By Don Shafer - ex Christian, ex pastor, ex idiot ~ I t's true, I am addicted to Christianity, to Jesus, to God, to the church, to the methods and relationships and the high I get from my involvement in that organization. But like any addiction to a harmful substance, it stole from me, and still will if I indulge. I feel the pull - the twinge to get back involved - my consecrated mind speaks to me - it represents the voice I was taught was really the voice of god - "remember the time you had a group of loving Christians gather around you and pray - remember how good that felt?" Yea, it did, but was it because there was a supernatural god there or just because we all respond to loving people who gather around us and lay hands on us. Of course that feels good. We are made for human touch and attention. The problem with it all is that we have been conditioned to equate those moments with an imaginary god that we are taught to picture in our minds until it feels rea...

By Michael Runyan ~ I n 2006, Richard Dawkins gave a talk at Liberty University when a young woman asked him the question, ‘what if you’re wrong?’. His answer has been enshrined in the atheist Hall of Fame, and is shown in this clip: However, there is another way this question could have been answered, as follows:  “What if I’m wrong, well anybody could be wrong, but what I think you are really asking is what if I am wrong and you are right, eliminating the possibility that we are both wrong.  So let’s go with that.  Christianity is correct and spells out the authentic doctrine of the living god.  OK, now let’s suppose you get married and have two children, a son and a daughter. Both become extremely accomplished in their fields of medicine and science, win many awards, have exemplary families, and are loved and respected in their communities and in their churches.  All seems so well.  You and your husband eventually die and ...

By Carl S ~ I 'm eighty years of age, the fourth of five children raised in a Catholic household. Three of my siblings were born eleven to fifteen years before me. My oldest brother, Ray, who had a strong influence on my youth, was the second child born. Serious questions related to the “to be or not to be” choices are focused here unfolding the story of his life, how it was and how it might have been. When Ray was in his thirties, our mother told him something which I consider unnecessary, cruel, and abuisive. She said that while she was pregnant, “your father wanted to have you aborted.” (Of course, my father wasn't thinking “him” at the time.) She did not mention this was during the Great Depression, and my father didn't think he could afford another child then. (The suggestion came from his co-workers, with whom he shared his concerns.) My mother just said, “No.” On many a night, Ray and dad would get drunk and engage in verbal battles for hours. (Ray held resen...

By Carl S ~ A ccording to tradition, the Garden of Eden was a place where no evil existed. No pain, no suffering, no death. Perhaps it's that same “Paradise” Moslems are taught is worth dying for to achieve. They might want to reconsider their desire. The tale of “The Fall” belies the absence of evil there, for how else could two proto-humans discover (through the Tree of knowledge of good and evil) evil, if it wasn't present from the beginning? This story tells of a creator-god who, following creation, pronounces his entire creation “good.” It follows the Tree of Knowlege was good, and therefore, its fruits. The creator's calling attention to the tree in the most obvious way, made investigating the fruit all the more desirable. After all, some of the most unalienable rights we humans possess are curiosity and questioning. And considering those humans involved had neither knowledge nor experience of what “death” meant, we can understand their curiosity to find what ...

By Sunday Silence ~ I cannot do Christianity any more. Its illogical stories, inconsistent standards, and ineffectiveness have become too much for me to continue believing. I struggled with intellectual doubt throughout my 26 year Christian experience. Many of the stories in the Old Testament are troublesome to my conscience and I would never suggest to someone that they use the stories as examples of upright behavior, as many preachers do. The evangelical and fundamentalist churches prescribe bizarre and contradictory remedies to the challenges of individuals and the culture at large. I navigated the doubts for so long yet I still held on to my faith. What finally destroyed it was the experience in my own personal life and that of my family. I tried to do everything that I thought God wanted and that the church prescribed. I was “sexually pure” and saved sexual activity for marriage. I did my best to be honest and live honorably. I tried to care for the poor. I tried not to be ...

By Michael Runyan ~ T he true test of a religion’s truth claims is whether it followers, particularly the most ardent ones, behave in a way that validates the underlying dogma. Christianity fails this test, and it fails it miserably. If a Christian truly believes the doctrine, he will accept that this life is just a brief spec of time compared to the eternity that awaits in heaven. He will also believe that dying is nothing to be concerned about because losing a few years on Earth is nothing compared to the trillions of years to be enjoyed in heaven, and besides, leaving the arduous and stressful existence often experienced in this life to go to a place of eternal peace and joy is a good thing. Further, if our 70 years on this planet decides whether we will spend 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000+ years in heaven versus the same amount of time in hell, it would demand that we spend every living moment making sure that we will go to the right place. All of this fails ...

By Sacred Skeptic ~ To utter one’s deepest fears about their faith is for some only slightly less risky than buying heroin on a street corner… (Peter Enns) F or several years I labored under the mistaken impression that I was the only doubting Christian around and that there was no-one I could turn to with my questions and thoughts. In my narrow-mindedness I felt that, either one was a Christian, getting on with one’s spiritual journey and presumably growing closer to God, or one was an unbeliever, out in the wilderness. I on the other hand was somewhere in between, trying to hold on to my faith in the middle of a storm of doubt. Where did I belong? I was careful not to “bare my soul” to anyone, not even my closest friends, as I didn’t want to be responsible for causing them to question their own faith. In no way did I want them to experience the pain I was feeling, of being an “unbelieving believer”.  I realize now that I should have spoken up a lot sooner, and that in ...

By Robbie ~ I joined a Pentecostal church called Struthers in Falkirk in Scotland in 1984. By 1996 I realised I was being lied to and they didn't believe their own lies. For years they tell you God does not want you, he wants your funeral. When you submit to prayer, which on reflection is some form of hysteria where up to three leaders pile on top of your head and yell over you until you hit the floor, they then leave you bewildered and confused. That was May 1994. When you go back realising your human weakness has failed you, you get one person who shouts over you hysterically then tells you that you have failed on this count before and will fail again. It is up to you. If it was up to me and my will, where did God's power through my surrender go to? Why did she not tell me I could fail before her intimidating behaviour and ask what it was which prevented me from reaching the purity of thought demanded? Not that I expect answers from these people. That would me...

By Michael Runyan ~ S uppose you are a scholar living around 90 AD and want to write a gospel of Jesus.   You don’t know anything about Jesus, but you have copies of the gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke to use as source material. Much of what you write is copied from the previous gospels, although you make small changes in style and editing, sometimes inserting subtle changes in the order and progression of events and in the dialogue.   However,  you want your story to stand out in some way, so you decide to invent a pleasant story to make Jesus seem even more spectacular than he’s been presented previously.  Here is the new material you add to your gospel: Andrew 12: 10-24 The next day, Jesus and his disciples entered Kursi on the east coast of the Sea of Galilee.  Jesus commanded his disciples to say nothing to anyone as he was fatigued from the previous day’s travel and large crowds.  But as they entered the city, a man...

By Karen Garst ~ A fter finishing my first book, Women Beyond Belief: Discovering Life without Religion , I had a chance to attend several secular events including the Women in Secularism Conference. This was excellent and I had the opportunity to meet many interesting women. So instead of going back into retirement, I decided to write another book. The result is Women v. Religion: The Case Against Faith - and for Freedom . Each of the essays in this book examines one aspect of the impact of the three Abrahamic religions on women: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In the first essay, licensed professional mental health counselor Candace Gorham, author of The Ebony Exodus Project , dives deep into the impact of religion on our psyche. She outlines the basics of mental illness that can be caused by religion, including depression, anxiety, shame, and guilt. Gorham also discusses the ineffective religious treatment for mental health problems such as pastoral counseling, conversion...

By Michael Runyan ~ W hen an author produces fiction, he often tries to make his account seem realistic if the goal is to have people believe it actually happened. Generally, this is what the authors of the gospels strove to do.  Some of what they wrote was actually based on something they read or heard, but clearly a lot of it was simply made up by their imagination.  When Mark, the first gospel writer, wrote about Jesus sending his disciples out two by two to preach his message, he introduced plenty of elements letting us know that it never happened. Mark 6:7-13 Then Jesus went around teaching from village to village. Calling the Twelve to him, he began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over impure spirits.These were his instructions:  “Take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in your belts.   Wear sandals but not an extra shirt.   Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town.   ...