By Paul ~ I wasn't sure if posting my story was a good idea, but after remembering what it was like when I finally saw through the illusion of Christianity. How it completely shook my world and my entire thought processes and worldview went under doubt and investigation. This was a scary place where I had no idea what else i had been wrong about or who I could talk to about my experience. I began to have this deep fear of being trapped in another delusional thought process like that again (as far as my spiritual quest is concerned). It was as if I was scarred by my experience in a supposedly life bringing belief. Something that was supposed to bring me freedom had in fact shackled me tighter to the dark places in my life with no real hope of getting out. So i feel it important to share my experience with the hope that it will maybe help someone else get past this. I wasn't born into a Christian family, but I did grow up going to catholic school so the seed of unreasoning w

By Carl S. ~ I t was Sigmund Freud who first proposed that we as children get our idea of "God" through experiences with our fathers. In Freud's day this might have applied. My father's father, as my mother said, was a stern head of family who ruled with an iron hand, beating his children with a cat-o-nine-tails, a description of which alone frightened me. If my dad got his idea of God from his father, we couldn’t know, since he never discussed religion with us. (I suspect churches believe Freud about his interpretation. They encourage fathers to be considerate, strong, and loving to their children. So that the children grow up with the same father image of their god?) Did our experiences with dad create our image of "God?" Our father was a practical man. I'd extend this practicality to his Catholicism. He did the novenas, rosary recitations, church attendance, etc., covering all the salvation bases. (I sincerely wonder if he confessed anything to t

By Tania ~ L ife wounds all of us. In a hundred ways, we get hurt. Life throws things our way, and we ache, we cry, we stumble through the day or the month or the many years and just try to not be overwhelmed by the sadness, the anger, the confusion. If we're lucky, if we're resilient, if we're patient, if we're surrounded by people who let us share and overshare, if we're able to find purpose, if we're able to find the right combination of meds or meditation or mediation -- if we are one or all of the above -- the wounds don't last forever. They scar. And that's when we can learn, grow, help others. We cannot do that when our wounds are scabs. At the risk of sounding overly dramatic or sentimental or gory or what have you, I use this as an analogy for my deconversion journey. It's been four years now since the start of my deconversion. Four years ago, I was that girl. That girl who went to church every Sunday morning when she wasn't

By Ben Love ~ D ear Human, At some point today, stop what you’re doing and find a mirror. Stand there for a moment and look into that mirror. Don’t see only the reflection of the physical body . See that too, yes, but also try to look past that and see the “you” on the inside. Try to get a mental image of that “you.” That “you” that you see...is good. You are good. You are just fine exactly the way you are. Do you have problems? Sure. Have you behaved badly in the past? Probably. In fact, yes, you have. Will you misbehave a little more in the future? All signs point to yes. But what you do and why you do it are a separate issue from this basic truth: you are born good, not bad. You are born innocent. You are born beautiful. You were not born evil. Now, does this mean you aren’t born with bad tendencies? Of course not. A human is, after all, merely a civilized animal, but still an animal. You have instincts within you, leftovers from the long, slow trek of your evolution—ins

By Daffodil ~ This is a continuation of a previous post detailing how I lost my faith. M y previous misgivings about Christianity in high school centered around how other Christians behaved. My first inklings of problems with the Bible came in college when I took classes overviewing the OT and NT. for the first time in my life I heard that both parts of the bible had been written by many, many people. This gave me an odd feeling in my gut as I had just begun getting more involved with the conservative group, The Navigators . I basically put this new knowledge on a back burner and soldiered on. Within the Navigators, I began to study the bible voraciously. I couldn't get enough of it and had so many questions. Unfortunately, I began to notice two things. First, there were many inconsistencies and disturbing stories. Second, no one seemed to be able to adequately answer my questions. I kept getting either, God is so much wiser than us and we just have to trust what his word

By Ben Love ~ T he first and most basic reality we must observe is that Christianity simply doesn’t make any sense. It is, to put it bluntly, absolutely illogical. This is in fact so obvious that it really shouldn’t even need to be stated. The Christian, however, may disagree. But if by some chance he does agrees that his religion is in fact illogical, then he will also assert that God intended it to be so. He will likely smile and say something like this: “Yes, that’s true. It doesn’t make sense to man’s wisdom. But man’s wisdom is foolishness to God, and the wisdom of God is foolishness to man.” However, we can recognize this for what it is: purposefully ambiguous jargon designed to allow the Christian to “be right” even when he is proven wrong. In any case, even if we were to concede that an Omni-Creator-Being (or God) would orient his revealed religion in such a way, we would also have to accept that this God intentionally oriented this religion to exclude most of his creation

By JB ~ M y journey to deconversion began about 6 years ago when I first entered the working world. Prior to that, I was as deeply devout and fundamentalist as one could possibly be, at heart if not by my actions. I was raised in church, am the stepson of a fundamentalist church pastor, and I even attended an extremely conservative Christian college. I even have a minor in theology! And despite a deep mental and emotional commitment to Christianity, I've always been a questioner. Not necessarily a skeptic. That would come later. But even during my formal education, I enjoyed raising difficult questions in my theology and philosophy classes. I think the thing that lead me to start seriously questioning my own faith was an emotional divorce from it. Basically, once I got a job and a place of my own and I wasn't surrounded and inundated by religion, I lost the emotional connection to religion that I had always had as a teenager and very young adult. For me, it is sort of lik

by Carl S. ~ O ne ExChristian post, of May 29, 2014, made a special impression on me. It was entitled, “A ‘Providential’ Encounter at a Pub," by Rev. Ex-Evangelist. It involves two women who are ex- Assembly of God members. At the end, the author says of one of the woman, “She is still angry about being so misinformed about so many things, such as science, history, the bible, etc., by her church pastors and teachers." Misinformed, we might ask, on purpose or through ignorance? Misinformed by those who are victims/pawns themselves? For whatever reason, the damage has been done. Let me use the local Assembly church I know as an example. It's a representative of all religious institutions. Does any member really know all that's being told to the kids there? I've been informed by a member that there are some beliefs listed in their " Statement of Faith ," published every Sunday that some members don't believe themselves. I can't help but co

By Daniel out of the Lion's Den ~ D ear Christian Facebook Friends, If you don't know by now, I have deconverted from Christianity. And if you couldn't tell, after 30 years as an adult Christian, I have an ax to grind. In the last 2-3 years, I have made many new like-minded nontheist friends, and we like to talk about religion. I have not unfriended any of you since many of you are truly my "real" friends and even family. But now it has gotten to the point that when I have passionate facebook conversations with other Christians who enjoy that sort of thing, some of you go haywire. And by haywire, I mean you cut and paste my comments (out of context of the conversation) and email them to my non-facebook wife, as if I need to be "told on". Know this, that you are "sowing discord". So please obey your own God and stop it. If you don't want to see these conversations, unfriend me right now. Some of you would like to see my marriage en

By xxkindofboredxx ~ S ince my deconversion in early 2013, I've realized that to get most Christians to think about their beliefs, you have to dismantle it from the inside. After all, that's what happened to me! You can try to use evolution and facts the Bible got wrong about how the world actually works, but most devoted conservative Christians will ignore that evidence. This is because they see evolution and the "free-thinkers movement" as a conspiracy, and the faulty science in the Bible as a "product of [ancient Jewish] culture." So I decided to make this little list of common Christian defenses for God and the Bible. Obviously this list is by no means comprehensive, but these are the ones I feel are the most commonly used by the religious community. So here is my - secular guide to - Cliché Christian Statements Statement: Without God, there is no objective morality. Answer: Do you support slavery? Because the Bible sure does. E

By J. S. Dollin ~ H ere’s my life. I’ve been ruled by Christians. I’ve been directed by Christians and now, I don’t want to be one anymore. And that’s okay with me. Do I need to admit to my family? What will make it so that I can be free completely? I didn’t party in high school. I didn’t even know that world existed. I was so naive that I didn’t even realize what exactly happened when this guy jerked off into the ranch dressing as a joke and got suspended. Sex, wasn’t ever on the table. I never pursued the knowledge of what sex was and when I finally asked Mom about it, she got this picture book for me when I was 12 or 13 from the Christian library. I didn’t really get it until I watched movies. Honestly, I don’t know how I didn’t know anything about it, it just never came up. I didn’t get my period until I was 16. I was a late bloomer and a late developer, which made me always feel like I was behind. I felt like I never understood what was happening and I didn’t have any fri

By G Man ~ M y journey started over 30 years ago when my parents were "saved" through watching Pat Robertson on the 700 Club - I was 4 years old and my sister was just a baby. My mom in particular jumped right on the fundie bandwagon and started really getting into all the televangelists you've ever heard of (and some you haven't), listening to them every day and then playing their tapes at night. This continued all through my childhood and through my teen years, during which my sister and I were both homeschooled and continued to be indoctrinated with right wing Evangelical material. This culminated in my taking a position as a 19 -year-old musical director at one of the largest churches in the Fort Worth area (I was a classically trained musician who started playing piano at 3). This was done concurrently with my attendance at a (non-accredited) Bible school. No "secular" college for me (in spite of my high GPA and SAT scores ) - heaven forbi

By Bob Keye ~ W ell here he comes. The man that lives off of his wife and the odd measly dollar slipped into his pocket by his mother and some frightened well wisher from his disappearing church. This parasite lives in a bubble and is frightened by reality. Well, he is none of my business. I can only feel pity for this sad and lost remains of a man. But, here is the thing he won’t let it go. He is in the playground, pushing and shoving old ladies and young children and anyone else that looks vulnerable and incapable. He prods and pokes because he knows that the helpless and hopeless won’t or can’t fight back. He uses fear and degradation and puffs himself up as being something special because he truly believes that they can’t see behind his pathetic unmanly existence. This is now my business, because he has approached me. He assumes that because I am a polite and non aggressive looking individual that I will comply to his presence and his will. This I certainly will not! H

By summerbreeze ~ I 've been attending a new Mega-Church here in my town for a while now. This is not the former Mega-Church that I had previously attended, it's a newly-formed non-denominational church now housed in a previous gigantic athletic club with thousands of members, and millions of dollars worth of renovations. It was a while back that I decided to start lying to my Husband. He had gone thru about 6 mos. of tests and interviews to finally get the diagnosis that he was a victim of Agent Orange. (He had done two tours in Vietnam )... He was declared 100% disabled with so many health issues, I couldn't count. Very soon after the diagnosis, I told him that I had had second thoughts about being a non-believer....that I now believed in God and Heaven. He seemed very relieved, even recommending a church that a lot of people he knew raved about. He had never been a church-goer, but was a solid believer. He has so little to cling to these days: o

By Mark2pt0 ~ D o you have a Christian friend that seems genuinely intrigued by the fact you have walked away from Christianity? Perhaps there are even a bit jealous because they have thought about doing so and just can’t seem to do it. Have you ever wondered why those people can’t just take that next step? I’m sure there are a multitude of reasons, but I have a Christian friend who has given me a new perspective that I believe is probably much more common than we realize. I think it not only explains why some people can’t allow themselves to make that change, but I believe it also explains why so many Christians get mad at those of us who walk away. Let me tell you the story. When I first announced to those closest to me that I was an atheist the responses I got from nearly all my friends and family were all very common ones, except for Bernie. Bernie was curious. He had lots of questions, but none of them condescending. As time went by it seemed as if he was more interested

By Carl S. ~ A s a follow-up to "Why Male?" of 2/21/15... From the "Anthology of American Humor," 1949, printed by the Magazine Digest Publishing Company, comes this gem: A father trying to read was constantly interrupted by his small son. Finally he tore out of the magazine he was reading a page on which was a map of the world. He then took a pair of scissors and cut the map up into a jigsaw puzzle. "Now," said he, "when you get this all put together, I will give you a dime." Presently, the son brought the map to the father. "It was easy" said the son. "On the other side of the page, there was a picture of a man and a woman, and when you get the men and women right, the world is right." Sixty-six years later, I am about to take that boy's observation much farther than he intended. The world is still suffering upheavals because the relationships between men and women still aren't "right" wherever re