By Seeker ~ M y mom was "saved" when I was 7 and I was personally "saved" when I was 13. I considered myself very lucky: I fell in love with Jesus from a young age. I adored God and felt adored; manna for an insecure and shy teenager. In my 20's, I broke up with my long term boyfriend (5 years) because he was a non-practicing believer and I had realised that I was choosing selfishly and not devoting myself to Jesus enough (and I could certainly not yoke myself unequally). I look back on it with a great amount of shame and horror. I truly believed that I could hear God's voice and couldn't understand how other people could deny His presence. I would ask and He would answer. "Is Boyfriend my husband?" - "No". "What must I do now?" - "Get some pure Word". Pure Word was a passage-by-passage study of Torah (first five books of the Bible). I was flabbergasted at how much of the original context and meaning had been

By Zelda ~ S ometimes I wish I had never woken up. It is too much of a shock, an abandonment, a rejection of the God that was never there for me. I woke up about nine years ago and I wish I could say that I am not reliving the trauma of the abandonment of this God that was never there. But, I grieve it every day. It is in the forefront of my mind, and sometimes, I almost grasp the fact that I don´t need to feel this yuckiness anymore, that I have somehow figured out how to be okay within myself. But, that feeling fades away all too quickly and I am left broken again with a sense of rejection of self. I am not able to see why I would feel such a rejection of self. Most of my life, up to the age of about 33, there was this God I thought I heard talking to me, that gave me impressions, that apparently thought I was special. I could not get close enough to him and I always felt it was my fault that I couldn´t. I prayed hard, I wanted all of it, to speak in tongues, to prophesy, to he

By Lydia ~ I was born and raised catholic, baptized as a baby and put in a catholic primary school and high school. We were a pretty serious family with crosses and pictures of Jesus and Mary scatted through the house. I also had a great aunt who was a nun and a great uncle who was a monk so our family was in pretty serious. I know people expect me to say how backwards they all were and all the outrageous beliefs they had but it wasn't like that. We were raised believing in evolution and we learnt pretty liberal ideas on justice as kids I was really lucky to have been introduced to those ideas a such a young age as it did help me to de-convert later on. It was outside of my family where it all went wrong. When I was 13 I left my mother and lived with my dad and I was introduced to a bad side of Christianity. I spoke out about the sins of gay people and stood outside abortion clinics praying with others. My biggest goal in life back then was to be a house wife and have 3 kids

By Karen Garst ~ W hile there is an ongoing dispute among biblical scholars whether Yahweh, the god of the Old Testament, had a consort, I am moving in the direction of yes. First, it is important to realize that the writers of the Old Testament drew upon existing mythologies for their stories. If you are not able to accept this, then don’t read any further. Scholars attribute the Torah or the first five books of the Old Testament to four oral traditions ¾ J for Yahweh, E for Elohim, D for the Deuteronomist, and P for Priestly. You might notice that the E version for the name he used for god, Elohim, looks a lot like El, the major god of the Canaanites. There is no dispute that the early Israelites settled in the highlands of Canaan. And yes, Israel has the “el” connotation as well. It probably means “El will rule.” As John Day states in his book, Yahweh and the Gods and Goddess of Canaan , “there are grounds for believing that their depiction of an El religion does at least i

By MTC ~ This post has some inspiration by this article from the Faithless Feminist . A s mentioned, menstruation is not the work of a so-called "intelligent designer." Besides being able to have kids, periods serve no use whatsoever. Not to mention they get in the way of things. If "God" is so all-knowing as well as understanding and caring, he would've come up with a much more convenient and simple way for women to be able to have kids. The article also mentions that breast size doesn't matter when it comes to lactation. Which reminds me, why are humans the only creatures where the female always has bigger breasts even if she's not pregnant or nursing? According to Biblical Gender roles, "God" also intended for a woman's chest to bring comfort and pleasure to a man. He wired men to be attracted to women's breasts, and curvy hips as well. So in other words, women were intentionally created to be sex objects. To heck wit

By Carl S ~ I n case you haven't noticed, people who are abducted by aliens, or have a past life as royals, or have after-death experiences, or have been instructed by their voices to perform certain acts, or know that the FBI and CIA are listening to their phone calls and following them, or are being persecuted for their Holocaust denials , all have one thing in common: they really believe they're special. If they didn't, it logically follows, for one thing, those powers wouldn't care about them. If they join with groups of others with the same “experiences,” they are even more convinced. These people might think of themselves as heroes or daredevils for enduring such trials. But you can't convince them out of their “knowledge,” as they have reached their conclusions from their experiences. It's all in their heads. One of the many reasons individuals are attracted to religions is that of being chosen to receive access to special knowledge of the mysteri

By Karen Garst ~ L ast week, I wrote an essay about why there weren’t more women atheists, citing statistics that set the number of men who disclose themselves as atheists at 68% and women at 32%. [1] I post my blog to a number of atheist Facebook groups each week. I have never received so many comments in the two years I have been doing this. The comments ranged from agreements with the reasons I stated in the essay: being part of a community, having church as a safety net, and issues with leadership and speaking out. There were also comments proposing that women’s brains were different, women don’t admit they are atheists, women are still subjugated in many societies, women  in the US have it better than men, to men are just more loud-mouthed. Therefore, I decided to share some excerpts from my book, Women Beyond Belief: Discovering Life without Religion , to show real life experiences of what women experienced when they did try to leave religion. At the end of this essay, ther

By Carl S ~ M any are raised in Catholicism and become Evangelicals or Episcopalians or whatever. Some in other sects came to “accept Jesus” while most are merely warm to him. Others of various sects became convinced and/or rabid Christians; most remain moderate. (I knew a man who changed from Lutheran to Christian Scientist to Methodist, and he was still in his 50's.) One Supreme Court judge described “Experience and Feeling as the Ultimate Ground of the Christian faith.” That's it? Wow. Doesn't that description fit every religion, and even schizophrenia? Many people switch sects just like they switch jobs. Many believers toy with astrology, Buddhism, dogmatic patchwork-faith-combinations, exotic methods of mindfulness, etc. What about you, what else is there? Why not try atheism? Go ahead and live a secret life for awhile. Does the thought scare you? Apparently, pedophile priests, their supporters, and leading clergy of any religions aren't scared of being punis

By WizenedSage (Galen Rose) ~ I get TheHumanist.com newsletter in my e-mail regularly. There was a reprint of an interesting article in the latest edition. It was originally published on Stream.org , a right-wing news site. The original article was by Tom Gilson, a senior editor with The Stream. The title of the article was, “ Christianity, Women, and How Atheists Avoid the Facts That Matter .” The article deals with an item that was on a Virginia television station’s news, and the video had gone viral. It seems that Tom Hicks, an atheist, had painted a message on the back of his pickup truck. The message read, “Women shall be silent and submissive 1 Cor. 14:34,” adding, “God said it, believe it,” and “Read your Bible.” The article’s author, Mr. Gilson, takes issue with Mr. Hick’s message, claiming atheists like him routinely avoid most of the “real” facts. Gilson wrote, “Hicks wasn’t trying to preach Bible truth. According to WTVR, ‘Hicks said the reason behind the verse is

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