Just over 25 years ago in May of 1975, I was on stage with Bob Hope as part of his 75th birthday celebration television special. It was a live broadcast from the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. At the time I was a proud member of the United States Air Force Band stationed in Washington, and all the other service bands also participated in the event. Lucille Ball was there, as was Pearl Bailey, Telly Savalas, and a host of other more or less famous stars and sports figures. It was a big event.

Five years later I met up with this icon of American culture in Selma Alabama.

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By James A. Haught

Religion is an extremely touchy topic. Church members often become angry if anyone questions their supernatural dogmas. (Bertrand Russell said this is because they subconsciously sense that their beliefs are irrational.) So I try to avoid confrontations that can hurt feelings. Nearly everyone wants to be courteous.

But sometimes disputes can't be avoided. If you think the spirit realm is imaginary, and if honesty makes you say so, you may find yourself under attack. It has happened to many doubters. Thomas Jefferson was called a "howling atheist." Leo Tolstoy was called an "impious infidel."

Well, if you wind up in a debate, my advice is: Try to be polite. Don't let tempers flare, if you can help it. Appeal to your accuser's intelligence.

I've hatched some questions you may find useful. They're designed to show that church members, even the most ardent worshipers, are skeptics too - because they doubt every magical system except their own.

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I am re-reading "The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide" by Douglas Adams. If you like science fiction, parody, comedy and veiled commentary on religion all in one, I highly recommend it.

The part that inspired this little rant is where Zaphod Beeblebrox, one of the main characters, is on a quest to find the man who runs the Universe. Along the way he is captured and forced to enter the "Total Perspective Vortex." This ingenious device, when hooked up to its victims, forces them to comprehend the immensity of the universe in comparison to the microscopic proportion of the prisoner's life in his or her relationship to the universe. The complete understanding of how irrelevant the individual's life is in relation to everything else there is out there, is horrifically mind numbing. No one ever survives the "Total Perspective Vortex." Mr. Beeblebrox, much to everyone's surprise, does survive. In fact he quite enjoys the experience finding it euphoric. He discovers while in the "Vortex" that he is the most important thing in the universe and it really makes him feel good.

Christians have a similar perspective on their value to the universe. Oh sure, on the surface Christians are told they are sinners, deserving of eternal punishment. They are told that there is no one good, no not one. They are admonished that they should humble themselves, and warned against the sin of pride. Then, conversely, they are told that the Man who runs the Universe actually shrunk himself down into a human body, endured all the privations of being a regular guy and then made a sacrificial death of himself in order to save those who would later believe in him. So, in this incomprehensibly large universe, filled with innumerable galaxies, each of which contains nearly limitless possibilities, mankind becomes the central focal point of all. The planet earth on the outskirts of a rather small, remote, and unremarkable galaxy, along with the monkey like beings who crawl around on its surface, becomes more terribly important than can be humanly comprehended.

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sent in by "likeafish"

I haven’t been around this web site long, but long enough to witness some of the ugliest behavior I have ever seen out of those who claim to represent the Prince of Peace. With only a handful of sites on the entire WWW dedicated to the subject of leaving the Christian faith, and perhaps thousands out there for the purpose of propagating the same, believers choose to seek this site out and attack Dave for what he is doing. And ATTACK is the operative word here. I dare say they’d burn him at the stake if they could.

So what is he doing? For one thing, contrary to what most Christians who come here perceive, he is NOT out to change anyone’s mind. He is out to free his own mind and to help others to do the same. He does not ask anyone to think what he thinks or adopt any particular take on truth other than what one finds for them self. This is difficult for a Christian to comprehend because of the theistic and dualistic perspective that guides every thought process. Everything, every idea that is not with them, that cannot be somehow subjugated or rendered neutral, is against them. Either there is a god, my god, or there is apostasy, unbelief, and everything is meaningless. One is either hot or cold, as the Lord put it, remember?

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AUSTIN — Herbert Washington, whom co-workers at Significant Plastics Inc. say was unduly concerned with the rapture and the second coming of Christ, suffered a serious heart attack when co-workers pretended they'd been caught away without him.

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A friend of mine who recently logged on to the site was quite impressed with it and took the time to let me know. We talked briefly about his own decision to leave Christianity behind and then he offered me a list of his favorite books.

I was intrigued, since I was not even aware that this man had had a similar struggle with leaving religion. I asked him to please forward the list on to me so I might post them here. Well, now it was my turn to be impressed. Here all this time I thought I had read a nice quantity of quality books, and I find out that I have missed a few along the way. I decided that I should definitely post his list here, making links to amazon.com so it would be easy for other interested minds to acquire them.

I will be among the first to be ordering some of these myself.

Thanks LG!

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Several years ago when I still arrogantly counted myself among the Lord's chosen few, I took my wife to visit yet another church. We were dissatisfied with the lack of spiritual depth or discernment that we seemed to constantly encounter from those in pastoral and leadership roles. For quite some time we remained optimistically (I should say naively) hopeful of finding someplace where a demonstration of a higher level of knowledge and awareness might accompany any emotional zeal for God.

It continues to amaze me that those who claim to love the Lord the most insist on remaining the least read or the most ignorant in regards to this very person they claim to love. Church is not the place to have a restlessly curious intellect.

However, that is not the point of this article. I said all that to explain how we ended up one Sunday in the "Lighthouse Baptist Church." This was and still is an Independent Baptist Church of the "Sword of the Lord" variety. Very fundamental in both rhetoric and practice, none of the woman wore pants, and all the men had short haircuts. Based on the accents of most of the parishioners, there was a strong contingent from West Virginia dominating the membership rolls. To accuse them of being rednecks would be to state the obvious.

We ended up visiting this choice assemblage of elected saints because some friends invited us. They assured us that this place was where we could find the rest for our tired minds and souls. From the start of the service we knew we were in trouble.

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