by Jake Rhodes ~ W hile expending precious time and brain cells on the digital cocaine my generation has contributed to society (aka Facebook), I have recently found myself becoming nearly exasperated by the status updates of some of my friends and relatives. I live in southern Mississippi, so Jesus’ ubiquitous magical influence is credited with everything from purported medical healings to the merciful brevity of Vanilla Ice ’s music career. Due to such beliefs, my news feed is often littered with fatuous celebrations of what one could label “mini miracles”. Most of you will know precisely what I am talking about. Who has not heard such nonsense as “Couldn’t find my keys… I prayed and then they suddenly turned up in a spot I had already checked 10 times. I swear they weren’t there before!! Thank you, Jesus!” or something resembling “Just got the call I have been waiting on! God is always on time!”? If you happen to be unfamiliar with such mentalities, do not laugh; I am not being co...

By Johann Kessler ~ P ersonally, I never thought I’d get this far. I never believed that I would ever be writing these words, this somewhat public admission of my denial of faith. But I’m getting ahead of myself, there’s lots of explaining to do before you understand what exactly I mean. I am a recent, and mostly hidden, ‘deconvert’ from Christianity. It’s a hidden undercurrent running through all strains of the Christian faith. All Christians experience doubt, but are afraid to admit it to their friends and family. Many others, including myself, experience doubt but then realize that our doubts are well placed and accept the reality that our belief is simply that: belief and nothing more. We’re just afraid of making it biblically known. We may live in a country in which religious belief is constitutionally protected, but that doesn’t stop the social consequences of making our lack of faith known. But before you misunderstand, I’m not talking about some half-assed and nonexist...

By Alan ~ M y loss of faith came quite early in life, by comparison to many others I have known. It all happened, surprisingly, when I made the determined decision to fully read the Bible. Haing learned about Adam and Eve, Moses, Jesus, etc.. by word of mouth, like all Christian children, I wondered how such a short series of stories filled out such a big book. It was natural to be curious about God and all of his "goodness" in history. What I got, instead, has a series of stories I would have believed true of Hitler, not God. After reading these things I felt, literally, physically ill. I was'nt able to eat for nearly 2 days, and my dreams began to evolve into nightmares (some of which persist to this day) of the worst sort. And after a week of tormenting myself, attempting to rationalize, and even trying to convince myself that the undiluted evil I had just read about was, in fact, good. But it wouldnt take. I would never, NEVER, profess love for a child murderer,...

By Dimunitive Diva ~ “Most people think great God will come from the sky, take away everything and make everybody feel high, But if you know what life is worth-you will look for yours on earth...”- Bob Marley and The Wailers , ‘ Get Up, Stand Up ’ A t this point, I am about eleven months into my deconversion/deprogramming.I am still amazed at how free I feel now compared to the way I felt when I was religious. The joy and peace that I have attained brings tears to my eyes. I am living a life I once thought impossible. As a Christian especially, the image of slavery is used to illustrate the effects of sin. Supposedly we are slaves to sin from the time we are born. It is only in Christ that we gain freedom and truly live. For me, however, it didn’t feel that way. Being baptized at ten and indoctrinated into a rigid form of Christianity was the beginning of my own Dark Age. Though my time in organized religion was not enough to completely destroy the individual I’d been before, i...

By Eveningmeadows ~ T he other day my daughter was telling me about a friend’s birthday party that she went to. While she was there, she was talking to her friend’s mother. I used to be friends with this woman when my daughter was young, but I just couldn’t take her anymore. I met her when we both had our kids in Xtian School. It was a very small Xtian school, and our oldest daughters were in the same kindergarten class. It was a lousy school, but that’s a different story. She was pregnant with her third, and I was separated from my ex for the last time. She seemed to be a nice person, and since I was separated, I didn’t feel too welcome by the nice married women in the church. I went to her house for coffee one day, and the first thing that hit me when I walked in the door, was the smell of manure. Her husband worked on a dairy farm , and it never seemed to dawn on him to change his clothes before he sat on the furniture. It was a very strong smell, but I didn’t want to be rude ...

By Dano ~ G uess what! In America today... You can be a liar, and not much will happen to you except that you may be elected President. Image by Vermario via Flickr You can say that you don't believe in any "faith based" theology or mythology today, and go about your life, but you won't be accepted by many of your neighbors (especially if you live in the south),or relatives for that matter. If you run for office you may get one or two votes, yours, and your significant others' (if she/he is a free thinker). In America today, you can say that you don't believe there is a God and Jesus never existed, without being burned at the stake, in contrast to what would happen to you for expressing the same sentiments about Allah and Mohammad in a Muslim country, where you will most likely loose your head, (literally). If you grew up in America,there is a pretty good chance, that until you reached an age when you started to think for yourself, that you had been...

By ExPenty ~ I 've posted a few things on here, but it's occurred to me that I never shared my extimony. With that in mind, here it is. I hope someone in a similar situation finds it helpful. I was "saved" in a Pentecostal church at the age of 16. I repented of my sins, invited Jesus into my heart and decided to live my life for him. It felt really real, and the world seemed wonderful. I devoted my life to serving God. I devoured the Bible, reading it as often as I could. I was hungry for it. I spent hours on my knees in fervent prayer. I received the " baptism in the Spirit " and spoke in tongues. I spent two years in full-time Christian ministry in London with Youth For Christ , then I went to London Bible College (a respected evangelical seminary, the largest in Western Europe, now known as the London School of Theology) for three years. During that time I did a weekly placement with Jews For Jesus and helped run the youth group at a local Bapt...

By Arthur ~ From http://whereisjesus.com A ll love relationships have a beginning and end. When you fall in love, get divorced or cease to exist . To lose one's faith is not something that is planned or even foreseen. It is all new, wonderful and beautiful. At first you are on “fire” with emotion and feelings of being loved, belonging to a family, being forgiven from sins, being worthy and accepted in the beloved, etc. Wonderful. But when you stop believing all that is gone and you are on your way to spiritual emptiness, loneliness and separation from god.(Hell) Falling away from relationship and sweet fellowship with the Creator/Savior/Father/ God is not one you would willing want for your life. Your Christian wife, family and friends reject you and wonder if you were ever saved. Did you ever have a love relationship with Jesus? The scornful words “You are rebellious” rings in your ears. “You do not want to be accountable for your sins” haunts you. You will spend eterni...

By Deep Blue Sky ~ I stumbled onto this site through a Google search about three months ago. It was about the time I was beginning to seriously consider giving up Christianity but feeling very unsure of where that would lead me and who I would be afterward. I have since de-converted but those feelings are still the best description of where I am in life right now. Please let me explain. My family converted to a form of Pentecostal Christianity from a Buddhist/Hindu background when I was 11. Ever since then I’ve been heavily involved with church: attending services and home groups, participating in setting up, the worship team and am a young leader at my church. However the major changes came four years after our initial conversion, when we moved to a different church. Our new church was home to an even stronger brand of Pentecostal biblical literalism, an obsession with spiritual experiences, demonic activity, the apocalypse and anything to do with Israel. I was 15 then and...

By Larry C . ~ "B rother John" was a gregarious Baptist preacher who pastored The First Baptist Church of Oldsmar, Florida in the 1970s and early 1980s. Sometime in the 1970s Brother John switched from being a traditional Baptist preacher and went Pentecostal . But John just didn't go mainstream pentecostal. No, he became attracted to the lunatic fringe (of the lunatic fringe?)of the pentecostal movement: the Word of Faith message as promoted by evangelists Kennth Hagin and Kenneth Copeland . Hagin and Copeland took the idea of the absolute authority of the bible to the nth degree. The Word of Faith movement emphasized the idea of "faith" to the point that you could reject modern science, medicine, etc. if one truly believed in "the promises" of God for one's health and financial prosperity, then you don't need all this man-made treatments and props. The Word of Faith folks are like Bible-believers on speed. Though he had no for...

By WizenedSage (Galen Rose) ~ I am not a lawyer, but I will argue that the Christian religion is built on hearsay. In fact, there is not a single important element of the Christian dogma which would be permissible as evidence in a modern courtroom. Allow me to explain. Hearsay may be understood as equivalent to the statement, “They say . . .” When someone says something like, “They say there were several people involved in the assassination of JFK ,” it is hearsay. If such a statement were made on a courtroom stand, it would be disallowed as evidence since the claim is unsubstantiated by any evidence and may be no more than rumor. Here is a more formal definition of hearsay: “Statements by a witness who did not see or hear the incident in question but heard about it from someone else.” Hearsay is admissible as evidence in American courts only under very stringent conditions, such as testimony by a representative of a crime laboratory. The reason hearsay is not generally per...