Image by Felipe Morin via Flickr Sent in by Windwiss I have been a regular visitor of this site for a few years and find it entertaining and also helpful in combating the illness that once possessed me. The illness in question is Christianity. I used to be an atheist , but somehow went into pentecostal Christianity. I used to be a devoted Christian, wasted a few years on it, and am now thankful to be out of it. Bible-God supposedly gives "tongues" or the Holy Spirit to whoever asks for it, and yet most of those Christians are not particularly successful in life. I tried to find the mysteries of life in the Bible but could not. Neither does the bible answer why sinners seem to prosper. The bible is unambiguous about how one gets "saved." One gets saved by acts ? or faith? or both? I asked the Christians (some of them were quite helpful and nice by the way), but they could not give a clear answer. They said you have to pray deeply, or read the bible with the help o...

Image by 7 Bits Of Truth via Flickr Sent in by John To sum up, every Christian I have ever put trust in has screwed me. That is not to say that every Christian I have ever known has shafted me, only the ones that I have let inside. It seems that the place where a person should be most at ease to feel the spirit is the place where a person must remain the sharpest and most vigilant. Churches are dens of vipers with their snake eyes on every one of your dollars. It's seems that the underlying theme is always the same. "It was for God" or "It's His will". What a crock! After 25 years of trying to devote myself to Christ, I have quit. The Bible that I was carrying for 31 years has been burned. I took it down to the local beach about 6 months ago and set it to ashes. My first major shock as to the true character of Christians occurred when I was 18 years old. My pastor at the time told me that I needed to be filled with the spirit and that I needed to lea...

Sent in by Andrew I was raised by my mother and very religious grandmother. My grandmother forced me to go to church from age 4 - 15. Neither of them would attend. I belonged to a very strict branch of Pentecostal faith called Apostolic. They believed that there was only one god (Jesus WAS the father) and that you had to speak in tongues to be saved, baptized in name of Jesus (if they said father, son, holy ghost you were doomed). If we owned a TV , went to a movie, read most any book other then the bible, we were threatened with hell. In all the commentaries of ex-Christians, I have yet to see a more vivid, and horrible description of the Hell that I was threatened with 4 times a week. The preachers had very vivid ways of saying how the fire would get inside your lungs. He said imagine holding your breath, never being able to breathe and never dieing. He spent entire sermons on how your skin would boil producing severe sores which would only make the burning more painful. I guess r...

Image by carf via Flickr Sent in by Christian I very recently realized that Christianity and Jesus are lies. The events that led to this realization began when I was eight years old and was attending a 7th Day Adventist school. They took away meat I had brought to eat for lunch, because eating meat was a sin. They took away my Spiderman action figure and Pokemon cards I had brought to show my friends, because, as we all know, Spiderman and Pokemon are demons in disguise, sent from the farthest reaches of Hell to corrupt the world's youth. When I spoke out against any of their stupid beliefs or pointed out a flaw in their teachings, I was sent to the principal's office and given a stern lecture on how the Devil was inside me and was making me question things. I was homeschooled the next year, and have been ever since then. Away from the accursed church school, I was able to read up on stuff and think for a number of years, before seeing the light a few days ago. So I'...

Flying Dolphins , originally uploaded by Jon_Watkins . By Neal Stone In 2000 I would hit my lowest point ever. Part time dead end job, bad teeth (do to a family disorder I couldn't afford to fix) and was living with my sister not sure where my life was going. On top of this, the dragon that had been pursuing me had finally caught up with me. I had no choice but to turn around and face him. I turned and faced the dragon ready to fight for my life. But when I turned around, it wasn't a dragon at all, it was me. All my life I have been living for my own destruction not even knowing it. Because of the mentality I was taught I would bring my life to a near end. I was taught to do for others at the expense of myself. Sacrifice myself for others and forget my own needs and desires. Had I not made the changes I made and not met my wife, I believe I would be dead at my own hand. My life was going that route, I just didn't see it. I finally got a break working for a Chris...

From Ash My brain is tired from trying to figure out life. Is Christianity real? Is there a heaven or a hell? Which one am I going to? What is faith and why do I have to have it? Can I ever stop worrying about doing something wrong? Is God punishing me? Maybe he's happy that I'm just trying to figure out my life? Maybe he doesn't even care? How do we even know or try to say what he's thinking? He's God! Then there's the Bible: How's it different from the Koran , or any other book, and how do you know? Is it wrong to marry someone who's not a Christian? How will I tell my parents? If Christianity is real and everything else is wrong -- how does a person even justify saying that? How do we know what's real if there's no evidence? There's faith again, but I don't get it -- why is it so necessary to invent something other than what's right in front of our faces? Why do we need religion? If it causes so much confusion, I don't want it...

Image by TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³ via Flickr By Pineapple If the God you believe in exists, why did He turn His back on me when I was collapsed on my bedroom floor sobbing and begging Him for more faith? Why did He leave me alone and bewildered when my faith of 20 years begin to unravel? When I started questioning the Bible I did the right thing. I rebuked Satan , believing he was trying to deceive me and humbled myself before the Lord and prayed for more faith. But He didn't answer my prayer. Or wait, according to Christian reasoning, He did answer my prayer and the answer was a big fat "NO". While I was crying out to Him on my floor that night, I would have accepted even a vague sense of peace and love as proof of His Spirit and thus His existence, but He offered none. The only conclusion I could come up with was that God didn't want me to be one of His children. I wasn't chosen. I'm glad that He has blessed you with faith. I'm glad that He c...

Image via Wikipedia By Mriana When I was little, there was this cartoon series involving Casper the Friendly Ghost , and I had an invisible friend, as do many children, only his name was Casper. Romper Room hosted some of the Casper shows, which caught my attention and probably encouraged my desire to learn, but it also gave me my invisible friend. Now, for those of you born long after Romper Room , this was an educational kids’ show in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. There was no Barney though. Rather, in this show, a very human teacher assisted a classroom of children in learning social skills and other important things they needed to learn as preschoolers. It was probably this early learning process, through the media, which lead to me to other profound discoveries, including religious ones. The interesting thing about having Casper as an invisible friend was the teasing I got from the adults around me. This friend I had a little longer than most children have theirs, probably ...

Escape , originally uploaded by SM Photo By Neal Stone First off sorry about the delay on this next part. Been a busy week and kind of lost the writing bug for a bit. You read all the time on the news how someone escapes from jail, but ends up being recaptured right away. Why? Because they failed to prepare for AFTER the got away. You spend all this time on getting free, but not what to do next. When I graduated it was assumed I would never go to college so I never had an S.A.T. And for a while that was the case. I did get some schooling eventually ( GPA 3.5) and took other courses related to work. Turns out I can sit in class, daydream, not read one word in the book and still pull off a B grade average. After graduating from high school I had no job, do direction and no idea what to do with my life. No one seemed to care and my parents suck at teaching life skills. All this had to be learned on my own. All the while the dragon was still in hot pursuit. From 1983 to 1998 I ...

Sent in by Andrew I grew up on the extremely Catholic west side of Cincinnati, Ohio . For those of you who aren't familiar with this (and thankfully most of the world isn't) West Side Cincinnati is one of the most isolated metropolitan areas of the country. Religious, economic, psychological and geographic borders keep these suburbs of about 100,000 people apart from the rest of the city. No easy access to a major interstate due to endless miles of suburbs, anyone that wasn't catholic was ostracized behind closed doors, people from any other area of the city were weird, and the valleys that surrounded this area led to a staggering lack of culture. I was raised to believe that divorced parents and their children were odd and contemptible. My mother is a bigoted, hypocritical fascist, pretending to be compassionate yet speaking ill behind everyone's backs... like a true Christian. My father, coming from good 'ole German stock, was quiet, but had a fury that oft...

Image by freestone via Flickr Sent in by Jenny the Disaster Of all the areas of my life, my faith has been challenged the most my entire life. I feel like this has been a long time coming. I struggled greatly with religion as a child. Even while I was in Sunday school , learning all about Jesus and God and the Bible, I found myself asking very difficult questions. I didn’t have doubt in my heart. I actually enjoyed myself very much. I liked the stories. I loved Jesus. I just thought God was mean. I didn’t understand why I was to worship someone who made life so difficult for some and so great for others. Was I supposed to worship him until he did something nice for me and hope that my family and I would somehow be one of the lucky ones? What makes you lucky? What makes you better than everyone else? What makes us more important than anyone of any other faith? It wasn’t my fault I grew up a Christian. Just like it’s not my fault I grew up to be an actor . It’s just the ...