From Joe (a True Christian ™ ) ~ Y our website isn't as useful as it intends to be. Calling it exchristian is more of a way to plant a seed of doubt into the minds of the faithful. At least the ones who are weak in their faith. I am not one of those people. And I do not have the need to see my post on public display. But do what you want with it. You see, most of the testimonies I have seen on your website immediately send up a red flag. One begins with "Catholic". Another begins with "raised in church". Another "I was saved". There are many "brands" of Christianity. But there is only ONE authentic one. And you cannot possibly follow it AND the world simultaneously. This is the number one reason why so many "fall away" from God. It is because they never found Him to begin with. Once you find the true God, you will have no desire to fall away. All of the testimonials on your website represent people who never knew God. One of ...

F irst off I am happy to announce that the wife and I reconciled and ended the divorce proceedings.  The sad fact of the matter is it took an automobile accident to realize what was really going on inside me.  I and the driver were not injured, but I was standing there looking pathetic because of the circumstances involved. Now in continuing my blog am I gonna jump forward to the present as it bares being said. Many Christians, especially the fundies, will point their fingers (it makes them feel better and more righteous) and say “See, you need Jesus.” or “This is a result of leaving god.”.  But the truth of the matter is neither is true.  My life and the thing that lead to this mid-life (or no life as I call it) crisis are the direct result of being overly indoctrinated and living in a cult like environment. I get told “You just need to have faith”.  Well here is a list of people who said the same thing. Adolf Hitler David Koresh Jim Jones Bin Ladin...

By Jason Bachand ~ T here is a bit of common wisdom, in religious circles anyway, that seminaries make more atheists than clergy. I'm proof that - at least occasionally - the adage proves true. Image via Wikipedia As an outspoken non-believer, many have taken it upon themselves (as a moral imperative apparently) to explain my atheism using the vocabulary of the religious, ethical, and (I'm not kidding) psychological disciplines. That's a delicate way of saying that I've been accused of being an apostate, a nihilist, and a bitter, angry killjoy - among other things. The possibility that someone might come to not believe in gods or the supernatural through a combination of experience and rational deliberation seems foreign to many; they suppose (or perhaps prefer) that non-belief must arise from wickedness, vindictiveness or neurosis. I wonder if these same people apply a similar rubric to the nature of faith - could it be that belief is the product of negative experi...

A resurrected post from the earliest days of http://exchristian.net...  By Webmdave ~ I have been in an internet email group discussion with a Christian who maintains that GOD SAYS that sex was not just made for procreation but also for pleasure. While I would never mean to imply that I don't enjoy sex immensely, I will say that my wife and I do not plan on having any more children, so have taken the measures to insure that does not happen. What I challenged him on is his belief that the Christian position is one in which sex for pleasure is revered and honored. Now I too was an evangelical believer, so I am quite familiar with the modern day rhetoric on how good and honorable the marriage bed is, when undefiled and all that. However, the historic position of Christianity for centuries has been one that looked with disdain on the act of copulation, considering it base, earthly, sinful or at least much less appealing than celibacy. Coition is only tolerated when it results i...

By Libby Anne of Love Joy Feminism ~ I was told as I grew up that Christianity is a relationship, not a religion. It's about having a relationship with Jesus, not about following rules. It would seem, then, that I was not raised with legalism, right? Wrong. You see, my parents do not believe that Jesus would tell one person one thing and someone else something else. What Jesus says to one person in a given situation will not contradict what he tells another person. So since Jesus told my parents to hold certain standards of modesty, that adult daughters are to remain under their father's authority, and that women should be homemakers and not have careers, well, he will tell everyone else the same thing. It seems to me that if Jesus were real and really had a relationship with every Christian, then Christians would agree on matters of doctrine and practice. In practice, then, anyone who doesn't hold the same beliefs as my parents isn't listening to Jesus. My par...

By Appalachian Agnostic ~ I am currently reading The Case For Christ by Lee Strobel. I have never read Christian apologetics before, so I was curious about this author's claim to answer the tough questions that skeptics ask. I was actually looking forward to reading the book, but Strobel irritated me right away. There is something menacing about a book written by someone who wants to convince his readers that they must either come to agree with his views or else suffer dire consequences. As I read through the introduction and the first few chapters, my adverse emotional reaction triggered the memory of another book. I can't remember the name of it, but it was one of many books about wildlife that I collected as a child. Back then I loved to read about wild animals- their habitats, their behavior, what they looked like and how they survived-it was all fascinating to me. But this one particular book, (I think I bought it at a rummage sale) used stories about real wildlif...

By religiousantagonist ~

By Curious Neko ~ S cattered. That's where I am right now. You see, once upon a time I lived a happy little church-going Christian life with my devoutly born-again Christian husband and we swore we'd make sure our children knew the REAL reason behind Easter and Christmas and we pitied the people who didn't because they were all going to hell. But, I'm getting ahead of myself... let's start "in the beginning," shall we? I was born to a Buddhist mother and a non-practicing Catholic father. I was baptized in accordance with the Catholic faith and my entire devoutly Roman Catholic extended family rejoiced. Fast forward some 10 years. I've never really gone to church and only have the vaguest idea about some guy named Jesus being the actual reason for Christmas and Santa doesn't exist. I am incensed. My mother somehow got roped into going to a Southern Baptist church (at this point we're living in the deep South ) and becomes baptised... my fa...

By Andy ~ T his year, 2011, marks the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps “promoting peace and friendship around the world.” Those are their own words describing their mission. As I read about this anniversary of doing good, helping people, creating friendships, I could not help but compare to the xtian concept of sending missionaries to “spread the gospel” around the world. Image by afagen via Flickr I grew up in a fundamentalist, Christian home. I went to church school for my education beginning in the first grade and continuing through the completion of my Bachelors Degree . They attempted to brainwash me for virtually all of my growing up. Through all of that I always harbored doubts beginning with my earliest memories. Now I also had doubts about Santa Clause and you all know how that turned out. In my family I had one uncle who was a missionary to Africa and India, another who was a pastor and missionary to Vietnam and an Aunt who was a missionary to Mexico. I he...

By Positivist ~ I am new to exchristian.net , and I have to admit it has become a lifeline to me in this final phase of my transition from fundamentalist, charismatic believer to agnostic atheist. Here is my story. Image via Wikipedia I grew up in a Christian home and from a very young age I was obsessed with Truth. I remember when I was six years old I started reading my dad's theology books, in between bouts of reading Little House on the Prairie and Nancy Drew. I also remember having an intense fear of end times. I was fairly certain, even at that young age, that I would end up in a concentration camp one day for being a Christian. I carried this fear with me all the way into my twenties, and it is this fear that cause me to make some very big decisions in the most unnatural ways. After all, we were told at all church and youth meetings, “You are the generation!” I made career and education decisions based on my eschatological views, rather than on personal attributes, ab...

By Anonymous ~ I am writing this because at this moment and for the last four months, pretty much constantly, I have been extremely troubled and well, guilt ridden about a choice I have made in life relating to being an ex Christian / Catholic. Image via Wikipedia I was raised Catholic and went to a Catholic School. Mass every Sunday, communion the whole works. When I was younger, I believed it all. I remember thinking that I wasn’t good enough for Heaven and not bad enough for Hell, but I’d probably make it to Purgatory and that sort of thing. I also remember lying in bed at night worrying because my dad or my gran wouldn’t get to Heaven (my dad was Protestant, but non religious or lapsed or whatever you would call it) and my mum was quite a strict Catholic. Anyhow - when I got to my late teens I just sort of stopped going to mass. My mum didn’t say much thought I knew she was disappointed in me. That was pretty much how it was until my early thirties when I was about to get ma...

By Donna of http://hellboundsoul.wordpress.com/ W ell this is awkward. I never really know what to say when I have a lot to say. This is supposed to be a sort of introduction, I suppose. A sort of ’hey this is what I’m going to write about and it’s going to be awesome so you better read my blog’ thing. I’ve never been a good advertiser, but I can at least tell you what this blog is supposed to be about. Recently (about 10 months ago) I decided to abandon the Christian faith which I had ascribed to for approximately my entire life (I am currently 21). This is probably not something altogether shocking to hear, since people abandon their childhood faiths all the time, especially those around my age. In fact, my particular story is probably not going to be very shocking either. In additional fact, it will likely be atrociously boring and predictable. Either way, you should read it. This blog is intended for the curious, for those who are wondering what goes through the mind of a po...

By Yak ~ I was at a book festival recently perusing a very interesting book on the Casey Anthony "case" written by scholar and ex-prosecutor Wendy Murphy when a middle-age christian walked up to me and began staring at me. He was intense --remarkably like what I think of as Dr. Mesmer when he was about to hypnotize someone. I looked up and he asked me if knew who killed Caylee Anthony . Now, after reading Wendy's book, I discovered that I wasn't sure of who it might have been, due to questionable circumstances and statements made during depositions. I said as much to the christian. His eyes grew more dark and intense and then he informed me that it was Satan killed the child. In spite of the reasonable doubts expressed by a seasoned former child abuse prosecutor (Ms. Murphy), it never crossed my mind that anyone other than a deeply troubled human with a nefarious agenda caused her death. I said as much to the christian and his face became like a storm ...

On fundamentalist counterculture & juvenile black market adoption fantasies ... by Vyckie Garrison @ No Longer Quivering D o you remember when it first dawned on you that your relatives are all a bunch of crackpots and weirdos? Seems like I was around 8 or 9 — my mother worked all night in the casinos and slept most of the day, leaving me alone to protect my naïve older sister from the depraved advances of Mom's alcoholic boyfriends and worry about my big brother's drug addiction. I couldn't count on my grandparents to help — they were too preoccupied with their own divorce, dating, and remarriage dramas. "Holy sugar," I thought to myself, "these people are seriously messed up!" That's about the time the fantasies began. My home, I imagined, was a three-ring circus — and my relatives were the freaks and the clowns. In my daydreams, I was not really one of them. No — surely, I was of aristocratic origin. My REAL family were ro...

By Larry ~ W ell this has been a long time coming! Funny thing is it hasn't... my walk away from Christianity only began three years ago yet I have packed so so much into my lovely life that its seems like so long ago. That's how time has progressed for me,as a Christian; I was one for nearly twenty years, time progressed differently. My life was so empty. You see I really did take it seriously and embraced a life full of "shalt nots" because I thought they were sinful and church society was against such things. So I missed out on night clubbing,drinking in bars, sex, meeting women in all the ways a teen or twenty something in the UK would normally grow and learn important skills. Of course I am making up for that big time now, needless to say!!! By the time I left school, at 16, I was way gone. I was seriously screwed up; basically all due to my upbringing which was very nuetral. What do I mean by that? Well I expect its normal to pattern after your parents;...