By Don Meck ~ I am 61 years old, and many at my age are starting to face the fact that they haven’t much more time left and start reaching out to god and wanting to suddenly become Christians. I will never understand this notion. I was raised by fundamentalists, who were also politically conservative. I was baptized into the religion as a baby and was forced to attend church services, Sunday school, camp ground meetings and vacation bible school. Still, even at a very young age, I realized that the whole concept of religion, especially Christianity was a joke. Nevertheless, it made no difference, I was forced to attend these events. Even though I realized it was all lies, it was only over the last 20 years or so, that I have finally been able to fully denounce it all. The same can be said about the political conservatism. That too took me time to fully reject and now find myself a radical progressive and being true to myself. I actively support the Freedom From Religio

By Jeffery Lee Bergman ~ A s a former evangelical fundamentalist associate pastor and elder, I greatly appreciate people willing to speak openly and honestly about their de-conversion experience. As a young boy, church was a weekly obligation where we dressed up in our Sunday best as members of the protestant denomination in a small town in New Hampshire. When I was 14 years old, at my mother’s insistence I went through the confirmation process and was baptized. While in high school, a girlfriend took me to a fundamentalist evangelical church in San Jose, California. I eventually accepted Jesus as my Lord and savior, began to immerse myself in scripture and after a few years became the guy who knew the bible inside and out, back to front, Old & New Testaments, studied Greek and Hebrew, owned and avidly read my KJV, NIV, NAS, Phillips, Young’s, Amplified, & Living bibles, and of course my Strong’s and other concordances. Eventually, I began leading bible studies, teaching

By Tania ~ I t stands about three feet to my right as I sit here with my computer and my cup of tea. Until a few weeks ago, I had barely touched it for a year. But now, I am living on my own again, and I have peace and quiet and space. I finally asked My Handyman to fix its damper pedal, and of course it was no problem for him. And now my Korg digital piano is serving its intended purpose, and it’s not just a piece of furniture on which to place those miscellaneous things that never seem to have a permanent resting place (library books, that thing to return to a co-worker, junk mail, etc.). It was a trip down memory lane as I unpacked several boxes that had remained packed during the four years in which I lived with roommates. I had kept many more kitchen things that I remembered (including lots of plastic forks), and I noticed that my scrapbook hadn’t been updated since 2012 (how did five years go by so quickly anyhow?!). And there were the piano books — Royal Conservatory books t

Amy Jane ~ the peace you leave with me is not peace at all it is a tiny, raging sun that burns me alive. the love you are is not love: it sheds the blood of innocents and swallows me whole the salvation you offer is not salvation at all it is a cowed and worthless soul damned at your feet i was raised to believe in a thankless god to offer alms in place of joy the peace you gave to me was my undoing, for it clothed terror in a sweet lie the peace that I have now in fullest weight is not imbued with horrible uniqueness But it. is. real. And better than A thousand sugared myths.

By Carl S ~ N o, you have not mistakenly accessed a porn or medical site. You're on the right site. We're here to deal with the penis as it applies to religion. The spokesmen for major religions have pushed their rules about sexual behavior on humankind for centuries, with wretched excess. They are obsessed with sexuality. And the penis has a lot to do with this. You wouldn't think so, because they're always projecting the “spiritual” at the public; that's a facade of denial to themselves as well as their unaware audiences. Their problem and the problems they cause others, are based on a simple fact of nature: Male penises involuntarily react to the presence of desirable women (or for some, men, but this author will focus on heterosexual relationships), with the beginning of erections. Looking at a nude or semi-nude female can have the same effect. Religions have turned this simple reaction into a moral battleground. One Saudi cleric “explained why their wome

By Karen Garst ~ “Over the course of centuries, myths are invented, told, and then start to travel as they make the rounds, they are borrowed, reshaped and retold – often to fit a very local agenda.” [1] F or most people who believe in a god, a myth is what someone else believes while religion is what they believe. They further use the terms pagan and heathen to signify people who believe in myths. But there can be no doubt that the quote listed above is accurate. From its very origins, Christianity borrowed from the surrounding myths that it encountered. When Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire in 381 CE, it started to spread outward more rapidly in the centuries that followed. Each of the cultures that Christianity encountered had their own gods, beliefs, symbols, celebrations on specific dates, and other rituals. The choice Christianity had to make was to ignore them, appropriate them in their entirety, or modify them to suit its needs. Christianity

By NoRedemtionHere ~ T 'm 61, not too well educated (accumulative education of an 8th grader, maybe), been to prison on multiple occasions, struggled with drug addiction most of my adult life, deal with mental health issues (PTSD, Bi-polar and General Anti-Social Disorder) and have generally been an abysmal failure at "normal" life. During most of the time dealing with all of this I have sought out this "loving Father and Son" both for healing and redemption and have found or received neither. What I have found is a community of people, Christians, that for the most part lack the qualities ascribed to them by the Bible, i.e. forgiving, inclusive and loving. My latest experience with a ministry where I attended a 12 step program straddled me with guilt over my "attitude" about their assertion that God only helps those who help themselves, something I questioned the Biblical accuracy of. I state all of the above to state this; what I have found by

By Carl S ~ M aybe you've had my experience. I attended elementary school, and one day the teacher found a note calling him some kind of a pig. Since nobody (naturally) owned up to writing it, the class was told to stay after class, to ferret out the writer. Now, the strange thing was: I personally felt guilty for that note, even though I knew nothing about it; so guilty that, right after class, I went straight home, a mile's walk away. My mother got a phone call asking where I was. She told them I was home and asked why they called. Now, we've all heard the saying, “If you're innocent, you have nothing to be afraid of,” but I didn't believe it then and I don't believe it now. She brought out that adage. Now, most parents would send the child back to face the music. Not my mom. She asked, “Did you write it?” I told her. “No, and I'm not going back.” She believed me and backed me up. Later on, the perpetrator confessed. But 70 years later, I still wonder:

By John Draper ~ B elievers seem awfully sure God is Love. How do they know that? They cite a lot of Bible verses. They say God is like the father in the story of the prodigal son, for example, who runs out to embrace his wayward and foolish son. But can they build a case for “God is Love” without using a single Bible verse? All they have to go on is “general revelation,” that is, the universe, nature—the place that’s full of diseases and injustices, the place where, thanks to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, everything continually trends toward entropy and, of consequence, we all grow more unsightly with each passing year. Does general revelation paint a picture of a God who thinks of us as His treasured possession? If you’re honest, you have to say it’s a mixed bag. There are beautiful sunrises—but sunshine is carcinogenic. Yes, there are plenty of delicious fruits to pick from the limb and push into your pie hole. And, yes, sex, is fun. But, then again, there are all thos

By Carl S ~ T hose blessed by being raised in Christian communities don't have to go through the trouble of choosing a faith. The “faith of our fathers” (and mothers) has been handed down to them, surviving tyrannies and persecuting monarchies, though we don't talk about how the faith supported those tyrants and monarchs. This “one true” religion has adapted. It's a blessing God has denied to Islam. The most popular word for Christians is “blessed.” They will say, “Bless you” whether you're up or down; even when they believe you're damned to perdition. They'll tell each other if you have a peaceful death, that's a “bless-ed” one, but if it's obvious your death will be in agony, then assuredly you will be “all the more blessed in heaven.” If you're a true believer, you have an automatic insurance plan to eternal life – provided you keep up the payments. Christians consider themselves blessed because they've been “saved, chosen, and given ac

By Sarah Davis ~ "I never really even believed in Jesus." T hese are the words I said to my father a few months after I told my immediate family I didn’t believe in the “God of the Bible” or in Jesus as god (but before I identified as Atheist). I was desperately trying to somehow get my father to come to grips with the reality of my lack of belief in a way that would cause him the least amount of pain. However, recently, in working on creating content and coming up with ideas for content for this blog, I have been thinking about how wrong I was in saying that I never really believed. I fell prey to the clever and devious trap I now know as the “No True Scotsman Fallacy.” (More on that in a later post). I was still caught in the thinking of Christianity, or, in the words of one of the lovely people who helped me through my deconversion transition over at Ex-Christian.net, “the furniture of your mind is still quite coloured by the theology.” Essentially, I believed

By Carlin Ross ~ A s women, I think it's easy to forget our journey. Careers, motherhood, and the constant barrage of life duties and expectations keep you locked down in the present. Sometimes you need to spend an hour or two answering questions about your life story to remember. I grew up in a Christian Fundamentalist home with no TV, no formal schooling, just round the clock shame and guilt. You were sinful from the moment you were born and needed to repent. All the natural things that kids do were demonized — cardinal sins — and all the things that happen when women are the second sex and girls are property happened to me. Most importantly, I was responsible for male lust. I would be a wife and mother, nothing more. Education wouldn't be wasted on me. One of the pastors remarked that god must have made a mistake because my brother struggled with dyslexia while I aced every test with ease. My brother studied German. I studied shorthand for my future job in the pink g