By John W. Loftus ~ P lato's cave allegory is a good one applied to the issues that separate believers and non-believers. I know I'm in a culturally derived cave. So I can reflect on that which I have been led to accept since I realize I'm in it, and this makes all the difference in the world. My conclusion is that I can only trust science to tell me what I should accept. Doing so allows me to think outside the cave, to question the reality I was raised to believe. Believers raised in their respective religious cultures are in the cave and in denial. They have accepted and now defend what they were raised to believe using a double standard, one for their own faith and a different one for the faiths they reject. But the problem is faith. Believers all defend the merits of faith even though faith has no method. Sometime ago in the past in that cave during a dispute between prisoners, one of them said, "Let's test the idea," and the test solved the issue in ...

By Valerie Tarico ~ Reprinted from Alternet E vangelicals wear their religion on T-shirts and around their necks and on car bumpers and eye-blacks. They hand out tracts on college campuses and stage revival meetings on military bases. They use weddings and funerals to preach come-to-Jesus sermons. In their resolve to spread the good news that Jesus saves, some also do things that are more morally dubious. In Tucson, nice young couples cultivate relationships with lonely college students without disclosing that they are paid to engage in “ friendship missions .” In Seattle, volunteers woo first- and second-graders to afterschool Good News Clubs that the children are incapable of distinguishing from school-sponsored activities. In Muslim countries, Christian missionaries skirt laws that ban proselytizing by pretending to be mere aid workers , putting genuinely secular aid workers at risk. In the U.S. military, soldiers bully other soldiers into prayer meetings or the Passion of the...

by Ex-Pastor Dan ~ Starting Over I am currently a senior at Columbia Southern University in their Environmental Science & Management program. Although most of my classes deal with science, I have to take two Management courses this semester to meet the requirements of my degree. In the course entitled Leadership, we have been studying great leaders and exploring the question – what makes a great leader? With my past in mind, I have been thinking a lot about what makes a truly great leader; had I ever known one? I know for sure that I was a terrible leader and sat under terrible leaders in the churches I went to and served in. For a recent essay, I was assigned the task of comparing two different styles of leadership: The leader who leads with Love and the leader who leads by inducing Fear. Wow, did that ever hit home! I not only sat under Fear Leaders, I knew that I had been one myself. I also was aware that I knew nothing about Love Leading until a very few years ago...

By Carl S ~ N o one wants to be vulnerable. Vulnerability will keep you from commitment; sex makes you vulnerable. I've experienced this almost from the beginning of awareness. It's no fun being torn between doing the right thing and whether or not you will be able to continue a relationship, for example. Bottlecap Wisdom (Photo credit: vasta ) Since I have become an overt atheist, my vulnerability is out in the open, and so, I'd like to spend some time telling others of my experiences. Fasten your seat belts. It all began with my big mouth. I couldn't keep from commenting about injustice whenever it reared its ugly head. Sometimes, I went over the heads of my superiors to report abuses. This did not endear me to those immediately over me, and maybe that is why I was "let go, without doing anything wrong" from one monastery, and thrown out of another. It was in the second one that I started asking questions the novice master was uncomfortable with (None of...

By Max Carey ~ G reeting fellow unbelievers. I decided to make this extremely brief because unless you were a part of our church [ Worldwide Church of God , publishers of the Plain Truth magazine] you probably won't be that interested in the details. So here goes: I was a christian the first 47 years of my life. During that time I couldn't conceive of a life outside of Christianity. Then there was a major crisis in our church and I was forced to reexamine my faith. I believe I did that honestly and objectively. During this period of examination a friend of mine suggested that I not throw out the baby with the bath water. I thought that was good advise but in the end I found there was no baby. I've been out the church for several years but I still find myself asking how in the world I could have believed what I did for so long. At least it's comforting to know that I'm not alone.

By Justin B . ~ F or nearly a year, I've wandered my life as an agnostic, or something unidentifiable.Labeling my deep disillusionment with a religion founded on a deeply immoral theology detailing the existence of hell for the "unbelieving" seems arbitrary. Some Christian would accost me, and label me an inveterate sinner for honestly admitting that I have deep doubts in Christian dogma . Rooted in Christianity is an overzealous belief that anyone that mentally diverges from the belief of the masses have committed the paradoxical sin that cannot be forgiven. I have tirelessly tried again and again , to no avail, to perhaps carve out belief within this establishment, but it has become nearly impossible. Instead, I have started to see the church as a whole as being something that greatly held me back both ethically, philosophically, and psychologically. Above all, the belief within eternal damnation for those whose beliefs have no foundation in Christianity is unconscio...

By C.T. Ogden ~ R ecently, a friend and I were discussing religion in a comparative sense. During our discussion of the good and evil aspects of faith and belief in monotheistic ideologies, we began to explore the idea of the Anti-Christ . What we discovered through our discussion was…beautiful. Beauty can take many forms; a child, a woman, a landscape, an idea, etc. In this forum, the beauty I have found was in the Irony . Only a perfectly evil and methodical mind could construct so perfect a fail-safe as that of the Anti-Christ. Allow me to elaborate. To look at the Anti-Christ in a Biblical sense, he is one that will embody the personality of Christ, but will ultimately deny salvation to his people. Essentially, and to most Christians, he is a man who will end all war, unite the world, and bring an era of peace before Armageddon that follows the rapture. Now let us subtract the ridiculous from this statement; the rapture, Armageddon, salvation, and the destruction of t...

By Incongruous Circumspection ~ A dam and Eve sinned in Genesis 3. They ate the cumquat fruit that was forbidden and it says their eyes were opened, meaning they realized something - they were naked as the noonday sun. Oddly, nakedness had no meaning to them until they disobeyed God, who tempted them, even though he doesn't tempt mankind, until they sinned. Thus they frantically sewed hula skirts together with fiberglass rope and created the first Scottish kilts for men. When God came back to the garden, knowing everything, and yet not being able to find Adam and Eve, he cursed all he could find to curse and then made proper pantaloons for Adam, and a pastel blue, triple breasted, plain dress for Eve. Adam was also given a button-down, long-sleeved shirt with crisscrossed threads clasping the collar shut, in lieu of a button. For undergarments, Adam was allowed to wear none whereas fashioned for Eve was a burlap petticoat and large elastic granny undies. Adam was allowe...

By WizenedSage (Galen Rose) ~ H ere’s a new game you can play with your Christian family, friends, or antagonists. I call it “Mysteries of the Gospels.” Of course, a “mystery,” in the Christian sense, is a seeming absurdity in Christian dogma which is very difficult or impossible to explain. It’s one of those conundrums that Christians typically “explain” with something like, “That’s just one of the divine mysteries.” The game is played by first offering an example of a Gospel “mystery,” so that your opponent understands just what a mystery is. It must be clearly understood by both players that the objective is not to solve the mysteries, but merely to identify mysteries. (Your opponent may choose to “solve” the mysteries later, at his leisure!) If your opponent is reluctant to play, then offer two or three more examples – ostensibly, to show how easy the game is to play – but, actually, to get as much nonsense on the table as you can while you have the opportunity. Then, you o...

By Rachel Leigh ~ W ell, actually I'm in search for some advice, guidance, or even counseling. I lived in an evangelical, charismatic, Christian home. Considering we were Christians, we weren't happy. I was born with a rare disease at birth. I was in a coma 2x in my lifetime. And I was a miracle in the church, cause of the fact that I woke up from them both and lived a "normal" life. When I was around the age 5 by parents started a church. It was small church in PA. My parents fought viciously. They were constantly fighting. They would scream profanities at each other. They would throw everything at each other. Then, to make matters worse. My dad was verbally abusive. In his eyes, nothing we ever did was good enough. "Why couldn't be like this person?" he would ask repeatedly. I remember they would fight. Then they wouldn't speak. Then, they would pretend nothing had happened. After years of watching this, I starting to ask my mom at around a...

By Steve ~ T here is something I must admit. As a Christian, I was utterly blind to the suffering of others. I cannot remember ever seeing something so horrible, so terrible, that I would doubt God. I now look back, and while I can’t change the past, there’s so much I wish I had done. I wish I had become an atheist earlier, but parental supervision, an inflated ego, the argument from ignorance , and an ultimately self-defeating evangelical set of beliefs was what I had to work with. I wish my eyes had been a little more open. I wish I didn’t swallow the bullshit that “God caused the earthquake in Haiti so that people might help them,” which I think was the standard canard I would spout when faced with such disaster. The argument from suffering wasn’t what led me to become an atheist. It was those other, peripheral arguments, and the many testimonies from agnostics, atheists, and pagans, that showed me the ineffectiveness and foolishness of believing in a personal deity, especially o...