By God O Rama ~ T he New Testament teaches that since Jesus was victorious over death, everyone who believes in him will be raised from the dead just as he was. After years of hearing Easter sermons that the resurrection of Jesus was the critical event that all history had led up to, I decided one spring day in the early-1990s to do an in-depth study on the subject. I started by comparing the gospel accounts of the resurrection. The Internet was in its infancy, and online Bibles hadn’t been invented yet, so I photocopied the relevant passages from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John , and pasted them side-by-side on a poster board. I was ready for God to reward my desire for spiritual understanding with exciting new revelations about that great day. As I studied the four passages at once, I can’t fully describe what took place inside me. It was a revelation alright, but not the kind I had been hoping for. It was a realization that apparently nobody could get their story straight ...

By The Thinking Atheist ~ R ecently I have been getting more and more leery of Religion. That in and of itself isn't anything surprising, but I have come to the rather disturbing, but expected conclusion that religion as a whole is detrimental to society and humankind. Why do I think this? For many reasons. First off, what is religion? It is the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, esp. a personal God or gods. At least, that is what the major religions could be looked at, and what Google tells us- anything else is just semantics. So here you have 7 Billion people, and a good deal of that population believes- without proof, evidence, anything of that nature- in an all-powerful being. Once again, no evidence, not the slightest bit of supporting information to that outrageous claim. Extraordinary claims need to be met with extraordinary evidence, after all, and religion had NO evidence to speak of. (Well, except a crying statue, but we'll get to that ...

By Harry J. Bentham ~ H owever vitriolic it might seem, “hard” atheism dismissing deities as impossible is more than justified. My justification for the harder form of atheism is that that the theistic claim contains a profound lack of precision, and requires this lack of precision to be received by anyone. Watching that old question on YouTube ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyG-WiiOii4 ) demanding atheism prove its “accuracy” got me thinking about “accuracy”, its value in explanations, and how the accuracy test proves the ineptitude of deities for explaining the origin of the universe. Theism must necessarily be highly inaccurate, the problem being that it depends on us looking at the universe with the poorest standard of accuracy for its arguments to work at all. The theist’s own consistent need for a lack of accuracy makes the theistic claim the most asinine possible assertion that any person could ever make. And the theistic claim isn’t just a claim promoted despite its in...

By God O Rama ~ I was recently shocked to learn that Jesus was in two places at once on the day of his crucifixion. How could that be? At the sixth hour , or noon, the Gospel of John places him at Gabbatha , or The Pavement, where he was judged by Pontius Pilate . It says at the sixth hour, Pilate brought him before the crowd that was gathered, and said, “Behold, your king!” The other three gospels say that at that time, he had already been hanging on the cross for three hours, and darkness came over the land from the sixth to the ninth hours, or from noon to 3 p.m.! If the authors of the gospels are writing “under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit,” how did this glaring error take place? Either John is wrong, or the other three gospel writers are wrong. Both cannot be right. Those who believe in biblical inerrancy often make the argument (http://carm.org/bible-difficulties/matthew-mark/what-hour-was-jesus-crucified) that the time discrepancy arose from a difference in...

By Aspieguy ~ C hristians do so many things that simply annoy and irritate me. Some of these things they do irritate me because of my Aspergers . I won't say this is a top ten list. I'll stop when I exhaust my examples. They are never quiet. They talk continuously and are noticeably uncomfortable with silence. They touch and hug you without permission. Strangers touching me is freaky They sing songs about things they don't ever do. For example, they never "dance for Jesus" or "lift holy hands". Because the majority of people masturbate, I wonder how holy the hands are. They lie. They claim to love everyone but really don't. Some employ sarcasm. I don't recognize sarcasm because I take it literally. I consider sarcasm a form of lying. The men act like women. Some cry when speaking before the church. They are truly in touch with their feminine side. I'm not. The men engage in womanly small talk and talk constantly. My idea of a goo...

By God O Rama ~ B ecause of his supposed role in betraying Jesus, Judas Iscariot has been immortalized as the quintessential traitor. The story of Judas is repeated as one of the most dastardly betrayals ever to have taken place—one of the Twelve who sat at the feet of Jesus, eating and sleeping with him, and then at the very end, turning on him. Here's how the passage in the Gospel of Matthew reads: And while he yet spake, lo, Judas, one of the twelve, came, and with him a great multitude with swords and staves, from the chief priests and elders of the people. Now he that betrayed him gave them a sign, saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he: hold him fast. And forthwith he came to Jesus, and said, Hail, master; and kissed him. And Jesus said unto him, Friend, wherefore art thou come? Then came they, and laid hands on Jesus, and took him. ( Matthew 26:47 -50) One question that seems pertinent: Who would pay Judas money to point out Jesus, when everyone in town ...

By Lizardlady ~ O h, how I wish I had found this site sooner! I've been reading many of your testimonies. It means so much to me to know I am not alone in having allowed myself to be deceived by the cult of Christianity, and then gone through a life-changing struggle to break free. My story starts almost as soon as I was born in 1963. My mother was, and is, a fundamentalist christian and my dad is an ex-catholic atheist. Mom did not get her way in many things while they were married, but she succeeded in nagging dad to take her, my younger brother and me to church. She never learned to drive so he performed chauffeur duty and went through the motions in church. That was my first lesson in hypocrisy - I learned every curse word in the English language (and some in Hungarian) from him, but he would decry cursing in front of "christian" people. We went to a variety of churches because invariably the minister would say or do something to offend dad and he would refu...

By Faithfool ~ M y 28 years of Christinsanity ended last January. Since then, a recurring thought often catches me off guard and floors me: “HOW THE HELL COULD I HAVE BEEN SO STUPID?!!” And for so long?!! Which made me think, how did each one of us at exChristian.net get sucked in? I bet the majority of us were raised by Christians. We never knew any different. How could we? Telling a child they will burn in hell unless they believe is child abuse. So we didn’t stand a chance. Even if we “backslid” or weren’t as serious about it growing up, the foundation was set for our ‘return to faith’ in later years. But what about those of us who joined the flock as teens or adults? Why didn’t we know better? I think vulnerability is key. I’m not 100% sure, but I’d be willing to bet there was a degree of vulnerability involved for each ex-C convert reading this. Ie, An eager young person who wanted to fit in with their admired Christian peers at school A disconnected teen who f...

By Carl S ~ S everal years ago I posed a question on a Christian website. I began by telling a personal experience following the death of a co-worker who died at the age of 44 from a heart attack. Because his young daughter and mine attended school in the same classroom, we had a connection. I went to the funeral home to pay my respects. The evening after his funeral, I got a call from his widow, who was VERY troubled about her husband’s fate. She thought that, because he did not go to church services, he was “in hell.” After nearly an hour of trying to persuade her to the contrary, because he was a very good and caring man to her and his children, so that he deserved heaven, I concluded that she ended up the conversation somewhat relieved because of our talk. (A couple of decades later, I asked a question related to this topic, to two different pastors on two different occasions: Would I get into heaven if I was a good, virtuous, man, though a non-believer? One answered “Of course...

By WizenedSage (Galen Rose) ~ M ost Christians, it seems, are quite willing to accept their feelings about their religion as proof of its truth, and are thus uninterested in evidence to the contrary. They have taken the leap of faith and thereby found the “Truth.” They think. . . I find it both absurd and amusing that many, perhaps most, otherwise rational human adults believe they can feel their way to truth. It seems glaringly obvious to me that whether something feels true is irrelevant in the search for truth. Hasn’t almost everyone felt certain about something in his life which later was proved to be false? But, the obvious must surrender when it comes to matters of religion, because believers want to believe, despite the fact that nothing of significance can actually be proven about any religion’s foundational dogmas. If the “spiritual-minded” can’t find any useful facts – or, if the facts argue against their beliefs - then they go with feelings and take that leap of fai...

By Tania ~ I am mad at some of the people in my life who claim to be “believers” (whatever that means), followers of Christ, godly people, and so on. Because these people believe easily – with the faith of a child, without asking big questions, without daring to think outside of the box – they do not understand what it is like to think like someone like me. What a lot of them don't understand is that we have arrived at this place of being agnostic/atheist/non-religious, not necessarily because we wanted to, but simply because we can no longer accept and follow the teachings of Christianity. We do not all reason the same way. We do not all have the same experiences, the same acquaintances and friends, the same thought processes; therefore, our journeys of faith may look very different than those of Christians who have never wandered out of the box. Somehow, some Christians consider me to be “less than,” because I do not pray like they do. Somehow, I am “less than,” because ...