By Carl S ~ M y beloved brought up something about Einstein after we’d watched the ten part TV series, “Genius.” She said, “He wasn't a very nice man. He neglected his family, especially his wife. And yet he found time to have sex with other women.” I pointed out he was human, that even psychopaths and the mentally-impaired have sex-drives. I mentioned a conversation I once had with her pastor's wife. “I have this book,” I said, “about medical pioneers whose work saved millions of lives. But they were not the kinds of people you'd want to know.” The pastor's wife was disappointed. Looks like she didn't notice her own people-saving Jesus wasn’t a pleasant individual, either. Maybe Einstein's obsession with finding solutions for the deepest questions humans have always asked was connected with his sexuality and his attraction to intellectual women. (Physics was his lifelong mistress.) Maybe he had no choice but to be uniquely himself; if he was different, he...

By Ben Love ~ I want to address an issue that seems to be cropping up now and then in my ongoing dialogues with Christians. It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes I will encounter those Christians who use the atrocities committed in 1930s and 1940s by Nazi Germany  as evidence that an atheist government, devoid of belief in God , will run wildly evil and will, well…  fuck  everything up for everyone. The record on this matter, however, might not be as clear as these Christians want it to be. Indeed, any brief student of Nazi Germany’s history can, without much effort, discover several pieces of evidence that not only connect both the Lutheran Protestant Church and the Roman Catholic Church  to the doings of Hitler ’s Third Reich, but that also indicate indisputably that Adolf Hitler  believed that the  Christian  God specifically was on his side and that he, Hitler , was actually doing the work of this God. Consider the foll...

By ObstacleChick ~ I was raised in a Southern Baptist family where my grandfather was a deacon (at one time chairman of the deacons) and my grandmother was a Sunday school teacher and Women's Missionary Union teacher. I'm not entirely sure what my grandfather's feelings were about the church, but he was very active and loved the people. He did a lot of pro bono work in the community as well, fixing the air conditioners, freezers, refrigerators, etc., of people who couldn't afford to call a technician. My grandmother LOVED learning and studying, and her subject of choice became the Bible. She had a small library of Bible history books, concordances, archaeology books, etc., and she spent a couple of hours each day studying those books and putting together lessons. She loved teaching and studying, anonymously gave money to community members in need, and always felt like she wasn't good enough morally/spiritually/etc. as her religion proscribed. In another time an...

By Chelsea Blinston ~ I started by saying my pseudonym is a girl's name, and yes, I can associate with things more attributed to the opposite gender because I'm free to do so and also curious about gender. But I identify as male, currently. I'm in my middle 20s and just started going to college 30 minutes outside of my original town where I live now. So, deal with this intro, because I wanted to get that explanation about my pseudonym out of the way. For the last 10 years, my anxieties, fears, and negativity kept getting worse, and being brought up Catholic, I incidentally grew colder to God along my path. I do not question the existence of God/gods, but all I can argue is that I don't think he's really perfect, or maybe even malevolent sometimes. I agree with some points on another guy who posted his story here about hating gods/God. I really have anxiety about dealing with the end of the world or very large-scale catastrophe on that sort of level in my life...

By Carl S. ~ C lear the fog, part the curtain. What's going on? Mention an immoral act of a Christian, and you'll get, “He wasn't a real Christian.” The argument is, if that person really believed, he wouldn't have done it. This leaves a lot of examples of Christian behavior dangling. Real Christian denials of, and wars against, human rights, are ongoing. Aren't “virtuous and justified” crimes committed by real Christians? (Should Christians appalled by Christian behavior re-define themselves as Jesusites?) When Protestants killed Catholics and vice versa, which were the real Christians? Did real Christians save the Jewish people or did real Christians kill them? Are Christians of the Western churches, or Eastern Orthodox Christians, the real ones? After all, don't they disagree on what each maintains are soul-life and soul-death-deciding matters of faith? Which are real Christians, the executioners or the heretics they execute? Is a real Christian a peac...

By Anushka ~ H ello. I am originally from India. I grew up in a Gulf country. I came to England when I was 16. Now I am 28. I was a Christian all my life. My church in England taught me that according to the Bible God will guide you, tell you what is going to happen in the future and offer you protection from physical harm. All you have to do is read the bible verses according to your need and that need will be fulfilled. Even Joyce Meyer teaches this. I can confirm that there are bible verses according to all such needs. I have read them a lot of times every day. Okay, no one harmed me physically. But, God did not guide me nor did he warn me about the future. You have no idea how much Bible I read everyday. The more I went to church, the more I listened to Joyce Meyer, the more I read the bible, the more I talked to my crazy Christian friend over the phone about God and my choices, the more messed up I became. I didn't go into drugs or alcohol or sex. But, I felt sorry for t...

By John Draper ~ B ack when I was a Christian, it was important to me to always have the Word of God close at hand. So I would keep a “pocket Bible” on my person. No telling when a well-formed female would cross your path, exciting your animal instincts. Funny thing—those pocket Bibles were never the full Bible. They were just the New Testament and the Psalms. Why is that? Most Christians have learned to ignore most of the Bible—that is, the Old Testament. It’s just so bloody and harsh—over the top. Not to mention hokey and boring. Sure, they pay it lip service. For example, they may tell themselves that the Old Testament focuses on the justice of God as opposed to the love of God. (Somebody had to teach those sinners a lesson.) But not even fundamentalists try to live by the Old Testament, not really. Maybe a verse here and there that they can use to bolster some point about Jesus but, for the most part, they live to the east of Malachi. Check out believers’ refrigerator mag...

By Carl S. ~ T he majority of those raised to be believers in Christianity assume what they are taught was originally and universally accepted to be truth, without opposition. Not so. Also, because of their placement in the Christian bible, most believers assume the gospels were written before the epistles of St. Paul. Also, not true. This is important to know, as epistles influenced the “Gospel of John,” for instance. Ask any Christian, “Who wrote the gospels?” and you'll hear, “Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.” Truth is, as any credible biblical scholar will admit, no one knows; those names are merely titles. We might wonder how evangelicals, trying to alter or destroy our laws, telling us how to live our lives, can refer to “revealed truths,” while remaining ignorant about the origins of them. How many of them know their St. Paul created the religion they preach? Consider the Council of Nicaea: Christian or not, everyone seems to be ignorant when it comes to the Council of N...

By Tania ~ R ecently I received an email/sermon from a somewhat-young-to-middle-aged person in my circle of friends and family members. The email arrived in my inbox not completely out-of-the-blue, because we’d talked briefly on the phone about a week before and we generally do keep in contact somewhat regularly. But the intensity of the message was a surprise to me. I read it a few times, my thoughts ranging from, “This is a joke! Right? This must be a joke!” to “Oh, wow, so this is the mindframe with which this person is operating,” to “It seems that my decision, months ago, to back away from this relationship still seems to the best decision for now.” The writer of the email started off strong, asking if I still have certain virtues in my life. The writer knows that I used to be a Christian, and now I am not. (During the past several years, the writer has brushed aside my efforts to explain my reasons for leaving religion.) He/she then mentioned that he/she thinks I am a good ...

By Jim B ~ F rom the mid 50s to the early 60s my education was in Catholic seminary environs. Giant stepping forward in time over some very slow progress, to Easter Sunday, 1982, the UU minister at the church I went to that day titled her talk, “The Myth of the Resurrection”. I don’t remember any of the content of her talk, probably because it was still such a shock to my emotional being at the time, no matter how intellectually I was was in the process of coming to the same conclusion about the concept. Since that time, the emotional shock from the idea of that talk’s title has diminished quite a bit, and the intellectual conviction of its truth has moved ahead accordingly, probably by inverse correlation. I eventually joined that congregation ten years later, beginning my reveling in a community where the word “god” was mostly absent (and the word “sin” was totally absent). The minister at that time brought Secular Humanism to my attention. I put that on the back burner, ...

By glebealyth ~ W hatever your take on Brexit. Whether you approve of the recent UK election results. One recent statistic shows younger people in Britain voting with their feet as far as religion is concerned. The latest British Social Attitudes Survey's extended data on religion or belief is showing that 71% of 18-24 year olds in Britain are non-religious. The overall figures tell us that 53% of the British population is non-religious, rising to 58% in Scotland. Only the over-65s show a majority as religious. Britain's national, established church, the Church of England, now has more pupils in its state schools, who are forced to pray every weekday, than it has worshipping in its churches every Sunday. Humanists UK discussed these "revelations" on Sky TV recently, on Sky News . There is hope for our nation that we will, at least in a generation or two, see the end of the established church and a stop to the privileged position of the 26 bishops in our u...

By Dontknow ~ F irst of all, I do not know what to believe. But here's my story. I didn't grow up in a Christian home per se. I remember going to vacation bible school and to church at times but not all the time. I do remember both parents being baptized (they were in their 30's). What I mostly remember about my childhood was the two of the fighting, verbal abuse and physical abuse by both of them. I remember getting spankings as a child. I have one sister who I despise she is 47 yo and I am 45 yo. Okay, now getting to some of my point. Wouldn't a loving, caring, all-knowing God know that as a child I didn't need to see or hear my parents fighting? Wouldn't God know I hated seeing and hearing that shit. It was scary and guess what because of them and yes, I blame them I picked up some of their bad habits. Monkey see-Monkey do. So fast forward, for the most part I believe I turned away from evil things (smoking, drinking, worshiping Satan, etc)...