Testimonies of Ex-Christians

There and Back Again: My 30-year lapse from atheism

2009-11-21T04:14:00.006-05:00

by Oddbird1963

People who are familiar with my family often say that I look a lot like my late father. I may have received my appearance from my dad, but I also received a love of science and history from him. Thanks to my father's thirst for knowledge we always had a recent copy of Scientific American, National Geographic, Science News, Science Digest and Popular Science lying around. I would read them, look at pictures, read the captions and soak in anything that seemed interesting to me.

I am not a scientist or a mathematician but I certainly have a love for science, and layperson’s explanations of cosmology, physics and evolutionary biology. Such things inspire me when presented credibly and creatively. Good job Dad!

When I was growing up our house was not a religious household. We only had occasional encounters with friends’ churches, my maternal grandmother's church and then the pious ramblings of my paternal grandfather about God, faith, and religion. And then there was the dreaded Vacation Bible Schools. A week of being uncomfortable about my behavior and what I said without really knowing why. My mom used these to get us out of the house so she could have some peace and quiet.

I must have absorbed some of the “sacred” attitudes about the Christian religion along with my occasional exposure to things related to the church. The experience of realizing I was an atheist (the first time) makes that clear enough.

I always loved it when one of our magazines would feature a story, hopefully with glossy photos and artists’ renderings, about dinosaurs, woolly mammoths, saber tooth tigers and primitive humans. I found it so fascinating to imagine what it would have been like to have lived among such creatures! Admittedly, I still do! I was extremely chagrined, therefore, when after telling some classmates about some new article I read about an ape-like creature that later evolved into a human, I was sternly rebuked by my so-called “friends” who seemed outraged at what I said. Apparently, I shouldn’t have been reading such false reports and theories because the world was made in only 7 days. Adam and Eve were the first humans and they did NOT evolve from apes. That’s what God says, because it’s in the Bible!

“Wow!” I thought to myself one night, while watching the stars from my front yard. “I really think what those magazines tell me is true. I just don’t think much of what those kids at school told me. I guess I just don’t believe in God.” At that admission to myself, I got the coldest chill in my body. My head started to tingle with a cold, sharp sensation. (Lest any Christians start to post that this must have been the Holy Spirit convicting me or something, I got the same feeling when I later converted to Christianity and then a few years later when I decided to rededicate my life to the Christian faith). It was the way I have felt before when I have been shocked with bad news or caught doing something wrong. In this case, I believe it was the realization that I was standing apart from my peers. I was receiving a kick in the ass from one of the strongest influences that I believe keeps people trapped in religion: social conditioning.

This realization must have occurred when I was 11 or 12. I didn’t even know what an atheist was at the time. I didn’t really consider myself an atheist even after having read comments from Isaac Asimov on his short stories which I used to love to read. I just didn’t believe in God. I believed in the discoveries of science as well as Bigfoot, UFO’s and even Eric Von Daniken’s “Chariots of the gods.” Hey! Don’t be hard on me. I was just a kid!

I kept quiet about being a junior atheist. I guess mu social instincts weren’t totally dead. I occasionally had to endure hearing the beliefs of my classmates in bits and pieces. I never really comprehended what was the big deal over Jesus. All Jesus was to me was that old timey looking picture hanging in my maternal grandmother’s bedroom. It was a name that was brought up around Christmas time with the adjective “baby” in front of it. But I knew enough not to go around saying, “I don’t believe in God.” The social shaming would be too strong.

This fact was driven home to me one day in the June after my 7th grade year at school. My younger cousin said to me, “Did you know there’s people who don’t believe in God?” At her words I got that stinging cold sensation again – like I was in danger of being found out. “Where did that come from?” I asked myself. Trying not to show my fear of being exposed as an atheist, I responded with a nonchalant , “Yeah.”

One year later, though, the pull of social forces would see me make a change that would take me in a whole new direction. At the age of 14, a classmate invited me to her Vacation Bible School (VBS). It was a lot of the same as with VBS experiences in the past. Arts, crafts, disjointed unconnected glimpses of the world of religion, not feeling part of things, but making the best of it anyway.

On the last night of VBS, one of the bible teachers from that week asked me, “When were you saved?” I told her I didn’t know what that means. Pretty soon Mrs. Margaret had swept me away to the “fellowship hall” and had begun explaining the gospel story to me. It was the first time I had heard the story in a complete narrative thatched together with scripture references that she showed me from her earmarked King James Bible. Later that night, I “received” Jesus as my savior ( a.k.a. “got saved,” “converted,” “born again”).

I used to look back fondly on that whole experience and love Mrs. Margaret for seizing upon the opportunity to ask me and then taking the time to “witness” to me. Now, looking back, that sentiment has shifted to, “I guess I don’t hate her. She was doing what she thought was right.”

The church I was baptized in and received my first indoctrination as a Christian was as fundamentalist as they come. It was a Landmark Missionary Baptist church. They believed this crazy, unsupportable doctrine that they were the “one true church” because of a supposed unbroken line of “true” churches tracing a lineage all the way back to Jesus.

The sign by the highway on the church lawn also said, “Fundamentalist Pre-tribulation Pre-millennial” Many of the leaders of the church believed that the laws against segregation and discrimination were unbiblical. In other words, slavery and prohibitions against interracial marriage were all biblical concepts that were not wrong in the bible god’s eyes. I actually had a deacon from the church tell me that most slaves in the south didn’t have it so bad because they were well treated and they had the opportunity to hear the gospel.

Among all these culturally influenced beliefs I also learned what could be described as the traditional fundamentalist Baptist doctrines:

Salvation by Grace through faith.
Primacy, inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible.
Baptism of the converted through immersion.
Eternal Security
And much, much more.

This was a time of learning, reading and so-called growth in the Christian faith.

Of course there was still crazy stuff. There were always conferences and revivals where the second coming of Christ was expounded upon with more certainty and detail than a person should be able to have. There were lectures on why it is that we know dinosaurs existed alongside humans prior to the flood. How do we know this? Dinosaurs are in the Bible and they burp methane gas and that makes them breath flames!

For the next three years I sat under the tutelage of missionary Baptist teachers of one sort or another. I had a period of three or four years from my senior year in high school through my junior year of college where I didn’t go to church much. I became discouraged by the lack of a “God-factor” in the lives of the people around me. It all seemed a joke. Yet, I held on to my basic Baptist doctrine and faith.

In my senior year of college I experienced a sort of “revival,” a renewal of my dedication to the God idea. I was once again imbued with a desire to study and learn all aspects of the bible and Christian doctrine. I desired the “personal relationship” which my particular brand of evangelicalism taught.

Eventually I felt what I believed was a “call” to become a preacher. I finished out my college degree and was married that summer. After about a year of marriage we stepped out on faith and moved to Texas for me to begin attending seminary and receive the education and training to be a minister.

During my time in seminary, my faith was intact. I did have to adjust my thinking on the Old Testament Book of Genesis. I came to the conclusion that Genesis 1-11 just had to be interpreted as mythological in nature. A literal interpretation of Genesis 1-11 just seemed so untenable given what we know about science, history and archeology. Other explanations such as the age-day theory that try to force-fit what we know into the biblical narrative are equally untenable and problematic. My approach was to not try to debunk evolution and not try to dovetail scientific knowledge into the biblical accounts. My approach was to proclaim the meaning of the text, not push for the literalness of the text. The rest of the Bible, I tried to interpret more or less literally. So, I remained a conservative Christian with those accompanying adjustments in my world view.

I graduated from seminary in full expectation of finding a church. I was fully ready to serve God full time as pastor or assistant pastor of some church somewhere. I was just going to focus on proclaiming the word and trust God take care of me and my family (Yeah. I was a bit naïve).

I had two very short pastorates. I left the second one intending to find a bi-vocational type ministry. I was still a fundamentalist Christian at that time. But I had a lot of question marks hanging over my head.

There are a number of factors that “drained” my faith and eventually caused my faculty of reason to develop new, non-theist positions. What follows is an attempt to identify the more significant factors.

Where’s the God-Factor? I spent too much time making excuses for the behavior of God’s people. Too many times I saw that what happens with the Church can be explained more in terms of personal psychology, organizational psychology, sociology and economics - not by the transforming activity of the Holy Spirit. I concluded that, despite the best intentions of many of “God’s” people, the lives of “His” people just do not provide sufficient reason to believe “He” is there.
Where’s the need for a God? Science does not provide a complete view of reality, but it explains more than faith, religion or a creationist interpretation of scripture ever did. There seems to be no need for a God (big “G” or little “g”) to explain reality as it relates to origins. While science does reach a limit where an uncaused Cause appears plausible, the choice between “God” as the uncaused Cause and an uncaused Universe does not tilt in favor of God. Nor does a belief in God as the uncaused Cause necessarily lead to some version of God portrayed in the Old Testament, the New Testament or any other form scriptures.
Where’s the evidence for God? Despite more than a decade of praying for wisdom, guidance, transformation and personal prosperity with an honest and sincere heart, nothing happened inside or outside of me that can conclusively be pointed to as God’s intervention or involvement. Good things have happened to me. A few bad things have happened to me. But nothing really has happened objectively or subjectively to say that God is involved in the little slice of the world known as my life.
Where’s the presence of God? I finally quit praying for things and simply began to ask God to communicate with me in some way that would be clear to me. I so wanted to know God, but nothing happened subjectively to lead me to believe God was showing Himself to me.

It took about ten years to process everything and determine that the god of the fundamentalists does not exist and that there is no credible evidence that any god exists.

As I faithfully served and committed myself to humble, passionate prayer and ministry, my family languished in dire financial circumstances.

It seems that the more I relied on the Christian god, the worse things got. My story is the story churches don't talk about. My story is not an intellectual journey that leads to the abandonment of faith. It is an experiential journey that spanned more than thirty years. Mine is the account of what they don’t talk about when they tell you to “trust in the Lord with all your heart.” Mine is the "true story" that dwells in the shadows of the church with the champions of confirmation bias receiving all the press.

Eventually I came to my senses and realized there is no god to rely on and faith is not rewarded by an all-powerful, all-knowing loving god. I too became free of the superstition of theism and the mental delusions of religion.

Troll Prevention

One time, in a blog on another website, I posted the above reasons for losing my Christian faith. A Christian apologist asked me a question about why I thought I had a right to ask God for the things I did. Here is what I told the PhD. I think my response to the two ways he asked the question reflects an adequate response for de-converts who have to put up with questions about their sincerity or the adequacy of their expectations in prayer.

What right do you have to make such a request?

As a conservative evangelical Christian, I believed and I taught that faith in Christ brought believers into a personal relationship with Christ.

According to Evangelical theology, through the redemption that God grants through faith in Christ, the believer is able to freely approach God as a loving Father. As a believer, I was taught and I believed in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, thus making a personal, subjective experience with the living Christ possible:
Romans 8:9: “You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.”

1 Corinthians 2:12-13,16: We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words . . . we have the mind of Christ.

We are told in James 1:5 that we should ask for wisdom and that God will grant it:

If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.

Of course there is a condition attached to this verse. I can always be accused having doubt. I can only say that when I asked I asked in good faith, believing that God was there and that he rewarded those who earnestly sought him.
We are also told in Philippians that we can make requests of God.

Philippians 4:6 – Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

Matthew 7:7-8 - "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”

In those times, I believed we were granted the right to make requests by a loving, all powerful God and that those rights were affirmed in His scripture
What right do we have to make such a demand?

I believe the “right” is covered above. The word demand seems a bit strong. First, many times I did not appeal to God dispassionately. Often I was experiencing great inner turmoil, confusion and indecision. By the time I quit asking for things I was pleading, like a dehydrated man being refused a cup of water. I don’t believe there was anything wrong with my attitude for the most part, so “demand” would not be a general description of my approach in prayer. I don’t believe “demand” in terms of an unfair entitlement to and drain of God’s resources is accurate either. A child can “demand” too much attention from a school teacher or a parent. But I don’t think my asking for wisdom, transformation, direction or a manifestation of His presence drains any of the resources of a “God” who is described as powerful, limitless, loving and faithful.

No, the right words to use might be “ask,” request,” or even “plead.” But demand? It seems too strong to reflect my actual attitude, for the most part, when I believed I was approaching God.

Long road out

2009-11-20T15:31:00.004-05:00

Sent in by Anonymous

Image by a hundred visions and revisions via Flickr

I was born into a Christian home, my parents both having been raised in the faith, as Baptists. At the time of my birth, in the 1960's, they attended a large non-denominational evangelical church in the Northeast where I was baptized by the pastor, one of the founders of the Neo-Evangelical movement in the 1940's. Neo-Evangelicalism, while supporting fundamentalist doctrines, distanced itself from fundamentalism's anti-intellectual, anti-cultural bent. It was in this church that I was raised, up until around the time I graduated from high school.

Growing up, we always attended church on Sunday. I remember hours of boredom during Sunday morning services, not having the attention span to listen to a 45 minute to one hour-long sermon. The music was also less than inspiring with it's “old-time religion” hymns. (They have since moved on the “contemporary Christian” music.) I hated going. Despite this, during my time in both Sunday School and Youth Group, I developed both a solid understanding of the Bible and a personal faith in Jesus as my Savior.

My childhood was full of anxiety. It was not that my parents laid the guilt of their faith on thick, although there were times, but I think the constant reinforcement of Christian doctrine week-on-week, year-after-year, in Sunday School took a toll. I remember many times feeling I had been a failure. For several reasons, I was never a good student, but I attributed this laziness; the sin of sloth. The typical sexual awakening of youth I experienced filled me with shame; the sin of lust. I remember having several “come to Jesus” moments, breaking down, asking for forgiveness, feeling cleansed and renewed, only to find myself some days or weeks later wallowing in the same guilt and self-pity.

I drifted away after High School. Flunking out of college, I found a job and began my first career. Although I did not attend church regularly, I still believed in God and Christ, the indoctrination of my childhood running deep in my psyche. This time of my life was hard, having little money and relationship troubles with a girlfriend, I might have been in a position to start questioning my beliefs, however I fell in with a bunch of street preachers in the city and experienced a renewal of my faith. This lead me to quit my job and go back to college, choosing a evangelical Christian school founded by the pastor, now deceased, who had baptized me.

Still a poor student, I was again not prepared for the rigors of college life, and I spent a few years struggling academically before taking a job at the same school I was attending. I still had what I would consider a strong faith and saw everything that happened to me as God's providence. I met a nice Christian woman, and we married. After she graduated, I continued my new career at another local university, and we began a family.

I'm not exactly sure when I began to question my faith, the process of de-conversion for me was slow. Neo-Evangelicalism places some emphasis on not abandoning reason in matters of faith, and I think that provided me with an opportunity to question my beliefs that I might not have had if I had been brought up in a more fundamentalist denomination. Sometime over the past four years, I began to question what I believed and why I believed. One of the major catalysts for this was the attitudes of my fellow church goers towards the gay and lesbian community. My work put me in contact with a large number of gay people who weren't the degenerates that they were made out to be by my fellow churchgoers. I couldn't reconcile what my church proclaimed as the official doctrine on the matter with what I believed was the message of the gospels. As a result, on Sunday mornings, I left my wife and family to attend services at a more liberal church. I made no big deal about this. Few people knew, at the time, and they believed it was more for reasons of worship style than doctrine.

My experience as a liberal Christian allowed me to explore further and deeper what I believed. I read the Bible. Of course, I had read it before, but this time I read with a critical eye. I explored alternative viewpoints as to the origin of scripture and its meaning. One watershed weekend, around two years ago, I read Robert M. Price's, The Reason Driven Life. By the time I finished and put the book down, I knew I no longer believed.

I have mixed emotions when I think back on my life and am equally conflicted when it comes to how I should handle the future. I am glad I had the Christian upbringing that I did from a moral perspective. My parents are good people, and treated me well despite my failings. I realize that being a good person and treating people well is not exclusive to Christianity, and I'm well aware of the hypocrisy of some believers. However, I can't help but feel that religion's codes of conduct provided me with a level set of expectations on how to treat other people and expect to be treated by them. I sure could have done without all that guilt, but mostly I regret all the time I've wasted waiting for direction from above on what I should be doing, rather than making my own way in the world.

The only one who knows that I've given up the faith is my wife. She still believes and attends church with the children. I go, on and off. I am fortunate that this has not really affected our relationship or our love for each other. She accepts me for who I am and respects what I believe. I am not sure how my parents or in-laws would react if they found out. I know at least some of them would be extremely burdened and it would change our relationship. I have no desire to cause them pain and don't intend to let them know.

My children also don't know. They have grown up a church very similar to the one I grew up in. They attend Sunday School and Youth Group. They are good kids and have a good set of friends and values. I do want them to know, someday, what I believe, but at this stage in life, I think it might only confuse them. I do try to steer them from rigid thinking and encourage them to be open minded. I think they'll turn out okay.

Thanks for letting me tell my story.

Keeping the Faith

2009-11-18T16:12:00.004-05:00

by Janus Grayden

For most of us who left religion, the schism wasn't a swift knife stroke but a slow, and oftentimes painful, process. This is especially true for those whose entire lives were completely entangled with their faith.

If you've ever had the misfortune of crossing paths with a prickly pear cactus, you know that the large, obvious spines are the least of your worries. It's always the minuscule, nearly invisible barbs that drive you insane, poking you even after you were absolutely certain that you had plucked them all out. With no malice intended, this was my deconversion experience.

When all of your friends, mentors, and close family are deeply religious, there is always more to religion than Sunday morning. The church I attended stressed an active involvement in almost daily activities. Without exaggeration, my life was completely involved in Christianity. So, when depression took a stranglehold on my life and, for years, no amount of prayer or any piece of advice slowed my downward spiral, questioning naturally followed.

However, as completely wrapped up in Christianity as I was, the existence of God and the fallibility of the majority of my faith was not up for dispute, in my mind. Instead, life took a much darker approach. God was sadistic and cruel, demanding that I pay a penance for being human in order to be worth His love. In short, a literal, well-versed knowledge of the Bible, unyielding adherence to faith and rampant depression led me to Maltheism.

If the idea that an omnipotent and omniscient being demands your suffering for appeasement sounds horrifying and utterly unhealthy, then you can appreciate what little favors faith did for me. I couldn't understand the passages about how God was supposed to be loving and kind while, at the same time, condemning almost everyone who ever has and ever will exist to eternal torment. The fact that it all seemed like the whims of a malevolent deity only served to drive me deeper into my ennui and sense of helplessness.

Therefore, when enough had finally become enough and I stopped praying and started working towards my own stability, things slowly began to improve. In the face of what I had been fed as a kid, life as an atheist didn't gravitate towards nihilism and hopelessness. I had been through that already and it was faith that held me prisoner. Truly, it was the large, obvious thorn that had wounded me.

Little bit by little bit, I sloughed off my faith and regained my sense of self-empowerment and capability. Of course, it's the small barbs that are the most persistent. Losing my faith was relatively easy. Coming to learn that faith is a wonderful thing took time and there were a great deal of obstacles.

Losing that kind of trust all at once shattered my ability to deal with people. Luckily, I was able to make friends who were patient with me as I came to know that faith isn't a monopoly held by religion. Losing my faith in a construct designed to hold me captive by my guilt and fears led me to have a renewed faith in myself and in the people I'm fortunate to be close to. Instead of centering my life around God and obediently believing that everything will fall into place around that faith, I've put my trust into being happy with the short time I'm lucky enough to have on this rock hurtling through space.

Still Trying to Escape

2009-11-16T09:28:00.002-05:00

by Ant

I am 24 years old...

I became a Christian during the early part of my junior year of high school after a close friend of mine, a neighbor, witnessed the Gospel of Jesus Christ to me incessantly over weeks spent playing basketball out in the street. Eventually, I let the jargon sink in, and decided I wanted to be a Christian. Big mistake.

After a year of being a babe in Christ, attending several different churches with everyone I knew who was a Bible thumper, I went on a seemingly innocent vacation with my father and sisters. When I arrived home a week later, I was bedridden with the flu. It was during this time that I conveniently read the chapter in Matthew about the unpardonable sin. I began questioning whether I'd committed this sin and done eternal, irreparable harm to myself. And thus began a nine-month tailspin of anxiety, sleepless nights, and unrelenting fear. I rarely found a moment of respite from this crippling dread, and, somehow, I was able to hide my inner turmoil from those around me. But I could only go on for so long.

Luckily, I moved to college during the ensuing fall, and through the beauty of new surroundings, fresh faces and the opportunity to finally forge my own path, I began to slightly drift away from my Christian faith. I still loosely followed the moral Christian codes that I'd adhered to over the last year (I didn't drink an ounce of alcohol, in fact, never have in my life, nor did I participate in any lewd and lascivious activities), but prayer and church going became non-existent. I finally regained my sanity and started living a normal life. I didn't blame Christianity for those fateful nine months, I just thought I had done my part as a Christian incorrectly, but a survival instinct helped me put my Christian beliefs on the back burner.

The good times would not last long enough. During the fall semester of my junior year, rumors began swirling that an avian flu epidemic was imminent, and like clockwork, my first though was about god and my eternal resting place should I be stricken with this disease and suffer death because of it. Without hesitation, I feared that I was destined to spend eternity in hell, so I prayed, hoping that my latest show of piety would put me back in god's good graces. Within the week, I sought out an on campus Christian Club, and as luck would have it, the leader of the organization was the son of a pastor at a local non-denominational church just a few miles from the campus.

Like a moth to the flame, I quickly became indoctrinated with their belief system, and soaked it in completely. I attended church weekly, without fail, participated in bible studies sometimes twice a week, and engaged in what was called an accountability group, whereby I and other Christians would recount our sinfulness to one and other, in a desperate measure to try and change our own human nature. Never seemed to work, but we all reveled in our sanctimonious practices. Needless to say, I was once again part of the system, and seemingly on my way to an eternity of ultimate joy and fellowship with my creator.

But the fears crept back in. Slowly at first, but eventually became as violent and tumultuous as they once were. My fears canvassed a wide range of issues. During the first few stages, the fear was mainly centered around my own belief that I was headed to hell for either not following god correctly, or because I was following the wrong god the entire time. But, that fear was always based on a contingency, a possibility, not a definite. My fate always hung in the balance, but it could be that one day I would be in heaven. The theology I had been taught (reformed Calvinism) confirmed that god had predestined many souls to be with him for all eternity, and my Christian brothers kept assuring me that I belonged to this select class of god's elect. Unfortunately, due to my intense study and insatiable thirst for knowledge, I was led to a far greater illustration of just how terrifying this "benevolent" god could be.

One day, while laying in bed, it hit me that according to my ideology and the overarching theology of most of Christendom, while it is possible for the individual to accept Christ and secure their place in heaven, the Scriptures all but ensure us that the vast majority of mankind will never experience the sweet repose of heaven, but would suffer forever, consciously and despondently in the wasteland of hell. No longer was it only fear that encompassed me, but a sort of nauseating emptiness in the most inner reaches of what I thought was my soul. I suddenly had the unenviable position of either rejecting god and accepting the terrible fate of hell pr resigning myself to a life worshiping a monster who would create millions of creatures, only to consign the vast majority to a fate that is literally unbelievable. That god could send billions of people to hell, and still demand worship was unthinkable, and it caused me more anguish than I've ever known. I had hit rock bottom.

I must point out that my thespian skills were still on full display, as I was able to feign normalcy once again for almost two years. Although I spent countless nights at bible studies and care-group meetings while deeply entrenched in these mental and psychological horrors, none of my church-mates were the wiser. It was actually quite amazing the things I did while giving nearly all of my mental acuity to rationalizing my fears and trying to convince myself that there was no way my preconceived notions of god's goodness could be that skewed; that the ultimate expression of good manifested itself by torturing feeble and fragile human beings throughout all eternity, all because his holiness, a measure to which fallible creatures could never innately live up to had been breached by our actions. No matter my attempts, I never found peace, and the maelstrem continually intensified.

Eventually, one thought began to nestle itself in alongside the constant theological debate going on in my head. The worst thought I'd ever thought, and the one thought everyone hopes will never enter their minds. I began contemplating suicide. I could not go on living like this anymore. Nothing temporal mattered to me anymore, and the vicissitudes of life seemed trivial. All I knew was the fear. The mind numbing, pulse-pounding dread that robbed me of my life for nearly three years. After about three weeks of these suicidal thoughts, I took action and began systematically detaching myself from the church (which, at the time, was basically the only life I knew; yes, I was that engrossed). All of my friends were Christians, and due to the alienation I had caused towards my family because of my holy lifestyle and damning "Good News Gospel" message, leaving these people would be to separate myself from everything and everyone. For as much as I detested their message and their god, I genuinely did, and to this day, do have an affection for them. But, for the sake of my sanity, and frankly, my life, I had to get out.

(My actual ex-filtration is a bit longer and convoluted than it appears here, but for the sake of some semblance of brevity, I'll get right to the point.)

Of course, the now ex-church-mates wouldn't let me go easily, and many of them spent the waning days of my "Christianity" pleading with me to come back, telling me that I was now a pawn of Satan and admitting that they were participating in church wide prayer meetings focused solely on my apostasy. Tears were shed and extremely long e-mails were sent (kind of like this testimonial...) from those expressing their dismay over my decision. In fact some believe so fervently in this doctrine of predestination, that they are fully expecting my eventual return to the faith. If they only knew....

It has been almost two years since my departure, and yet I still find myself consumed by this doctrine of hate and fear mongering. Although, I still have intermittent contact with those from the old church, I have found myself irreparably disconnecting myself from some of them, as I have been badgering their beliefs on open public forums in an effort to demean their belief system and maybe give them a window into the heartbreak that I've felt.

Although I no longer fear hell, nor do I fear for the fates of those around me, having had my worldview completely shattered twice over the past five years has left my psyche in shambles. I regularly slip in and out of depressed states, and have adopted an extremely cynical outlook on life, often times bordering on nihilism and stoicism. Given that I was a Christian during the formative days of my youth, and have since been a mental wreck, I've never been involved in a romantic relationship, and have only two people that I truly consider friends (one of them is as screwed up as I, although for wholly different reasons). My current personality and severe neuroses preclude me from pursuing such a relationship, whether intimate or friendly.

The suicidal thoughts have crept back in, not because of inexorable fear anymore, but because I feel that there is nothing to live for. I have a disdain for mankind now, for harboring this religion throughout our sociological evolution, and I am quickly becoming something of a misanthrope, which is diametrically opposed to my once affable and jolly nature. Oh, how long ago that was. Now, I am just bitter. My anger towards what religion has turned me into, and how it has ruined my life cannot be quelled, and every step I take in the right direction, several steps opposing it follow.

So, here I am, two years removed from the bonds of religious dogma, yet still trying to escape...

Still on the fence

2009-11-16T08:54:00.004-05:00

by Michael

Image by Jonathan Gill via Flickr

I guess one could call me a de-converting Christian. I am still a little on the fence, but leaning towards the non-Christian side. My story is something of a mystery even to me.

I was raised in a Christian home, with Christians of various stripes and zealousness. I followed in their footsteps for the longest time, being a creationist and the like. But one day I was at a public library searching for videos on atheism for the sake of learning how to argue against it. By luck I discovered a video of a Christopher Hitchens' lecture on his book. Lets just say the surprise was mind blowing. It didn't de-convert me, obviously, but it got my mind thinking: What if there was more to what I believed, what I knew, and what I was told about? I checked out his book, and started to read it. It made me question my beliefs, particularly in regards to Creationism, and it showed what my belief system can do to me in a way I had never seen.

I soon realized that I couldn't believe in the stuff anymore. I soon had a problem though, since I had never been quite able to not wear my heart on my sleeve. It was talking to my grandmother, and I exclaimed that I wasn't sure what to believe anymore. (I found it is good policy to be a pragmatist in talking about things like this.) Well, in short, she made me question again, so I gave religion another shot, though I continued to do research. I found my new Hitchens inspired convictions to be sound. But then I found what I much later determined to be a crock of a book: Why I Believe by D. James Kennedy. It brought me back into the fold.

As I continued to research and think, I flirted with de-conversion again. This time I grew more certain in my convictions because of the fact that I thought that the bible wasn't historically accurate (again thanks to Hitchens' book). I soon became a bit aggressive about what I thought, and acted as such. It ultimately culminated in a discussion with a pastor. In the emotional state I was in (due to getting into an argument with my Grandmother of all things), the pastor was able to beat my arguments against Christianity. (The arguments wouldn't have been all that good if I had been in a less emotional state of mind, I realize in hindsight.) So, I decided to make a serious attempt at being a Christian. I started looking more at apologetics and it only reinforced the conclusion that the Bible wasn't historically inaccurate. Then I took a break from in-depth study of this and thought more about the theology of the Bible and how it worked. Let just say that I became a moderate in regards to Christianity. I was still in support of stem cell research, and I believed that people's decisions should be left to the individual.

In the fall of this year I started taking a class in the anthropological development of religion. I was curious about how religions developed. One of the things I learned is that to truly understand belief systems you have to be as completely objective as possible.

Soon I started to take a look a Christianity. I started to apply the concepts I was learning. I also got up enough guts to think about the Bible in my own way, not using the standard Christian norms. What got me where I am today is realizing that the typical apologetic argument for the Bible is sound within itself, but it leaves out too many important details. Like, what was the culture around them like? What are the other kinds of possibilities other then what is in the Bible that could have influenced the apostles behavior? Also in general concept, what could have happened that was not mentioned in the Bible to influence its conclusion? And to me, as far as I know, these questions have not been well examined by apologetics.

In many ways I have found answers. For one, the factors (cultural theological, and otherwise) that could have influenced the apostles are numerous, and easily could be something other than the Bible. I also started to examine (from an alien perspective as AC Grayling would put it) the ethics taught in the bible. I found that the moral codes particular to Christianity (not just general things like shall not murder), and realized that these are maladaptive codes of behavior that only really work in that culture well.

But still many questions remain and I would like responses.

What possible reasons could have Christians had to make a up a empty tomb story?
Why could no one find the body of Jesus?
What could explain the appearances of Jesus to the apostles?
How could have legend developed so quickly after Jesus died, that what was written in the gospels could not have been at least generally accurate?

Based on my personal research, I have concluded that Jesus existed and taught, was not well liked by the establishment and died. I welcome criticism on those points.

I guess I am caught in a contradiction right now. It would be nice to have some certainty.

One year on...

2009-11-13T16:17:00.003-05:00

Sent in by Candace

Image by teddy-rised via Flickr

Hi guys, about a year ago (possibly longer, I can't really remember) I was on the verge of leaving Christianity, but still struggling a bit because of how involved I was with my ex-church (it wasn't even my church, it was my friend's church and she dragged me into it) and my lack of anything else in my life that was even vaguely fulfilling.

I posted a testimonial here titled "Looking for Answers." Well, it's been a year and I just thought I'd update you guys on what I've been up to. It's not really a testimonial as such but I didn't know where else to put it (moderator: feel free to do with this post as you wish).

Anyway, as I said, a large part of the reason I joined my friend's church, and Christianity, in the first place, was because of a lack of anything fulfilling in my life at that point. I had just left a long-term relationship that had been going nowhere and I was still trying to get over my ex. Plus, I was in the middle of a combined law degree that seemed to stretch on interminably with no end in sight. So I was in a bit of a rut and Christianity just filled the void, if only temporarily. I always knew it was only a band-aid solution and I'd have to get out and find whatever it was that fulfilled me, eventually, when I found the courage to live for myself rather than other people.

As a bit of a background, I've always been a creative person but that creative side of me has never been encouraged by my parents - in fact you could say they actively discouraged it. Once, my dad tore up a picture I drew for school because he thought I was wasting time. I didn't mention before, but I'm Asian, and my parents have this mentality that if you pursue anything creative you will starve. Hence why I did law combined with Media Arts and Production at university (I'd wanted to make films since I saw Lord of the Rings back in 2001). I hated Law but it was a trade-off so I could do Media Arts, which my parents were absolutely against me doing by itself. Law was the back-up plan. So here I was, stuck in this degree and feeling like my life had no purpose. I was absolutely sick of law and it seemed like there was light at the end of the tunnel - I was wallowing in a miserable, meaningless existence. The sad thing is, even though I was doing Media Arts, I hadn't put much effort that side of my degree because, after being discouraged from doing anything creative all these years, I didn't feel like I was talented or passionate enough to pursue a career in anything creative.

So here I was, languishing, and Christianity came along. I thought I'd give it a try since I had nothing else in my life at that point, but luckily, I was smart enough to realise that this just wasn't right for me and to get out. I still haven't told my friends yet. I hardly talk to them anymore. But it doesn't matter what they think. I think losing their friendship is worth what I gain from being free to think for myself.

So, to cut a long story short, shortly after I "quit" Christianity, I tried acting, on a whim. I was in a theatre production and I loved it. In high school I never had the confidence to even give a speech let alone act in front of an audience, but after the trauma of realising God either doesn't exist, or he doesn't give a shit, what was there to be afraid of? Death? Death was sweet mercy compared to the what the Bible promised to those who turned away from God, but since I didn't believe in the Bible anymore, what did it matter? I was relieved.

So to really cut to the chase (sorry for ranting), what am I doing now? Well, I am...

In my last semester of my degree and as far as I know I'm doing great (I worked my butt off this semester and it better pay off!)
Doing work experience for a TV production company and apparently they love me (also because I work my butt off),
I will be directing a short play next month, which will be performed at the beginning of next year as part of a theatre festival, and...
Next year I'm going to film school! (Well it's really just a postgrad degree specialising in film at my current university, but film school sounds cooler.)

So all in all, I'm very proud of myself and how far I've come. I've finally found something meaningful in my life that I wish to pursue (be it film, TV, theatre, whatever). Now that all the poisons have been leached out of my life - abusive parents (not abusive anymore, except to each other on the odd occasion but thankfully I'm out of their control now), loser ex-boyfriends and GOD - that angry, callous, neglectful tyrannical being who demands perfection from us and punishes us for NEVER BEING GOOD ENOUGH (notice a pattern here? - they are all manifestations of the same thing - the shroud of darkness that had covered my life and that had stopped me from gaining the confidence in myself to develop my full potential.)

So there you go. I don't regret the time I spent as a Christian because I think I learned something very valuable: Don't expect anything from other people and always rely on yourself. You are the most important person in your life (I don't mean that in a selfish way, I just mean you can't keep looking to others for approval and you really have to love yourself and accept yourself for who you are) and you NEED to have faith in yourself and your own abilities if you want to accomplish anything meaningful or fulfilling in your life, and to be happy.

I still sometimes question my faith in myself (who doesn't?) - every time I do something new, something I've never done before, I think, "Wow, I didn't know I was capable of that. How is it even possible?" And it scares me sometimes. But hey, as long as I'm alive, I can keep renewing my faith in myself, right? I can keep proving myself to myself. And if you fail, you simply forgive yourself and learn from your mistakes. There's nothing to be afraid of. We all know how it ends - it's how you get there that matters. Life is like walking a tight-rope - you know you can fall at any time, but you keep going. There's no safety net. That's the deal. You look Death/suffering/pain right in the face and you keep walking.

Christians exploited my mental illness to indoctrinate me

2009-11-09T06:43:00.006-05:00

Sent in by Kylee

My conversion into Christianity was not based on a rational decision, I am diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder which is a mental illness combining schizophrenia type symptoms with bipolar mood disorder.

At the time of my conversion I was not diagnosed and unaware I had a mental illness; I was psychotic and suffering delusions.

These delusions consisted of a belief that I was communicating with god. I did not embrace Christianity but had my own interpretation of gods nature. My best friend at the time was a Christian and she persuaded me to go to church where they persuaded me to read the bible. I was clinically insane and it is in my opinion a state where people should be protected from evangelists and religious indoctrination. However my episode continued for almost a year before I was diagnosed. The prolonged state of insanity has resulted in damage to my lifelong prognosis.

The only people I confided in about my delusions (which I believed to be true) where my best friend and her pastor. I told my best friend about the divine messages I was receiving and she encouraged these delusions. Once I told her that god had commanded me to leave my family and become a nun she encouraged this delusion suggesting places I should go. When I questioned why god would ask me to do this she told me it had to do with faith. When I spoke to her pastor I told him my strange 'prophetic' dreams and revelations. These had a strong implication that I thought I was Jesus Christ. I also told him that god had told me I have cancer and would die in three years. The reason I point this out is so you can see the obvious nature of my illness and understand why I am angry that the Christians I confided in did not act accordingly.

I requested to be baptized though stipulated that god wanted me to be baptized naked. This pastor did not refer me to medical attention, but instead, knowing full well I was mentally ill, which I am certain he did, accommodated my request for naked baptism.

These christians are culpable for my dismal prognosis as they not only failed to direct me to medical attention; they exploited my illness and indoctrinated me.

I remained a Christian after I had been treated because I had been indoctrinated while I was sick. I learned in church about gods judgment against the non believing and their destination of hell. a couple of years went by and then I got psychotic again. (I mention my delusions in detail because I want you to see how my indoctrination interacted with my illness creating a far worse scenario then just experiencing illness)

I was hospitalized but believed I had died and gone to hell. The fear was excruciating, and I never would have had such a fearful delusion if religious propaganda had not been pushed upon me.

I waited in 'hell' for three days each moment I was convinced that the eternal torture was imminent and unavoidable. This is by far the worst thing that has ever happened to me and for years I suffered nightmares of being in hell.

One day I was listening to my local Christian radio station and the spokesperson was teaching on a passage from the bible about hitting your children with rods. He instructed listeners to hit their children when they were disobedient but not to use your hand as then the child would associate the pain with the parent he said to use an implement.

At this stage, due to my mental illness, I had lost complete confidence in my ability to make rational decisions and trusted in Christian guidance over my own judgment so I began hitting my children with a wooden spoon.

Since my initial episode I had not been in a relationship and was very lonely and not coping well living alone with a mental illness. All my Christian friends told me I had to be in a relationship with a fellow Christian and remain sexually pure until married, needless to say these requirements limited my chances of having a boyfriend greatly. Like I said I was not coping I was severely depressed for four years so much that I had to hand custody of my children over to their father. I was even driven to suicide attempt.

I did eventually meet someone I liked very much but he was an atheist. I decided to be disobedient to the bible and begin dating this man. I went to church one evening and the pastor prayed over me. I had not told him about my relationship but he said to me that god was telling him I am in a wrong relationship and need to change it.

At the time I concluded that this must be a divine message as I had not told him about it. I have since realized he must have heard it from a member of the congregation and then used that opportunity to force me to do what he himself thought was right. Believing this was a divine message I broke up with my boyfriend and shortly after became suicidal. I spoke to the pastor in question about this and he said I should break up with my boyfriend but to do it slowly.

At another point in my Christian experience I was raped, not by a fellow Christian though the reason I share this is that my indoctrination commanded me to forgive all who apologise as the bible says.

This man did apologise though told me that I should apologise also to him for my part in this. (WTF!?! "I'm sorry I allowed you to victimise me.") As a Christian I was compelled to forgive him and this was a very degrading experience there was absolutely nothing good or right about it.

My deconversion took a while but I really made progress once I spoke to my counselor about wanting to be in a relationship with my former boyfriend but being taught it was a sin. My counselor was a Christian but not fundamentalist and she told me her view that the bible was written by man and suggested that I caused no harm to anyone by having a loving relationship. In fact, quite the opposite was true and it was of mutual benefit to me and my former boyfriend.

I began to see the harm I was doing by breaking up with my boyfriend which was indeed more damaging then having a relationship. This lead me to decide maybe the bible wasn't completely inspired though I remained a Christian for a time while I critically evaluated the bible, now I had given myself permission to.

It did not take too long to dismiss the bible with encouragement from my boyfriend who was a source of information regarding the questionable history of the bible and I also allowed myself to accept contradictions and downright malicious judgments of god for what they truly were instead of trying to reason them away.

With the bible given as much merit as it deserved by me the logical process that lead to me becoming atheist went something like this...

It was evident that those individuals who sincerely desired to know and follow god were not rewarded with a clear, consistent, universal truth.

Therefore the assumption that god exists seems unlikely, especially if this god requires us to believe in him and follow his teachings. Also if there were a god who did not care what we believed yet was compassionate he would undoubtedly reveal himself to end confusion, wars, condemnation, and fear of eternal damnation.

This compels me personally to disregard any notion of god

My Agnostic Limbo

2009-11-08T09:16:00.004-05:00

by Parasol

I was raised into a Catholic family and went to a Catholic primary school, and for the most part I experienced a comfort and connection with God during Mass and in private prayer. While the feeling of connection to God was true, if I sound like a model Catholic, rest assured my teens were peppered with misdeeds and their consequent guilty ruminations. I fell pregnant at 18, unmarried and seemingly in direct defiance to my father's pleas - albeit drunken ones as he passed by my open bedroom door - to 'not do it,' because having sex or getting pregnant would "wreck my life." But the connection -- the feeling of peace with God -- was there nonetheless.

I pretty much stopped going to church as I entered motherhood, but I was ever conscious of my failings toward God and the church. You see, although I don't remember the idea of divine punishment being drummed into me as a child, my private readings of the Revelation during my mid-teens had filled me with fear. To this day I don't understand how anyone who is aware of their 'failings' could find solace in reading any of the horrors contained within that book! Despite this (and perhaps, in part, because of it), I still prayed privately, asking for help to be more like Jesus and for all the usual things I assume people wish for in prayer.

I guess I was ripe for the picking when in my early twenties I allowed the Jehovah's Witnesses into my home for a few months. Through talking with them I came to realise how little I knew of the Bible - and in truth, I do believe that during my childhood I was shown mainly its most sanitised passages (thank goodness!). Of course there were many aspects of the Jehovah's faith that I could not logically reconcile, but I admit that I was comforted when I learned they believed a compassionate God would not doom the failures to Hell! But the very exposure to the near-impossible demands of Christ's teachings shattered me. So much of what I had believed and felt was blown away almost in an instant, and I felt so very, very wrong, and so very incapable of meeting any of Jesus' requirements, except the ones that came naturally to me. I couldn't pray anymore - I felt not even worthy of that. I could not 'talk' to my loved ones who had passed, because I now knew that they were but dust and bones waiting for the second coming. I questioned my participation in traditions I had known all my life (Christmas, birthdays), and because I still did these things, it was all the more reason to feel unworthy! I was racked with fear and guilt, so much so that it was almost the only thing on my mind. It came to the point where I couldn't mentally handle it, and so I asked the Jehovah's to stop coming. They did so, reluctantly, and I tried to resume something of my prior life. But the fear remained. I became angry at religion and God, and at the seeming hopelessness of it all (and of life - for I was also becoming more aware each day of the atrocities within this world). So for the last few years I have been in this hybrid state of anger and fear, and it has led me to search, very tentatively at first, for justification of my feelings. In essence, I have given up on religion and put into the 'too hard' basket in the hope that I will find peace and be released from these horrid feelings. Knowing that this is essentially a knee-jerk reaction to religion's stranglehold over my moral character gives me more reason to doubt myself. Consequently there is the terrifying thought that perhaps this is all part of a 'divine' plan to make me realise the truth that others willingly and selflessly see and accept. If this is indeed the case, then I can easily predict the mental anguish that is to come. I am, quite frankly, a mess!

During my recent feast on atheistic works I have discovered many convincing reasons to doubt the divinity of the Bible. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, much of it is so repulsive to my own moral code that to obey it would be a great disrespect to my own humanity. But the counter arguments remain: What if the Bible is right, despite its inconsistencies? What if the atheist researchers have missed key things? What if, as the apologists would say, it is man's free will - and not the Bible itself - that has brought about the atrocities committed in the name of religion throughout time, and the message is still essentially good (if not all good, then true)?

In closing, I am at the stage where my 'logical' self can see that it is perhaps my longing for the comfort and peace I felt with religion while growing up that makes me doubt my intellect now. Perhaps I enjoyed the emotional release of praying to someone who I thought would respect my own natural compassion, sadness and confusion at this thing called life. I can see, too, how utterly pathetic it would be for me to turn back to religion because of fear. All I know is that I want to do good for goodness' sake.

I hope this has made some sense, and that I might invite a little 'enlightenment' from you all. I also wonder if any of you have gone through something similar.

*Note to readers: This was originally published as a response to another member's testimonial.

Deprogramming

2009-11-07T12:19:00.009-05:00

by Eric J

Image by TheBazile via Flickr

One young man's journey from Evangelical Christianity to Non-theism

Part I
Growing up

I remember going to church every Wednesday and twice on Sundays. Sunday mornings included Sunday school and children's church, the adult service once I was old enough.

I remember being taught that the Earth was made in six days because the Bible said so. Soon there after God flooded the Earth because the people became evil and only 1 family was spared. I remember learning that David was the only boy to stand up to Goliath. He did so because was filled with righteous indignation over the fact that Goliath challenged David's God. I learned that a man named Jonah spent 3 days in the belly of a whale because he disobeyed God. I learned that Job's wife was turned into a pillar of salt because she too disobeyed God.

At the age of eight years old, my father's mother died of cancer. I remember the family praying a lot. I remember my father not being able to understand why his mother had died in spite of their prayers. I remember hearing him say that it was because someone in the room didn't have as much faith as the rest of the family, and because of this his mother wasn't healed.

Around the age of 11 or so, I remember learning the Fundamental Tenets of the Assembly of God denomination. For those unfamiliar with them, they are as follows:

WE BELIEVE... The Scriptures are Inspired by God and declare His design and plan for mankind.

WE BELIEVE... There is only One True God–revealed in three persons...Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (commonly known as the Trinity).

WE BELIEVE... In the Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. As God's son Jesus was both human and divine.

WE BELIEVE... though originally good, Man Willingly Fell to Sin–ushering evil and death, both physical and spiritual, into the world.

WE BELIEVE... Every Person Can Have Restored Fellowship with God Through 'Salvation' (trusting Christ, through faith and repentance, to be our personal Savior). [1 of 4 cardinal doctrines of the AG]

WE BELIEVE... and practice two ordinances—(1) Water Baptism by Immersion after repenting of one's sins and receiving Christ's gift of salvation, and (2) Holy Communion (the Lord's Supper) as a symbolic remembrance of Christ's suffering and death for our salvation.

WE BELIEVE... the Baptism in the Holy Spirit is a Special Experience Following Salvation that empowers believers for witnessing and effective service, just as it did in New Testament times. [1 of 4 cardinal doctrines of the AG]

WE BELIEVE... The Initial Physical Evidence of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit is ‘Speaking in Tongues,’ as experienced on the Day of Pentecost and referenced throughout Acts and the Epistles.

WE BELIEVE... Sanctification Initially Occurs at Salvation and is not only a declaration that a believer is holy, but also a progressive lifelong process of separating from evil as believers continually draw closer to God and become more Christlike.

WE BELIEVE...The Church has a Mission to seek and save all who are lost in sin. We believe 'the Church' is the Body of Christ and consists of the people who, throughout time, have accepted God's offer of redemption (regardless of religious denomination) through the sacrificial death of His son Jesus Christ.

WE BELIEVE...A Divinely Called and Scripturally Ordained Leadership Ministry Serves the Church. The Bible teaches that each of us under leadership must commit ourselves to reach others for Christ, to worship Him with other believers, and to build up or edify the body of believers–the Church.

WE BELIEVE...Divine Healing of the Sick is a Privilege for Christians Today and is provided for in Christ's atonement (His sacrificial death on the cross for our sins). [1 of 4 cardinal doctrines of the AG]

WE BELIEVE...in The Blessed Hope—When Jesus Raptures His Church Prior to His Return to Earth (the second coming). At this future moment in time all believers who have died will rise from their graves and will meet the Lord in the air, and Christians who are alive will be caught up with them, to be with the Lord forever. [1 of 4 cardinal doctrines of the AG]

WE BELIEVE...in The Millennial Reign of Christ when Jesus returns with
His saints at His second coming and begins His benevolent rule over earth for
1,000 years. This millennial reign will bring the salvation of national Israel
and the establishment of universal peace.

WE BELIEVE...A Final Judgment Will Take Place for those who have rejected Christ. They will be judged for their sin and consigned to eternal punishment in a punishing lake of fire.

WE BELIEVE...and look forward to the perfect New Heavens and a New Earth
that Christ is preparing for all people, of all time, who have accepted Him. We
will live and dwell with Him there forever following His millennial reign on
Earth. 'And so shall we forever be with the Lord!

Again, sometime around the age of 11 I remember going ice fishing with my father. He tried to explain sex to me. All I can recall of the discussion is that he preferred to use the term "making love" instead of the word sex. We never spoke about it in a positive light again.

At some point in middle school I remember a friend showing me pornography for the first time. I remember it being thrilling, secret, and attractive thing.

I remember at sometime in the 9th grade I became dissatisfied with listening to my parents praise and worship music. I received a Walkman cassette player with FM radio for Christmas that year. I began listening to secular alternative rock stations on the radio. My mother found out and took the Walkman away from me.

At the age of 14 my family began to have issues with their church. It wasn't being run the way they thought the church should be run. I remember many conversations about how greatly dissatisfied they were with the church. My grandparents began attending a different church and I began attending their church. After a few weeks my whole family switched to the new church. I made friends at this church, something I don't recall having at the old church.

Only a few months later the youth pastor that I had grown to like announced that he was going to be leaving the church, it was God's will. I later found it out it was the head pastors will, that he was told to leave the church. A new youth pastor came to fill the position, I very quickly grew to like the new youth pastor. The new youth pastor was at the church for a few short years. He invested time in me, attempting to pull me out of my introverted shell, and he was successful to a large extent. The new youth pastor introduced me to Christian Rock music, this type of music wasn't approved of by my parents and we had numerous fights over the subject, a few of the fights resulted in them confiscating the "Christian Rock" Cd's and demanding that I listen to "holier" music. All the while I can recall my father listening to secular country stations, a hypocrisy that I pointed out.

Sometime around the age of 15 the family bought their first home computer. I once again found pornography on the Internet. After a number of weeks my parents figured out that I had been surfing the Internet for that type of content. I was scolded, and I remember feeling great shame. I remember crying, and my parents leading me through a prayer of repentance because I was a sinner.

Sometime around this same age I can remember riding in the car with my mother and sister. I voiced my opinion about being unhappy with a certain aspect of my life. My mother's response was that I needed to pray about it. It's the first time I can recall becoming angry at a response of this nature.

At the age of 15 I had my first girlfriend. My family approved of her, she was from the same church as us. I would spend all day on Sunday with her sitting in the basement of her families house watching movies.

At this same age I began playing saxophone in the church band every Sunday for both services. My girlfriend played the clarinet in the same band, we dated for 6 months.

At the age of 16 I received my drivers license. At this point my family gave me a car to drive, for the most part I had a decent amount of freedom. There were occasions where I would drive 45 minutes away to hang out with friends from church. I'd stay out all weekend with their car, and I called in home once or twice. On occasion I violated my midnight curfew with no consequence.

Sometime around the age of 16 or so I picked up the guitar and began to learn. I was now playing in three Sunday church services which had practices on Thursday evenings. I was also playing in the youth group band which held practices on Wednesday before service. My commute to this church was approximately 35 minutes one way with no traffic. I would make this commute 4 times a week on average for a number of years.

Somewhere around the age of 17 or 18 the youth pastor that had been a large influence in my life announced he was going to be leaving, and that he was going to go back to school, it was God's will. I later found out that the Head Pastor had told him to leave, just like the previous youth pastor. A few months later the Head Pastor's wife took over the youth along with almost every aspect of the church.

Sometime after graduating high school I remember being told by the music pastor ( who was later fired for participating in secular activities) that I needed to have a private meeting with him and one of the pastors wives. In this meeting I was told that they had been keeping record of my attendance.They informed me that I was 15 minutes late to a practice one Thursday, this was due to traffic. They felt that my heart was no longer in the worship program and that I was being asked to quit both the adult and youth services. After 4.5 years of devoted volunteer work, I had been "fired." I remember walking outside of the church after that meeting and crying for a long time. I remember feeling used and discarded.

At this point I began to hang out with friends I had met at FaHoLo church camp. They were not from the Assemblies of God, they belonged to a non denominational church. I remember my family being disappointed in my decision to attend other churches. It was here that I met a different type of Christian, these were people who had previous experience with drug use, some had had premarital sex, most listened to secular music. I remembered feeling acceptance unlike anything I had previous experienced, simultaneously most of my previous church friends shunned me for hanging out with this crowd.

Somewhere around this time I can recall my father getting so upset with our pet dog, a shit-zu, that he threw the dog off a chair, I remember the dog yelping. I remember screaming at him in front of everyone for the way he had treated the dog. I was the only one there who yelled at him for his behavior.

At the age of 19 I met a girl, we fell in love. She wasn't a practicing Christian when I met her. Shortly after her and I first meeting she went to church with my family and I. She went to the altar at church one Sunday morning and "gave her heart to Jesus Christ". My mom prayed with her at the altar, and my she "got saved".

A few weeks after we started dating I had sex for the first time. I remembered feeling so in love. A few weeks after we had been together her and I went to my home, my parents greeted us at the door and both of them were very unhappy. I remember my mother and father sitting my girlfriend and I down, they proceeded to inform us that they were aware that my girlfriend and I had been having sex. My mother explained to me that she had cleaned my car (an event that had never occurred before and never occurred again) and in doing so she discovered a note book which contained discourse between my girlfriend and I. These private and explicit notes made it clear that we had been physically intimate. I remember my mother explaining to my girlfriend and I that I was raised to know better then to behave in such a manner, and that because of our actions we were both sinners. I remember my girlfriend leaving the house in tears. After she left, my parents prayed with me so that I could ask for forgiveness of my sins.

From this point on my parents and my girlfriend never got along very well. They always saw her as the girl who deflowered their little boy, and she always knew they felt that way. Around this time I was told that it was now required of me that I be home by 1 am, no later or I would be locked out of the house. This was something I had never experienced before.

I remember one night my girlfriend and I were going to leave my house. My father made a snide comment to me as I was leaving. I remember having this overwhelming feeling that I had had enough ill feeling from him so I retorted. I remember my father charging me, putting his hands around my neck and backing me into my girlfriend who was holding a glass chess board and pieces. I remember the glass snapping under the weight. I was concerned for my girlfriend's well being ( something my father clearly wasn't concerned about) all of the sudden the long suppressed anger I had felt came charging out. I remember slamming my father into a wall and choking him. I remember my mother pulling us apart and my sister screaming and crying.

I remember one night not wanting to leave my girlfriend, I just wanted to lay with her. I stayed out past my 1 am curfew. At this point I was either 20 or 21. My parents bought a special storm door, to which they did not give me the key. I came home to a locked door. I called my sister to let me in, and she did. The next day I was told that if I ever had my sister let me in again that her and I both would get in trouble. From that point on I started leaving windows unlocked in case I needed to get in after 1 am.

At the age of 21 I had my first taste of alcohol, it was champagne. I remember feeling no shame or guilt, I remember liking the flavor and the effect.

When I was 22 my sister met a guy who wasn't a practicing Christian. Shortly after she started dating him, he left for music school in California. My sister wanted to go visit him for a week. My parents informed her that she wasn't allowed to visit her boyfriend. Eventually she packed everything she could into a few bags and attempted to leave the house. My mother took my sister's bags and locked them in a bedroom so that my sister couldn't leave. My sister called the police to have them assist her in being escorted with her belongings from the home. My sister went to California and stayed out there for a number of months.

When my sister moved back to our resident state of Michigan she moved in with her boyfriend and lived with him for roughly 2 years.

In the meantime my girlfriend and I had started attending a non-denominational church every Wednesday and Sunday. Our church was always looked down on due to the fact that it wasn't evangelical and didn't promote the "gifts of the holy spirit" IE speaking in tongues. My parents came to church with us one time when my girlfriend was being baptised and maybe one other time for a Christmas play. I was always asked to go to their church, especially for Holidays. If I did not attend their church for Holidays I was put on an immense guilt trip.

Over the few years that I dated this female I slept in my car roughly a half dozen times. Most occasions were in winter, so I had to sleep with my car running to stay warm, I was locked out for breaking my newly formed 1 am curfew.

I was frequently asked by my mother if my girlfriend and I were still having sex. I remember lying often to my parents to avoid punishment, guilt and shame from them.

Somewhere around the same time I remember my father screaming at my girlfriend because of a business decision her and I had made the he didn't approve.

My parents owned a cottage in northern Michigan. For a long period of time when they would go out of town, I'd stay home by myself. For a long period of time I remembered hoping that on their way to, or back from their cottage, that they'd get into a fatal car accident. I remember wishing my parents were dead and out of my life, I remember knowing that I shouldn't feel this way, and yet the idea of not having them in my life brought a sense of freedom that my present situation didn't seem to offer.

My relationship with my girlfriend was on the rocks, we broke up and got back together a few times. In that period of time I started going to my parents church which was the 3rd Assembly of God church they had been members of since I had been born. I attended this church for roughly a year. My girlfriend and I got back together and we attended this church a few times but ultimately we went back to the non-denominational church that we had been previously attending. Once again my family was disappointed with my choice.

I was 23, my girlfriend and I broke up for the last time. We had been fighting a lot. Sometimes I would fly into a rage and sometimes the fights became physical. I remember being so angry all the time. I remember doing things that scared me. I remember always feeling like I had to choose between my girlfriend being happy with me and respecting me and my parents being happy with me. Ultimately I let go of my girlfriend, I felt as though I was being torn in two.

I felt sorrow greater then anything I had ever felt. I spent almost a year in emotional agony and turmoil. I sat in the dark, alone with my sorrow many nights. If I didn't sit at home alone, I'd go out to the bar with guys from work. I began drinking often. I hid a 5th of Bacardi Limon in my desk drawer at home. I'd wait until my parents went to sleep and I'd start drinking. When they went out of town I'd drink until I passed out.

Part II
Sorrow and suffering -- my new best friends.

It was at this time I began to question many things. My circumstances, my own emotions, how I ended up in the place that I was in. If Christianity is the Truth, and it's supposed to make a person loving and compassionate like Jesus, then why am I always SO angry. If the Christian life is a life of love and joy and peace, then why didn't I see it in anyone close to me? Why was I always so angry, why did I get upset so easily? Why did my girlfriend and I fight so frequently? Why did my parents and I fight so often? Why was I always so afraid of everyone else's opinion of me? I was afraid of what my parents, girlfriend, boss, pastor, youth pastor, friends all thought of me, I sought their approval all the time. I was terrified of them being upset with me. Why did I cry myself to sleep so many nights? Why did I lay in bed and think to myself, if I died in my sleep how peaceful and freeing that would be?

It was around this time that I read a few books which had a large impact on me. Ironically both authors s were Christians, John Eldredge and Donald Miller. I remember reading in one of John Eldredge's books that he didn't attend church for a year and it resulted in a whole new perspective for him on church. I read Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller after that. The only thing I can recall from the book was that he felt unconditional love and acceptance from the non-Christians at the college he was at, and that it was a foreign concept in Christian circles. I remember reading a chapter that explained that most Christians trade in love like it's a commodity. When you behave in a manner that is socially accepted by your church peers they lavish you with love, however if you take an action that they don't agree with then they withhold their love as a punishment. This was behavior that I had become accustomed to growing up in my house, this was my father's M.O. I eventually came to understand how manipulative this behavior was.

Around this same time I started talking to a close friend of mine whom I hadn't spoken since he'd gone off to an AG (Assembly of God) college. He started telling me about the things he was learning in college, specifically about the scholastic composition of the Bible. He started sharing with me all that he was learning. Things like : The Bible was complied by Constantine over 300 years after Christ supposedly had died, that Bible Scholars had no idea where Christ was crucified or was buried, that they had no idea who wrote the 4 gospels, that they didn't even know if there actually was 4 gospels, That 2 of the Gospels may have come from one original book called the Q text and that Matthew and Mark were copied from that, and that Luke and John were copied off of Matthew and Mark, The fact that the book of John disagreed with the other 3 books on a number of things, and the list goes on.

I began to look up this information for myself and what I learned shook the very foundations of what I was raised to believe. I began to go back and read the Bible with new eyes. I approached the Bible with the idea that IF the Bible was inspired by God, then I should be able to pick it up and read it and understand it like a text book for life, and that in doing so it should mold me into a good person. What I discovered instead was myriad of questions, all of which went unanswered by everyone around me. Ultimately with enough research into the scholarly aspects of the Bible, I came to realize just how human the compilation of the Bible was. It was at this point that I realized that the world that I was raised to see as black and white was actually very grey. It was at this point that I asked myself just how far this grey area went.

I began studying anything I could get my hands on, all the while I was judging Christianity by the fruit it produced, after all that was a concept put forth by Jesus Christ himself. So if Christians hold the cornerstone on what it means to live a life of Love, then why do they have the highest divorce rate of all religions where as atheists have the lowest? Why was it that all I had ever seen growing up were displays of discontentment, disapproval, anger, guilt, shame, fear, and a sense of oppression? Why was it that my family and I could only stay at a church for so long before something went terribly wrong.

In the middle of my personal journey out of theism, the AG church my parents had been attending had a "situation". The pastor they loved and worshiped announced that he was leaving to go to the west coast. Shortly there after it was discovered that the church was 3 years behind on bills and on the verge of foreclosure. I remembered feeling a sense of vindication, I remember saying to myself "and another one bites the dust".

A very wise friend of mine once said "All things end badly, otherwise they wouldn't end.", this statement was definitely true of every church experience I'd ever had growing up.

It was at this point that I developed a voracious appetite for any information and evidence I could get my hands on. I started to wonder, if everything I was raised to believe is seemingly flawed and founded on unsubstantiated claims, then what else is there? I started watching any documentary I could get my hands on that may help me to establish my sense of identity and my world view. I read the Bible on my own, I read scholarly reviews of the Bible, I watched documentaries on how the Bible was made, what books made the cut what books didn't, the Gnostic Gospels, the Apocryphic books, I watched documentaries about archeology and if it supported the Bible, Ancient history, biology, the evidence for evolution, quantum physics, theoretical physics, astronomy, astrology, Ancient Celtic and Druidic lore, Sumerian, Egyptian, and Mayan mythologies, panspermia, even some occult ideas. I began to look at other world religions and how they compared to Christianity, Buddhism, Hindu beliefs, pagan beliefs and rituals and how they've influenced Christianity. The similarities between Jesus, Mithra, Buddha, Krishna, Horus, Sumerian epics, etc.

During this time I had been attending the fore-mentioned non-denominational church. It was at this point that I stopped attending this church as well, my personal goal was to remove myself from the influence of a church for a full 12 months and at the end of 12 months reflect and determine how I felt about my time out from under the influence of the church. However it was a condition of my living situation that I attend church atleast once a week. My parents said I could live with them rent free as long as I went to church once a week. Since it was a priority for me to not attend church, I simply lied to them and said I went, I'd leave the house for a couple hours and come back and tell them that I had attended. After all I didn't want to get kicked out of the house, and lying was easier then having a fight.

After roughly 1 year of study and discourse with a few very close friends I realized that I knew enough to recognize just how ignorant I was. Where as before in the ignorance of my youth I thought that I had it all figured out. At this point I knew enough to know how to ask quality questions. So I systematically started asking questions of those around me who were Christian. I found one recurring theme, they ultimately came to a point where they said, "I don't know, I suppose you just have to have faith." To me this answer was the greatest intellectual cop out and failure, to me it was a "Christianese" way of saying, "I don't know but I believe this because I want to, I have no reason for my belief.". Every time I asked a question of a Christian who ultimately had no logic / reason / evidence for why they believed what they believed, I became more and more bold. Their doubt was my strength, I began asking harder and harder questions of a growing number of people. I ultimately worked up the courage to challenge my mother on some basic Biblical questions. At this point I knew that I was going to be moving out of my parents home. I had to get out from under their influence, just as I had removed myself from the influence and authority of the church. Ultimately I decided that if I was going to have a relationship with my parents after I moved out, it was going to be on the grounds of mutual respect.

One night I questioned my mother on many biblical subjects, to which she had little to no answers. I remember my father came into the conversation toward the tail end when I was simply using the Bible to challenge their own Assembly of God beliefs, my father responded to this challenge by slamming his bedroom door in my face. It was at this point that I decided that my parents most likely would never be able to respect me as an individual, and we'd most likely never be able to have a conversation about anything that mattered in life. Sadly I came to the decision that my parents aren't the type of people that I could be friends with. A couple months later I moved out of their house and we've not spoken since.

My major transformation overall took roughly 2 to 2.5 years. I have by no means "arrived". However I can honestly say that in my own personal journey, born out of suffering and ignorance, I have come a long way. I have learned more in the last 3 years of my life then I learned in the previous 24. I am no longer the angry, ignorant, biased boy that I once was. I can honestly say that up until this point in life I've never had the sense of clarity and foundation that I now I have.

As of yet I don't know of a method by which I can instill a sense of curiosity about the world into another individual. I can only speak from my own journey, and it boiled down to the fact that I hit a point where I decided that I wanted to know the Truth regardless of what it was. I didn't care if the Truth supported the worldview I was taught to believe in or if the Truth was that everything I was ever taught to believe was a complete lie. I merely wanted to know what was True and what was false in the world. Out of my desire to figure out what the Truth was, came a sense of wonder and curiosity about the world.

Ultimately I suggest one simple thing:Question "Authority." If those who claim to have answers don't have any actual answers, then you should feel free to stop listening to them. Know yourself, know about the world in which you live. Never stop discovering reality for what it is, and always approach it like it's brand new, question everything. I'm now of the mindset that that which is True should be able to stand on it's own Merritt. To put it another way I borrow some words from the Declaration of Independence, " We hold these Truths to be self evident... "

Raised Catholic, now secular humanist/atheist

2009-11-05T03:55:00.002-05:00

by Cecile

I submitted a deconversion story on this site back in the early 2000's which is probably long gone by now--I certainly haven't been able to relocate it--and which would have been posted long before there was ever an option on here for reader comments. At best, you could post a website or contact info, and I originally included an email address, but removed it after I got a few too many replies from Christians who thought it was still possible that I could be brought back into the fold, "if you just want it enough!" Sorry, but I don't want it at all, and I left behind any belief in God or gods where it belongs, back in my childhood along with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. In any case, it's been almost a decade, so it's time for a newer version of the story.

I was born in the Philippines in 1967, and like 90% of the people there, my parents were practicing Catholics. We moved first to Canada and then to Michigan in 1971. I went to a public school up until the third grade and at some point in the day every Wednesday, the Catholic kids would be gathered up and sent to another school a few blocks away for catechism lessons, so even from the earliest memories, I knew my religion was just one among many, and we were in the minority in most places where we lived, which made any variations of an argument ad popularum useless, unless you were speaking of Christianity in general, and not just Catholicism. I understood that most kids just went along with whatever their parents raised them in, and even as a practicing Catholic, was pretty much the "live and let live" variety.

My family moved to Arkansas in 1979 and sent us to a Catholic school, so even though we were "among our own kind" while at school, while in the public at large, we were even more of a minority here than we were in Michigan, although people from my church did seem to own a disproportionately large number of the local businesses. When I was in the sixth grade, I read some books on ancient mythology--Greek, Roman, Norse, Egyptian, etc. While enjoying the stories, I couldn't help thinking in the back of my mind that at one time, people believed in those gods just as much as they do the ones today. For all we knew, the religions of today will be the ones our descendants look at a few centuries from now, laugh or shake their heads at, and wonder, "What the hell were they thinking back then?"

Even while still professing to be a Catholic, there was more than a little bit of agnosticism creeping even before I made it to my teens. "I believe such and such, but I know there isn't actually any proof for any of it, so I have no right to expect anyone else to believe it." Attempts at "witnessing" or converting non-Catholics would have been extremely disrespectful to the other person and out-of-the-question for me.

Then came junior high school and more religion classes, and now we were getting into more grown-up subject matter. Not that I hadn't heard about any of these teachings before, but the more I learned about rules that were almost exclusive to Catholicism, the more I realized, "This church is completely out of touch with modern times, and it's not for me." For instance, as a female, I found the rules about not letting women be priests or letting the male priests be married highly offensive. They might as well be saying, "We hold women in such contempt that not only do we not want any of them in any leadership position (unless you can count nuns smacking schoolkids with rulers), the only men we want are ones that don't want anything to do with women." Then there were the rules forbidding artificial birth control (which is rightly ignored by most Catholics anyway) and abortion. "Right, like I'm going to take family planning advice from some celibate, post-geriatric guy in a dress. When's the last time you were pregnant, Padre?" Thank goodness I never listened to the one about "no sex before marriage" either, or I'd be the 42-Year-Old Virgin right now. I refuse to believe that when my partner and I are expressing our love for one another physically, that somehow we're doing something evil and sinful, just because we don't have a piece of paper or matching wedding bands.

In any case, once I had any choice at all in the matter, I stopped attending weekly mass with my parents. At first, it was because I had my first job after graduating high school, and they scheduled me to work Sunday afternoons. I obviously couldn't be in two places at once, but there was always a deeper reason beyond just needing some extra spending money. I'd long felt extremely uncomfortable being there, like a time traveler from a future where religion didn't exist anymore, who went back to study the earlier culture by pretending to be a member of one of the churches that existed at the time, just to see how far we'd really come or verify that people really were that crazy back then. On a really bad day, I felt like an undercover officer infiltrating a cult to see what they were up to.

A lot of the above explains my problems with Catholicism in particular, but as for religion in general, I wasn't inclined to switch over to any other variety of it either. It probably has a lot to do with my personality type, which according to every variation of the Myer-Briggs indicator I've taken recently, is an INTJ, very rare, especially for a woman. If you want me in a nutshell, picture Dr. Temperance Brennan from "Bones," only without the fancy degree, well-paying job, the pop cultural illiteracy, or the tactlessness in public.

The introvert vs. extrovert preference, in particular, was a very strong one, like choosing the introvert answer 7 out of 7 or 6 out of 7 possible times. Part of what goes with that is being content with--if not having an outright preference for--one's own company. Much of what might have motivated almost any other person to belong to some kind of church despite being plagued by doubts--wanting to belong to some kind of community--just doesn't apply to me. They can't entice me with the prospect of filling that void because I don't have that void.

Another aspect of being that type is that thoughts and reason are held in more value than emotions and wishes, which would explain a lot. All those things which hold emotional appeal for Christians--believing there's a personal God that loves them and answers their prayers, that they'll get to spend eternity in heaven if they just believe and do what they're told, that they'll be reunited with their lost loved ones in that same after life, etc., none of that holds any weight with me. When it comes to supernatural or paranormal or any similar type claims, I've always had rather a skeptical mind that considered them to be "B.S. until proven otherwise." I don't hold claims that have God or religion attached to them to a different standard of evidence than ones about ghosts or aliens or ESP, or Christianity-based claims to a different standard than those of any other religion's. Maybe the same thing that's made me "immune" to religious yearnings is what's made me almost completely uninterested in experimenting with drugs and alcohol. I'm far too committed to accepting reality on its own terms, no matter how bad it sucks sometimes, to want it handed to me through some religious or chemically-induced haze. I want to see it for exactly what it is, so I can deal with it appropriately.

It also doesn't matter to me what most of the people in my family or my locality or my country believe. All that matters is this. Going strictly by the kind of evidence that would be accepted if this were a scientific theory being tested or that would be admissable in a court of law, is there any more evidence that supports Christianity's claims than there is supporting any of the other 10,000 or so religions floating around out there? If there is, I certainly have never found it.

I'm starting to really like the term "apatheist." It's not an official word in the dictionary, but the connotation is that the person doesn't believe in God, but doesn't really give a flip whether anybody else does or not. They very well might think religion is such a pointless subject, it's not worth their thought energy to dwell on it that much. If pressed to, I probably couldn't prove that elves and unicorns and dragons DON'T exist, but I'm not going to lose any sleep wondering what to say to any people who think that they do. I actually deliberately avoid ever asking what religion a person is when I meet them, because I don't want to unconsciously try to stereotype them or predict their actions based on the answer. If they bring the subject up first, sure, I'll listen, but I'd prefer to learn for myself what they're like from their own behavior over time. To this day, there's people I've been friends with for years who I have no idea what religion, if any, they consider themselves to be, and that includes the boyfriend I've had for over a year. Don't ask, don't tell, don't know, don't care.

It certainly hasn't always been easy. My mother can be especially condescending on the subject. She seems to have bought into all the stereotypes that people who leave religion do so because they weren't willing to follow the rules and want to sin freely. She keeps holding out hope that my atheism (which has gone on at some level for 27 out of my 41 years) is "just a phase," and I'll go back to Catholicism once I'm older and wiser. It just doesn't occur to her that people leave them behind because they decide (gasp!) they're not true, and they'd rather have new friends or none at all than to only have ones for which they have to pretend to be someone they're not or believe in something that they don't as a condition of acceptance. I might not be a Christian anymore, but I have plenty of principles and morals outside of that part of my life, and they prohibit me from trying to win friends by living a life of such utter hypocrisy. I am what I am, and if you can't accept that, you can kiss my you-know-what, because there are plenty of people that will.

The Objectively Absent God

2009-11-01T15:48:00.002-05:00

Sent in by Interested

We start with a story of a child: Myself as an early teen.

The setting: a Christian youth conference with the goal of re-igniting the fire of faith in America's youth. I am standing up front with hundreds of other believers accepting Christ as their Lord and Savior.

The worship music began to mellow and the lights stayed dim as dozens of conference staff poured across the crowd, laying hands on as many bowed heads as possible.

Some spoke loudly while others whispered. Some spoke in other languages while others spoke in movements.

My eyes were shut but I could feel a hand eventually make its way to the back of my head. This was it. I had heard about Christ and I knew that God was real, but this was the final moment.

The prayer started. "Lord please fill this boy with the holy spirit, let him know you are there, let him feel your presence. Let him know the joy of knowing you, and bring him into salvation through the death of your son, Jesus Christ..."

Inside my head the excitement grew. The dim light and powerful melodies echoing through the room ensured that this would be a very spiritual night. The creator of the universe was about to enter in to me, and I would be a new person tonight.

But instead of knowing that Christ was with me, I was left with a rather confused feeling. Did it work? Was I saved? Do I know Christ now? Did I do something wrong?

Around me tears flowed and sobs were heard. Everybody else seemed to be having a very emotional moment. Something must've gone wrong with me. Why didn't anything seem different?

Maybe I was over-thinking it, but this entire thing was ambiguous. Surely if I had just been filled with the Holy Spirit, I'd know by now, yes?

Questions and doubt suddenly filled my mind. Was everybody else just faking it? Or did I seriously just not want it enough? Was I not sincere enough to accept Jesus into my heart?

I left that conference that night with my group more confused than when I started. Surely that was not the goal of the conference.

What was missing? That's a good question. Impossible to know for sure. But why was it impossible?

There can be many explanations for my experience. Maybe I just wasn't truly ready. Maybe I didn't believe enough. Maybe I wasn't sorry enough for my sins.

Conveniently, the problem presented by Christianity is an unsolvable problem. It is a problem of vague degrees. What is it to be sorry enough? This question would torture me for a good portion of my childhood.

When everybody else can do something that you can't, you start looking within. What am I doing wrong? What's wrong with me?

The problem is that there is no objectivity within Christianity. Because there is no proof, there is no room for critical thinking.

Why would God give us the ability to utilize critical thinking, I often wondered, if we aren't to use it for the most important part of our lives?

It just never added up for me. It was a big chunk of change that never came out to the right number. Yet for a good portion of my life, I did spend a lot of time living a life that didn't make sense inside. We call this cognitive dissonance.

With the threat of hell hung above me and a set of instructions to "accept Christ" that never seemed to work for me, I was stressed, confused, and depressed. And what's worse, it just never made sense!

But maybe, in all my confusion, I ignored a certain logic. It's possible that the answer had been staring me in the face that night.

Did I want to accept Christ? Absolutely. I really believed he was real, why else would I have stepped forward that night? I was convinced that this was what I wanted for my life. I had faith that despite common sense, Christ was real, and I was ready to accept him into my heart.

So why would God decide not to enter my heart at that time? If he did, why would he choose to avoid letting me know? Why would the creator of the universe stay silent when I had done everything that was asked of me? When I had finally dedicated my life to Christ and wanted to make a commitment, why was the almighty silent?

To what advantage does God have for being silent in this predicament? Maybe because the objective proof I was seeking was that he didn't exist.

My path to spiritualism vs. religion

2009-10-28T15:16:00.002-05:00

sent in by Belladonna

I am the illegitimate child of a drug addict/prostitute. When people found out who and what my mother was, they were not very accepting, especially in a small, conservative community. When I lived with my mother, I was brutalized; I have had every rib broken, my skull fractured, my jaw broken at least 3 times, my eye sockets broken and my nose broken. I still have scars, nearly 30 years later, where she broke bottles over me, and if it wasn't her beating me, it was the men she brought home. And I also know what it's like to have to beg for money and rummage through dumpsters just to eat; at 9 years old, I weighed 36 pounds.

I was taken from her and brought to live with my grandparents. When I started school here in 4th grade, my grandmother met with the principal of the school and told him my history and asked that it remain confidential; although she was assured it would, a school secretary made sure the elders of her LDS Church knew, so that the children of the church would be protected from me and any influence I may have. I was ostracized, attacked and beaten up.

I began to attend a Baptist Church in a different town; I thought I was at home, but found out they were also merely tolerating me. I had attended this church for nearly 3 years when I decided to question the statement of a Sunday school teacher regarding his assertion that Mother Teresa was going to hell. He said she was, I said, "No way"; that night, I was informed I was not a member of the church when I was told I could not go to a revival meeting with the rest of the kids, and the next week, I was asked to leave and not return, because I was a blemish on their church. They wished me well and told me they hoped God had pity on me, but they were sure to point out Deuteronomy 23:2 to me, and behind my back, they stated they knew I would never be anything more than what my mother was.

For years, I could not step inside a church - any church - without becoming physically ill. I have tried, but I don't last very long, and I don't tolerate any church that tries to convice me about the evils of homosexuality, because when I was 15, I was adopted by a gay man, and he saved my life. He gave me love and a solid home, made sure I was educated, and cheered louder than anyone when I graduated from high school, something no one thought I would do. He made me realize I really was worth something.

I have never been able to let go of my faith, but letting go of religion is no longer posing a challenge. Christians so often pose as all accepting; yet, as I am finding out once again, are some of the harshest, most judgmental of individuals. And when you try to have a conversation with them regarding their "faith", then they resort to attacks, reminding you that you are not one of the chosen few.

I feel I have nothing in common with any Christian any longer, because I simply refuse to look at myself as being above anyone else, even in the name of Jesus.

The begining of the end for my belief

2009-10-25T17:20:00.005-05:00

By a Loving Friend

Image via Wikipedia

I didn't grow up with God in my family. It wasn't until I was about eight or nine years old that I started to believe. I thought that it was cool and something fun for me to do. So I started to read the Bible a little and memorize prayers, and I prayed at night when I remembered. I became a Christian on my own, because I wanted to. I did not grow up with God hanging over my head and my parents dragging me to church every Sunday.

I met my best friend in the whole world when I was 10. Her name was Yvonne and she was the littlest in her family of a single mom and two older brothers. Her oldest brother was an older teenager and her other brother was a mentally retarded 10 or 11 year old (my age). Though she was younger than me, we became friends very fast. We played outside together everyday we could, and really loved each other. I felt like she was my little sister at times, if I said my favorite sport was soccer so would she, if my favorite color was baby blue, so was hers.

One day we were playing outside and she was complaining about how her leg/hip hurt. She said she told her mom about it but her mom said it would go away and gave her some pain pills. It didn't go away. She complained for maybe two more weeks, and then her mom finally went to the doctor to get some x-rays. A few days later I learned that my best friend had cancer. I was 10 and couldn't completely understand the severity, but I did soon.

About a month or so after we found out she had cancer, they started her on chemo-therapy. And one day she came home with a hat on and everyone was fussing at her to take it off. I didn't really understand until she took off the hat. All her lovely, long, wavy hair was gone. I can remember the look on her face; she looked so sad, and all I wanted to do was make her feel better. After that we stopped going outside a lot because the treatments had made her sick.

A few months passed and now she is in a wheelchair. I take walks with her and push her around outside, but it wasn't the same. She just seemed to get sicker and smaller every week. Then when her and her mom got back from the doctors one day late at night, her mom called my mom outside to talk and I had to stay outside. But I wanted to know what was going on because her mom was crying. So I peeked out the window to watch them talk and the next thing I see is them just holding each other and balling. I got that horrible feeling in my stomach and I knew at that point what was wrong. There would only be one reason for so much crying. Yvonne wasn't responding well to the treatment, she was going to die.

After that, everyone got really depressed and I didn't know what to do. I just kept doing what I always did with her. I stayed over at her house more often, tried to stay happy. It was coming up to my 13th birthday, and when it arrived she came with me to my grandparents house. I felt bad because she slept a lot, but I was glad she was there.

So now I had had Yvonne for 3 years in my life. Starting out, she was an energetic little girl who loved to play; now she was a sickly, sad little girl that knew she was going to die. But we prayed. We prayed all day and night for her, begging for her to get better. Her mom even had the church come to her once, and they had a whole big thing just for her. We had almost the whole city praying for her. Her mother was a good Christian lady who took good care of her children. Yvonne was an innocent little girl who gave her heart to god. And I was a devoted friend who prayed very hard for her.

I can remember the day she died quite well. I woke up in my room and was getting ready to go and see her. My mom told me that I had to take a shower before going over there, so I pouted as I took my shower. When I came out of the shower and was all dressed and ready to go, I heard someone crying. My father was in the bedroom crying, my dad didn't cry. I asked him what was wrong but he wouldn't tell me. So I went to search for my mom. I was walking down the steps as she walked into the door just below me. She was also crying and I was starting to panic. I asked her what was wrong, and it took her a minute to tell me. She told me she was dead, and i collapsed on the stairs.

I don't remember what happened after that but I remember being told that we should go and see her before the people come and pick her up. I was afraid. I didn't know what a dead person looked like, and she was my best friend. But I went with my mom anyway and just remember that there was a lot of people and I was sitting on the living room floor staring at my dead best friend being held by her mother. Everything after that just blurred together.

Yvonne died of cancer when she was just nine years old. Why? Is it because she wasn't worth saving? Was it because she didn't believe enough? Was it because we didn't pray hard enough? Or was it because there wasn't a god to save her in the first place? These questions haunted my for the next year or two. Eventually I came to my senses and realized I had prayed so hard to nothing. How could there be a god if a 9 year old can die? It doesn't make sense. The funny thing is that I was told that god wanted her to be with him in heaven. Then I concluded that god was greedy, horrible, and unfair.

If God existed, my best friend would still be alive, the world would be a peaceful place, and people would be happy. Because this is not so, I feel betrayed and now believe that the whole god thing is just another way to make people compliant and obedient.

Trying to Keep the Baby Without the Bathwater

2009-10-24T02:20:00.002-05:00

by Chris Cormier

I was raised Catholic and sent to Catholic school for most of my childhood. I had a wonderful experience within my Catholic faith but left the church at 17 because I felt that the central claims of the faith are absurd. I developed into and remained an intellectually clear-minded and outspoken atheist for 25 years. Despite this, I spent years painfully grieving the loss of faith. I was quite literally tormented on a daily basis by the question of God for years at a time. It almost drove me mad. It was if I sensed God but nonetheless felt intellectually compelled to reject the whole idea.

About a year ago, after receiving the 6th vicious and unnecessary lawsuit from my ex-wife (we've just wrapped up number 8, by the way) I found myself at the "end of my rope," i.e., that I seemed to have no more personal strength or courage left. I had been painfully emptied over a decade and had nothing left. Amazingly, one night I found myself driving to the local Catholic church feeling like I was being compelled by a force that originated outside of myself. It was as if I had been grabbed by the scruff of my neck and thrown into the church. I dropped to my knees, begged for forgiveness and mercy (even though I had no idea what that meant), and somehow...it came. My chest convulsed repeatedly as some kind of spiritual power coursed through me and restored me...It was unbelievable...Every time I prayed for the next several months I felt this power and my body would begin to shake involuntarily. I started going to Mass and receiving Communion on a daily basis. Even though the homilies were frequently very uncomfortable for me and I still struggled with dogma, I loved going to Mass ands had a faith that lifted me above all my concerns in some mysterious way. My reading of Thomas Merton was incredibly helpful in this regard as well.

Now, a little over a year later, I find myself still being very drawn to the church and my faith but astounded and deeply disturbed by the bizarre and archaic tenets of dogma, including the belief in a "Living God" that not only tolerates suffering but will ultimately levy infinite punishment on many. As one of Woody Allen's characters once said, "If there is one thing we can say about God, he sure is an underachiever!"

My question is this, I suppose: What is someone in my position to do? I can't help but acknowledge that I am experiencing something "very real" (i.e., something of the "divine" and "transcendant," for lack of better words) within the context of my faith/doubt but reject basic Christian (and all other) theology and dogma, as well as claims for the authenticity of the Bible (and similar documents). Much of both are simply atrocious and stupid by today's standards, even allowing for differnces in culture, history and ethical standards, and allowing for creative interpretations of the former. Thomas Merton acknowledges these problems but promotes working through them over time by praying for grace and faith... Paul Tillich promotes a symbolic interpretation of the Bible and basis for faith...But it seems that much of Christian dogma and the Bible remain unredeemably horrible despite these efforts.

Also, and perhaps more fundamentally, it seems that humans by their very nature may be evolutionarily designed (perhaps as a byproduct, exaptation or even psychological adaptation) to experience something of what we call "the divine." Perhaps "God" is really a name we apply to a deeply human and infinitely valuable experience that is legitimate and perhaps even necessary for some, but that nonetheless lacks any external basis. In this case we would say that God is purely subjective, not objective. If this were so, we should not be looking for the "right" religion, or even to rejecting the impulse to religion and faith, but the best means of cultivating one's deepest spiritual potential without reference to archaic, dangerous and empirically incorrect philosophical/theological systems.

I think that "technically" I may still be an atheist, but now sense that we should not throw out our deepest humanity and spiritual potential ("the baby") with "the bathwater" of religion. But how one is to do this in the modern age and without the conventional tools of "religion" remains a mystery to me.

ANY IDEAS? Seriously...Where do we go from here?

Atheist after 40 years a Christian Minister

2009-10-23T02:48:00.004-05:00

by Jeff

I just found this site and figured I'd check in, as I too am an "ex-christian." I became a Christian at 18 after a rather dramatic conversion experience...lots of emotion and a total change of direction in my life.

I was a senior in high school at the time and making decisions about career and college. I was "led" into the full-time Christian ministry shortly after my conversion, so I chose to attend a rather well-known Bible college in South Carolina.

After four years there, I sensed that I'd most likely eventually become an overseas missionary, the which I did. But before accepting a missionary assignment in Italy, I graduated, got married, was a youth pastor, a Bible teacher in a Christian school, put in a year towards my Master of Divinity degree, and finally pastored a church in Philadelphia for three years. Six years after graduation from college, my wife, two children, and I moved to Europe to evangelize and start evangelical churches.

This was my life and ministry for over 28 years, but all during this time I was struggling to maintain my faith. I had so many questions about the Bible and its teachings. I kept suspecting that Christianity really didn't "work." I mean, prayer didn't really work. Faith didn't make me a new person. My old "sins" were still plaguing me. I rarely sensed any "presence of God" in my life. I looked for God's guidance, but rarely was sure I got it. And even then it often turned out to be patently erroneous. I experienced church and missions from the inside and became very disillusioned with it. For an enterprise headed by the God of the universe, it sure was awfully human, and terribly fallible. I really saw precious little that could be called "evidence of God" in it all.

My questions about the Bible and its teachings just multiplied over the years, until I had to intentionally close my eyes to them in order to maintain anything like enough faith to continue my ministry without feeling like a total hypocrite. But the struggle only got worse...along with depression and very real self-loathing (for my feelings of hypocrisy.)

Finally, after 28 years overseas, I came to that place where I just could no longer consider myself a believer. I could no longer represent Jesus and the Bible, as my missions agency called on me to do. Honesty demanded that I quit the ministry and return Stateside.

It is now almost five years that I've been back in the "secular" world. I no longer attend church. I have come to peace with my unbelief. In fact, I am happier and enjoy greater contentment now than at any other time in my adult life. The dust has slowly settled in my mind and I have come to realize that I actually do not believe in God at all anymore. I haven't looked to become an atheist, but I guess that's what I am... and I'm very happy in my unbelief, thank you very much!

That's my story in a nutshell. If anyone wants to comment on it or jot me line, feel free (rjtrueman AT gmail DOT com). I'm not crusading for atheism, but neither am I ashamed of it. Quite the contrary.

Be well!

The Story of a Recent Doubter

2009-10-21T14:08:00.005-05:00

by Sarah

My parents were never the crazy fundamentalist type that other people have talked about. I love them both dearly and have never doubted their love for me. Yet they were deeply religious. My Dad came from a Southern Baptist background and my mother had been Catholic but converted to Protestantism in college. I remember religion being an integral part of my childhood. We attended a relatively small church and so everyone was like family. Almost all my friends were from my Sunday school and I remember us playing games after church like Noah’s Ark We would pretend to be different animals and scurry under tables that were supposed to be the ark. We were completely oblivious to the fact that the rest of the animals and humans were drowning outside the ark. I sang in the kid’s choir and acted in the Christmas pageant.

When I reached school age my parents decided to homeschool me. I actually don’t hold this against my parents as much as you might think. I received an excellent personalized education that has served me well in my later studies. But all the books that we studied had a Christian slant to them. In history class we read books on missionaries, the spelling exercises often involved biblical stories and I would do math problem involving how many bibles could be distributed to x number of people. For me it was perfectly normal. After all if everyone in my world said that Jesus was true, then why would I doubt? I knew that a few people didn’t believe, but they were either bad people or just confused. And it was my job to set them straight. I can still remember distinctly “leading my first soul to Jesus”. I was probably all of six and playing with one of the three “unbelieving boys” in my neighborhood. I asked him if he wanted to go to heaven. He said sure and I told him he had to ask Jesus to save him. He said ok and I ran home absolutely thrilled at his conversion. I was convinced I had brought my cousin to the Lord as well after a long deeply theological conversation (at age ten). My agnostic aunt was quite upset when I proudly told her that I had turned her daughter into a Christian. I don’t think that any of these “conversions” lasted more than a day or two.

I can still remember one Christmas when my Dad decided to purge the house of all Santa paraphernalia because it distracted from the real meaning of Christmas. You’d think I would have been upset, but I eagerly joined in, almost throwing away my Mom’s heirloom 1950s Santa statue (she wasn’t as thrilled about the purge as my Dad, but who was she to question him).

Life continued on in this way up until high school and college. I kind of lost my fervor during high school when I stopped homeschooling. Partly because I was exposed to non-Christians who were actually good and cool people and partly because when we moved we didn’t really find a solid church to plug into. But I didn’t ever doubt that Christianity was true. I may have drifted away early during college if it wasn’t for the fact that I ended up rooming with a fellow Christian and living next door to two other Christians. And this was not the most religious of schools. I was convinced that this must have been God’s way of keeping me in the fold. We had bible studies together and prayed when life got stressful. We even got involved in the local Assemblies of God church. It was different than I was used to. People would sometimes prophecy or speak in tongues. I was a little wary of that as it wasn’t part of my background, but it was the only upbeat church that I could find and the people were extremely friendly. My roommates got really into it. One had been raised Catholic and she found the personalized religion of A of G much more appealing. The other roommate was from Africa and she firmly believed in the existence of devils and miracles and speaking in tongues. With her, life was always a struggle between the demons and Jesus.

They were extremely nice though and so much more genuine than many of the other people at my school and we quickly all became inseparable. We became well known at church as the foursome and often were invited to their houses. It felt like a community and I enjoyed it. I definitely had doubts but always managed to quickly shove them out of my head when they became uncomfortable.

My deconversion actually starts with a relationship that I had begun to develop with one of the young men at the church. He had come from a rough past. He used to be involved in drugs and crime, but he had gone through one of those religious programs and had found Jesus. He was now living on the straight and narrow. His conversion story was exciting and inspiring. And who doesn’t like a reformed bad boy? It adds a touch of danger and mystery. We began to sort of date. He talked enthusiastically about God and what he was doing in his life. I responded in kind, maybe a little more so than I would usually have done. I wanted to appear like a fervent Christian as well. I saw us together, on fire for Christ and making a difference in this world. It gave my life a feeling of satisfaction and purpose. But, as most of you probably can already guess, this guy was less than perfect. At one point he got massively drunk (apparently hadn’t quite gotten over those addiction problems) and tried to sleep with me. I went along with it further than I should have although we never actually had sex. A few weeks later he told me that he couldn’t continue to be in a relationship with me because of what we had done. He said he was disappointed in both of us. I apparently hadn’t done enough to stop him and save him from himself. All of our other experiences and conversations apparently meant nothing compared to that mistake. But his “guilt” didn’t stop him from starting to date a more “holy” girl from our church two weeks later. I have my suspicions as to whether or not things between them had already been going on even before he broke up with me. They got married less than a year later and are considered to be a model couple at our church. I still get sick every time I see them.

But I don’t want you to think that I turned away from the church because of a personal vendetta or anything. Although that did keep me from going to that same church for a while. I felt so worthless after that experience. Not only did I feel rejected by him, I felt rejected by God. I was convinced that I was evil and that I was a hypocrite. I did everything I could to make up for it. I listened to sermons online, I prayed my heart out, and I read my Bible. But nothing helped. I didn’t feel closer to God. I felt angry that I had to go through all this to appease him. I also felt angry at thinking that this guy that I now despised was going to heaven just because he had said a little prayer while my good friends who were not Christian (but were just as moral and often nicer and more fun) would be going to hell. And for some reason, right then, the concept of hell became real in my mind. I had always believed in it in a theological sense but had never really thought about it. Now I pictured all my non-Christian friends literally burning forever in that place. That is an extremely frightening thought. And I couldn’t get over the fact that we as Christians were having potlucks and camping trips and reveling in our salvation if we really thought even one person was going to hell. Shouldn’t we all be in mourning all the time over this tragedy? I couldn’t see the purpose in life or the world if the vast majority of humans end up in such a terrible place. It would be better to die as a child before you reached the age of accountability than risk not believing and go to hell. And I wondered about my brother who has Autism and Down Syndrome. Did he get a free pass into heaven because he couldn’t understand about religion? I hoped so but at the same time it didn’t seem fair. I’d rather be born with mental problems as long as I was guaranteed an eternity in heaven afterwards. Things were starting to not make sense the more I looked at them. I spent hours on the internet looking for answers. I heard all the pat answers repeated a million times but none of them satisfied me. I developed severe depression. Every time I walked on the streets I pictured the people that I saw in hell. Not a fun way to spend your time but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I became mad at God for putting me through it and for not giving me comfort or explanation when I needed it.

I stumbled across this site and it opened possibilities I didn’t even know existed. I never considered not believing but the arguments on this site made sense and every story I read sounded like my own. I never thought I would find people who had gone through the exact same feelings as me but there they were. The atheism thing frightened me at first. I couldn’t be an atheist. It just wasn’t part of the package. And losing the illusion of heaven was a frightening concept as well. I still wanted to believe in Jesus and God but without the hell part. But I knew I couldn’t have my cake and eat it too. I lived in limbo for a long time. I tried to tell my parents about my doubts. My mom would cry and my dad thought it was Satan’s influence. It was hard not being able to share my pain with them. My friends were the same way. They tried to give me answers but they didn’t really have any. After a while they just kind of ignored it. For a while I went along with still going to church but I felt awkward standing there and singing songs to a god that I was no longer sure existed and whenever the pastor spoke I just thought of ways to refute his argument. But I felt lonely. My friends did not ostracize me but I no longer felt part of the close little group because I couldn’t fully participate in the religious aspects that were such a part of our relationship. I began to get annoyed at them constantly singing gospel around the house and attributing everything to an act of God. I still can’t understand how people ask God to help them on a test when there are people in the world starving. If God cares more about my Econ midterm than a baby with cancer then I think there is a problem.

The last part of my story involved a mission trip to Africa that we took that summer. I was still very much in doubt, but this trip had been in the works for a year and they convinced me that I could do other things besides religious stuff. It was one of the most awkward things ever. I enjoyed the experience of traveling and I was able to teach English and do some other work but I was constantly surrounded by the most intense Christians that I had ever seen. Christianity in many places of Africa is extremely Pentecostal. They fully believed in tongues and miracles and shouting and being slain in the spirit. I had to sit through more than one all night prayer service. I went to a spirit soaking in which people waited to be filled with the spirit and then began to yell, cry, laugh, fall over, or whatever else struck their fancy when they believed the spirit had come. I just kept seeing it as more and more ridiculous but my roommates really got into it. They all came out of the summer so much more “on fire for God”. Since I was traveling with them everyone expected me to be a Christian too and I went along with it because it was easier than trying to explain the truth and listen to them try to bring me back into the fold. I hated being the wet blanket. For a while I tried to point out the flaws in logic to my roommates but after a while I just felt like I was alienating them and being the killjoy. I think the most poignant part of all the deconversion stories is the loss that you feel when you can’t connect with your old friends and family in the same way. Now I’m back and I have stopped going to church. Ironically the summer of missions, which was supposed to strengthen my faith has only left me more doubtful and confused. Now we are supposed to attend a session with the bible study at the church that helped partially support our trip and talk about what we learned. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to say the truth and alienate all my friends and church family, but I am tired of being hypocritical. I know that once I officially say something, it will drastically change the dynamics of my relationships with many people.

Any advice?

Love comes from Jesus

2009-10-20T03:34:00.005-05:00

by Sara

Image by jcolman via Flickr

I was raised Catholic and became Presbyterian in high school. I was so serious about my faith, excited about finding a church that acted as if God was real instead of trapped in a Latin Mass. And in all honesty, it was mostly wonderful. I was pretty awkward at that time and it was a place to belong. I didn't experience any of the horror stories many people relate. The people at my church were for the most part caring and conscientious. I left my hometown and went to college still a fluffy doe-eyed Christian. At that time it was the most important aspect of my life and there wasn't a close second.

There are a lot of things that people point to that led them to change their mind about God but there was no revelation for me. It left me slowly. I both became more liberal politically as I tried to nestle myself deeper into conservative Christianity. I began hanging out with the orthodox christians. But bits and pieces of what I held dear began falling away anyway. I ignored and ignored and ignored the problem until I got turned inside out and upside down.

My husband (then fiancé) and I had been at a picnic with some church friends and some fairly annoying church-planter had dropped by. While he preached away at his patient audience it occurred to me that I hadn't believed what he was talking about for along time. I wasn't a Christian anymore. I was terrified and horrified at this realization. I was devastated, I thought that life had pretty much ended for me. I even offered to break off my engagement with my husband because I was not the person he proposed to anymore.

I had a lot of trouble following my de-conversion. I became depressed and had a lot of difficulty finishing my senior year of college. It was a terrible time. I wept and pleaded with god to kindle that faith in me I used to have. I grieved as if someone had died. I was unspeakably angry with god and the people in my church. I forgot who I was. I couldn't figure out where i was going.

At the bottom of this funk I was getting married (my patient and caring fiancé not only did not break off the engagement but sat with me through all the various crying/screaming fits). My husband and I decided to have a conventional but god-neutralized wedding. Because I was honest with our two officiants about my own doubts and our choice of wedding service both backed out of marrying us. I was understanding with my husband's friend backed out. I wasn't very close with her. But about a week before the wedding my high school youth minister informed me that not only did he feel he couldn't do the sermon, he couldn't come at all. The stunned silence on the other end of this phone call was enough to encourage him to amend at least the second of the two decisions. When I asked him why he couldn't be a part of my wedding he said, "Well, I believe love comes from Jesus". It was the cruelest thing that I have ever experienced.

A year after getting married I have mostly picked together the pieces of my inner life. It's tough to have lost what I had in common with many of my friends, to lose my bearings in the world, to keep up a lie with my parents (they are wonderful and not scary conservative at all, I'm just a scared-y cat). But that refusal to marry my husband and I by someone who I respected and cared a great deal for still smarts.

Maybe I'll never change back to being a Christian, maybe I'll decide to be Buddhist, maybe I'll decide it doesn't matter and I don't care. But I'll never refuse to be part of someone's life because of what they believe.

Former Fundamentalist with Ph.D. from BJU is now an Agnostic

2009-10-15T05:07:00.005-05:00

by Ken Pulliam, Ph.D.

I was saved (trusted Christ and Christ alone) and baptized in an independent, Fundamental Baptist church (Galilean Baptist Church). Later I became a member of Forrest Hills Baptist Church in Decatur, GA, which was started by Curtis Huston, a former editor of the Sword of the Lord publication, the periodical originally begun by John R. Rice (Mr. Fundamentalist) in 1934.

I graduated from Baptist University of America (BUA) in Decatur, GA in 1981. BUA was associated with the Baptist Bible Fellowship, which was started by followers of J. Frank Norris, a major fundamentalist leader in the early part of the 20th century. Then I went to Bob Jones University in Greenville, SC, perhaps, the most well known fundamentalist Christian college in the world.

After earning an M.A. (1982) and a Ph.D. (1986) in Theology at BJU, I went to teach at International Baptist College (IBC) in Tempe, AZ which was founded by James Singleton (also the Pastor of Tri-City Baptist Church). Singleton was a board member and active speaker in the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship, a group that originally came out of the Northern Baptist Convention in the early 20th century. The term "Fundamentalist," while a pejorative term for many people, was held as a badge of honor by the people with which I associated.

After teaching for about 6 years at IBC, many doubts began to accumulate. I taught Apologetics, Theology, English Bible, Introduction to Philosophy, Elementary, Intermediate and Advanced Greek courses. On the graduate level, I taught N.T. Introduction, N.T. Biblical Theology, Historical Theology, and advanced Greek courses.

I remember fielding many difficult questions from students in these classes and I always responded with the "pat" answers that I had been taught at BJU or had read in evangelical theology books. These usually satisfied the students but in my heart they did not satisfy me. I continued to study and research, thinking that somewhere, someone must have an adequate answer to these questions. For example, one which I could never resolve was the "justice of an innocent person (Christ) being punished in the place of the guilty parties (sinners)". This is counter-intuitive to what every man knows is right. Punishment, in order to be just, must be directed towards the guilty party. To substitute an innocent party, even if that party is willing, does not constitute justice.

In Dec. of 1996, I left the ministry. I "layed-low" for many years because I did not want to debate and I did not want to disappoint my dear Parents (who had paid for my education and who were devout Christians). Beginning in 2003, I started posting on TheologyWeb anonymously under the name FormerFundy. I enjoyed debating the so-called apologists who frequent that site. This year, I started my own blog, formerfundy.blogspot.com in which I am systematically discussing the reasons I left the faith.

I am also working on a book which may be entitled: "The Death of Christ for Sinners was both Illegal and Immoral."

Thanks,

Ken Pulliam, Ph.D.

Teenage Life in a Christian Home

2009-10-09T20:12:00.007-05:00

by AST

Image via Wikipedia

When I was a teenager the family went to a week long course called "Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts." It was Christian driven, encouraged by our Baptist church, and kind of fun. I look back and I am sure I believed we all did the right thing.

One thing we had to do was purge Satan from the house. The would of course involve "sending him back to hell" which can only be done via fire. We could not sell or give away any Satanic items, they had to be burned.

That meant, being a teenager, just about all of my record collection. BeeGees, Beatles, Steve Miller Band, Ramones, anyone NOT specifically singing the praises of God was either Satanic or Satan trying to get in. We could not give him one inch. I even had to burn a little Tiki doll that I was i the house when we moved in. My stepmom was uncomfortable over it but I saw it as simply wood, not the idol claimed.

So one day we all took our Satanic materials and burned them on the back porch in a small fire. We were cleansing the house by sending these materials back to Satan.

Of course we spent a summer week at a Christian Camp with singing and praising and all sorts of fun activities. Church included Bible Study for an hour before church, the church time, Sunday evening, and Wednesday evening for kids in similar age groups. I suppose it gives an idle mind something to do, but I could have done without the guilt.

I was taught that AIDS was God's punishment on the homosexuals. Okay, I can understand that, it is simply action/reaction. But when my step-brother died of AIDS I had to ask myself something. You see, I never liked him, but I'd not wish him dead. Does that mean I have a more forgiving nature than God? I am not a liberal by any means. And now that I ask questions my entire background is questioned.

One of my high school teachers pointed out conflicts of information in the Bible. When I confronted my parents, they tell me that any conflict is simply Satan twisting my mind to see what is not there. This was not an answer at all. And for one point of record, a bat is a mammal and not a bird. But the Bible says it is a bird.

Needless to say, the only options I had were being a Christian or being a devil worshiping, masturbating, drug dealing meth addict strung out on porn, weed, loud music, and late night TV. Not very nice options.

I turned 18 on the 22nd, I moved out on the 11th of the next month. No surprise.

Since then I have traveled around the entire world. I have seen the love brought by a religious belief as well as the hate. I have experienced those who wish to share with me every bit of their beliefs, and those who feel that I am invading their privacy by asking. For the most part the main attraction to other people does not involve religion, only personality.

I still have questions. I believe in God, or at least a Creator (the latter does not require worship). I reserve judgment on specific written materials until all the facts are in. I am scared I may be wrong. I am even more scared I may be right. I cannot pray without ceasing. I cannot avoid thinking impure thoughts at least 30 seconds a day. I cannot understand why those who say they are the most forgiving are the least forgiving. I cannot understand why asking questions is wrong.

Tori Amos once said, "I love Jesus. It's Christian's I can't stand." And Napoleon said, "Religion is what keeps the poor from killing the rich."

My life is about half over, and if I die in a natural way I have trouble understanding why my life will be judged by everything from a divorce to a dirty magazine under my mattress that my parents never found. It seems the good means nothing in the long run and only the bad marks are recorded for eternity. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

I wonder how screwed up I really am.

Religion is Bullshit

2009-10-08T13:20:00.003-05:00

Sent in by Billo

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I have always asked myself about the existence of God.

I was raised up in a Christian family and sent to a Christian school. For many years I was afraid of Hell even though I got "saved" many times, but I was never peaceful, because I was always depressed by guilt.

I was taught that it was a "sin" to sexually desire a woman. Human nature is based on sexuality. We live to reproduce! Why should it be wrong for me to follow my nature?

Honestly, if it is a sin for a man to desire a woman then it is a sin for birds to fly and fish to swim.

More than that I hated the false hopes that Christians give to people. For example, they tell a blind boy that if he prays and prays he will be see again. The poor boy has the hope that he will recover and so prays and prays. Giving false hopes is like making fun of person. Yes they should comfort a person in trouble, but more than that they should tell them to accept reality and live life as it is.

I learned while I attended a Christian school that Christianity is all about hating everyone who thinks differently from you. Take for example the poor Israelites who were constantly invaded by other nations. They deserved what they got, the Israelites came into the Promised Land and killed everyone including women and children who didn't think like them -- by the order of God, who supposedly loves everyone. Not only that but they wiped out the whole race of the Canaanites and destroyed entire cities and then waged war on neighbor countries and tribes for no good reason.

I am trying to set myself free form religion. I have learned it is ignorant and intolerant. Of course I am still scared of hell and demons, because of all of the religious bullshit that was hammered into my head since I was a kid.

I thank you all for you testimonies that have helped me give this step and thank you for this great web site who inspires me to continue

Sorting it all out

2009-10-08T13:12:00.003-05:00

Sent in by Allan

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I recently became agnostic. I stopped believing in Christianity awhile ago when I realized that nothing in Christianity makes sense.

The Trinity is found nowhere in the Bible, yet somehow I'm required to believe it in order to be Christian.

When I did a little research, I found out the the matter of Jesus' divinity wasn't settled until 300 years later in a council. That's right people actually voted to decide whether or not Jesus was God.

I was also disturbed by the fact that two of the founders of Christianity couldn't agree on whether circumcision was required. If both these men were led by the Holy Spirit, how were they disagreeing on a matter as important as this? Shouldn't the Holy Spirit make them agree on everything since they are inspired by God?

After this I thought, "Well, Israel fulfilled many prophecies when it came into existence in 1948. Also, I always admired the Jews for producing so many intelligent people throughout history. They also receive Nobel prizes way out of proportion to their numbers. I began thinking maybe Judaism had the truth. I listened to lectures by a rabbi named Tovia Singer who goes around debunking Christianity to prevent Jews from converting. He made me positive that Christianity was wrong because it takes Old Testament verses out of context to make Jesus look like the messiah. So, for a brief period I was a gentile who believed the Jews had the truth. However recently I became honest with myself. Israel depends heavily on the United States. If God is behind Israel why does it need us so badly? What if Israel is a self-fulfilling prophecy? The Jews knew of the prophecy of a restored Israel and worked their butts off to accomplish this. It doesn't seem to impressive when you think about it in those terms. Also, most of those Nobel prize winning Jews are agnostic. Seems a little strange that God would bless people who don't believe in Him.

Now that I'm agnostic I can completely accept evolution without feeling guilty about it. I can dismiss the Noah's Ark story as complete idiocy.

I sometimes feel frightened that when I die my consciousness will cease to exist, but it only makes me appreciate what time I have here more.

Leaving the compelling love of Christ

2009-10-07T03:02:00.010-05:00

by Maestra

My husband and I got a mass email from our former pastor (we were still on the mailing list until a few weeks ago) with an attachment about how Muslims were going to storm the White House to pray and noted that a Muslim leader wanted to turn the White House into a Muslim White House. The tone of the message was fear for our nation; that Christians needed band together and pray before the Muslims took over. Even though the email didn’t suggest we wage war, it was enough for my husband and I to be disgusted. That night, as I considered the possibility of a Muslim/Christian war brewing in our country, I felt an outrage toward religion-a feeling I’ve very much been trying to temper since that feeling conflicts with my ultimate goal, which is to live peacefully and lovingly with those around me. I am surrounded by Christians and the last thing I want to do is be labeled as angry and intolerant. My Christian family and friends are very dear to me.

In January 2009 we notified family members and friends that we were “taking a break” from church. They knew we felt like we didn’t believe and were having faith issues, but we didn’t at that time dis-identify ourselves with Christianity. After that email from my pastor…we were ready.

Unfortunately for me, this admission has plunged me back into extreme sadness and frustration. Up until then, I was experiencing a nice stretch of joy and peace. When I started the school year, the joy hit me (I am a Spanish teacher). I looked at my students and it hit me hard that we’re ALL o.k. NOBODY is going to hell. I am part of them and they are part of me and we’re on this journey of life together. I don’t have to “be the light” for them, but maybe I can brighten their day and they can brighten mine (which they do)! I was enjoying a reprieve from the mentally and emotionally taxing issue of de-conversion.

But now it’s back. I called my brother-in-law who is on the board at our former church to tell him. I wanted him to hear it from us first. Matters are complicated because he and my sister live right next door. Needless to say, he was very disturbed. I am frustrated because when we first announced our doubts back in January he was sympathetic and even told us our doubting made him question his faith. I sent him a few things and his response was that the points addressed were “very disturbing.” But since those early days, I believe he has talked to his very devoted family members, my sister-who deeply believes, and he is reading many books encouraging him in faith and he is full on board with Christianity. I asked him a few months ago if he really believed women have pain in childbirth because Eve sinned (he is a doctor-and a very good one) and he said he does. Sigh.

After specifically denouncing my belief in Jesus as the risen savior (Is that blasphemy? I’ve always been confused about what that is…) my sister and b-i-l changed appointed guardianship of their kids to my b-i-l’s side of the family. I knew that was coming, but to hear my sister tell me this was painful. My sister and I went out to dinner to discuss this issue and I told her how hard this was for me because I know I lose when pitted against their faith. I knew if somebody said, “Deny Jesus now and for the rest of your life or your sister dies…” I would lose. She didn’t respond. I had told her back in January that when my husband and I told my pastor we were taking a break from church and having religious doubts that she (my pastor) basically compared us to the worst child criminal. She told us if we were abusing our kids or not sending them to school she could call social services on us but in this case her hands were tied. She also told us that we, nor anybody else has heard the worst of what she thought of situations like this. I imagine she thinks it is better for us to drown in a lake with a millstone hung around our neck as Matthew 18 suggests. She did not say this though. My whole family knows my pastor said this to us. I told my sister that if she and I worked or volunteered for some organization together and she told me that our boss told her these same things our pastor told us, I couldn’t continue to work or volunteer for that person who had such a negative view of my sister when I know what a wonderful mother she is. I just wouldn’t tolerate being around somebody who thought that way about my sister. But in this situation, not only does the whole family continue to embrace the pastor and the organization-they must also on some level adhere to those views about us. Nobody will consider what we have to say, nor read anything that doesn’t promise to support faith. They prefer to love, support, and commune with the very person (and probably people) who have such a lowly opinion of who my husband and I are.

It is hard. I remember being a devout believer and what I thought of people who left the faith. I never would have considered marrying a non-Christian. I wouldn’t spend much time with a non-Christian. I also would never appoint guardianship of my children to a non-Christian and if my original selection deconverted…I would change guardianship too. But now that I see this all for what it is I want to share it with my family. I want us all to close this crazy chapter of our lives together, take each other by the hand and walk into the sunset together…with full support and allegiance towards each other.

But I lose. Their flesh and blood…visible and real…I lose to Jesus. They are very sure about Him. One thing that Jesus got right is that he didn’t come to bring peace, but a sword and to turn family members against each other (Matt 10:34). It just shouldn’t be like this.

So does anybody have advice? Am I over-reacting? I have such hurt feelings over this but I know they do too. My goal is to not become cynical and angry, although I feel both of those things. I want to be kind and loving and live in peace with them, but I don’t know how. I think communication is key to working problems out, but this seems to be a topic where discussing the issue makes things worse. Nobody wants to hear what I have to say regarding the Christian religion nor anything I’ve learned from reading about the history of the Bible. I’ve forced it a few times and it never goes well. Who has “been there done that” with family members and been able to maintain a healthy and loving relationship? How do people do this?

Searching for clues to God's existence

2009-10-05T09:12:00.002-05:00

by The Truth Seeker

You might say that I am a slow learner. It’s taken me 72 years to finally conquer my fears about going to Hell for being a constant sinner.

I started out going to a Baptist Church when I was 5 years old. I lived in Houston and rode a bus every Sunday to the Baptist church off of South Main St. I learned about all of the old Bible stories that are taught to most children, and I believed them all. Why shouldn’t I, the adults told me they were true, so they must have been true.

When I reached the 5th grade I was sent to a Baptist military school and every day, Monday through Friday we would go to chapel and hear more stories about the Bible and Christianity from a Baptist point of view. I went to church on Wednesday evenings and went on Sunday in the morning and in the evening. After 8 years of this kind of indoctrination I knew all about the superficialities and stories about Christianity. No one ever told me about the bad parts of the Bible and all of the atrocities that God commanded the Israelites to do to its enemies. I guess it was too embarrassing to let us children hear that sort of stuff.

When I graduated from high school, I went straight to college, and I didn’t spend any more time going to church because I was tired of it after 8 continuous years of the most concentrated indoctrination one could imagine.

I went through college and got married after about 3 years to, of all things, a Catholic woman. I figured we could work out any differences we had through a rational discussion between the two of us. Wrong. This woman was a religious fanatic, and I never knew that while we were dating. Back in those days, if you married a Catholic you were supposed to raise your children as Catholic, no discussion allowed.

Well after 8 years of going to college, I received a BS, MS, and PhD. During this time I converted to Catholicism because I knew if I didn’t, there would be no peace in the family because of my fanatical wife.

So after 23 years of marriage and seven children, you know Catholics were not supposed to use birth control, things had just about gotten out of control with my wife. She had become more irrational over the years. First it was her fear about the communists taking over the world. She constantly made predictions about when this was going to happen. I got so tired of hearing this I finally began to write down her predictions and would show them to her when they didn’t come true. Of course that didn’t make any difference because there was always a good reason why they didn’t come true. She then wanted to get out of the US and wanted me to take the whole family to Australia, where the communists couldn’t get to us. I wouldn’t do this, because there was really no good reason for doing it.

Then she became obsessed about the stock marked. She believed it was going to crash and the whole economy would crater. Of course this didn’t happen, but every time there was a wobble in the market downwards she was encouraged even further in her belief. If she could have held out for about 25 years, she would have finally been right.

Next she became obsessed with a group in New York State who claimed they had seen a vision of the Virgin Mary and this was happening on a continuing basis. Of course the Virgin was predicting the end of the world if the US didn’t stop sinning and she didn’t see any sign that we were stopping sinning. My wife then began to collecting humongous Mason jars and filled them with wine and grapes. She did this so that when the end came near and all the grocery stores were destroyed we would have something to live on. The grapes wouldn’t do much for us, but after drinking all the wine, we wouldn’t care anyway.

She had to make a trip to New York to see the Virgin Mary and she had to take several of our children with her. This incensed me that all of this craziness was continuing to go on, and now she was trying to drag our children into this craziness.

I had endured 23 years of this craziness and I held on because I didn’t want to leave my children with this crazy woman. It turns out she was a paranoid schizophrenic and this illness was getting progressively worse. I finally couldn’t take any more of this craziness and I had to leave. We divorced and, of course, she got all of the children so she could continue to indoctrinate them with this craziness.

She did a real job on several of our children, but after they began to leave home and live a life on their own and mixed with other normal people they began to see how sick their mother was.

I reminisce about all of these bad memories because they began to make me think more about religion and what it can do to sick people. It can also do the same thing to sane people who are weak and afraid of going to Hell because of the constant indoctrination that all religions do to their adherents.

The fear of going to Hell is a real fear in most Christians and it affects them through out their life. It’s amazing to me what power all the various Christian religions hold over their adherents with this fear.

After getting divorced, remarrying (a sane woman this time), and working through my career and retiring, I finally realized how little I knew about the Christian religion. I knew all of the good Bible stories and all the rules, doctrines, and regulations of both the Baptist and Catholic religions, but I realized how ignorant I was of how these things actually came about. Who was it that said and why did they say that Catholics couldn’t use contraceptives, that priests couldn’t get married, that women couldn’t become priests, that Baptists couldn’t dance or gamble, that we were all born sinners because of original sin, that Jesus was born from the Virgin Mary, that Mary was sinless and always a Virgin and ascended into heaven without dying, that Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead, that you would commit a mortal sin if you ate meat on Fridays, that masturbation was a mortal sin, that you could only perform certain specified sexual acts and not others, that wine and bread would be turned into Christ’s real blood and real body only if a priest said the correct words, that you could have your sins forgiven only if you told them to a priest, that abortion is a mortal sin, that you could only go to heaven if you believed in Christ and his resurrection and were given grace, and what is grace?, that God from all eternity knows who will be saved and there is nothing you can do about it, that there really is no free will since God knows what your fate is no matter what you do. Who made these rules and when did they all start?

Well I studied and read the Bible, read scholarly historical and archaeological findings, read Christian literature, read agnostic and atheist literature, read the history of Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Mormonism for five years, and I have finally decided that there is no God and that the Christian religion is based on a supposition that Christ was crucified for our sins and arose from the dead. This is the supposition that all of Christianity depends on and if this is not true then the whole religion falls apart like a house made of cards. It turns out that there were no eyewitnesses of the resurrection that wrote anything about it. All of the gospels were written by people (and they weren’t the actual people named for these gospels) that were not eyewitnesses of Christ and all the miracles that he was supposed to have performed and they were all written 30-60 years after his death. The apostle Paul wrote his epistles closest to the time of Christ’s death, but he never saw or knew Christ. So if no one actually saw Christ arisen from the dead, how can we really believe what the gospels say? Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Mormonism are even more fantastically outlandish than Christianity could ever be.

If there was a God, don’t you think he would leave some clue that he existed? With all of our scientifically modern technology, don’t you think that we could get a small clue of God’s existence? Where is that clue? Scientists have searched this world and the universe over and there is still no clue. Why is it that miracles seemed to have come to an abrupt end after the gospels were written? If there was a God, don’t you think that miracles would still be taking place? Why did the twelve disciples get all the good luck and none was saved for the rest of us? What else can one conclude except that he’s not there? Have any of you ever actually spoken with God like they supposedly did in the Old Testament? Why did all the communications with God stop two thousand years ago? If anyone knows of a good scientifically valid clue that God exists, I would like to know about it because I’m tired of searching for it.

A Personal Funeral

2009-09-30T02:49:00.001-05:00

by MtlRedAtheist

Last week was the 9th anniversary of my grandmother's passing. She died on my mother's birthday.

I decided to visit her grave site for the first time since the funeral 9 years ago. I needed to have some alone time to remember her. The circumstances surrounding her death were rather terrible, but I needed to revisit them. I needed to say a final farewell and set her to rest in my own mind. Aware she could not hear me, I still shared a few personal words with her. I felt I owed myself the therapy.

I loved her very much. Sometimes I get emotional, when I see her strong features in my children's faces. I see her in my father and his sisters and when I look in the mirror and a sadness comes over me, because I miss her.

It took many years following her death before I felt I had the strength to visit the site and have that much needed moment alone with my thoughts and memories. The reason it took so long dates back to my childhood. When I was 6 years old, my parents converted to Evangelical Christianity. From that point on, I was raised on the Christian fundamentals of the Bible. I believed. I was a child.

I was taught that death is not the end, but that we have a spirit that lives on. I was taught that this spirit, by default, is condemned to suffer for eternity, burning in a lake of fire. This notion utterly terrified me as a child, but I was also taught that there is a way to avoid this fate. I was taught that if I believed in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and accepted his "gift" of salvation, my spirit would not be cast into the fiery pits of hell, but rather go on to live in a paradise of eternal bliss with God. This appealed to me much more than the alternative.

Shortly after my parents conversion, my father shared his beliefs with his parents and siblings, hoping they would believe and be saved like him. They were not convinced and did not convert. Considering what I was taught, I believed that my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins were at risk of being thrown into the lake of fire to be tortured forever. This grieved me to no end. I spent the rest of my childhood in fear for them.

About 14 years later, these fears culminated when my cousin nearly died in a tragic car accident. I clung tightly to my faith and prayed fervently for my cousin's recovery and even more fervently for her spiritual salvation. The thought of my innocent cousin suffering for eternity in more excruciating pain than what she was already experiencing in her broken body weighed so heavily on my mind that I became sick whenever I thought of it.

I recall that night that following her first surgery, it looked like she was going to live. My fear for her spiritual salvation subsided gradually, but not completely. During my cousin's lengthy recovery, I began to examine the toll my beliefs in hell were taking on my mind. Then without warning, my grandmother became very ill and died within a few weeks.

Without any evidence of her having converted, I believed that my innocent grandmother, my love, was suffering in eternal torment. This tortured me. This is why I could never return to her grave site to personally pay my respects for so many years. I was sad, hurt, angry, worried and fearful. My faith was causing me such torment. How could the beautiful person that was my grandmother be punished so severely for merely not being convinced by the words of the Bible for which there is no supporting evidence?

Over the next few years, for reasons unrelated to this story, I lost my faith. I became an atheist. I became aware that death is final, but people live on in the memories of loved ones and those they touched in life. Thankfully there is no heaven or hell, only our short life here on Earth that we should make the most of in every possible way. Life is far more valuable with this outlook, because it's the only one we got.

After putting this religious days to rest, I realized that I never properly grieved my grandmother's death and never properly said my good-byes, as I was too concerned with my beliefs that she was being tortured indefinitely. I don't know why it took so many years, even after losing my faith, but I finally made it out to my grandmother's grave site and made my peace.

Now that I'm a father, I notice time go by very quickly and I realize that life is short. Life is too short to hold grudges against those we love and dwell on our own hurt feelings. Life is too short to cut loved ones out of our lives. Life is too short to marginalize our loved ones because of our faith. Life is too short to marginalized our loved ones because of their faith. Life is too short, so live it to its fullest.

Intolerable

2009-09-28T15:33:00.004-05:00

by Patricia

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Some of you might of seen me around posting from time to time on a few things, but not really know who I am or what I am about.

Well let me start by saying my mum is a Catholic, born in Egypt where most of the country is Muslim who hate Christians (she claims) and would say disgusting things to her. In the end she immigrated to the land down under where we enjoy the black salty yeasty brewers tar known as vegemite.

Well for as long as I can recall, my grandmother (her mother) had lived with us until her death a few years ago, my parents had long separated.

I was born with serious heart and birth defects and was baptised in the hospital because the doctors thought I would not make it, and then once I was well enough, I was baptised in a church.

I did my sacraments of confession and communion.

My Mum’s Brother is a priest, her sister is a nun and another brother was studying to become a deacon.

As you can see the religious side of my family runs very deep through them.
I am a secret disgrace and shame for my poor mother who wishes I could be more like my brother and embrace god and Jesus.

I recall when I was younger I would go to some spiritual “healing” sessions where some people would pray over me for my heart, and they would ask if I felt anything which I said yes, but really the answer was no.

We went to this big group church thing I cannot recall what it was, some large outdoor park venue, we were told if we prayed hard enough or if we had faith god would appear to us or perform some miracle. Well I guess we a) did not pray hard enough, or b) had enough faith.

I recall feeling disappointed thinking we were praying why hadn’t we seen anything spectacular?

When I was younger my auntie (who is married to the deacon), told us of a miracle she had seen the sun “spinning” and came and told my mum enthusiastically, I still do not understand what it could possibly be a sign of, but whatever.
So we were over at their place one day and my auntie was pointing at this miracle she had seen it showed itself again, my auntie was saying to my mum that she had prayed to god and the Virgin Mary to repeat that miracle so we wouldn’t think she was crazy. And it happened! (ta-da), I do not recall exactly what I saw but how could that be a miracle? What does it exactly signify?

My mum told me not to tell anyone at school the next day because they would not believe me, well she was right, I told my two best friends and they looked at me like I had sprouted a second head!

As I got older I started to think for myself a bit more, mum would love to have religious discussions with us and go on and on as if it was the only thing in the world, I became increasingly frustrated at what I saw as her narrow minded answers to my questions and her in ability to not be able to mesh them with reality and her constant want to debate and fight over everything. I recall when my grandmother was around she would say if you don’t do this (insert task) god won’t love you!

One of my mum’s sister’s is going through a hard time and asks why god is doing this to her and how it must be his will to cause her all this suffering in life (her husband is I believe emotionally and verbally abusive towards her). It causes me pain to hear her speak as if god would actively participate in handing out this punishment to this lovely woman who is so kind. I just cannot fathom the type of god who would do such a thing to someone who converted to Greek Orthodox for her husband for him to turn around and say in front of the church people her opinion doesn’t matter because she is not a real orthodox. (If I heard him I would have dropped the C bomb, but again I am just a disappointment).

When I was about 16 just before my 16th birthday I was in hospital for a week because I had tried to commit suicide, because of things happening to me in my life that time, Instead of having a loving mother who would comfort me and want to find out what happened to make me go down this path, I got the cold shoulder, I got my mum coming to the conclusion the only reason I did this was because I saw it in a horror movie that I wanted to emulate, then she said if I ever did it again she would leave me at a half way home, and then the final icing on the cake was, when I was upset about that, my grandmother told my mother to just ignore me because I was acting up for attention! (Imagine that)

So that is what they did, ignore me, ignore that I was going through depression, if is very hard for me to type this because It stirs up those emotions of rage and anger that were perpetrated by so called Christians.

But then the bible is full of hate so I can’t really be surprised or blame them for their attitudes, because it comes from this so called book of “love and peace” should be titled “war and hate.”

I haven’t been to church for many years and I do doubt the actual reality of there being god who gives us free will but puts us in families who as another poster pointed out indoctrinates us from birth into their chosen religion, so we don’t really have any of this free will. Well now that I think about it I have exercised my free will to refute the existence of god.

Now fast forward another 15 years give or take a year or two (a lady never reveals her true age).

My mum is now suffering from depression and actually came to the conclusion that since she was 19 she never felt happy in her life, no joy or anything. She believes her ex boyfriend from another country had this curse put on her by her sister’s ex boyfriend (who also claimed he did black magic), that still lingers to this day.
She told me I do not know what it is like to be depressed so I have no idea of what she is going through (see the ignoring of my attempted suicide).

She has told her poor sister (the one married to that nasty Greek Orthodox) that their ex’s got together to put this curse on them both.

So they both pray for this curse to be removed, she also enlists the help her priest brother who has done exorcisms of houses or “cleansing”.

I cannot fathom the level of this superstitious non-sense but she claims people all around Greece and Egypt and in Spain all believe in black magic (As if it is credible).

She refuses to get proper treatment and help claiming they are all quacks and they do more harm than good.

I say religion has had a terribly negative impact on my mother’s side of the family, I can only see it as compounding the problems that they face, and not helping in any way other than to teach them to honour your family even if it is wrong. I am not sure if it is a cultural thing as well but it seems religion plays a big part of their decisions as well.

Because I always hear “A good Christian doesn’t do x,y,z”
So I cannot pinpoint why or when I stopped believing I can only say my experiences of the people around me people who claim to be good Christians are actually liars and perpetrators’ of horrible abuse.

And that is why I cannot follow a religion like that, or any that claims god is loving yet allows starving people to live and die in poverty to which I asked my mum why god won’t help them, she claims he can’t do everything for people and people must help themselves, and I point out that the governments in those countries are corrupt and so this god should step in and help the people who are suffering unjustly because of corrupt governments she said they won’t get help because they don’t believe in god and Jesus.

So I just throw my hands up in the air at so called Christians and want nothing to do with any of them anymore, I find their human rights practices do not coincide with actual human rights.