By TDB ~ I am an ex-Methodist. I am 25-year-old autistic atheist who also questions his sexuality while at the same time am totally grossed out by sex. I have been labeled a "special snowflake social justice warrior" for being who I am...and I think it's killing me. I have thought about suicide for the longest time now and I may have written something here once before that was probably incredibly inappropriate. It all came from seething rage over the Orlando massacre as well the notion that my rights as a human being with the ability to think an act for himself should be up for debate. I was born and raised in the Deep South, Georgia to be exact. I am trying my damnedest to not conform to any ideology, but all it has done has given me more scorn than ever before. I think that learning to come to grips with the truth that me and my kind are cancer for valuing feelings more than facts, or whatever the apparent current argument is. I have been frequently called a

By Ben Love ~ J esus is a character known just as much for what he said as what he did. And he said some pretty interesting things. Some of it, I must admit, is pretty good, though none of it was original to him (indeed, the Buddha said nearly all of the same things in a different way 500 years before Jesus was even a thought). Some of it, however, is patently ridiculous. That children, for instance, needed to leave parents and husbands needed to leave wives in order to live the kind of life God wants for them. Or that no one should work to obtain food and provisions. But for me, there is one thing he said that resonates as possibly the stupidest, most absurd utterance of all. It is found in Matthew, chapter 18, verse 3: “And he said: ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’” The Christians will argue that this is among the sagest wisdom in the New Testament. “The faith of a child,” they will say, “is a

By Carl S ~ A s you stand in the checkout line scanning the tabloid headlines, consider those of ancient Rome. You're already familiar with tabloid “fake news and alternative facts” mixed together with actual happenings, places, celebrities, and ordinary people with “extraordinary” experiences. It should come as no surprise to you embellishments, rumors, and outright falsehoods abound. Tabloids flourish on indifference to truth. You can't find this crap anywhere else. It catches our attention, guarantees sales. Picture yourself in ancient times waiting in line at your local agora, or open marketplace, dealing with the “tabloids” of those times. (Of course they weren't published; no printing press.) They were rumors and stories, scriptures, some becoming “tradition,” their main appeal to the same audiences as today. Their “reporters” were “tall story tellers,” some boldly passing themselves off then, like now, as prophets, seers, authorities of the gods. In other words

By Paul A ~ I grew up in an Evangelical-Pentecostal family in the Netherlands. I am Dutch and English is my second language. I was born with a harelip. My parents felt bad about this and thought it might been because they had sinned. They have been searching for comfort and an answer in their faith. They found John 9 as an answer: “And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.” So all my childhood I have been told this story and in a way it made me feel special. God gave me a harelip and was going to do something special with it, I was wondering what that would be. My parents were very active in the church and later on I was too. I was baptized in water and later on in the holy spirit too, spoke in tongues and was ever so happ

From Rodney M ~ I really don't need to transcribe volumes of some diatribe to prove my worthiness to be read. After all, I'm writing to a bunch of moron's who claim they can think but rarely do so beyond their own "narrow self interests" or suicidal group-think causes. Guess what, life sucks for most of us. It sucks to a large part because we live in a world of competition and that competition is not fair. It's not only unfair it's often deadly to the naïve and innocent. Now, you can always blame some dogma for the problems in the world but even your dogma isn't a unifying one. As a matter of fact I can sum up the calloused ExC-Net dogma in a few sentences: I am rational. Do what thy wilt, shall be the whole of the law. Welcome to the jungle. You can take anything you want but you better not take it from me. Repeat Mantra. The main problem I have with this website is that you never offer any viable alternatives. You're like the Geor

By Astreja O ne thing I've noticed about Christians proselytizing online is that rather a lot of them try to come across as Scientists, with a capital S.  In this context, one gets to hear all sorts of twisted misinterpretations of physics and biology.  Not one of them seems to understand what the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics actually is, but it crops up an awful lot.  Evolution deniers are legion.   Chemistry pops up once in a while too, but usually only when a Young Earth Creationist is whining about Carbon 14  dating. Today, though, I specifically want to talk about Christian Mathematics, and red-pencil a few key equations. First, there's the puzzle of the Trinity, wherein 1 + 1 + 1 = 1.   One does not need a calculator or more than a grade 6 education to determine that the correct equation is this: ⅓ + ⅓ + ⅓ = 1 In other words, Jesus, Yahweh, and the Holy Ghost only count for one-third of a god each, and with Jesus temporarily out of the picture between Good Frida

Article from The Guardian, submitted by Jennifer ~ Religious belief widely viewed as safeguard against ‘grossly immoral conduct’, according to new research A theists are more easily suspected of evil deeds than Christians, Muslims, Hindus or Buddhists – even by fellow atheists, according to the authors of a new study. The finding suggests that in an increasingly secular world, many – including some atheists – still hold the view that people will do bad things unless they fear punishment from all-seeing gods. The results of the study “show that across the world, religious belief is intuitively viewed as a necessary safeguard against the temptations of grossly immoral conduct,” an international team wrote in the journal Nature Human Behaviour. It revealed that “atheists are broadly perceived as potentially morally depraved and dangerous”. Read the entire article here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/07/anti-atheist-prejudice-secularity Please return to this site

By Carl S ~ A phrase we don't hear very often anymore is usually applied to rulers and surgeons: “Playing God.” It might be revived to explain President Trump. Playing God can be described as: few explanations, no apologies, no accountability, and above the laws of man. So far, “playing God” is working for him. And it might explain why 81% of evangelicals voted for him. He sounds familiar to them. Now that I have your attention... here's a question for a true believer: Can you tell me if there was ever a time when everyone in the world was bad? When I asked one believer, her answer was “No.” Thinking about that many years ago, I realized just how stupid and psychopathically anti-human the Noah/great flood story is. Then national 4th of July fireworks display, broadcast live on public television, was as ever, spectacular. The final, longest-lasting barrage was accompanied by an orchestra playing “God Bless America,” although we can be sure the audience had its mixtur

By Carl S ~ “What is easy and obvious is never valued. And even what is in itself difficult, if we come to the knowledge of it without difficulty, and without any stretch of thought, or judgement, is but little regarded.” -- David Hume 1739. “The value of a thing sometimes lies not in what one attains with it, but what one pays for it - what it costs us.” -- Nietzsche 1889 “The average man, who does not know what to do with his life, wants another one which will last forever.” -- Anatole France 1914. “Faith makes a virtue of not thinking.” -- Bill Maher 2008. W hen I was a child, my mother would talk about the “spoiled” children who “had everything given to them.” They didn't have to work for what they had, so they didn't appreciate what they had; they took it all for granted. Indeed, if you have to put out effort and sweat to get what you earn, all the more so are you li

By Mandy Jane ~ I became a Christian at the age of 7 and I remember that soon after I smashed all the china cats my grandmother I bought me for my birthday, having been told by God they were false idols. My grandmother lived a long way away but always sent me a lovely letter and china cat on my birthday. My brother phoned my lovely gran and told her I had smashed up her china cats gift, and we had a really special conversation that I now treasure. I remember she said that if she hadn't already lost her faith the smashing of those china cats would have done it for her. I remember I told he that Jesus was looking after me now and I didn't need anyone or anything else. She told me that I was a little girl who needed my parents to feed and clothe me and my school to teach me and grandparents to make me feel like I was someone special. She told me that If I thought Jesus was going to take over feeding me, then I should go sit in my bedroom and wait to see how hungry I got. S

By Sharpened Grey ~ O ften we hear tales of Christians being persecuted, ridiculed and judged for their beliefs. Standing up for those beliefs are a testament of faith and cause for high praise amongst Christian peers, but what about the non-believers? Growing up, I was in and out of churches. I believed because I was told I must believe “It is not for us to question the ways of the Lord”. “Faith means believing in what we cannot see”. A battle raged inside of my mind. I found myself struggling to suppress my doubts, lest I offend God and end up on his naughty list. I attended church faithfully. I raised my hands during worship, following the lead of my church family, even though it felt wholly unnatural to me. I suppressed my discomfort as I had suppressed my doubts. I longed to please God. I ached to lead a Godly life. I felt shame that I was too shy to spread the word to strangers, for their blood was on my hands. My failure to get over myself and say something, just s

By John Draper ~ B ack in Sunday School, whenever we’d sit down on the floor cross-legged for story time, we were quickly trained to hiss should a Pharisee assume the stage in some flannel-board biblical drama. I packed those prejudices into my rucksack and carried them with me as I embarked on my adult “walk with Christ.” It seemed obvious. I mean, the Pharisees were about “religion”— rules . Good Lord, that’s what Catholics do! For example, check this out from Leviticus 14. It’s what a leper has to go through should he want to be cleansed from his uncleanness. First the leper must bring the priest two clean birds—I said clean!—along with some cedarwood, crimson yarn, and hyssop. Then the priest sacrifices one of the birds immediately—over fresh water in a clay pot—and then dips the living bird, the cedarwood, the yarn, and the hyssop in its blood. Then the priest sprinkles blood on the leper and releases the living bird. Then, seven days hence, the leper washes his clothes

By Pedro Fortunato ~ Y esterday on Facebook, I saw a picture that ironizes the judgmental logic so present in many Christians. There was the phrase "How to get a ticket to hell" and then, those well-known not so popular commandments from the Old Testament prohibiting eating pork, working on Saturdays, etc. Well, I know it was meant to be just a joke, but anyone who knows a little theology, knows there is a theological error in this picture (the error of thinking that the laws of the Old Testament were meant to save people from hell). Anyone with a little more understanding of the Jewish culture knows that the idea of hell and heaven are not in the Old Testament as the Jewish religion did not, and does not, have a hell (the idea was developed when the Old Testament was already written and only “stuck” on Christianity). It does not take much study to comprehend that breaking the law in the Old testament did not mean eternal, but temporal punishment, as it is summed up in

By WizenedSage (Galen Rose) I n May of 2017, Gallup released the results of a poll concerning adult Americans’ Bible beliefs. The poll found that 24% of Americans were “literalists.” That is, they believe the Bible is “'the actual word of God, and is to be taken literally, word for word.” Obviously, these people are nearly beyond reach in their superstition as they routinely brush aside any and all argument and evidence that doesn’t fit the literalist stance. At the other end of the spectrum are 26% who - like most regular visitors to this site - see the Bible as “a book of fables, legends, history and moral precepts recorded by man.” In other words, it’s essentially a compendium of make-believe. In the middle then, is the remaining half of all adult Americans, a full 50%, who believe the Bible is the inspired word of God but that not all of it should be taken literally. It is this group of people that I wish I could reach with an extremely important message, taken directly

By Karen Garst ~ O ver the last several weeks, I have listened to a number of podcasts about atheism, feminism, and men’s rights. In addition, I watched the news regarding the G20 Summit and the G19 support for the Paris Climate Accords. I decided to write this post about an African goddess called Asase Yaa who was also referred to in the following poem as “Old Woman Earth” to contrast the dichotomy our culture has created between humans and the earth as well as between men and women through the worship of a male deity. Asase Yaa was the wife of a sky deity. Both were worshipped by the Ashanti people. This worship survived the slave trade of these people in the country of Jamaica. The Jamaican slave owners did not believe in converting their slaves to Christianity. This examination of an early African goddess in no way means that I want to start worshipping a goddess. I am an atheist and I do not believe in the existence of any supernatural being, male or female. However, as

By Carl S ~ W e all bring our childhood experiences baggage with us as we navigate our lives. We can spend the remainder of our lives separating the who am I really from what we were taught; those influences we accepted but now think about often. And we can run into not only obstacles, but illumination, in the process. Sometimes I find myself in a situation, quoting something my parents said pertaining to it. Secretly, I catch myself wondering why. I have to remember their experiences were interpreted differently in their days, with their information, from mine. Then I think: They would have tried to understand “where I'm coming from.” I remember my mother accepted not only my oldest brother's homosexuality without being judgmental, but his atheism after returning from the Pacific WWII battles, and then his eventual entrance into monasticism. I think my parents wouldn't be shocked at all by the revelations of pedophile priest cover-ups. Even back in the 60's my mo