Sent in by dealdoctor ~  F or those who wish a convenient online way to hear excellent detailed arguments against Christianity, its doctrines and its "Bible God" here is a link to   Annie Besant 's magnificent book  My Path To Atheism     Annie BESANT (1847 - 1933) Annie Besant in 1885.  Annie Besant was a British social reformer, and radical free thinker of the late 19th century. She married a clergyman but her increasingly anti-religious views led to a legal separation in 1873. Besant became a member of the National Secular Society which preached 'free thought' and also of the Fabian Society , the noted socialist organisation. In the 1870's Besant and Charles Bradlaugh edited the weekly National Reformer , which advocated advanced ideas for the time on topics such as trade unions, national education, women's right to vote and birth control. In 1877 Besant published 'My Path to Atheism' which surgically dissects the basic tenets of c...

dealdoctor ~ I t is interesting to me with all the news about ISIS and fundamentalist Islam that there are ex-Muslims who feel about Islam what EX-Christians feel about Christianity. I have been in the process of researching the fact that the famous black sacred stone in Mecca which the Islamic pilgrims circle in worship once per year during their pilgrimage of Hajj to Mecca is in all probably an artifact of Goddess worship once practiced in exactly that same location in pre-Islamic pagan worship days. Holy patriarchy! The good old boys club was once a good old girl hotspot. The article below points outclearly that Muslims who value the truth more than they value religious authority can and do wake upfeeling just as screwed by Islam as some here on ExChristian.net feel screwed by years wasted in Christian fundamentalism. It is kind of like looking in a mirror and seeing a reverse image that issomehow very revealing. Rock ON! http://www.islam-watch.org/Lennard/Islam-Sacre...

Sent in by DealDoctor ~ D id you see the debate between Bill Ney "the science guy" and the Crazy Creationist guru,Ken Ham which happened right at the come let us dupe you Creationist Museum in Kentucky? If there was anything that should change a fundamentalist I believe the bible from Genesis to Maps believer person it is the plain, simple statement of the facts by Bill Ney "the science guy". Then again you can't fix stupid and facts have a hard time changing the Faithful. Check out the debate in the video below and see what you think. Imagine if you were still a crazy headed dogma filled believer and that you were in the audience would what you hear change you? What happens when facts meet faith?

By dealdoctor ~ G uys, each of us has been involved in Christianity and many of us in a brand of Christian Evangelical fundamentalism that really caused many of us us feel guilty about our sexual urges and as teenagers, masturbation in particular. I think you might find interesting this YouTube video lecture by Alan Watts a one time Episcopal priest who later became deeply involved in Eastern mysticism and Zen Buddhism . Watts is an outstanding intellectual of top rank who does a sharp analysis of the relationship between Christianity, sex, and masturbation. He explores its Jewish and Greek foundations. Anyway it is always good to know the source and cause of matters this includes the way things are in Christian churches as they relate to the "let me make you feel guilty abut sex stuff" brand. Watts will entertain you and he is an educator who is very well educated. Here is the YouTube lecture. See what you think. Might this be the reason Churches think about sex...

By dealdoctor ~ M ass movements are on the rise worldwide. People are hitting the streets to call for a more humane and better world in the Arab Spring and OWS. People are even hitting the street to spit out brain dead right wing nut babble. It is hit the streets season everywhere so where are the secular humanist folks. Wait. It is about to happen. There is to be a massive "Reason Rally" March 24, 2021 in Washington DC on the national mall. This is your invitation. Yes, you. It is being billed as the largest gathering of secularists, humanists, reason lovers in the history of the world. Our numbers are growing as I am sure you know. When asked what there religion is those who mark "none" is the fastest growing segment of the American population. We are about to have a big coming out party March 24th, 2012. Bring balloons. This rally will demonstrate to the American public that the portion of the American population that does not believe in God is n...

By DealDoctor ~ L eaving behind a childhood and teenage viewpoint on religion. Religion is a fact of life on this world and everyone religious or not encounters it just like they do McDonald's hamburger stores on almost every corner of life. Life is full of religious shit and we as ExChristians must deal with it like it or not because it is just there. We need to be grown up about it. Perhaps Albert Einstein and Carl Sagan , two people most of us ExChristians who respect reason and science admire can give us a balanced "grown up" view of religion from the perspective of reason and humanism. They certainly were not Christians. Grown ups are rare. It seems that children are in total dependence upon their parents and they all but worship the big parents as "gods". It is so very bad when someone grows up with awful parents because so much of what they learn is wrong because their parents who are teaching them about reality are screwed up too. Some people ne...

By dealdoctor ~ Note: This is long do not read it if you do not wish to take the time. It deals with finding meaning in life as an atheist, humanist and agnostic. “It is a commonplace that all religion expresses itself in mythological or metaphorical terms; it says one thing and means another; it uses imagery to convey truth. But the crucial fact about religion is not that it is metaphor , but that it is unconscious metaphor. No one can express any thought without using metaphors, but this does not reduce all philosophy and science to religion, because the scientist knows that his metaphors are merely metaphors and that the truth is something other than the imagery by which it is expressed, whereas in religion the truth and the imagery are identified. To repeat the Creed as a religious act it is necessary not to add "All this I believe in a symbolical or figurative sense": to make that addition is to convert religion into philosophy. R.G. Collingwoood (1889-1943), Bri...

By dealdoctor ~ J ohn Lennon's song “ Imagine ” contains the famous lines: Imagine There’s No Heaven It’s Easy If You Try No Hell Below Us Above Us, Only Sky Image via Wikipedia Atheists simply do not believe in Heaven or Hell after this life, but rather that this life is the only life an individual will have to live. What are the implications of such a belief? Does this leave atheists in a sad hopeless situation while living this life, because once it is over it is really flat out over with no encore? Would this make us depressed people because there are no golden streets on which we will walk for eternity? Does this mean that atheists will live irresponsible, immoral lives now, because there is no hell to punish us when we die? Gosh if God does not have a carrot of heaven to inspire us and a big stick of hell to fill us with fear, what in the world would motivate us to act in kind ways toward others? Gosh it seems if we actually start to imagine that there is no hea...

By dealdoctor ~ The Book of Mormon : A Broadway Musical O k, I am not and never was a Mormon but I find the storyline of this new Broadway musical, The Book of Mormon, very interesting. It comes from Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the developers of South Park who are the ultimate kings of satire. Two young eighteen year old Mormon missionaries are not sent to Orlando where they hope to be sent but instead they go to Uganda . Hunger, war, real world hell are there right in their fresh young faces and their middle class Salt Lake City Mormonism seems to have no tools in its toolbox to deal with the real life issues these suffering people in Uganda face on a daily basis. One of these Mormon kids is more of an expert on Star Trek than on the Book of Mormon and everything gets all confused together which makes for an absurdER new religion. The combination of Mormonism and Star Trek forms a totally new religion that inspires the devotion of the new Ugandan Mormon faithful. People begi...

By dealdoctor ~ I f you are a Christian, the works of Robert Ingersoll will scare you out of your tennis shoes.  If you are an atheist or agnostic he win your admiration because this powerful orator strongly laid out our case during the golden age of atheism in America 1850-1900. Col. Robert G. Ingersoll 1833-1899 spoke thousands of times all across America to crowds of thousands and held them spellbound. http://tinyurl.com/6jh69vc Dan Barker, a former fundamentalist preacher and now the co-president of The Freedom From Religion Foundation www.ffrf.org was influenced by Ingersoll. In Dan’s book Losing Faith in Faith he writes about hearing another preacher attack Ingersoll’s book Mistakes of Moses. When Barker read that old book he saw just how powerful the thinking of Ingersoll was and why he has always been such a threat to Christianity.   Ingersoll was a heavy part of the logical arguments that moved Barker out of fundamentalism into the atheist fold. In...

By dealdoctor ~ H ave you guys seen the child and baby preachers? If you don’t think that religion brainwashes little children you need to take a look at this: What we see here with the phenomenon of child preachers did not happen overnight but the preaching behavior of these children is the result of many days, weeks and months and a few years of observation of their parents and respected church leaders. Observation was followed by the adoption of approved behavior which resulted in attention and parental praise for the child. Think rats learning tricks to earn the cheese. This child preacher stuff has got to be the Christian’s secret weapon held for the end times. Baby preachers flat out need other babies in the congregation who really get into worship. I mean these child and baby preachers do not want lukewarm baby Christians but turned on really committed “true believer” both feet into the worship experience baby Christians. I am not talking about new Christians. I...

By DealDoctor ~ O ur good friend Valerie Tarico in her excellent recent article “ Heaven, Hell and Sam Harris ”  which responds to Sam Harris’ new book Image by ganesha.isis via Flickr The Moral Landscape said: "For those of us who find traditional dogmas inadequate to answer the complex ethical questions before us, and I am one, Harris has opened a conversation we need to have." I could not agree more with smart Valerie. I would go on to say when we reject dogmatic Medieval religion and then find liberal religion to be only a tap dancing cop out which lacks the courage to just let it go and move on because of habit, tradition and social structures those facts do not mean that science has all the answers moral or otherwise for human situation. Harris is correct that it does have many. I remember in the movie " Dead Poets Society ” Robin Williams saying something to the effect that subjects like math, physics, and chemistry help us make a living but that poetr...

Suggested by dealdoctor ~ And this: http://tinyurl.com/497etsl

By dealdoctor ~ C an you learn to laugh at death or will you be so fucking serious you will mentally, physically or if powerless in mere fantasy torture and then kill anyone and everyone who reminds you of your own mortality? Image by Beverly & Pack via Flickr BIG IMPORTANT WARNING: Fundamentalist Christians and Fundamentalist Atheists the material below might fundamentally fuck with your fundamentals. And in addition to that scare the poop out of you. Don’t, I repeat don’t, open this Pandora’s box of examining the phenomenon of people who giggle at funerals unless you want to see how things really pan out my doras. In plain English, this material is downright scary, spooky, Holyweeny (sacred hot dog), celestial carnival crap that can mess with your mind. Beware, and in addition, WOE , to those, who choose to read this material because it might break your essential “serious button”. As you know people with a damaged “serious button” have been known to take out their aggressi...

By DealDoctor ~ W ell the facts are in and the long awaited decision has been made by Rome. Not to be outdone by her son Jesus’s visit to North America to impress Later Day Saints, the Virgin Mary did indeed make a visit to Wisconsin herself. The New York Times has the full article (click here ). Religious tourism is sure to increase in Champion, WI so the faithful can catch all the Mary spiritual power to be found there now. The Catholic hierarchy has pronounced it a fact now although it happened 151 years ago. Some might say their response was slow but then again the word slow does have more than one meaning. On a side note the Wisconsin Bureau of Tourism is out of their mind happy and think this could mean more jobs in the state for all kinds of holy relic vendors. Jobs are hard to come by these days as you know. The Times article says, “In 1859, the year after Mary is said to have appeared in Lourdes, a Belgian immigrant here named Adele Brise said she was visited th...

Sent in by dealdoctor -- A theist biologist Richard Dawkins introduced philosopher Daniel Dennett at the British Humanist Society for a lecture on the subject of the origin and evolution of religion . If you have ever wondered about these things: How and why did religion got started in the first place? What has kept some religions going for thousands of years while other religions have gone extinct ? Why have the religions have undergone so much change since their early days? What are the various possible changes in the role of religion in the future of the world?

By dealdoctor -- P ragmatism, which is certainly the prevailing viewpoint in America, concerns itself with what work and furthermore with what will work right now. In such a culture history becomes less and less meaningful. As atheists, agnostics and humanists in this same culture we might also see little value in history and thus cut ourselves off from a rich foundation of atheistic thought. That might not be such a good thing because being mature and having a history seem to be intertwined. If you are familiar with Jennifer Michael Hecht will probably agree she has done a great job of giving the atheist community a sense of its own history. Perhaps you would like you to go to YouTube and do a search for: Jennifer Michael Hecht: Doubt Hampshire College . The series contains 8 short 6-10 minute videos of her guest lecture there. Or just try this http://tinyurl.com/2g78ytl If you would like to start with a reading try this: Jennifer Michael Hecht - ‘My atheist paradise — l...