By Andie ~ I am no longer sure what the hell I am. I was raised in a household with a very devoted Catholic mother and a father who would go to Mass and piously beat his breast during Mass, as he was taught to do as a child. Then, at night, he came into my room and fucking molested me. He was a fucking sick asshole and still is. He refuses to die although he was born in 1937; if that sounds cold-hearted, let me tell you that my father regularly abused me in ALL ways (the least of it was physical, but it still happened), belittled me, and basically let me know that I was a worthless piece of shit. Sexual abuse in and of itself is very scarring. No more be said. Image by 55Laney69 via Flickr I am 40 now, and left the church around the age of 26. I couldn't take it anymore and just left. I didn't attend another church until I moved to the Beltway and started attending Lutheran services at night. I attended their church service at least once in the morning and not a ...

By Alexis ~ H i everyone, I am a lurker here. If you are familiar with the Jesus Camp video, that was how my childhood was, except possibly even more extreme. The tears and 'jesus-is-my-boyfriend' type songs and the testimonies and the rapture and the evil harry potter and the hellfire for all non-believers. I was unlucky enough not to be born into the regular, normal world (we called that the "non-believers" and "the world"). Instead I was born into religious extremism . Although nobody got physically hurt, we've all been hurt psychologically. I continue to feel like a robot but at least I am much more free than I used to be...it's taken many years to start allowing myself to think and do something I never got to do growing up....which is to form opinions and make decisions. Kids raised like myself have their rights stripped away, their minds controlled by somebody else (the parents whose thoughts are controlled by the religious leaders)...

By Faithfool ~ A fter looking long and hard at the bible’s definition of love in 1 Cor 13, and seeing how far short God falls from it , I started to hunger for a more comprehensive definition of love beyond the bible. I recently got my hands on a copy of “ The Art of Loving ” by Erich Fromm , and have been devouring it with many delighted ‘aha!’ moments. Fromm says there are four basic elements common to all forms of love: Care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge. So let's take a quick look at the first three and see how Biblegod measures up. 1. Care. "The active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love." Is God's love for us active? The Bible certainly pays a lot of lip service to this idea, but in daily life it's a struggle to see any evidence of his 'active concern' for our life and growth. Anything that could be held up as ‘active concern’ can often be explained away by reason, emotions, or coincidence. 2. Responsib...

By Ryan ~ A t 28, I sometimes wonder why it took so long for me to renounce my faith. Why did the obvious objections to theism in general and Christianity in particular not occur to me sooner? How was it that I managed to remain so unreflective for so long? Was I stupid, or just stubborn? On the other hand, when I recall my earliest memories of attending church when I was 4 or 5, it occurs to me that I might never have left the Christian fold—might never have defected from the “family of God.” All the ingredients necessary for life-long loyalty were there: a ready-made pool of like-minded people to share life with; an open, accepting atmosphere where candid expressions of joy and sadness were allowed for and even encouraged, and where real love was frequently expressed; a quasi-serviceable moral code; charming, intelligent lay leaders who made the Christian life seem not only functional but formidable; the promise of food and fellowship with extended family after the morning serv...

By black freethought ~ I write this essay to talk about how difficult dating is when you are an ex-christian in the black community. Although I realize for a lot of us in the atheist community, dating can present many challenges. According to a recent survey, over 70 percent of Black woman see the Christian faith as an important part of their life. (June 2012 The Washington Post and Kaiser Family Foundation ) After my divorce and later deconversion from Christianity, I started toying with the idea of getting on a dating website. After many months of having a basic profile, I decided to upgrade to the paid subscription. The first thing I noticed was that there were very few females who identified as atheist, and none of them were black. This didn't surprise me because I am the only black atheist I know. Many black women identified themselves as christian who were looking for other Christians. I also ran into this phrase while reading their profiles, "He must belie...

By Dano ~ W hen I was 7 or 8, I remember going through a stage where I wanted to be like captain Tootsie. I may be the only person on the planet that remembers who Captain Tootsie was, but for all of you non, tootsie roll lovers, he was an advertising creation , no different than the ones used to sell stuff today. If I was fortunate enough to be in the possession of a nickel, usually by commission of some kind of sin, like not giving it to God on a Sunday as I was supposed to, or stealing from my mothers purse, I headed straight to the candy store, (yes there was a little store up on the corner that sold nothing but candy, mostly a penny a piece, from a large showcase full of tootsie rolls, little wax bottles full of sweet stuff, paper ribbons with little dots of candy on them, guess-whats, with a prize in each one, and all day suckers, and innumerable others.) Tootsie rolls were my favorite, because they were chocolate and the bonus was a short pictorial on the back of the wr...

By Andrea ~ I was only eleven years old at the time but, for someone so young, the OCD disorder had built up fast and become a monster. I remember it first creeping up when I was cleaning my room one night.It started off normal, and then I had the sudden thought that I should rearrange all the puzzles in the closet.So I stacked the boxes..and then I felt like it wasn't good enough so I stacked them again. Then came the thought ''Maybe it's wrong to leave any kind of mess in the room.'' So it took about ten times of straightening them before I was satisfied.At that point I should have thought ''Wow that was a waste of time!'' But because OCD had crept up on me I just thought...''Guess that was annoying but important.'' I was preoccupied with silly tasks, but I could still function.What I didn't know was that it was going to get much worse. Since I was only in fifth grade, I had been to church but hadn't really been...

By Tabitha ~ I ’m 38 years old, and I’m the youngest of three children. I was raised in the Assembly of God churches of Washington state by a fanatical, born again, end-times, tongues-talking mother, who herself was raised by a southern Baptist mother that was about as warm and fuzzy as John Calvin and Martin Luther combined. My father was a mean drunk who spent long hours at work, then abused all of us when he was at home. I was baptized at age five in the Wenatchee river , and I answered countless altar calls over the years, but I never felt saved, just dirty and shameful. My earliest memories are of shame. My mother used to stand outside my bedroom door and listen to hear if I was masturbating, so she could throw the door open and catch me touching my own body. Then she would continue to stand there and lecture me, and tell me that I was going to hell for being a dirty-minded girl, and that I better repent of my sins. She did this to me from the time I was a little girl unt...

By Vince ~ M y life is dominated by rational thought. Having just finished my undergraduate degree in chemistry at a public university and now as I'm just about to start in the Master's Program for synthetic organic chemistry, I find myself in awe at nature's prowess but even more so at man's ability to understand it. The rational thought that got me to where I am today is the same rational thought that first got me asking questions, and asking questions is the fast track to becoming an ex-Christian. My father died when I was six years old of lung cancer. So my mom sent me away to a grief camp for kids who had lost loved ones. There were sermons every night and during a candlelight vigil I finally broke down and let all of those emotions that never seemed to surface come bubbling out and streaming down my cheeks like a torrent. They told me that my dad was watching me from heaven, an angel. I grew up going to church like most American kids. My family was not super...

W ile in Jerusalem Mitt Romney made an appearance at the Wailing Wall in a Yarmulka . Was he just trying to pay tribute to Orthodox tradition or does he think he’s Jewish? Perhaps both. Conservative Christianity teaches “ supersessionism ,” the idea that God’s covenant with Christians replaced his covenant with the Jews and now Christians are the Chosen People, the spiritual heirs of Abraham. Traditionally, Mormonism takes this a step further – teaching that Mormons are not only the spiritual heirs of Abraham, they are his physical descendants as well. Mormonism includes a ritual called the “ Patriarchal Blessing ” in which a member in good standing receives a set of pronouncements spoken by an older male who is thought, during the ritual itself, to act as a latter day prophet. Like many of Mormonism’s better known distinctive features, such as plural marriage and wearing sacred undergarments , the practice was instituted by Joseph Smith himself.* One of the most central functions...

By OrdinaryMan ~ I n spite of the fact I am a former fundamentalist Christian and ex-pastor, my minister son and his family think I am headed for Hell. This is my response to him. I use the pen name of August Stine. Different Family Beliefs Your faith is important to you. My beliefs are important to me. We pray to the same God every day For me, He is the Caring Creator; Who cares about my well being To you, He is the fearful God Who demands obedience. I believe Jesus was a spiritual man but not God. I believe Jesus said some great words of wisdom And I am sorry he had to die on the cross. You believe Jesus died for the sins of man And his salvation is a gift from God . I do not believe this, but let’s suppose I did. Didn’t you say salvation was a gift? If it is a gift, why do I need to do anything? You say I am going to hell unless . . . You even give me the words I should say— “Jesus, forgive my sins.” Do people go to hell for not sayin...