dolan’s tenure there pedophiles were paid to simply disappear.

In June of 2002, Dolan was appointed Archbishop of Milwaukee after his predecessor, Rembert G. Weakland, admitted a confidential settlement of $450,000 to a man who accused Weakland of sexually assaulting him in 1979. In contrast to Weakland, Dolan was a known theological conservative with the trust of the Vatican, and, despite questionable management of sexual abuse scandals in his previous position, in St. Louis, he was tasked with cleaning up the mess.

From the start, Dolan positioned himself as a victim’s advocate: "...[i]t is impossible to exaggerate the gravity of the situation, and the suffering that victims feel, because I've spent the last four months being with them, crying with them, having them express their anger to me." His response to those tears and anger, however, foreshadowed events of this winter, when Dolan has consistently argued that the Church is above the law.

In the case of the pedophile priests, Dolan almost immediately set about exploring financial incentives that would encourage them to step down and fade away into the community. He emphatically denied in 2006 that this was the case. But during subsequent bankruptcy proceedings for the Milwaukee archdiocese, public documents showed that Dolan had discussed payout options with his finance committee as early as 2003. Now email from Julie Wolf, Communications Director for the archdiocese, confirms that pedophiles were paid up to $20,000 apiece in exchange for quietly relinquishing their positions in the Church.

Dolan almost immediately set about exploring financial incentives that would encourage them to step down and fade away into the community.Peter Isely is Midwest director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests and a resident of Milwaukee. Isely expressed outrage at the newly confirmed payoffs, which his organization has long alleged despite Dolan’s denial. “This is as ludicrous as a school board, instead of firing a teacher for criminal acts against children, calling the police, and revoking his license to teach, instead saying that they had to pay the child molester tens of thousands of dollars to hand over their license to the board.”

In 2006, serial molester, Father Franklyn Becker admitted that he had been paid $10,000 for signing “laicization papers” renouncing priesthood. At the time, Dolan insisted that the payment was to cover health care expenses. “For anyone to assert that this money was a ‘payoff’ or occurred in exchange for Becker agreeing to leave the priesthood is completely false, preposterous and unjust.” Minutes from the 2003 Finance Committee meeting suggest otherwise. Payouts to pedophiles like Becker were to be on top of pension, salary and health care benefits, and had no strings attached.

Since moving to New York and taking over leadership of the Catholic Council of Bishops, Dolan has leveraged his position to advance a set of priorities based on conservative theology, anti-reproductive rights and anti-gay rights in particular. He has been a vocal and visible opponent of comprehensive health care access and marriage equality, arguing, essentially, that the religious freedom operates at the level of institutions and trumps civil rights law. His position as Cardinal gains him not only the ear of the Catholic laity but of the White House. Last November, for example, a meeting between Dolan and Obama was described as “one among many meetings with officials from the Catholic Church and the administration.”

In this fight, Dolan has had a strong ally in Bill Donohue of the Catholic League. Like Dolan, Donohue appears more concerned with protecting the Catholic Church than past and future abuse victims. In March, Donohue said that the Catholic Church had been too easy on victims, “too quick to write a check,” and should instead “fight them one by one.” In 2011, Dolan thanked Donohue for a press release that, among other things, called SNAP a “phony victims group.” In January he scorned a gathering of victims and advocates in Boston as “the professional victims lobby” and “a pitiful bunch of malcontents.”

Like Dolan, Donohue is a staunch Vatican loyalist, who has a played a fierce and vocal role in what are being called the Vagina Wars. He launched a boycott of the Jon Stewart Show after Stewart displayed an image of a manger blocking a vagina that the League called hate speech. Delta Airlines compliantly pulled their advertising. Donohue’s professions of horror at the image are matched only by the “horror” that Dolan expressed at the “strangling nature” of Obama’s narrow contraceptive exemption for Catholic Churches. But will the Vagina Wars be sufficient distraction from Dolan’s history of enabling abusers? That remains to be seen. In a 2011 60 Minutes interview Dolan himself said that the abuse scandal needs to haunt the church for some time to come. Perhaps he should watch what he asks for.

By Dano ~

Every now and then I find myself wondering if there really is a way to communicate with whatever force that caused us to exist. The thought that I just might accidentally stumble upon a way to ask our creator for favors, and get answers is a reoccurring, futile mental exercise, that I delve into on occasion. The simple answer, to which, I suspect, has always been right in front of me all along.

Big Bang!!! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Perhaps we are already in communication, by default with whatever pulled the trigger for the 'Big Bang'. Maybe in that millisecond of pure energy explosion, we became a part of whatever is, was, or ever will be. We were preordained to evolve from slime on some prehistoric beach, and be made of the stuff of the universe.

I keep thinking that life has been difficult for some time now and I sure would like to hit the god lottery. I've thought and thought about it, and even looked at the writings of those who claim to speak to the guy who made us, but to no avail. None of them appear sane enough to me that I would want to emulate their success. Maybe it's just that they are so entwined in the bliss that they claim has been bestowed upon them by the big guy in the sky, that they are willing to forsake all rational and critical thought, and just want to wallow in the splendor of their success.

I'm sure you know a few folks who will tell you that their faith in, say, Bible God and Jesus, is all that matters to them. I am sure that if I had to become as gullible as a child, as the bible recommends in several verses of that "GOOD BOOK", and had to give up the cherished skepticism that has served me so well these many years, that I not only would become poor in material wealth, but my mind would degenerate into the same disconnected, circular, credulous way thinking that I see in all Jesus freaks and bible-thumpers. No I just instinctively , and logically feel that whatever god is, It is above all else, by necessity, rational.

God in my humble opinion, certainly wouldn't look like, act, or demonstrate any of the qualities of a human male. (Maybe a female) Humans kill each other for frivolous reasons, are jealous, narcissistic, vain, greedy and need to be loved -- qualities that a god would have no need to possess. The fictional "Bible-god" has all of these deficits and more.

I'm not the first person to hope that I will be rewarded somehow for remaining true to the belief that everything is as it should be, and that any force powerful enough to explode everything from that infinitesimally small speck of matter with the potential of becoming our universe, wants no part of our attempts to trivialize our beginning with the self relevant, pathetic, magical, mystical, cartoonish concepts of the Bible, and its anthropomorphic, very flawed, main character.

I'm sorry to report at this writing that life is still a mystery to me, and the older I get, not having a clue as to what or why "It" put us here, is starting to somehow be OK with me.

By Carls S ~

There's another term for "intelligent design" - "Not Paying Attention.” Home schooling is the last-ditch effort to keep kids from finding out how Nature really works. Huge blinders are required and denial is indoctrinated. Talk about failure to evolve and adapt!

The ligne is still used by French and Swiss watchmakers (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Darwin first started thinking about evolution by noting how breeders and plant hybridizers selected for certain traits, with results such as beefier cattle, faster race horses, splendid flowers, larger, tastier fruits, etc.

Humans design for purposes, but evolution is not itself designed. Natural selection is a hit-and-miss system, with a lot of misses strewn all along the trips, and what‘s left is just practical enough to get by. Adapt or perish is usually the prime criteria. There's no designer designing nature. And what's the "purpose” of a black widow spider, a 17 year locust, newly-discovered crabs deep in the ocean at poisonous vents, planet quakes on nearby planets, billions of stars? "Choice" is not a word you would use to describe their existence. “Chaos” would be more realistic, honest.

During the few years my brothers and I spent in parochial school, we were taught that, “God created us, and each of us had a purpose" (outside of the obvious eventual purpose to be with him in heaven). "Guidance” through the school years consisted in telling us how, as individuals, just what directions God was guiding us in making choices according to his wishes. In other words, "God has a plan for you," because after all, you were specifically designed to follow that plan, that intelligently designed purpose for us, one and all. Surely, this is a very "romantic" and reassuring way to answer life's multiple questions and demands - one size fits all? (Don’t laugh; millions ascribe to this.) This "explanation" is itself a construct of imaginations, except that it is by nature, incompatible with nature, which couldn't care less what you believe, and goes on doing what it does; you work with it. Nature has no intelligent purpose, and we are ALL of nature, made up of all the elements of the universe, subject to change, circumstances, bodily limits, limitations on what we can change for our purposes. We, too, design, procreate, make tools, and survive through adaptation and thinking, just like most organisms. If we didn‘t, we wouldn’t last.

The fossil record shows us that all previous species on this earth ultimately failed. My father made a very good living adapting and designing large scale equipment for earth-moving equipment. If he had a similar 99+% failure rate, his family would have starved to death; i.e., he would have been an "Intelligent Designer." If you could compare the corn Columbus found, eaten by native Americans, with the corn you eat today, you would see and taste the results of manipulated hybridization, and it becomes obvious that there is no designer behind it doing it 'right' in the first place. As that farmer being told to "thank God" for his abundant crops said, "You should have seen it when God ran the place alone." The very process of human tampering is necessary to make food more fruitful, tasty, abundant - evidence of it's inadequacy in the first place.

So, wait just a damned minute, before you go any further. Whatever your purpose in giving MY life a purpose is, I'm skeptical. Like a non-trusting Pinocchio, I'm not entering your Pleasureland, lest I become a beast of burden ass, a trained slave to no purposes than those of others. And no one else should, either. Nature and my nature don’t work that way. Are we not the designers of our own mental lives?

By Rhonda Denise Johnson ~

Because I live very far from my mother and sisters, I can go through my days without thinking about them. Yet, because we are family, there are times when we encounter one another and I realize that more than mere kilometers separate us. Every now and again, it occurs to me that Jesus (or at least those ancient authors who claimed they were recording his authentic words) was right about one thing: he came to bring a sword, to divide a house against itself, mother against daughter, brother against brother and that a man’s enemies will be those of his own household. I want to reject this and at times I have proclaimed that I would not let it happen. “I will not allow some religion to destroy my family.” But how do I have peace with people who do not want to have peace with me except on condition that I conform to a belief system that I find is untrue at best and psychologically debilitating at worst?

On more than one occasion I have seriously considered never having anything more to do with my mother. Not that I don’t love her. I do. It’s just that after biting my tongue nearly in two, I invariably require a recovery period and it’s only after I haven’t talked to her in a while that feelings of my love for her can resurface. You see, my mother is an ordained Christian evangelist who for the last thirty years has blamed me for not allowing God to heal my vision and hearing impairments. As an evangelist, she has not evinced the ability to hold a conversation with me without throwing in some comment that leaves me in a state of cognitive dissonance. As her daughter, I’ve heard everything from “You‘re lost and going to hell if you don‘t believe Jesus is Lord” to “God told me He wants to heal you. But it won‘t happen if you don‘t believe.” Sometimes I’ll foolishly offer what I think is a reasonable reply, forgetting that, when speaking to a person who was indoctrinated into the Word of Faith movement, logic and reason do not apply.

My mother is an ordained Christian evangelist who for the last thirty years has blamed me for not allowing God to heal my vision and hearing impairments.My sister is loving towards me. Her behavior—her words have that brightness that tells me she is trying to love me back into the Church. That may sound benevolent, but it’s still manipulative. Admittedly, I haven’t made a big effort to convince her that that simply isn’t going to happen. She has done all but beg me not to tell her my reasons for leaving the Church. Perhaps she thinks I am mad at God just like she was or maybe she thinks the behavior of other Christians drove me away. I’m not mad at my Creator. I don’t think going to Church has anything to do with God. When I think of God, I think of the Creator of the whole universe. But when I go to Church, I find this low-level regional manager whose creation story in the Bible bears no resemblance to the physical universe. No, the behavior of other Christians did not drive me from the Church. Would that it were that easy. But my decision to leave the Church was based on something far more fundamental than that. I left the Church because when I began to read outside the carefully selected memory verses they gave us in Sunday school, I found things in the Bible that made it impossible for me to continue thinking of it as the Word of God. I’ve never talked to my sister about these things and I’m not sure I have the right to force information on her that she is not emotionally ready to deal with. How do I know she is not emotionally ready? Because if she were then I would not have to figure out a way to talk to her about these things. She would bring them up herself. Meanwhile, she continues to smile nervously when people we run into ask what Church I go to. The situation with her is more tolerable than that with my mother. Still, I wish I could at least stop tiptoeing around the subject and have a frank conversation with her. She would have every right to disagree with me if what I told her did not resonate with her, but at least the subject would not be taboo. Her Church gave her a really nice car at a time when she was in a financial predicament. of course, if she considers what I might show her is really in the Bible and acts on it, the Church will say, “Well, give us the car back.” Like Morpheus told Neo in The Matrix, “All I have to offer is the truth.” Can truth stand up to a lie that meets a person’s emotional and financial needs?

It’s not that I want to please my family but don’t know how. On the contrary, I do know how to please them but just don’t want to. Wheat would please my mother is if I called her and said, ”You were right. I was wrong. There are no contradictions in the Bible. I‘ve prayed and asked God to forgive me for ever thinking that there were and now He has healed me and I can hear a gnat piss on cotton and see the boogahs up an ant‘s nose.” That would make my family very happy. It wouldn’t even have to be true. Just the fact that I would be making a “statement of faith” in that direction would make them all say “Praise the Lord.” But I will say no such thing. I refuse to live in co-dependence to people who are addicted to the blue pill. I refuse to go to bed every night knowing that I am living a lie. I have to live with myself. If I am not happy with myself, no one can give me what I don’t already have so doing things to win other people’s favor would be like selling my car for gas money.

By KrayzeeAssKris ~

I could be called a second-generation agnostic. Though I wasn’t born into a Christian family, my parents were. My fathers parents are armchair Christians; only going to church once in a great while, if at all anymore, so my dad was more or less free to find his own path. My mother was born to a woman who forced Catholicism down the throats of her husband and all twelve of her kids. When she died of uterine cancer (no real surprise there), my mother had just turned 19. Without her religiously obsessed mother to guilt her into church, my mom immediately turned away from religion. She couldn’t understand how good people, who happened to not be religious, were destined for Hell just because they refused to believe what their hearts were telling them was wrong.

I grew up with total religious freedom. This was one of many reasons why I chose my parents. My parents were a little into Eckankar, which is like an Americanized Buddhism, when I was young, which introduced me to concepts such as reincarnation and soul travel and even meditation. My parents never taught me to be wary of Christianity; I just instinctively knew to stay away from it.

As I continued getting older and became a teenager, I decided that there probably was no God and if Jesus had actually lived then he was sorely misunderstood. I became an atheist, but my atheism was rather short lived when I figured out that the Christian/Jewish version of God was wrong, and I was able to understand what God really was; the collective consciousness of all life, matter, and energy in the entire universe! I looked into the sky that day and saw God for the first time. The myth of the Cyclops comes to mind here. Some Greeks found a massive skull with one big eye socket and giant tusks. They decided that it was a giant man with one eye! They then feared ever meeting this Cyclops, for surely it would kill and eat them. The skull was actually that of an elephant; a, mostly, gentle leaf eater.

I realized that it wasn’t God that I was angry with, but the followers of religions that were once based upon truths, but over the millennia had become corrupt institutions based on fear and control. How could these people be so blind?! You see, most, if not all of the people that read and contribute to this website are smarter than the average human. While that is a good thing, the problem with this is we have a very difficult time understanding how the average person can be so ignorant because we have no reference point to understand them.

There are three groups of people that shun religion; those whose intellect cannot accept religion, those whose hearts cannot accept religion, and, like me, those whom fall into both categories. Whether you have the wisdom to listen to reason, or the wisdom to listen to your intuition, it takes wisdom and intelligence to break free from the tyranny of ignorance and falsities that so horribly plague religion.

I realized that it wasn’t God that I was angry with, but the followers of religions that were once based upon truths, but over the millennia had become corrupt institutions based on fear and control. Another facet of greater intelligence that religious people don’t grasp is that the smarter you are, the better you are able to understand consequences. This is the true basis of morality, something the average religious person claims as theirs, yet fails at far too often. A truly moral person does the right thing because they understand that doing the wrong thing will cause harm to others, which will then come back around to harm themselves. If you do not understand right from wrong, instead taking a course of action merely because you were told to, then you, my friend, are immoral. This was the whole focus of “The Matrix: Reloaded.” You can choose to do something, but it is meaningless until you understand why you chose to do it.

Many ex-religious people fall into the category of victims. While I do feel sympathy for you; after all, the world is a mess that I have to live in too, thanks to religion, I would warn against rejecting God, or the true teachings of Jesus or Siddhartha, etc., simply because you have been hurt by those whom claim to follow these deities. It is akin to a woman that has been raped several times throughout her life, so she rails on about how ALL men are rapists! We all know that isn’t true, but that’s what you are saying about Jesus and Siddhartha and various other wise people of the past whose teachings may or may not have been the foundation of a religion that was eventually corrupted by immoral men.

Whether you realize it or not, you chose the life you are living before you were born, with the hope that you would be able to break the karma of dogma before you died. As an ex-Christian, you have succeeded! Congratulations on your victory, but it is now time to forgive those that you perceived as having harmed you. One of their roles in this life was to get you mad enough to reject dogmatic religion. Be grateful to these people for helping you to wake up. By forgiving them, you clear your karma and, ironically, show that you are far more Christian than they are! Forgive them for their ignorance and you will heal yourself and the world as well.

Now, I’m not perfect, yet, as I still get annoyed by stupid people and don’t spend enough time focusing on good things as I should, but I’ve gotten a lot better. Though I was not raised Christian, I was still raised in a Christian society that instilled many bad habits and thoughts in my head. These things take a lot of time and patience to get over, and I had a head start compared to most of you. Soon we will reach a point in our evolution where we can fully embrace the benefits of science and technology, which will result in a world where we are truly free to be ourselves. Despite what religions want you to believe, humans are not vicious creatures. Children are helpful and compassionate, but their natural tendencies are diverted when the unnatural concepts of religion and money are forced upon them. It is our job as awakened individuals to bring about a world of peace, abundance and love. Rejecting religion is a great first step toward accomplishing this. Be proud of yourself, and believe in yourself.