By Carl S. ~ T his is going to be different from my previous postings, undisturbed by my usual self-appointed editor, helpful as he has been. There will be no effort involved in trying to be concise and clear so that every reader will understand completely. Free association will reign. When I say, "my family", I will be referring to the one I was raised in only. There is an impulsive reaction driving me to write as I must: a recent death of my remaining brother's beloved. This was almost three weeks ago. When we were informed, we traveled 800 miles, beginning on the day after finding out, to be with him and attend the funeral. More and more, my brother's atheism is revealed to me; some- thing I don't think my primary family ever noticed. He had, prior to the funeral, told his beloved's family that they could choose the ceremony. They chose to have a non-denominational preacher conduct it. So - here was this man from out of nowhere, reading the stock obit

By an ex-pats journey ~ I was a Christian for almost twenty years before serious doubts started to appear this year. The main root cause of my walking away from Biblegod is the reaction of Christians to the breakdown of my marriage three years ago. I was in an abusive relationship and it took me far too long to get out because I was a Christian and I believed that "God hates divorce." So, it this were true, why did god not answer any of my prayer to "save" the marriage? This started me on the road to thinking that god was not really there. I eventually left my abusive ex and tried to start a new life, only to have a whole heap of guilt piled on me, which lead to me being diagnosed with clinical depression . I was then threatened with the predictable b*ble verses, ( Malachi 2, Matthew 19 ) and told that this was all down to me having a "hardness of heart" or that I was "in league with Satan." My faith has been lost on this and some other i

By Gregg ~ I recently found your blog. I am a formerly active and devout Christian that has become an atheist. I thought I would share my story with you. I have very few "real life" people who can really appreciate and relate with my journey so this Internet outlet might be a bit therapeutic. If you were to publish this, which you do have permission to, than please keep my anonymity. Thank you. I was born into a very religious family. My father was a leader at his Lutheran church . My mother was an active main stream pentecostal denomination member. My grandparents lived immersed in the Bible and Christian television. I was constantly in church and being exposed to preaching and teaching on the TV. At a very young age I had ta few experiences that completely gripped my developing worldview. Of course, now I have to concede that these experiences were some sort of hallucinations or something. But as a child and youth, these were very real affirmations of my faith. Onc

By Carl S ~ S ometimes my wife and I watch true crime stories on TV. Justice triumphs in the end . . . usually. At other times, as on the show "Disappeared," the person is not found and the case becomes a "shaggy dog story" (a long story with no end), still unsolved. Doesn't everyone feel cheated, conned into watching, led on when this happens? Why did we waste our time getting involved? One expects our justice system to bring a satisfying end to a case, but even with hundreds of years of practice, this is not always possible. Lately, the term "closure" has become popular and we encounter it time after time in these crime stories. The kin and friends of the victims must, in their own words, have closure. A tactic of law enforcement officers is to offer a plea bargain, a lesser charge of, say, second degree murder to a criminal, in exchange for the information as to where the murderer buried the victim or victims. One reason for this is closure, me

By Crying Boy ~ I 've never given any testimonials before even when I was still a Christian. I did, in fact for many times, visualise my self standing on the stage and give testimonials. Constructing all the points that I wanted to make in my mind. What I've never thought about is, I finally has a chance to give testimony. But sadly (or gladly), it's on an ex-christian site. I was born in a semi religious family practising what we called Taoism . My parents practice it merely because of the tradition rather than really believing it's true. But my siblings, most of them, are kind of religious. And so did I. But not in Taoism, but in Christianity instead. I was the only Christian in my family, and my family don't like that idea. Growing up in a Christian School in a country far away from USA, from kindergarten to high school (yes, the same school), I automatically become a believer. Not only a believer, I'm one of the activist in the school church. I very r

By FearlessFire ~ T he stories on ex-Christian.net have been an encouragement to me. Image via Wikipedia I graduated from Bible college this year. Within the next few months I intend to come out to my fundamentalist parents as an agnostic. I am very nervous about it. Has anyone had to go through something similar? I am especially concerned about my mother's reaction, because she has suffered from anxiety and depression disorders and I have put this off for years for fear of pushing her over the edge. I decided this fall I could not live with my family anymore, in hiding, so I am going to stay with some friends for a few months while I work up the courage to tell my family. My friends know what it is like to hide who you are -- they are a lesbian couple. (How we became best friends is a hilarious and inspiring story . . . my gay-hating parents have no idea that my friends are lesbians .) Actually, right this very minute, I am about a mile from another Bible college because

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By the Coffee Shop Atheist ~ I wasn’t raised in church. My dad, a divorcee on his second wife, had been ostracized from his church at the announcement of the divorce, his status as a deacon was revoked, and those who had called him ‘friend’ turned to enemies. My father had been raised religious, but this trickle-down barely got to me. I heard whispers of Jesus thanks to private Catholic school, but knew little of the bible stories, and thought them to be untrue, until about 16. I grew up awkward. I was smart, scrawny, and didn’t quite understand social conventions as easily as the rest of my peers. As such, I was picked on, insulted and degraded, and as I didn’t go to church with any of these other ‘good Southern kids’ (south Carolina by the way), I had no outside contact. I had tried a few churches with my mom (who has much of her current happiness thanks to a church) but found everyone to be rude, self-centered, and general stereotypical southern Christians. Then after my freshm

By TheDocktah ~ T his isn't going to be lovely and eloquent like so many of the articles and testimonies on this site, and I apologize in advance if this sounds garbled or angry but this is, truly a rant. A rant from a young woman who is slowly losing her father to religious fervor. This story begins over twenty years ago, when my parents were young and newly engaged. My mother was (and still is) a truly nondenominational Christian and my father came from a very devout Born Again Christian family. My father brought my mother to meet his parents and my Grandfather locked my mother in a room with him for over 2h and demanded to know who she thought the "head of the household is". When she answered that a marriage was an equal partnership he berated her with Bible verses that said a woman was to obey her husband and that man was the "head of the house and how she was wrong and sinful. Then he asked my father the same question and he answered that marriage was a pa

By Paul So ~ W hy do people find apocalyptic prophecies so convincing? One of the important reasons why people find prophecies convincing is because prophecies make predictions that have already happened either a while ago or recently. But is that a good reason to be convinced by prophecies? I am going to argue why that particular reasons for the authenticity of prophecy fails because essentially prophecies are using inductive reasoning in order to come to a far-fetched supernatural conclusion. In order to my this argument intelligible and comprehensible, I am going to explain what inductive reasoning in order to show afterwards why prophecies are actually mundane human abilities that disguises itself as supernatural vision. I am also going to show why there is an inherent flaw within prophecies. Prophecies are actually mundane human ability to predict the future by inferring what will occur from what has consistently and uniformly occurred before. This ability is called inductive

By WizenedSage (Galen Rose) ~ O ne of the strangest foundational beliefs of Christianity is that belief in Jesus is a moral issue. In the Bible, Jesus is crystal clear that the worst sin of all is to not believe in him. In fact, Christianity plainly decrees that belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ is more important to one’s salvation than living a moral life. All one may accomplish in the way of living a moral life can be erased completely by the simple act of not believing in Jesus. That’s the biggest sin (with the possible exception of blaspheming the Holy Spirit), and one that assures you of a one-way ticket to hell. This is made perfectly clear in John 8:24, where Jesus says: “I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.” And, as we know, to die in sin means hell is your destination. Further evidence is provided in a parable where Jesus is clearly referring to himself: “If a man abide not in me,

By Jason ~ F irst off let me say that I have been reading the testimonials here on Ex-Christian for some time now and it always invokes a range of emotions within me. So I have finally worked up the nerve to share my story in the hopes that someone out there who is struggling with their own faith can find a little comfort and know that they aren't alone. De-converting, for me, was an extremely painful process. Combined with absolutely no support and a sense of disgust from my family, it almost took my life. So... here we go. I was raised in a fairly strict Southern Baptist family smack in the middle of Oklahoma. Religion was a VERY big part of my life starting at the earliest that I can remember. Hell, my parents even had me in a small private christian school which oddly enough was Assembly of God in denomination. As you can imagine this confused me quite a bit. Here we have two different sides of the same religion each pushing their own special set of beliefs upon me fro

By Ronco ~ I can only hope that my extemporaneous writings this a.m. are as eloquent as those of others visiting this site, as soon as I complete this draft, I'm sending in some moola. And I'm unemployed. To some, my story may seem trivial, to me, it is not. I guess we could all write the same. So where to begin . . . how about the cliff notes version #1: Thank God for this site ;-). #2: A natural desire to follow our programming #3: The problem of 'bad code' #4: A new awareness #1: What a breath of fresh-air this site has been for me this morning. When you suffer from erroneous programming its hard to see reality. When you're disappointed with the lemon peels of life there is a natural desire to internalize and self blame for one's circumstances. And unfortunately, when one is raised on 'christian ideals' there is a tendency to 'blame ourselves for the circumstances that GOD has delivered upon us'. The right question is &#