By ToonForever ~ I saw an article on the behavior of dew drops on leaves. Image via Wikipedia It seems so very simple. My short interpretation is that the dew drop seeks a state of rest, which sends the dew to the tip of a leaf, even if doing so defies gravity. Such a tiny little natural phenomenon creates such spectacular beauty in a meadow on a cool morning. If I’m being honest, it’s thoughts like that which keep me agnostic. The majestic beauty of nature in uncountable ways, from the vastness of space and the stars, planets, nebulae, comets, to simple dewdrops upon a field of grass or upon a spiderweb. While there is no doubt in my mind that any god that might exist is not YHWH or Jesus, I could ponder an intelligence behind the beauty of the universe. To an extent. Here is where a Christian would extrapolate the idea of such beauty into a discussion of such symmetry requiring a designer – The way nature works to create such majesty can only come from the mind of a...

By A ~ I ’m facing a bit of a difficult decision with which I would appreciate the insight of the ex-Christian group. I come from a Christian family. We may not have been fundamentalist or anything, but Christianity permeated our lives as long as I can remember as a child. We went to church regularly and, even if some of the Bible was interpreted figuratively rather than literally in our household, yet we were taught that the only way to a needed salvation was through Jesus Christ. My father is a controlling man. Not violent or openly abusive or anything of that nature, but deeply controlling. He wants what is best for his children, but he simply can’t let people live their own lives and offers strongly worded advice at every turn. And he never misses an opportunity to point out how wonderful life is when you put your faith in Jesus. I’ve seen him do this both with family and in general with others. In the years after I first left home, all his letters to me were full of encourage...

By Lillian ~ I come from a Catholic family and I attended Catholic schools for 13 years. I studied my catechisms, attended Church daily and on Sunday. When I was 18, I found myself pregnant by a man that I knew would not take care of me or our baby. Knowing that abortion was wrong, I stayed pregnant. Both my mother and a good Catholic Aunt said "Why don't you have an abortion?" I was too far along by that time to do it. My baby was handed over to strangers. I had put him into "God's hands". Over the years I prayed to God knowing that He would take care of my son because I had made the ultimate sacrifice. I received a call 17 years later telling me that my son had committed suicide. That was the day I saw the light. When I realized that my entire upbringing was based on fairy tales, I took responsibility for every decision I made. I think that is one of the reasons that people go on believing after their prayers have not been answered. When you realize...

By Klym ~ O k, I just finished watching a video on Fox news about the child who "went to heaven" during an appendectomy. The family wrote a book about the child's experiences called "Heaven is Real." How can an experience like this be explained rationally? Do you think he was already indoctrinated with the Christian religion? Is it a brain thing? He said Jesus had clear blue eyes....weird, considering Jesus was Middle Eastern, if he existed at all. I don't believe in an afterlife, so this type of thing baffles me. Visit msnbc.com for breaking news , world news , and news about the economy More: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1368467/I-met-granddad--wings-Colton-Burpo-went-heaven-speaks-relatives-book-Heaven-For-Real.html http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/42154263/ns/today-books/t/heaven-real-one-boys-astonishing-account/#.Txq1E_mYUsw

By Valerie ~ I was born into a Christian, non-denominational family...one that is self-righteously spiritual. I thought myself to be a Christian, and even formally asked Jesus into my life when I was 11 years old. Having parents that pushed God as my ticket to heaven and an exit from Hell was the binding component in my faith. I didn't learn that my relationship with "God" was actually just negative reinforcement until I became a 24-year-old senior, majoring in psychology, and minoring in philosophy. I realized that I chose a relationship with God because I was fearful of a possible Hell. In my best philosophical effort to understand my newly- formed doubt over Christianity, I began analyzing the details of my relationship with God. If God existed, and I worshiped Him merely to escape the perils of Hell, then I worshiped a God based on no positive love, or respect. How could God possibly accept me, a woman only worried about escaping Hell, into Heaven...a place sp...

By the ReligiousAntagonist ~ A s I'm sure you're aware, I get a lot of flack from atheists saying that I go "too far" in my videos and border on exploitation. This video is kind of a fun jab centering around the "atheist tone debate" .......with the christians as the clue-less bystanders.

By Eva ~ I ’ve been avidly reading through a lot of posts on this site since I found it about a week ago. I am a recent exChristian, and while I relate to many posts, I also find my heart going out to many of you who have been so hurt by religion, as I also have. I have a very long and complicated story, but a bit of it can be found on my blog at http://alivetoreality.wordpress.com/2011/06/27/why-i-stopped-going-to-church /. I say I’m a recent exChristian, because it’s only over the last few months that I stopped using the title Christian at all to refer to me, but leaving religion has been a process that has been going on for years. For the last three years since I stopped attending church, I’ve been popping into sites and listening to forums of others who’ve left church but still hold to certain aspects of Christianity or believe in God. My favorite is the Free Believers Network founded by expastor Darin Hufford. I love listening to his podcasts because he’s entertaining and s...

A video by HealthyAddict ~ “You’re an atheist? But you’re so nice!” “Do you believe in Satan?” Image by rafaelm via Flickr “Your life must be bleak and meaningless.” “So why do you even bother to live?” “You were never a true believer.” “Why do you hate God?” “You’re just going through a phase.” “Deep down, you really believe.” “Just wait till you have children of your own.” “I’ll pray for you.” “But what if you’re wrong?” “It’s not meant to be taken literally.” “Have you ever read the Bible?” “You still believe in Jesus, though, right?” Got any more good one-liners? Add them below!

By DealDoctor ~ L eaving behind a childhood and teenage viewpoint on religion. Religion is a fact of life on this world and everyone religious or not encounters it just like they do McDonald's hamburger stores on almost every corner of life. Life is full of religious shit and we as ExChristians must deal with it like it or not because it is just there. We need to be grown up about it. Perhaps Albert Einstein and Carl Sagan , two people most of us ExChristians who respect reason and science admire can give us a balanced "grown up" view of religion from the perspective of reason and humanism. They certainly were not Christians. Grown ups are rare. It seems that children are in total dependence upon their parents and they all but worship the big parents as "gods". It is so very bad when someone grows up with awful parents because so much of what they learn is wrong because their parents who are teaching them about reality are screwed up too. Some people ne...

By QuestioningFaith ~ I recently had an article posted where I told some of my personal experiences regarding my path to agnosticism. The article was posted at a national South African news service , and I would love all your comments regarding what I had said there. The comments from strong Christian believers are also shown there, and the comments they make are ones I am sure you have all seen many times before. The link to the article is: http://www.news24.com/MyNews24/Reply-to-RationalBeliever-20120105 . The text of my article is below. I am grateful for your letter (on science and religion written by RationalBeliever ), which I found thoroughly insightful. You are indeed correct: science asks questions of things in the material world, and can only be expected to find answers, for events, in the material world. But you must realise that both science and religion attempt to answer questions that we humans pose. The problem we have is that the answers religions come up ...

By Black Freethought ~ I have followed the path of reason now for about eighteen months. However I have only shared my deconversion with a few close family members. I have felt, to quote an R. Kelly song, "Trapped in the Closet." I come from a strong, close knit,christian family where I have many relatives who are pastors, evangelists, and church leaders. My parents are also ministry leaders. My mom is a preacher(who says she hasn't been called yet) and my father is a deacon. My parents are well respected in the baptist church community here in the Motor City . So out of respect for my parents' notoriety, I have kept silent. Keeping silent has proven to be most difficult. When I would visit them, they would talk about god and how he sits on the throne. I would just nod my head. However, I would really want to say, "No he isn't because he does not exist in reality outside of your thoughts!" But I don't want any trouble or be accused of disrespec...

By Carl S ~ T he label, "The New Atheists" is being batted around, sometimes derisively, sometimes with curiosity or questionably by other atheists. One new target batted around like one hitting stones with a baseball bat enjoys. Atheists aren't really new, they've been around as long as religion, probably longer, but recently, they have scientific evidence on their side (didn't they always?), as a sound structure and weapons stockpile against superstition and ignorance. What about the "New Christians"? They're the ones who don't talk about Hell anymore, Divine wrath (the "Dies Irae" disappeared from the Catholic funeral mass ages ago), serious evil. They have replaced the O.T. god with a warm, fuzzy, nebulous figure who's always looking out for his chosen ones in his special clubs. How did this come about, that this embracing of the new improved God sneaked itself into the 21st century? Let's posit that the Old and New ...

From Joy ~ I do not know if you can help me but I have been a Christian for almost 40 years. I am currently working as a secretary of a Baptist church. I got the job by default. It began as a temporary job but then they unexpectedly fired my boss and gave me her job. I have been involved closely in two local churches and have in the last 6 years been deeply troubled about what I see and believe. I have read books on former Christians after a friend left the faith. I realized I no longer believe either and have been a fool. However the main means of my support is the church job. I know I am a hypocrite and they have no idea. I have (and still am) looking for other jobs but in this area they are hard to come by. I am writing to you to ask if there are any organizations whom help people such as myself who are in the process of transitioning away from religion? Any support or advice groups or email contacts that can help me? Thank you for your help,

By Mike ~ R aised in a strong catholic sense, I always believed, even if I didn't 'see'. I used to pray for things, and many of them came to be true. Others simply were put into 'god's hands' into the mystical queue. I am a truly lucky man with more than I could ever ask, for I am the husband of a loving, beautiful devout Christian wife, and the father of a happy young boy. Image via Wikipedia Things eventually became clearer, or unraveled depending on one's views. A couple of years back, my Catholic dedication waned at the lack of real leadership within the church at the higher echelons (kiddy fiddling, contraception, no real choice in the matter etc etc etc), and the constant niggling that worship should be truly joyous, and not a Gothic sombre and macabre (a constant view across the board). So without further ado, I jumped onto my wife's evangelical, happy baptist, pentecostal, charismatic, band wagon sweeping western nations off their feet. ...

By Paul So ~ T he strange thing is that while I was born as a Christian, I was never born into a Christian family that held the attitude that once someone is a Christian, that person will always remain a Christian as a True Christian. My family was, at the very least, a little tolerant enough to consider Catholics to be Christians (which is not always common among conservative protestants). However after my deconversion, I begin to meet other Christians and ex-Christians who talk about the notion of being a “True Christian”. I would often hear the “no true Christian” argument from many Christians, and I would also often hear frustration among other ex-Christians (as well as secularists who were never Christians) about the fallacy of this argument. I could almost never relate to this argument, but at the same time I am sympathetic enough to write an essay that would refute this kind of argument to show the inherent fallacious-ness. As a philosopher (or just plainly a philosophy stud...