By Valerie Tarico ~ R ecently a pamphlet designed for Christian children made its way around Facebook. It warned God’s little lambs to avoid grumpy sad people called “atheists.” The pamphlet, as it turns out, was satire , but it pokes fun at some real stereotypes about atheists. A private school curriculum called Accelerated Christian Education, which claims placement in 6000 schools, includes cartoons in which the atheist characters are rude, mean and drunk; and bad things happen to them. Stereotypes like these get echoed sometimes even in Christian books and lectures that are targeted at adults. I once attended a successful megachurch on the Sunday before Easter. The pastor wanted his audience to be clear that the resurrection of Jesus wasn’t merely some spiritual metaphor. “If the resurrection didn’t literally happen,” he shouted, “there is no reason for us to be here! If the resurrection didn’t literally happen—there are parties to be had! There are women to be had! There ar...

By NYdiva ~ S ometimes the hardest thing about being an African American businesswoman is keeping my mouth shut when religious Black folks drag religion into the public square . Unlike my outburst in my last story ( I just couldn’t take it anymore ), I constantly fight the urge to speak out. “Is this a business meeting or a prayer meeting?” Or “I thought this meeting was about real estate?” Having been religious once, I understand how much faith influences a believer’s worldview. But being bombarded with faith talk at Black business meetings all the time is annoying. More often than not, a minister is asked to pray and soon people are shouting, waving and shaking as if they were at a revival meeting . I once sat through a business meeting where a woman told the story about how she was engaged, but her fiancé had left her for another woman. She was heartbroken for years. But on the news, she just heard that her former fiancé had killed his wife, their two preschool children and...

By Paub ~ D eadbeat! That's what comes to mind when I remember the countless times that I've knelt down to pray to my once everlasting father. See.., my father was powerful, he was so damn powerful that it confuses the mind. He was also amazing, his greatness was beyond compare. How about his knowledge? - it was unsearchable. The problem is that his knowledge was waaaay to high which is not really applicable to my situation. His power was soooo intense, in fact I've never really experienced it because I might perish if he uses it. He was sooo amazing that he turns everything that life throws at me (even bad ones like being unemployed) into something for my benefit. Yet when I asked, it was not given.... when I fearfully asked, it still was not given. Why would the most powerful being, someone, who could create the world from " ex nihilo " not give me what I asked? Compared to sacrificing "his one and only son for us", what I asked of him would tr...

By Luke ~ I believe I was seven or eight years old when I was old enough to understand, was when I made Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior. That he would come into my heart, and live with me forever. I am almost 20, and I am now an Ex-Christain. I was a praying, tongue-talking, witnessing, servant of the most high God. I no longer call myself that. It was not a sudden choice. It was a long transformation. Choices were involved, but they took a long time for me to decide. Ultimately, letting go was very tough. I can now see why, I now see why it took so long, and I now realize a few of the reasons why it was so hard when at the time I did not know why. To those who are considering leaving Christianity behind, I may not be able to make your decision any easier, but I can help you see why it can be tough. Here a few reason why it was tough for me. I believed because it was all I was taught. When I was given these spiritual instructions, of which those around me (family, friends) were ...

By Carl S ~ M ary Shelley's novel, “Frankenstein,” is about Dr. Frankenstein and the man he created, and is well known. It‘s about a scientist bringing life into a corpse assembled from various body parts, using electrical forces. It is also a precautionary tale, since the creation becomes a monster, turns on his creator, kills innocent people, and must be destroyed. Perhaps the story is the origin of the “mad scientist” stereotype so beloved of, and exploited by, fiction writers and movie makers, which fed paranoia about the power of science to begin with. This story has been used as a warning for scientists not to “play God.” (Although it may be argued that the creator-god of the bible is insane.) Let us consider Dr. Frankenstein’s method as a reflection of theologies. Religions construct their bodies of evidence from the salvaged body parts of dead religions. As EChamberlainMD stated , “Judaism borrowed from, modified and adopted the various religions it encountered in the...

By Beinghuman ~ O ver the past couple of years, I have gone from being a Catholic, to deism, to atheist. All of us have thought of this question before. How do I tell my parents or family about this? Since I'm in college, I don't have to go to church. I'm free to make my own decisions. When I go back home, I still go to church with my family. The thing is, I can't stand going. I can't stand praying to something I don't believe in. I can't stand believing in the lies of the Catholic Church. I can't stand it when priests bash secular culture, because we don't have the same beliefs as they do. I'm not just not sure how my family is going to react. My family is pretty conservative, so there could be some issues. However, they aren't super fundies, so it could be all right. I have a feeling that they would be really disappointed about my lack of faith. My sisters probably wouldn't care. They're not that religious in the...

By Max T. Furr ~ I n 2004, the World Council of Churches (WCC) established the International Day of Prayer for Peace . Each year since, on the 21st day of September, the WCC issues a call for all people of faith to lift their voices to Heaven in a tsunami of supplication for peace. This day of mass prayer coincides with the United Nation's annual International Day of Peace established in 2002 to encourage all the world's combatants to stand down, at least for one day. Every year since the first Peace Bell tolled in Jisenji-no-hana, Japan in 1947 in prayerful remembrance of the horror wrought by the Atomic Bomb, Peace Bells peal and citizens pray in many countries on various days of national commemoration. The United Nations Peace Bell, gifted by Japan in 1954, rings out every year on Earth Day, its bell-cord blessed and presented to the U.N. by Shinto priests in 1990. Today, one can find on the Internet thousands of sites offering prayers for peace from individuals, t...

By Beinghuman ~ A fter doing a lot of research on Christianity, I still wonder how I ever believed in it. I've been an atheist for about a year. Now, I can look back and see through the control religion had on me. I used to think that religions became popular because they truly cared for their followers. Now, I know that religions become popular because they have the most control over their followers. They use several brainwashing techniques to keep their flock in line. I'm sure that many religious people have doubts about their religion, but their faith blocks them from questioning it. I remember that there were certain points where I seriously questioned the Catholic faith , but I was trapped by delusion. Here are some of the things I've noticed about how religion controls their followers. Parents: Before we are even born we have no choice but to follow our parent's religion. Parents bring us up before we can even reason, and force us to follow their ...

By WizenedSage (Galen Rose) ~ N o, that is not a statement of my belief. That is the title of a 2004 book by Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek that I have been reading. What’s different about this book is that its authors claim to believe that the available evidence proves there’s a god. They claim that because atheists are not following the trail of evidence in their insistence on a godless universe, then those atheists are making a leap of faith. Of course, these authors’ evidence for their god falls woefully short of proof. Despite their numerous degrees, these guys are by no means deep thinkers. (Although I may be getting this impression simply because they are not honest in what they say.) For example, they make this naïve statement (p.130), “The atheists/Darwinists/materialists believe, by faith, that our minds arose from mindless matter without intelligent intervention. We say it is by faith because it contradicts all scientific observation which demonstrates that an eff...

By Rebel With A Cause ~ I was born and raised in a middle-class Christian home. We did the typical stuff most Christians do - church on Sundays and Wednesdays, Friday night prayer meetings and bible studies. I was OK with everything until I hit my teen years. My father was a pastor, so ever since I was a kid many things including certain cartoons and video games were banned because they were considered demonic. I wasn't allowed to date anyone who wasn't a Christian because it was considered a sin against God. In my early teens my father began to instill the fear into me and my siblings that if we left the faith, we would burn in hell worse than anyone else in the world, and if I stopped going to church, several demons would attack me and make my life worse. I did what I could to ignore the fear and just tried to keep the faith and continue to live the Christian life the best I could with a smile. Things got harder for me. He later taught me how the bible says we ha...

By Ben Harmon ~ O ne of the main barriers to de-conversion from any dogmatic, narrow belief is clear: embarrassment at being wrong and not admitting it for so many years. I discovered this fact when, questioning my Dad’s narrow belief (and conspiracy theory), he was particularly stricken by my prediction that he would eventually be embarrassed at the number of decades he spent believing a narrow doctrine. A “doctrinarian” is someone who strictly adheres to a narrow doctrine, regardless of its impracticalities. Doctrinarians feel compelled to stand by a specific worldview, and reject any analysis that is contingent on another worldview, or even reject any analysis that is not explicitly part of their worldview. In the doctrinarian’s mind, if something is not in direct agreement with the claims of their ideology, it must be rejected as false (“that doesn’t make sense in my ideology, so that must be wrong!”) On some evenings when my Dad and I are around one another, he has an...