By James Smith João Pessoa, Brazil -- B lame it on my parents. They always told me to "think for yourself". I doubt they ever considered what would happen if I really did that. Image by Miguel Ramirez via Flickr Now, I suspect what they meant was, "Think what we tell you but do it in your own words." Too late. When I was 13, I began to question everything and soon the total absurdity of religion became apparent. Because I have been “encouraged” (forced) to read the bible several times, it was easy for me to see the contradictions in the book, what christians professed to believe, and how they lived. When I refused to go with them to their church, they said they “Would make me go." I asked them, “How are you going to make me? How will forcing me to attend church change my mind?” Already, their attitude was starting to harden me against everything else they would tell me. Their next idea was to have their minister talk to me. I told them it was...

By WizenedSage (Galen Rose) -- I happened across an utterly fascinating and totally hilarious web site the other day that I just had to share with you people of reason. The web site is called “ Jesus, Dinosaurs and More .” The specific article I read was titled, “ Were people in the Old Testament really that Old? ” The anonymous author is referring to the numerous men in the Bible who lived to be several hundred years old. He (or she?) lists seven, including Adam, who lived over 900 years and writes, “When you look at the age of the Patriarchs (Adam's descendants) in Genesis you will see two things. One, is that from Adam to Noah the average life span was somewhere in the neighborhood of 900 years.” He also provides a really neat graph with data points for ages at death of some Biblical men and some Kings of England, showing how the average life span of humans declined from about 900 at the start, through a period of 200 to 500, and then down to less than 100. As...

By Renoliz -- I can’t seem to help but to mull over my last, and final, brush with Christianity. And my bizarre fear of Satan and obsession with Hell . Mostly, these fears are gone now but it seems so strange. “What happened?”, I ask myself. I was completely out of Christianity for years. 20 or 25 years. Then, after only a couple of years of going to church, I was afraid - afraid of Hell. Afraid of what Hell was doing to the unsaved. Afraid people would never hear the Good News of Jesus and roast in Hell for eternity. I can only think that the Hell concept had been like a ticking time bomb. An implanted idea that exploded when I started going to church again. I went from being sort of spiritual to being a Christian afraid of Hell in a fairly short time span. And when my logical mind was ready to leave the church, a few years later, my emotional brain was not so easily subdued. My rational self determining being was going into combat against my emotional Hell fearing s...

By WizenedSage (Galen Rose) -- W hile reading the Wikipedia entry on ‘ urban legend ’ recently, I was struck with how well the Bible illustrates all of the basic defining properties of the term. I think it could fairly be said that the Bible is, in fact, a large and poorly organized collection of urban legends. According to Wikipedia, “An urban legend, urban myth, urban tale, or a contemporary legend, is a form of modern folklore consisting of apocryphal stories believed by their tellers to be true.” The point here is that folklore and urban legends are basically the same thing, it’s just a matter of timing; what starts as urban legend becomes folklore with age. So what started as urban legends in Biblical times became folklore with the passage of time. Such legends or myths are typically either wild embellishments with a kernel of truth or pure fiction. Let’s take a look at the ‘urban legend’ entry and see how the Bible can be used to illustrate the various features of the term...

A letter from Royce -- I t seems that all you have done here is to substitute self for God. Image by joeltelling via Flickr Lack of recognition of Gods authority is the first thing that went wrong. My Satan, how obvious you have become. P.S. Isn't your web-site just a church? Nothing new here, just the same group of mean spirits that have stalked the earth since time for man began. Good luck in Hell.

By Alegria -- D ear Christian, I am an atheist , that is, from Greek, 'a-theos', meaning, 'without a God'. I do not believe in your God, nor do I believe in the Son/Younger God, or the Holy Spirit /Deceased God(?). I do not believe in Hell, nor do I believe in Heaven. So I ask you, why can't you put forward a nice argument for believing in God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit without resorting to 'but you'll burn in Hell' and 'but you won't go to Heaven'. I repeat, I do not believe in these two metaphysical places and therefore threatening me with eternal damnation is like threatening a mature, intelligent, grown man by telling him that Santa won't bring him presents. Furthermore; your continued attempts to tell me that 'atheism is a religion' are laughable at best, weepable at worst. Can you remember what 'atheism' meant, that's right; 'without a God', from Greek 'a-theos'. This simply means I don'...

By Janey -- I was raised no religion - mom's family being church of Christ, and dad's being Lutheran . We never went to church, but my parents both had been hard hit with it to the point I think when they married they ran away from it. My mother would read to me from a bible when I was little -- bedtime stories straight from the Old Testament . Image by jabberwock via Flickr But during the 70's there was an explosion of new information - numerology, Zodiac, horoscopes and witches - Wicca and information not previously so readily available to the general public. Mom got hold of it, and as she has since put it, it made sense. Especially after she found out confirming facts such as she is a triple Scorpio , and odd things that occurred in her childhood (shunned as evil by her Christian fanatic family) now made perfect sense and she had answers. I mean a triple Scorpio with only one more life to live -- hence an old soul -- has some ingrained inherent powers. So as my mo...

From UncagedCardinal -- H i everyone, I'm new here, just recently out of religion. Image by danny.hammontree via Flickr I was a professional musician for 35 years (until my arthritis got too bad). As part of that career I played organ in hundreds of churches and many cathedrals. I played keyboards in many 'modern-church' bands. I enjoyed the music but often found the words to the hymns/songs rather suspect. I must have heard thousands of 'sermons', from hundreds of 'preachers'. They talked and preached about god's 'Holiness' over and over. We read from the supposed 'Holy' bible. We prayed like eternal sycophants to 'The most 'Holy' God', (as opposed to the other 'unholy' ones ?) We sang over and over in different conotations 'Holy, Holy are you Lord God' , and, 'You are the most Holy', 'Holiest in the heights', and, 'You alone are Holy' etc; etc; as though somehow being ...

UPDATE T he forums at http://ex-christian.net were down do to a significant increase in website traffic . Image by DavidDMuir via Flickr Basically, our large number of daily forum users (and lurkers) were unintentionally crashing the current server. None of the posts or materials were lost. Everything is always backed up. This return to full service on a dedicated server to handle the increase in traffic is thanks to the generous souls that have funded the project. We were able to pay a year in advance of hosting, and incoming monthly subscriptions will be saved in order to defray various software updates and next years big bill. Thanks for your support. Without the generosity of so many, we would not have been able to pass "GO." Sincerely, Dave webmaster of http://ex-christian.net

By VeryBerry -- I went to church this morning just because I have been attending church services for 33 years. In fact, I don't believe in the God of the bible anymore; nor am I afraid of hellfire. I have such the peace that surpasses all understanding from seeking and finding the truth. My article may seem like a general rant about Christianity, but I feel the need to write to diffuse my anger against years of religious brainwashing . Please bear with me as I publish bits and pieces of my painful journey to freedom. As I sat in church this morning, I thought about WizenedSaged's latest article " The truth shall set you free " which triggered some memories about all the years that I was convinced of being free from sins. However, now I feel truly free from bondage and I can say "I ain't scared of burning in hell." What hell? Where is Hell ? Can my GPS take me there? I am not afraid of something that doesn't exist. Many of you might ask if I...

By Kristin -- I ’ve always had questions about religion. They started out innocent and curious, but when no one could answer those questions, they became suspicious. My most frequent included the following: Why would God send someone to hell who hasn’t even heard of Jesus? If every religion says they’re the one true religion, how do we know which is right? Why would God even let someone be born if He knew in advance that they were going to hell? Other than the Bible, what evidence is there that Jesus is the Son of God? Why do we believe people who hear things from God, even though they are sometimes wrong? I stopped asking my mother questions the day she quietly said, “Your intelligence is going to make it hard for you to have a relationship with Jesus.” I was incredulous at what that statement implied – that you can’t think about religion, just blindly believe, no more questions. I felt exactly the opposite. It seemed like the single most important thing to spend time thin...