Awakening

Awakening-12 (Photo credit: justinrummel)

By Twinkletoes ~

I began realizing that I didn't believe in religion when I was a teen, but couldn't leave it as I was forced to go to church, w/o fail, every week. When I got old enough to drive, I still went to church and youth groups out of habit as well as being uncertain of my true beliefs. The older I got, the less I believed in religion of any kind.

The crowning blow was when I tried to have my letter transferred (I was raised baptized and confirmed in the Episcopal church) to a church nearer where I then lived and was denied because I'd married a man who had previously been married. I was told that I would have to get special dispensation from the Bishop to be able to be a member of any church. That really did it for me as attending went. I was furious that anyone would dare to tell me who I could and could NOT marry. What difference did it make if my husband had been married before or not? If his previous marriage didn't work out, so what?

As I grew older still, I lost more and more of my belief of this mythical person who was supposed to help me through life. By the time I was 30, I was an agnostic, but it took moving from an area that didn't give a hoot if you went to church or not, to a VERY fundamentalist area that certainly did. When you were introduced to someone new, their first question was "What church do you go to?" That one just stunned me. I didn't care IF they went to church, so why should they care if I did? And further more, which one I went to was even lower on my list of interests.

By the time I was 50 I had become a full blown atheist. I still don't advertise it due to the fact of living in a fundie area (N GA)but I have found plenty of people who have lost their religion so I'm quite comfortable being who I am and not having to pretend anything.

Finding this site has been wonderful! Reading so many others who've been badly damaged by religion breaks my heart, but it's great the support that folks on this site give to anyone who needs it. WONDERFUL!

Comments

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Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

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ACTS OF GOD

By David Andrew Dugle ~ S ettle down now children, here's the story from the Book of David called The Parable of the Bent Cross. In the land Southeast of Eden – Eden, Minnesota that is – between two rivers called the Big Miami and the Little Miami, in the name of Saint Gertrude there was once built a church. Here next to it was also built a fine parochial school. The congregation thrived and after a multitude of years, a new, bigger church was erected, well made with clean straight lines and a high steeple topped with a tall, thin cross of gold. The faithful felt proud, but now very low was their money. Their Sunday offerings and school fees did not suffice. Anon, they decided to raise money in an unclean way. One fine summer day the faithful erected tents in the chariot lot between the two buildings. In the tents they set up all manner of games – ring toss, bingo, little mechanical racing horses and roulette wheels – then all who lived in the land between the two rivers we

Morality is not a Good Argument for Christianity

By austinrohm ~ I wrote this article as I was deconverting in my own head: I never talked with anyone about it, but it was a letter I wrote as if I was writing to all the Christians in my life who constantly brought up how morality was the best argument for Christianity. No Christian has read this so far, but it is written from the point of view of a frustrated closeted atheist whose only outlet was organizing his thoughts on the keyboard. A common phrase used with non-Christians is: “Well without God, there isn’t a foundation of morality. If God is not real, then you could go around killing and raping.” There are a few things which must be addressed. 1. Show me objective morality. Define it and show me an example. Different Christians have different moral standards depending on how they interpret the Bible. Often times, they will just find what they believe, then go back into scripture and find a way to validate it. Conversely, many feel a particular action is not

Why I left the Canadian Reformed Church

By Chuck Eelhart ~ I was born into a believing family. The denomination is called Canadian Reformed Church . It is a Dutch Calvinistic Christian Church. My parents were Dutch immigrants to Canada in 1951. They had come from two slightly differing factions of the same Reformed faith in the Netherlands . Arriving unmarried in Canada they joined the slightly more conservative of the factions. It was a small group at first. Being far from Holland and strangers in a new country these young families found a strong bonding point in their church. Deutsch: Heidelberger Katechismus, Druck 1563 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) I was born in 1955 the third of eventually 9 children. We lived in a small southern Ontario farming community of Fergus. Being young conservative and industrious the community of immigrants prospered. While they did mix and work in the community almost all of the social bonding was within the church group. Being of the first generation born here we had a foot in two

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