by Valerie Tarico D ecember twenty-first is winter solstice , the shortest day of the year, which makes the twenty-second the first day of more sun! Let me spell that out. Beginning this week we’re on a path toward “sun breaks” and dry sidewalks, a time when people will take their fleeces off for long enough to wash them, a time that pet poop will dry out enough that your kids can scoop it off the lawn. Anyone who thinks that winter solstice couldn’t possibly have spawned the rich array of celebrations that we now call Yule and Christmas and Divali and Hannukkah and Kwanzaa never lived in Seattle . Solstice means that within a few weeks the days will be perceptibly longer. It means that by mid- January, it will be easier to see the ice I’m scraping off the windshield with my battered health insurance card. It means that crocuses will come up through the grass if I hurry and get some bulbs planted, and the chickens will start laying again. It means that my crazy friends Sa...

by the Avangelism Project Image by tab2space via Flickr I hope you don’t define yourself by atheism. Not only is it not fair to define your person by something you don’t have (theism), is lets Christians define you. Especially this time of year. When we evaluate if and how we celebrate the holiday season with any regard to Jesus or to Christians, we're sanctioning the Christians’ idea that they own December. If we define our lives by their mythology, Bill O’Reilly has every right and quite possibly some reason to assume we’re jealous of their Baby Jesus. Christians think they own December because in 350 the pope declared December 25 was Jesus’ birthday and co-opted the existing pagan feasts and celebrations. But adding Christian mythology to pagan mythology doesn’t change the fact that it’s all mythology. Virtually every aspect of the American holiday celebration—the trees, the word Yule and its log, feasting and gluttony, gift giving, caroling, candle lighting, and eve...

by Jessica Image via Wikipedia I was born into a born-again Christian family. I had the whole photographic family – mother, father and a younger brother. When I was a child, my mother talked to me on our couch about loving God and accepting Jesus Christ into my heart. After I did what she told me to do, she gave me my first Bible. It was pretty and it clasped shut -– with pictures sporadically placed throughout. We went to church every Sunday morning and all my friends were other Christian kids. My mom was very strict – TV was heavily monitored as to what would be acceptable by Christ and what wouldn’t. I attended Christian schools from second grade until high school. Christian friends, Christian teachers, Christian parents. We didn’t associate with non-born again people. My parents taught me that Catholicism was of the devil; that every other faith but the one which we practiced was of the devil. My family changed churches when I was in grade 7. We moved to a Baptist church that...

by exfundy I f you had asked me when I was a practicing fundy I would have told you I was humble. Though isn't being self assured of your own humility somehow rather ironic? Anyway, I really thought I was humble. I couldn't have been more wrong. The Americanized version of Christianity is actually a very selfish thing interlaced with lots of intellectually dishonest humility. Perhaps the most glaring example of my previous selfish beliefs and theology is what I call the "It's All Good Theory (IAGT)." That's just a name I made up for it that I wouldn't expect anyone else to make sense of yet. I guess that means I should explain. So let me throw out a hypothetical though very possible situation to illustrate IAGT. For this illustration try to get back into that Christian mindset. See if you can figure out where I'm going before you read it. Imagine you just bought a brand new home. It's big. Everything inside and outside is top of ...

Image by rbieber via Flickr by Dan Ok, ok, ok...I will finally share my testimony (geez, just like in church). But this is only a small picture for now and not in chronological order, kinda random, just off the top of my head sort of thing. I graduated from New Tribes Bible Institue . Yep, step right up and memorize the WHOLE book of Ephesians. No PDA either! That is, no Physical Display of Affection (but my girlfriend and I got as close to each other as possible!). Hey! I remember looking at Sports Illustrated magazines that the school received and seeing pictures cut out of it! Wow... nothing like censorship. So sad to look back now -- those years wasted. My mind could have been learning science, history and math. *Sigh* I attended Capernwray Missionary Fellowhip . One day, outside, during a break in classes, I remember pointing to a flower and said to a friend, "Something so beautiful as that, how could anyone not beleive in a Creator?" She said, "Bea...

by JM, Annoyed Medicinian Lord T his particular work (of art?) makes me want to vomit. It is not the depictions of Jesus that I find sickening, or any of the other symbolic items in this painting. No, what makes me sick about this is that it offers an unpleasantly pornographic view into the mindset of the modern-day right-wing anti-liberal "patriotic" American Christian. It screams "GIVE US OUR THEOCRACY!!!" I was once a Christian. I believed. I prayed. There was a time when garbage such as this painting wouldn't have bothered me in the least. I am fortunate that I had the intellect necessary to figure out what a depraved falsehood Christianity is, and that I stumbled across a wealth of evidence that could lead to no other logical conclusion. If only everyone could be so lucky. Whether or not the world would be a better place I cannot say, but it certainly wouldn't hurt. Well, it is that time of year again. The winter solstice is rapidly approachin...

by Ren Image via Wikipedia I'm one of those people who is still trying to sort things out, but I came to the conclusion long ago that the god in the OT scripture and the god in the NT are not even close to being the same being. I also know the god from the OT is definitely sadistic and sounds evil when I think about it. Recently, I found some old friends who are now Reformed Calvinists , and when I have asked them questions they give me the spiel that the Fall introduced evil in the world; God abhors sin; we are all as rags before god and deserve his wrath because we have sinned; and all of this is to glorify God. Sometimes they refer me to the verse that says, "I knew you before you were born," when I bring up their doctrine of predestination and how that can possibly be merciful or just. Then they ask me how I reconcile whatever response I give with whatever verse they come up with (usually something in Leviticus or Exodus), and I smack my forehead. What I can ...

by Red De-conversion 1 My parents were “born again” when I was five years old. They quickly became zealots. They used our house for church gatherings and backyard bible study. People were constantly coming and going. My parents became extremely active in their zealotry, witnessing door to door and going to church three times a week. This was the mid-seventies, and I have nostalgic memories of the long-haired Jesus freaks coming over with their sandals and guitars. At this age I picked up and filtered the messages I was hearing at church: We are the best church. We are saved and others are not. We are good and they are bad . I was five when I formally accepted Jesus Christ into my heart. In elementary school, I was an active crusader, genuinely concerned about my schoolmates’ souls. When I was about seven, my dad and two other guys from our church broke off and founded their own church, which rented out a space at a private school. It was exciting to me. After intense worship wi...

By Wise_Fool Image via Wikipedia I sn’t it hard when everything is going along OK, and then out of left field, something comes along to completely STUFF IT UP! The following information is so important it’s scary. Over the last 5 years the National Geographic has conducted “ The Genographic Project ” to establish human origins. They have tested the DNA of approximately 35,000 people and what they have found will have a profound impact, especially on inerrant bible believing Xtians. Why? The study has shown that ALL males share the same Y chromosome (Male Y chromosome is passed on unchanged from generation to generation), which traces back to a single male – Adam, Garden of Eden , 4000BC, right? – No, the East Coast of Africa, 50-60,000BC (let’s call him Alpha Y). From this extensive, highly documented, and practically indisputable research we can’t help but come to the following conclusions; No Adam. No Sin. No Saviour required. Adam cannot possibly have been the first...

by the Avangelism Project I t sort of hit my wife and me suddenly late in our process of deconverting. Every Christian rejects something (or a lot of things) in the Bible. Particular things. Things about which the Bible is very clear. It turns out, there’s no other choice. The Bible contains a lot of paradoxical statements, conflicting accounts that cannot be unraveled and even a formal contradiction or two. It also has commands that the Christian does not wish to obey and descriptions of God that the Christian does not want to worship. What each Christian is telling you, though, in her or his own way, is that he or she is god. Still, Christians can’t reject the Bible entirely. That would be throwing out the baby Jesus with the holy water . The Bible is the only reason to believe certain things they do hold dear. So, in one way or another, they reject what they don’t like. Some Christians will dismiss more of the Bible, others less. Some in pious sounding ways, and others more flagran...

by Freed Albert Image via Wikipedia For anyone who was raised Catholic, you know what it means to be indoctrinated. In Catechism we had to memorize answers to questions like, "What is the one and only true church?" The answer: "The one and only true church is the Catholic Church ." There were a whole host of rules we had to obey like never setting foot in another church, attending mass every Sunday, not eating meat on Friday, women wearing hats to church, etc. Sometime during my youth, the Catholic Church began to change some rules. Mass was said in English rather than Latin. Then suddenly we could eat meat on Friday. Then women could wear hats to mass. This is when it began to dawn on me that the rules, which I had been led to believe came from God, were actually just made up by men who could change them at any time. The veneer began to crack. When I got married at age 20 (because my girlfriend was pregnant), the priest insisted that we recite an oath, be...