By Travib ~ I spent the majority of my childhood in the ropes of religion, but my doubts began at a very early age, around 15 or so - but it all came full blown five years ago, exactly one year after my best friend passed away after his second battle with cancer . The doubts began as passing thoughts, with how our military gets away with killing so many people during wars, even though the bible states that we are not supposed to kill. Add in that the science classes through the years began to make better sense with actual proof seen through the lens of a telescope into the night sky, along with several lingering nagging questions about how my family, the vast majority of which are hard-core Christians, can have so much infighting when we are supposed to love each other. After reading a particular bible verse however, it all made sense: The one proclaiming that unless you hate (not dislike), but hate everything, including life itself, you cannot be a disciple of Christ . I am sup...

By Castiel233 ~ R easons for becoming a Christian: 1: The Bible was written centuries apart by numerous authors, yet still broadly tells a coherent narrative. 2: Although some biblical stories appear far fetched to modern readers, they are generally possible, particularly for a god who can create the universe. 3: The threat of Hell is an awful large and permanent risk to take 4: Some modern miracles Such as the Dancing of the Sun, which was predicted in advance by three peasant children and witnessed by thousands in 1917 are very hard (for me at least) to explain. Reasons against becoming a Christian: 1: Prayer doesn’t appear to work beyond what we would expect from statistical chance. 2: Millions live and die without ever hearing the gospel and they are perfectly happy 3: The universe seems completely hostile to Human Life 4: Free will and an all seeing and knowing god appears to be incompatible 5: Mental illness and brain damage seems to destroy the idea that...

By Stillunsure ~ Church… the Taco Bell of hungry people. T he larger the gap is between your expectations and your reality, the larger the seedbed is for bitterness and resentment. So, if you can't change your reality (drugs work at that temporarily…) then change your expectations. ...change my expectations...?,…you mean the ones that Jesus told me to expect...? You mean all the expectations Christianity said you could rely on because God doesn't lie? Like - ask and you shall receive? Like, those that put their trust in him shall never be disappointed (ashamed) Romans 10:11...? Are you talking those expectations? Because well then...it appears the bible is a made up book of random shit and real life proves it's nothing but bullocks (those are balls)… Or, God can't seem to do two things...override man's free will or do miracles when people don’t believe he can. (Mathew 13:58) “yeah, so much for sovereignty, looks like Simon Cowell ’s grandfather was ...

Jo Parker- no more shame! ~ T here are many questions about god I have been asking since I was a child. I have yet to find any acceptable answers to these questions. There are many problems with the christian concept of god. If god can do anything, can he be bad? If he can’t be bad, he is limited and not all-powerful. If he can be bad, we can not trust him. What is Free Will? Biblical Free will is not “free”. If someone holds a gun to your head, but tells you that you are free to go, do you really feel free in that choice? What is the biblical definition of unconditional love? Telling someone to love you “or else” is not unconditional love. It is, in fact, the very definition of conditional love. Threatening someone with eternal torture if they will not stay with you and worship you is maniacal and abusive. If we study the bible, how can we walk away from it trusting god? We know from Genesis that god’s word cannot be trusted. God breaks promises from the start. Remember that he ...

By Valerie Tarico ~ I n past summers, Child Evangelism Fellowship has targeted children in Boston, Denver, Chicago, Little Rock, Salt Lake City, and the Twin Cities for conversion to their brand of biblical fundamentalism. This summer they chose Portland, Oregon. It may have been a mistake. Some child advocates argue that proselytizing children for religious conversion is immoral. By contrast, Child Evangelism Fellowship boldly proclaims what they see as a God-given mission: Child Evangelism Fellowship® is a Bible-centered worldwide organization composed of born-again believers whose purpose is to evangelize boys and girls with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and to establish (disciple) them in the Word of God and in a local church for Christian living. One of their key tools is an after-school program called the Good News Club, which takes place in public grade schools across the country. Good News Clubs mix snacks, games, art projects and stories with upbeat moral le...

By Carl S ~ S ometime in life, if you have believing parents, it begins. “God made you to serve him and to be happy with him in heaven.” You're expected to accept this as fact, along with the verifiable facts you learn, such as how to read, use numbers, and make a sandwich. Sometime later, if you're thinking, you realize that your parents actually made you; and if you think further, they didn't actually create “you” because they couldn't know what “you” would be, intentionally or not on their part. In fact, come to think of it, they merely passed on their genes, only re-creating another human. What's the purpose of sex? Does that question even enter your head when you’re diving head-first into it? The fools will preach that the reason is conception; but that's like saying the purpose of eating is to sustain the body. In both cases, ignorance ignores reality in dogmatic assertions. Lovemaking and intimacy aren‘t “entered into” with a goal. We don’t eat stri...

By WizenedSage (Galen Rose) ~ M any Christian sects believe that, according to the Bible, God will one day destroy the earth at “the end of days.” That just doesn’t make sense. We humans were put on this earth under very difficult conditions, prey to the beasts, infectious microbes, the weather, natural disasters, and our own tendencies to arrange ourselves into often hostile tribes. Ever since, we have worked hard to better the lives of our species through the development of science and social progress. Thanks to our development of science, very few of us are in danger today from beasts like lions, tigers, etc. And, we have developed inoculations to protect us from many diseases like measles, mumps, polio, and many others, we’ve developed numerous antibiotics like penicillin and its allies, and we’ve discovered or developed dozens of pain killers to aid the suffering. We learned that diseases aren’t caused by demons but by microbes, toxins, and genetic flaws. We learned that...

By Marlene Winell ~ F rom this graphic, it should be clear that a child in a fundamentalist Christian environment faces a powerful array of factors influencing indoctrination. Many of these techniques are quite deliberate, such as keeping children at home for their schooling to control what they learn and don’t learn.  The primary goal of sincere Christian parents is to pass on their faith, not help their child develop critical thinking to make a fully informed decision about religion.  Christians do not present their offspring with literature on all the religions of the world and make field trips to temples, churches and mosques to help them decide.  Yet in their theology they claim that “accepting Jesus” is a personal choice of free will and only those who reject God’s free gift of salvation will go to hell. The fact that parents go along with churches inducting toddlers into the belief system and programs for preverbal children are readily available only indicates...

By Valerie Tarico ~ W hat does it mean to be a person? For the anti-abortion group, Personhood USA, a “person” is present from the moment a sperm penetrates an egg, and members are fighting to have their definition encoded into law. Online coaching tools for abortion opponents use the term person interchangeably with human or human being . Are they interchangeable? Does it matter? Personhood USA is driven by a mission that dates back to Roe v Wade, when, in the process of legalizing abortion, Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun made this comment : “If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's [Roe's] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the [Fourteenth] Amendment.” In other words, if an embryo or fetus can be defined legally as a person, then abortion could potentially be classified as murder and a host of other legal rights could accrue to the developing fetus. The set of legal argum...

By Ewas ~ Why did I leave born again Christianity ? I ’m a 23-year-old guy from Lithuania who left Christianity 1 month ago. For 3 years I've been a serious christian, walking as hard as I could on the christian path. All of my dreams and goals in this life were related to fulfilling G-d’s plan in my life. I was really serious about that. I spent all of my time (free and not free) for Christianity. I was strongly focused. I was praying in tongues so much in order to build my spirit as strong as possible, reading the bible so much too. I lost all of my friends, I actually disowned them myself and everybody what was on my way. I wasn’t too sad because of that though, because I saw a bright future. I knew I’ll achieve it, cause I was even ready to die for these dreams and for G-d. I saw many kinds of miracles, it was natural for me and I really liked it. If 1 month ago, somebody would tell me that I would leave my faith, I would laugh strongly. I was so strong in my fai...

By Martin Solos ~ L ast weekend I was reminded that it had been approximately nine years since my family started attending church. Being reminded of this also brought to mind the fact that it’s now been a whole year since I stopped regularly attending church. I’ve only been twice in the past year, and an attempt to ease in via a smaller home-group earlier this year lasted only a few weeks. Talking about it face-to-face isn’t something I’m all that comfortable with as I can never guarantee on the neutrality of the other person. If I discussed it with someone within the church, I fear that their primary mission is to get a lasso around my waist and drag me back; but discussing it with someone outside of the church may not work as there wouldn’t be a common frame of reference. At least by articulating everything in the written word, I can have my say before anyone interjects. Firstly, although it’s been a year since I attended church, it didn’t automatically mean I’d lost whatever ...