By William Pankey

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If it is possible that I have correctly understood the biblical character of God aright, then what is entailed from such an understanding paradoxically makes the theological foundations of Christianity all the more unreasonable. I maintain that the internal structure of Christianity and its view of God creates an inherently and logically inconsistent theological worldview. My argument rests on the twin premises that God’s attributes, namely his omniscience and immutability,^[2] are incompatible with the likelihood of God acting in history—Heilsgeschichte.^[3] For if such a being does exists it appears to me that Christianity is necessarily superfluous to his existence.

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By The New Heretics
I am sorry, but I have to let this one out.

I can not count how many times I have seen Christians waddle up to some poor kid with piercing, tattoos, weird hair, or clothing that does not meet their approval and wave their fat little fingers in their face and quote:

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By DocMike

I don't understand how any modern woman can buy into the teachings of the Bible. It's so obvious, the book was written by men; specifically men who believed that women were inferior. And I'm not even talking about the Old Testament here. This one is from Ephesians:

5:22 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.
5:23 For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.
5:24 Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.

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Sent in by Paul D

Image by SamPac via Flickr

I am deeply grateful to all the people who responded to my previous testimonial and all the kind and helpful comments, believe me, you showed me more compassion than I received from fifteen years as a Christian - I thank you. I don't always have access to a PC but when I do I always reply to messages.

As before, the Christians I am talking about are those whom label themselves as "born again," and this is where I will start.

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By WizenedSage

Image by dawn m. armfield via Flickr

Occasionally I will read that death must be terrifying for those who believe there is no God and no after-life. It makes death so final, so empty!

I guess I must be a little odd, because I find it a great relief that there is no everlasting life. Of course, anyone would be relieved on coming to believe there is no hell - but no heaven? Well, frankly, I cannot imagine anything that wouldn’t get boring after hundreds or thousands of years of it, especially groveling before some egocentric god.

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By dealdoctor

Recently there was an article in the New York Times placing focus on a debate in Israel between secular and religious Jews concerning the role of religion in their military. It seems that now there are large numbers of conservative religious Jews in the military there who have risen to positions of great authority. The top-ranking rabbi is seen by many as encouraging wars of Israel to be seen as holy wars. A recent tract sent to soldiers quotes and Scriptural verse that amounts to saying any mercy on the enemy as contrary to Scripture. In addition there is also a debate in the religious communities about the role of religion in the military. Which comes first holy land or people? It seems liberals and conservatives just can not agree all around the world.

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By Brenden

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I'm just about to turn 19 in a fairly religious close-knit family, and I'm an atheist. I don't particularly like the word atheist, because it places a label on the exact people who don't want one.

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By Valerie Tarico

Valerie Tarico -- Image via Wikipedia

Are more social ills associated with religion or a lack thereof?

If you’re honest, your answer to this question probably maps to your belief status. After all, most of us like to think we’re on the side of the elves, not the orcs-- that we and our kind are making the world better. In the absence of clear evidence, the religious and the nonreligious both believe this. Every once in a while, though, we actually get a bit of data that lands on one side of the question or the other, and last week some interesting research hit the press.

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Sent in by John

Looking through this site, I see that most of you are American. In England, religion doesn't play such an integral role as it seems to in the USA. However, it is just as pernicious.

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Sent in by David

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I'm going through a sincerely difficult time right now.

I have had an 'active faith' all my life. About two years ago I bought a major part of a collection of books from a theological seminary that was closing. The books were not only on Christianity, but also philosophy and Nature and many other topics that were similar.

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Sent in by Gary

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I'm writing this testimonial because I need some sort of outlet for my frustration. So, let's start from the beginning.

I grew up in a very strict Christian home. I went to church whenever the doors were open. When I was thirteen my mom decided to move my brother and I 300 miles away from the rest of our family because she felt that the "Lord" wanted her to. That landed us in Nashville where we started attending an almost cult-like independent baptist church. All of the families in the church were home schooled and that was one of the reasons we were drawn to the church because I had been home schooled since I was very young.

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By Neal Stone

Image by mufan96 via Flickr

As I shared my story I shared my beginnings dealing with Epilepsy and being visual impaired. I also shared my learning disability. These are all the thins that helped set the stage for the usury that is Christianity. When you are insecure and unsure of yourself and your life you are easily used and manipulated. This was my life for over 20 years.

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By Mriana

My alarm went off and I woke up to a local United Methodist Church advertisement, which stated, “If you have values, then people trust you.” Then some mumble jumble about Methodist doctrine concerning values and the man ended with, “Come visit Schweitzer United Methodist Church...” This was not the dance music I like to awake to of a morning with one or all three of my cats wanting my loving attention, nor was it the sound of birds celebrating the spring morning, much less my values, but rather an assault to my morning senses and thought processes. Not to mention, my cats had no clue as to why I suddenly jump to smack the radio with annoyance.

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By WizenedSage

It occurs to me that rainbows have a great deal in common with Jesus. When we see a rainbow, we see a magnificent, beautifully colored arc across a vast expanse of sky. It has the power to transfix one with its awesome presence, its beauty. It is clean, it is perfect, and the colors are always in perfect order.

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By KSS

Image by Travis Seitler via Flickr

I wonder why the Bible is used a source book for morality? I was listening to local Christian radio and I found it distasteful to hear them trying to raise funds to put "a Bible into the hands of every child".

Why is that a good thing?

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Sent in by TheOtherRainMan

James Bond. Indiana Jones. The Librarian Dude from those "Librarian" movies on TNT. What do all these men have in common? Well, technically, they have a plethora of things in common, such as the fact they are all men, they are all incredibly good looking, they always get the girl, and their third installment was usually considered "not good" by a good percentage. But one thing in particular that they all have in common is that they are men of action at night, but in the daytime - they are men of charm.

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Video

• Peter Singer vs. Dinesh D'Souza: video. Topic: existence of God.
  
• Richard Carrier vs. Mike Licona: video, dvd. Topic: resurrection.
  
• Dan Barker vs. Mike Licona: video. Topic: resurrection.
  
• Dan Barker vs. Hassanain Rajabali: video 1 2 3. Topic: existence of God.
  
• Dan Barker & Richard Carrier vs. Hassanain Rajabali & Michael Corey: dvd. Topic: existence of God.

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Sent in by Confused (Ex?)Believer

My journey into Christianity began in high school when a friend of mine invited me to a Pentecostal church. Since I have been raised as an Orthodox Christian (nominally, our family wasn't really religious), I have accepted the teachings of a protestant church because they seemed to be based on the Bible more than the Orthodox's teachings.

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I went to elementary and high school in the rural South in the late fifties and sixties. There was no Internet, and information sharing was much filtered. One knew that there were such things as atheists and the really strange -- vegetarians, but there was no real sharing of the reasons for their "evil or odd" beliefs.

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Sent in by Andy

I was born into a hardcore legalistic home school Christian family.
We went to the local Independent Fundamental Baptist church "every time the doors were open".

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Por Lorena

This article has been posted in both Spanish and English.

I remember the time the Pope came to my country, around 1987. Some threw themselves in front of the Papamobil, the vehicle specially built for him. On their knees they kissed his hand. They cried at the sight of him. The people were sure that miracle healings had occurred just by having touched him. A choir of 300 people was formed, and the most important bureaucrats in the nation gathered to honour him.

Yes, the Pope—whoever he is at the time—is received as God in the flesh in my country, and I am sure, it’s the same in the rest of Latin America.

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By The New Heretics

In psychology we began learning about the effects of childhood guilt, which unchecked later turns into shame. This was spoken in the context of abusive family situations, and led into a long discussion on dysfunction.

I came to find that I suffer from these symptoms of guilt, but I was not “abused”: we just called it being Christian.

It can rightly be said that as a person believes themselves to be - so the are (or act). If you believe yourself to be fat, no matter how thin you get you see yourself as fat. If you think you are looser, you tend to behave as one. If you believe yourself to be bad - you tend to behave that way.

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By Valerie Tarico

Image by carf via Flickr

Sometimes I get letters from former Christians—the evangelical/fundamentalist type—who are also parents. “What do I say to my kids?” they ask. “I raised them to believe that without the blood of Jesus they are evil sinners. What a horrible thing for them to think! I feel guilty.” “All of their friends are members of our old church, so we keep going. I don’t want to tear them apart, but it’s getting harder and harder for me to pretend.” “When I try to talk to them they just cry. They think I’m going to hell.” No matter what age the kids are or what the situation, telling them you no longer believe can be tricky. Here are three things to remember.

1. Help them to understand your changes as a matter of spiritual growth rather than spiritual abandonment....

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All the mysteries of the Universe explained! ...Sort of.

Have you ever wondered, “What’s the point of everything?” asks documentary film producer Roger Nyard

"I have, and that’s why the documentary [...] exist(s).

"We all share one thing in common -- we exist. But why? I wrote down every question I could think of regarding the nature of existence, and then began asking people all over the globe for their insights."

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A segment from a YouTube video series featuring selected portions of presentations by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris.

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A Baptist pastor in Belton was charged Monday with setting fire to his own church Sunday morning, according to a warrant and a fire official.

The State Law Enforcement Division charged Christopher P. Daniels, 40, of 1337 Blue Ridge Ave., Belton, with second-degree arson in the fire at Blue Ridge Baptist Church, 1340 Blue Ridge Ave., a warrant said.

Anderson County Fire Chief Billy Gibson said Daniels was the church's pastor. He wouldn't say what made authorities suspicious of Daniels.

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By Mriana

The title for this article is a quote from Holly Near’s song “I Ain’t Afraid” (http://hollynear.com/lyrics/i.aint.afraid.html), and I write this rant in the same fashion as her song, because I am not afraid of anyone’s god, but rather what they do in the name of their so-called deity. This behavior keeps me in the closet with my disbelief here in the Bible Belt, because I have been through such vicious and disgusting behaviors before, which I have no desire to experience again. I only hope that one day such behaviors will end and it will not matter if one is a humanist, non-theist, atheist, agnostic, or whatever label they chose for themselves.

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By David S

As many of you are aware, a Christian pastor in Illinois was killed on Sunday March 8, in his church, no less. Certainly, a terrible tragedy and I feel horrible for his surviving family. Nonetheless, this tragedy illustrates a common theme I have found among Christians: God had a special plan for this man, and that no way, interferes with His plan for me! In other words, they never consider that maybe God's plan was cut short by this child of God being executed, and that their own lives could fall pray to the enemy as God sits idly by, doing nothing!

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From Gloria

I have a question that I am hoping one or more of you can help me with. I suffer from OCD - obsessive compulsive disorder - and both of my daughters do as well. Mine are of the checking, counting, ordering type. My youngest daughter, 21, has always had sensory type obsessions with clothing and social anxiety issues. My other daughter who is 23 has gone through a large variety of OCD's, one often replacing another over the years. She has had anorexia, then compulsive eating, then panic disorder, depression, fear of germs, but the very worst thing she has faced, the obsession that is really most overwhelming is scrupulosity. She has dealt with this since she was 17. She is sure, on a regular, daily basis that she has sold or will sell her soul to the devil and she is terrified that god will reject her and turn his back on her. She deals with this fear constantly, day in and day out. It is overwhelming her.

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Frank Turek, co-author of "I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist," and Christopher Hitchens, author of "god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything," met at VCU in Richmond, VA to debate the subject, "Does God Exist?"

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A compilation of video segments regarding the recent rise in open atheism.

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Imagine how awful a world without God would be.

Better yet, just watch the following video!

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Sent in by WizenedSage

The following is a testimony by my friend, Carl, who has no computer, but with whom I have shared much material from this site. He wished to give something back. All responses will be shared with him.

My parents moved a lot. And they were seriously superstitious Roman Catholics (miracles, rosaries, saints, etc.). These things are important in retrospect, for they explain how I ended up in a monastery at the age of 14...

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The following is a short segment of the movie, Religulous.

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Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. - Blaise Pascal

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From Struggling Agnostic

I became a Christian when I was in high school, and contrary to all other testimonies I've heard, my life had been perfect to that point, and I didn't accept Christ only when my life came crushing down. It's been about 5 years now, and being disappointed with the faith, and going through some serious depression and religious type of OCD, I've come to the decision that I don't want to believe in Christianity anymore and let go of old beliefs.

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By Priscilla

Image by mobob via Flickr

1. I don't care if you think I'm going to hell since I don't believe it exists. I'm also not interested in gaining admission to your heaven.
2. I'm not afraid that you might be right and I might be wrong, so fear isn't going to change my view.
3. I don't care what "the bible says". I have read it, studied it, enjoyed parts of it, but I don't believe that it is anything but literature.
4. I will not accept rules or laws being imposed on me that are based in your personal religious beliefs. If you attempt to pass laws like that, I will fight you with all the strength I have.

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Sent in by Jody

My childhood was one of confusion, being raised by my RLDS mother and agnostic father. They married as a result of a whirlwind courtship during college, when my mom had sown her wild oats and dated this "heathen" non believer. She later returned to her conservative RLDS heritage when I was a young girl. (BTW: RLDS is a small, breakaway sect of Mormonism. It is now called Community of Christ, and happens to be very liberal). This was the cause of much division in our family, as my mom tried to "convert" my father. My dad was a great father, taking us camping and being involved in my youth group when we went on canoe trips and such. But I felt like what was missing was the spiritual dimension. I determined at a young age to marry a "priesthood man," and in my childish thinking, avoid the problems that plagued my parents. In my mind, God was something to be pursued at all costs. I gave my life to the church, to this belief in a God revealed in the Book of Mormon and worked hard to be "worthy" of being in Zion. "Of course, I never "measured up" and continued to emotionally beat myself up when I would fail. I did, after all want to please God and be a spiritual person and contribute to the ushering in of the kingdom. Early marriage to a priesthood member seemed to me to be the "ticket" to the kind of life I dreamed of.

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Sent in by Sergio

My personal journey of de-conversion can be viewed in a similar light as a story of an addict. One day you feel great and have no fear of hell and the need to tell others about it, but the other day you wake up and feel like Christ is real, what you have experienced is true, and Christianity is the way.

This website and numerous books have been able to show me the logical reasons against Christianity, but since I've been attending a Pentecostal church, my EXPERIENCE prevents me from truly leaving my faith behind.

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Sent in by by rustywheeler

Image by timabbott via Flickr

I was born in 1969 in Glendale, California, the last of four kids by a 9-year margin to my nearest sister, but my family moved to Portland, Oregon when I was five. My parents are Charismatic Fundamentalists; by the time I left home we had been plain old Baptists, Assembly of God, and Foursquare.

It's kind of wild: I've been visiting this site a lot lately, and it's got me remembering, sifting through the crazy shit I heard growing up, presented as truth. I distinctly remember a popular Young-Earth Creationist delivering a series of much-anticipated lectures in our church, explaining (among other riveting insights) how, since we know that the rotation of the earth is slowing, we can infer that if it was really billions of years old it would have had to originally be spinning so fast as to be centrifuged flat like a pancake.

We had our share of the Holy Ghost, speaking in tongues and the like. I can remember the tension in the room, that unique pregnant pause AFTER someone had babbled a coded message, but BEFORE the Spirit transmitted the translation to someone else. One woman in particular I remember was particularly vulnerable to convulsive aisle-rolling; I think the Ghost had a little crush on her. I mean, He was up in her business every week.

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Here's a nice little Bible story for the kids. In Genesis 19:8, Lot protects some of God's angels by offering his "virgin" daughters to the men of Sodom instead.

"I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes."

This is a horrible story! Can you imagine a father doing such a thing? Actually, Lot was lying about the virgin part. According to Genesis 19:14, they were both married.

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"These people aren't secularized. They're not thinking about religion and rejecting it; they're not thinking about it at all," Kosmin says.

A closer look at the "Nones" — people who said None" when asked their religious identity — shows that this group (now 15% of Americans, up from 8% in 1990) opts out of traditional religious rites of passage...

The percentage. of people who call themselves in some way Christian has dropped more than 11% in a generation. The faithful have scattered out of their traditional bases: The Bible Belt is less Baptist. The Rust Belt is less Catholic. And everywhere, more people are exploring spiritual frontiers — or falling off the faith map completely.

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By Wizened Sage

The Bible is a collection of fairy tales. To some of us this is as obvious as the noses on our faces. In fact, to me it is one of the most amazing, mind boggling things about this world that millions of adults simply cannot see this obvious truth. True, the Bible begins with “In the beginning…” rather than “Once upon a time…” but not all fairy tales begin with those words, and the other parallels are just too striking to ignore.

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Sent in by Joshua K

My family was worried for my soul after I had started to "fall away from the church" (which I like to think of as, "using my own brain"). So they had me go and talk with a pastor so he could change my mind.

I was extremely disappointed by how one-sided the debate was, how his only real answer to solid, reasonable questions came back to the dismissive claim of "You just gotta have faith".

But on to my points. I play guitar in a touring do-it-yourself band. I would consider myself pretty well experienced in business and marketing via the school of hard knocks. At the end of the day, you've got to sell CDs, and you've got to get people to your shows, or you don't eat or pay your bills. If there's one thing I've learned, it's just HOW HARD IT IS TO EFFECTIVELY COMMUNICATE A SIMPLE IDEA TO A LARGE NUMBER OF PEOPLE. Like a tour date. Or where someone can pick up our CD. You can't make it obvious enough on a flyer or website. Somehow, someone ALWAYS misses it.

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What is the story of Jesus' birth? How did Judas die? What did Jesus say when he was crucified?

The answers to those questions vary depending on which Gospel you read, says Bible scholar Bart Ehrman.

Ehrman is the author of Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them). He says that each Gospel writer had a different message — and that readers should not "smash the four Gospels into one big Gospel and think that [they] get the true understanding."

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An original song by "sbGault," of the atheist/objectivist band Galt Aureus.

Enjoy...

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Submitted by The New Heretics

So, Jesus and I finally broke up.

I really thought that things were going to be different this time. He said that he changed… loosened up a little, stopped all his bad habits, said he was nothing like his dad.

I broke it off, and now I am going through all that crazy movie-like post-break-up nonsense.

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Sent in by Splashy

Hi all, I’ve been a lurker at ex-Christian for a few years now, and I think it’s about time I shared my anti-testimony.

My parents are not Christians in any way, which was helpful for my de-conversion (oh you’re not a Christian anymore darling? That’s nice, as long as you’re happy, pass the butter wouldn’t you?), but they didn’t exactly have any views on religion, which made me ripe for converting. Growing up in rural Australia, I was sent away to a boarding school when I finished primary school (elementary school for the USA reader). Therein began my indoctrination.

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Sent in by Cynthia

I was born into a military Fundamentalist Baptist Christian home where there was no option other than to also be a Christian, and the bible was taken literally. I grew up in America and South Korea, both very Christian countries. I of course realize I was born an Atheist, just like everyone else. But I was told very quickly that I was a Christian, just like I am half Korean. It was not something to have a choice in; it was simply fact.

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Sent in by Windwiss

I have been a regular visitor of this site for a few years and find it entertaining and also helpful in combating the illness that once possessed me.

The illness in question is Christianity.

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Sent in by John

To sum up, every Christian I have ever put trust in has screwed me. That is not to say that every Christian I have ever known has shafted me, only the ones that I have let inside.

It seems that the place where a person should be most at ease to feel the spirit is the place where a person must remain the sharpest and most vigilant. Churches are dens of vipers with their snake eyes on every one of your dollars.

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Sent in by Andrew

I was raised by my mother and very religious grandmother. My grandmother forced me to go to church from age 4 - 15. Neither of them would attend.

I belonged to a very strict branch of Pentecostal faith called Apostolic. They believed that there was only one god (Jesus WAS the father) and that you had to speak in tongues to be saved, baptized in name of Jesus (if they said father, son, holy ghost you were doomed). If we owned a TV, went to a movie, read most any book other then the bible, we were threatened with hell.

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Divine Comedy: Spring 2009 Show



The following is a set of photographs from a 2009 gallery show in ArtWorks, a gallery in Harrisonburg VA. The show ran for two weeks and opened on February 16th.

The title of the Show was Divine Comedy because it used humor to get people to think about religious authority and fundamentalism.

Artist Jonan Drew Davis writes,

I have a deep interest in internet culture, especially in memes and their evolution, and it can be seen in several works.

My aim in doing this show was to make people think and to make people laugh. I hope I've succeeded. Please Enjoy.

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Image by carf via Flickr

Sent in by Christian

I very recently realized that Christianity and Jesus are lies.

The events that led to this realization began when I was eight years old and was attending a 7th Day Adventist school. They took away meat I had brought to eat for lunch, because eating meat was a sin. They took away my Spiderman action figure and Pokemon cards I had brought to show my friends, because, as we all know, Spiderman and Pokemon are demons in disguise...

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Image by ahp00k via Flickr

From Siarhei V


So, I've been officially de-converted for about a week. It has been an interesting week of thinking, experimenting with stuff, telling my friends and family about it, and researching. However, after reading a ton of material on this website, it seems like there is one issue that keeps people believing, and there is no real counter-explanation offered by anyone.

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