By Herb ~ I haven't written to this site in some time, but I decided to write now because of a problem that just cropped up. My father was a Seventh Day Adventist and my mother was from a Pentecostal type church known as The Church of First Born . Both churches taught a literal interpretation of the Bible. We were to follow whatever the Bible said no matter how ridiculous or senseless it was. To them, the Bible was just a bunch of rules to follow. Because of this approach to following the Bible and obsessive compulsive disorder , I developed a bad case of scrupulosity . I was always worried about what was right and what was wrong and whether or not I had done the right thing to be saved. When I was 26, there was a person at work who was an agnostic. Knowing him and conversations with him about religion and the list of books he recommended for me to read gave me the courage to give up religion. But I still have OCD, so now my religious obsessions have taken a differ...

By Herb ~ W henever people find out that I'm an atheist, they usually come up with a miraculous anecdote to try to convince me of the reality of Christianity. They often take the form of miraculous cancer cures. I heard one such anecdote today from a coworker. He said his aunt had cancer. Radiation treatment was given to her. After so much time, it was determined that an operation was needed. A cat scan showed a black spot in her muscle tissue. After operating, it was found that there was bone deterioration near where the black spot had shown up on the cat scan, but there was no tumor , not even any scar tissue where a tumor had been. The coworker attributed this as a miracle cure brought about by the family's prayers. Of course, as in most of these cancer miracle cure anecdotes, the doctor was puzzled. I'm not a medical expert by any means, but I believe that maybe the radiation treatments had cured the patient. I believe that all patients have varying...

By Herb -- I gave up Christianity back in 1973. Christianity always bothered me because of all the silly rules and regulations. I was overly scrupulous about it. Image by doug88888 via Flickr The means of my escape from Christianity was becoming aquainted with a well-read agnostic whom I met at work. He was my mento out of that monstrous religion. He introduced me to lots of books including books by Bertrand Russell and David Hume which sent me on my way to freedom. But all has not been well with me over the years. I still worry about miraculous anecdotes that I read and hear. I worry that maybe there's something to them. I also worry about coincidences that I come across. About 15 years ago, I was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder . It's what caused my scrupulosity and is what causes my current worrying about religion. A worry that is particularly bothering me now is this: In 1947, Israel was granted some of their old homeland back by the U...