By DustyLady ~ "You will recognize your own path when you come upon it, because you will suddenly have all the energy and imagination you will ever need."- Jerry Gillies. I ’ve been a lifetime seeker. Its been a long road with a lot of detours, but I feel like I have finally found my so-called “spiritual” path. I did not grow up in a religious home. I was told that we were Lutheran, but my parents were big partiers and drinkers and we never went to church. Although, my dad took me to church once as a child and it felt weird and kind of phony to me. When I was a kid, the only reading material in our home was my dad’s old psychology books from college, and an encyclopedia. I had a voracious appetite for answers. Around the age of 13, I started frequenting the library and read everything from sci fi to non fiction books on anything and everything. I was very much a ‘female nerd’ and still am to this day. My dad had grown up very religious, and it was there in his backg...

By SteveS ~ A ngels and demons are two of the most pivotal beings in Christian mythology . Fighting for the souls of humans below, these entities meddle in mortals’ everyday affairs. You can be sure that a majority of Americans, liberals and conservatives alike, believe in such beings. The growing consensus among Christians is that we have free will, which God cannot violate. But there may be something else tacked onto that consensus – namely, the belief that although God cannot interfere with human’s free will, he also cannot interfere with the free will of angels and demons, leaving them free to roam about the earth, doing as they will. This has been a counterpoint that Christians are starting to use more frequently – God gave Satan free will too, after all. I wanted to bring this up because although it might seem like a way for the Christian God to wriggle out of the bear trap of the problem of evil (but even if it did work, there are still many hurdles to jump through before...

By Incongruous Circumspection ~ I n the fundamentalist teachings I grew up in, we were taught that we were sinners. Vile, filthy sinners. Everything that we did in life that would be considered good by human standards was worthless. We were nothing without God. God had killed his son, Jesus Christ, because there was obviously no other way he could forgive us of our sins, without Jesus' blood lovingly washed over them. (Ah...the fixation on blood to clean stuff. I won't get into how asinine that idea is.) Unfortunately for us, God just killing his son and running the blood all over the place to do it's cleaning work, wasn't enough. We still had to say we believed in the whole idea. If we didn't, we went to hell. Yep. An eternal slow cooker, thrown into a bunch of fire, along with all these scary spirits called demons. Never mind that only the privileged few that could read or simply be in the right spot at the right time to hear the truth caused billi...

By Carl S ~ D oes the word “dogmatic” tell us something about comedy? Well, interestingly, the dictionary defines the meaning of dogmatic as, “marked by an authoritative, arrogant assertion of unproved principles.” Oy vay ! Is this not an open invitation for ridicule and satire ? Consider that the word derives from “dogma.” Do you see why religions, with their unwavering insistence on following their own chosen scriptural texts in their own rigid interpretations, outlawing all others, would be threatened by any others? You can see how they would have a rough time competing against free speech. And why they suppressed it for thousands of years. In the public marketplace religion is free to advertise and sell itself. But, religions find themselves competing with popular culture and information which threaten its traditional powers. Ergo, sects steal and borrow and copy from them for their own advertising and sales pitches. In the public marketplace, anything and anyone is open to com...

By Bruno Corey ~ I f the Bible were God's Perfect Word, would the book be one that needs a warning label to protect children and adolescents from the depravity of its content, and to warn adults of its irreconcilable absurdities? Look closely and consider: if you were God and you decided to reveal Yourself, your rules and ideas and your wishes to mankind for all the ages in one grand, inimitable and perfect medium, a book to be the guiding light, the single ultimate source, the one literary moral, ethical, spiritual beacon that humanity could always trust and look to and could never pervert, mis-translate, mis-interpret or edit... ...would it be, of all possible choices, the Bible? If it would be, you haven't read the thing. If you've read it and studied it and you actually think that's the best Almighty God can do, you're either blissfully self-deluded, a Catholic nun , a tinhorn evangelist or - scariest of all - an academic theologian. If you think tha...

By Michael L ~ S o I recently stumbled upon this amazing website and have decided to tell my deconversion story. I would love to get this story off of my chest and would appreciate any kind of feedback that might help me in my current situation. I grew up in a Christian home as the oldest child. My parents' faith is the most important thing in their lives. Every morning at 6:00 AM my Mom wakes up and does her devotions. She hangs pictures with Bible verses all around the house. She is deeply involved in the church and I'd say 90% of her friend circle consists of church-goers (ironic since she is taught to be a fisher of men...) My Dad on the other hand seems to tag along and appears less devout than my Mom, but is nevertheless a strong believer. My parents sent me to Sunday school every week and sent me to a Christian elementary school with strict teachers. So strict in fact, that I became depressed/emotionally stressed in the fifth grade and pleaded to my parents...

By Bruno Corey ~ How would you handle the following situation: a story from the good book John, chapter 8...? O nce upon a time a group of card-carrying Old Testament doctrinaires and Jesus doubters interrogated Jesus pretty heavily and hard; he rolled with the punches, answered calmly and in kind (though cryptically of course, as all mythological celebrities tend to do). Anyway Jesus referred to himself several times as being personally sent to Planet Earth by a Celestial entity called God...and at this heresy the mob eye-rolling and head shaking intensified. And then when Jesus told this open-minded gathering of experts that he'd been around since before Abraham - the great patriarch of their Israelite and Jewish lineage - well, the inquisitors had had enough. So in keeping with Moses' level-headed, fair and judicious laws, they picked up a bunch of rocks and were about to lay some good ole fashioned Mosaic justice on this upstart rabbi from Nazareth, by stoning him ...

By Okodee Mmowere ~ I n part two of this series, entitled “ The Tower ”, we look at a Sunday morning that many people have come to recognize. Ah, Sunday morning, for some it’s the day where they swear they will never drink again. For others it’s time to go to church and for many generations of black men, women, teens, children, and elders, going to church on Sunday morning became a tradition that for many continue to this very day. For many in the black community, church meant more than just going into a building at around nine or ten in the morning, it was the equivalent of going to a concert. People dressed up in their best suits and dresses, and wanted to look their best, for whom, I was never too sure; judging someone on their appearance while in church isn’t exactly considered “godly” nor is lusting after the opposite gender while praising the lord. The black church is full of a laundry list of characters that sound like the cast of a play that airs on BET on Sunday afternoo...

By Valerie Tarico ~ The story has gone viral: A group got together at Applebees. When the tab came the minister wrote on the ticket, “I give God 10 percent, why do you get 18?” She scratched through the automatic large-group tip and substituted a fat zero and signed it with the word “Pastor” in front of her name. A waitress posted an image on Reddit . The pastor called to complain. The waitress got fired. The internet went wild. Last I saw, one story had 80,000 comments and counting. In reality, the pastor simply exposed something that is all too common to Christian thinking: the sense that giving to the church and to religious charities is the be-all and end all of generosity. As indignant reactions to the Applebee’s incident show, service workers sometimes pay the price: “I worked at the Outback Steakhouse for 3 years and we ALL dreaded Sundays.” “The Sunday after church crowd were allways the worst tippers. I found another line of work.” “As a former waitress who frequ...

By Allen Blaine ~ M y name is Baine, Allen Baine (not my real name) and I am a double agent. What do I mean by that? Simply I am living life as a Christian and yet do not believe. It all started back in 2007 when I found this site and started reading. In 2008 I started to blog here on a regular basis up until 2011. In fact many of you have read my blogs and I was quite popular here. My final blog was about my life story. But it was the only blog I would do about my life story. I never got to finish. You see, in Summer 2011 I separated from my wife of 10 years. After an auto accident that fall, I found myself back together with her. Then in Novemeber I met a new friend who challenged me, and I found myself refinding my faith...or so I thought. Over the course of a year things went back to how they were before, and this last summer we separated again. It was July of 2012. This time things got strange and I won't even go into it. But this time the separation is t...

By Pars ~ I t's a sad day, but a good day for me because on the one hand I discovered an important truth, but on the other, that truth is a bit upsetting. I finally understand there is no God after 34 years on the planet. I was never a big Jesus guy, though I was a Catholic (non practicing) for many years. However, I had always maintained a belief in God until that begun to erode when I researched Christianity. I would learn that my faith was pure nonsense. The reason I finally looked into my faith closely after 34 years was that I met and became friends with a woman who is a Born Again Christian . I was concerned by some of her religious views and how they governed the decisions she made about her life. When she realized I was not interested in converting to her faith she basically wanted far less to do with me. That was hard to accept, especially since she had seemed so nice and I love her 6-year-old daughter, who is the cutest thing ever! This woman seemed kind of bipolar-...

By Sebastian Phoenix ~ W ell, I suppose the first thing I should do is share my story. So here goes nothing. I am a 21 year old male, living with my parents in a small town in Alabama. Needless to say, the overwhelming majority of my family is Christian - both of my parents, all of my siblings (I am the youngest of four children), all of my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. For the first 13 year or so of my life, I went to an Advent Christian church . For those of you who don't know what that is, it's pretty much one step shy of being a Jehovah's Witness . My parents did not identify as Advent Christian, however, my maternal grandfather was the church's pastor, and the majority of the congregation (which, by the time we stopped attending, was a whopping 10 people) was made up by my extended family, and they would always get offended when we attended any other church instead of theirs. I attended Christian schools my entire life and it honestly never even oc...

By Lilly Black ~ Bible Thumper or Bible Basher... Is there really a difference? W hen my eyes suddenly opened and I realized just how messed up the church and Christian doctrine is, for a while I felt a lot of anger and frustration. I was very tempted to cut off everyone in my life who posted Christian stuff on Facebook or dared to talk to me about it. I started to think and say things like: "Christians are so illogical." "Christians are stupid!" "Why are they all so foolish? Can't they see that what they believe makes no sense?" "I hate fundamentalists!" I was letting anger and frustration claim a foothold in my life. But my wonderful husband pointed out that I was just exchanging one form of bondage for another. I had been freed from religion, but I was still holding on to my arrogance and judgmental attitude. I was right, they were wrong. They were stupid, I was smart. I was suddenly closed to their side, just as I had o...

By Incongruous Circumspection ~ T heology, the foundation of any religion, is easily spaghettified by any generation that needs to twist it into the status quo. Sometimes, the old guard fights back and recruits young-uns to wave the banner flag for their cause, becoming more shrill as the rest of humanity moves on. The following is a typical conversation one might have with a layperson of Christianity, where there is no "winning" the argument because, after all, theology can answer everything. Skeptic: If you claim that we can look at our bodies and see God's handiwork, because of the perfectly functioning systems, all working together, why is there cancer? Believer: Because, when Adam and Eve sinned, destruction started to happen in our bodies, due to the curse ( jargon ). Skeptic: Wait! Two things. First, if sin is what causes cancer, then, when we are without sin, in Christ (jargon tossed in here for effect), why do we still get cancer? Second, if ...