By Karen Garst ~ E ver wonder why we have an appendix? Why so much of our genome is superfluous? Or, in my case, ever give birth to a baby with severe physical deformities who could not safely be born without medical intervention, and then have your friends quote the biblical psalm at you about God knitting a baby together in the womb? (Because nothing screams that you’ve been made by an all-knowing architect than needing eight corrective surgeries to make tiny deformed limbs slightly more functional.) Some of these flaws would be easily correctable if there truly was a designer who possesses a mind involved in the process. Instead we see evidence that blind natural forces act as the designer. This is never more obvious than when comparing the human body, the one supposedly made in God’s image, to that of other animals with superior parts. Abby Hafer, in her book The Not-So-Intelligent Designer: Why Evolution Explains the Human Body and Intelligent Design Does Not , shows ten m...

By MM ~ I was brought up by Christian parents and with a few doubts off and on went along with Christianity until going to university. In my first year I was involved in the CU but never really settled into a local church, then in the second year the CU turned very fundamentalist and I stopped going but continued to lead a halls group, but was certainly struggling with my faith. Then I had a year on work placement where I immediately settled into a conservative evangelical church. Towards the end of this year I went on a student weekend and the talks really clicked and I came back really stoked for the gospel. This enthusiasm continued through my final university year, back with the CU and in a church I wasn't entirely happy with, then I landed a job back with my work placement. Back at that church I remained enthusiastic for about 6 years, involved in the children's holiday club and doing the Moore theological course. Then in the second year of that course we ha...

By Tim ~ I n January of this year (2017) after much meditation and investigation I came to my own epiphany,the wonderful dawning of enlightenment using the rational and reasoning ability of the organ that has taken millions of years to evolve: my brain. I had been a Catholic for 20 years, held the keys to my local church, got things ready for mass and was a Eucharistic minister. My disenchantment with the faith has been gradual as I have always had strong leanings towards meditation on the reality of existence, probably influenced by Buddha`s teachings. The revelation however was immediate, liberating and indescribable --  a `divine`moment in my life that I will never forget. After viewing many internet sights it dawned on me that what I had been led to believe for all these years was nothing more than blind faith based on a person that never existed historically but only in mythology.The veil of ignorance lifted from my mind and I immediately became a new person without ...

By Carl S ~ I have a friend who informed me he doesn't like to look in the mirror. Here I thought I was the only one. We don't like our looks; what I see there doesn't look like me. How do I see myself? I can't answer that. Does knowing that “appearances can be deceiving” have anything to do with this? After all, police interrogators report looking into the eyes of psychotic killers and seeing “nothing” there. I remember when I was single, talking to a woman on the phone for at least ninety minutes. She was anxious to meet up with me, so we agreed on a place. Well, she came in, took one look at me, and left. Other women told me I've got pleasant looks. Each to her own, I guess. Hasn't changed my “lack” of self image anymore than my “lack” of faith. As a boy, I listened to Jack Benny on the radio. Eventually, when I saw him on television, his voice didn't fit his face. To this day, I break out in laughter whenever I hear of someone seeing Jesus or his ...

By Carl S ~ A few days ago, I purchased a fascinating book, “Leningrad: Siege and Symphony,” by Brian Moynahan . Since I'm very familiar with the “Leningrad Symphony,” as well as the siege of Stalingrad, the title grabbed my attention. If you are still a believer in God or prayer, you will be totally unprepared for the historical facts and first-person testimonies in this book. If you still believe in God and the power of prayer by page 200, you're totally in denial. Of the many lessons learned from Leningrad, both long before and during the siege: there is no God. (BTY: the question, “Does prayer work?” is moot, if one claims to believe in a caring God. Prayer will not be necessary if there were.) Does truth matter? America's Trump administration has used a term, “alternate facts,” as an explanation for its claims. This is just another way of saying “lies” in Trump's “Orwellian 1984” political doubletalk. His press secretary explained Trump's “facts” as “wha...

By manwithquestions ~ S o I started dating a christian woman who eventually told me if I didn't go to church I could not marry her. So heck i gave it a shot. The music the message kinda touched me I remember crying my first time going. I went on Sundays her family were all born again and very very into the religion. Deep down I knew it was a little much but I thought so I had felt Gods presence so I continued on. , Although I was going to church, some bible study I always questioned: Why I couldn't have sex with my girlfriend and was it all real or a big sham? Friends thought I was crazy for waiting so long 'till marriage. I was suppressing natural feelings and it was very difficult to deal with. This led to watching things the church would deem bad, but I felt it was just natural. Eventually I felt more and more overwhelmed by the religion. It was just overbearing. The fact that we were the only ones right and everyone else was wrong, I just could not agree with. I...

By Tania ~ L ast night was one of those rare nights when I did not fall asleep two seconds after turning out the light. Instead of picking up a book or flipping through a magazine, I chose Facebook. Probably not the most calming thing to do, that sneak-peek into others’ lives, which inspires a host of feelings from surprise to jealousy to nostalgia to inspiration to you-name-it. As I spent longer than usual on Facebook last night, scrolling through my home page and my own timeline, I contemplated yet again this concept of holding on…and letting go. As I saw pictures of the church “young adults” group, church weddings, and barbecues and road trips with the church people, part of me just wished to go back to those times and to have life more mapped out for me, Christian-style…for the most part, though, I am excited to have moved on and wandered into more unknowns. It wasn’t until a couple years ago that I realized that it’s okay to stop trying so darn hard to make things work. I ...

By WizenedSage (Galen Rose) ~ O ver the past few weeks, I have been embroiled in a fascinating debate on the Letters to the Editor pages of our local weekly newspaper here in Maine. It all started when a neighbor, our own Carl S. in fact, wrote a letter questioning whether the Roman census that allegedly brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem from Nazareth actually happened. A man responded to Carl’s letter, disputing Carl’s claims. At that point, I couldn’t resist chiming in myself in defense of Carl, so the next week my letter (#1) was published. Letter #1 "The Roman Census Revisited" To the editor: These past two weeks there has been an interesting debate on these pages concerning the Roman census said to have caused Jesus’ parents to travel to Bethlehem from their home in Nazareth. According to Carl Scheiman, there was no such census, while Henry Simmons claims there was. I think Mr. Simmons misunderstood. Scheiman wrote, “a decree went forth from Caesar Augus...

By Carl S ~ N ew Years evening 2017. My wife's church had a bonfire to celebrate New Year’s Day. I told her they were late; the pagans celebrated solstice with a bonfire, in December. It's no surprise a church would copy a pagan ritual. Christianity stole all its beliefs from the pagans and adapted them. Let's talk about people and their actions. Could you reach that point, described by some, where, “nothing surprises me?” If you were a soldier in combat, chances are you'd see killings and atrocities you thought you would never have accepted. After many, one becomes jaded. If you are married to a spouse who cheats on you, you won't find the news a “shocking revelation” if a celebrity has been unfaithful for years. Can you think of a person who would never surprise you, but surely, others? It used to surprise me when game show contestants would throw away thousands of U.S. Dollars on a gamble. Now I'm only disgusted. We know that many people are willing t...

By Carl S ~ B elievers tell you your prayers weren't answered because, “You didn't have enough faith.” Why should you need any faith? How can one person’s believing something more intensely than another change the outcome of a petition to an invisible being? Why would an all-powerful deity care? Doesn't a god realize that, when you need real help you need it now, and should receive it now, no conditions required? If Christians believe, according to their scriptures, that their heavenly father will not give a stone to his children who ask for bread, why are so many of them accepting stones and blaming themselves for absence of bread? Did belief in God do anything for the Jewish people who prayed for deliverance in concentration camps? What good is a god who does nothing about that? Useless. If he was in any way human with super powers, he'd be prosecuted and maybe, executed, as guilty of genocide. Did all the prayers and sacrifices to all the gods prevent the co...

By WizenedSage (Galen Rose) A ll positive social changes of a sweeping nature seem to involve a tipping point. The abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, civil rights for blacks, and broad social acceptance of gays all appeared to be beyond the reach of Americans just a few generations ago. Those who spoke out and worked to overturn the entrenched, tradition-bound norms were often judged to be tilting at windmills, or trying to turn the tide with a spoon. And yet, in each case, a generation eventually came along which achieved the improbable, and the norms of all of these except slavery were overturned within the last 100 years - the last two, civil rights for blacks and broad acceptance of gays, both within my adult lifetime. There may be some lessons here regarding a tipping point for our country’s religious saturation, as I shall explain. I went to a small city high school of about 1,200 students during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and didn’t know of a single gay student ...