This site is designed with the intention of encouraging ex-Christians, former Christians, de-converting Christians and other non-believers in the decision to live life based on rational thought rather than religious mythology.
sign tacticsImage by SoStark via FlickrSent in by by Kathlene

Wow, I am so glad I found this site. I am now only on my second day of turning away from God and it is so liberating on one hand, but terrifying on the second. My journey has taken 3 years, so it wasn't an overnight decision although it feels like it. I feel like I have taken my own brain back and I am giving myself permission to have my own thoughts. I am 35yrs old and I became born-again when I was 22. I was so young and naive back then. My husband and I had just broken up and I was angry, lost and hurt. My best friend had become a born-again Christian. I went to visit her and gave my life literally up. I am still in the anger phase of how many years I have lost by not living.

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The goddess of the Moon, with her cloak billow...Roman statue of the goddess Luna/Selene.
Image via Wikipedia
From James

As I have been reviewing many of the articles on this website I have noticed something that needs to be addressed. Like many of the people here I have had a religious past - Christianity, New Age, Unity, and Wicca. The one thing I have noticed a lot in the articles is the equating of the discrepancies in the Bible with proof of the non-existence of a deity. Disproving the Bible does in no way disprove god. It only disproves the divine authorship of the Bible. Disproving any particular religion does not disprove god either.

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SILHOUETTE CITY is the first post-Bush investigation into the nature of the radical Christian right. This video follows the spread of apocalyptic Christian nationalism from the marginal groups of the 70's-80's to today's mainstream Christian right. With the impending re-marginalization of Christian nationalists on the horizon (with the election of Obama), the film explores the lengths to which religious militants in America are prepared to go for their beliefs.

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Detail of Religion mural in lunette from the F...Image via WikipediaSent in by Trans-man

I didn’t grow up in a very religious environment. My father has been an atheist for as long as I know, making fun of religion and people who believe. However, he wasn’t a good father, and not a good role model. Had he been a better role model, maybe I would have had more conversations about religion and would have never gone into a church in the first place. Truth is, I was looking for a home of sorts, where I could experience some acceptance and friendship, and unfortunately, churches are good at filling some of those needs.

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Light of faith shining throughImage by Swamibu via FlickrBy Ty H Philips

For over two thousand years, western society has been influenced by the teachings of an obscure mythical figure known as Jesus of Nazareth. Why he was called this, is unknown, aside from his disciples trying to fulfill prophecy on their own, because he was neither born there, had family from there, nor ever lived there. Many, including myself, will argue that we are less influenced by the stories of Jesus as much as we are by the teachings of Paul and the future Roman Catholic Church. This paper will be a detailed refute of the ethicalness of the Judeo/Christian faith.

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By Marshall

I was not brought up in a religious home. My mother and stepfather never went to church or talked about it or God from my memory. I never remember thinking about religion when I was young other than when I was with my real father on weekends. He would drop me and my sister off at a church for Sunday School class every now and then. He would drop us off and then leave and come back and get us afterward. He never went to church.

I really don't know why he took us to this day.

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by Lance

Courtney just posted an excellent rant on November 27th titled "Satan's waiting, and you better believe there are NO donuts." I was going to write a quick reply, but the more I thought about it, the more it turned into a full on rant. So thanks Courtney for your post.

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Image via Wikipedia“Thanks for a Nation of Finks,” says America’s Poet, William S. Burroughs, in this beloved Thanksgiving Prayer. (It is traditional for the head of household to recite this prayer before the Feast.)

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“Hell” by Hans Memling, 1485
By Courtney

I pointed out (in My Atheist Manifesto) that the Bible claims that people will know Christians at first glance 'by their light,' being such serene and loving beings, and how that's actually never the case. Christians rebut this, with such reliable consistency that you could bet your house on it, by claiming that most Christians are not 'true' Christians.

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By TruthSurge

The standard in morality monitoring just got better. The MoralMaster 2.0 can gage your morality with a few quick questions. Don't wait! Call now and get your own MoralMaster 2.0 morality monitor! It could save you an eternity of regret!

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The message is but eight words divided into two short sentences set against puffy white clouds on a blue and black background.

One of the men behind the billboard message says his life has been threatened because of it, which seems an odd thing since those doing the threatening all profess to be Christians.

Just eight words:

"Don't believe in God?" the upper left of the billboard reads. "You are not alone," the lower right says.

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Pastor Gerald Thompson from Salem Baptist Church said 28-year-old Melissa Jones came to him last Thursday crying. She confessed to having sex with a 16-year-old member of the youth ministry that her husband runs.

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By Brian Crisan

Atheism is a lack of belief in supernatural deities (i.e. God); the opposite of theism.
Atheists as a whole do not have a consensus on how to define atheism. A number of the issues involved in defining the term appear below.

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By Ed Current

I have faith that with my new invention, praying to God will be effective and reliable, finally.

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Sent in by Elizabeth

I accidentally stumbled across this website while I was Googling the Duggar family, and I have been browsing on here for the last four hours. I am intrigued because I had no idea that so many people shared the same frustrations as I do. I was raised in a strict Church of Christ home. For those of you not familiar with the COC, it is a small denomination of Christianity primarily concentrated in the South. Each congregation is independently owned and operated.

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Rob Foster was 16 when his family unraveled.

He had told his parents that he wanted to leave Calvary Temple, the Pentecostal church in Sterling the family had attended for decades. But church leaders were blunt with his parents: Throw your son out of the house, or you will be excommunicated. And so that December two years ago, Gary and Marsha Foster told Rob that he had to leave. They would not see him or talk to him.

"I was devastated," he said.



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Seize this life -- it's the only one we have
 

freedom_from_religion.jpg

A billboard in Rancho Cucamonga asking viewers to "imagine no religion" was taken down this week after residents and the city complained about its message. The Freedom From Religion Foundation advertisement was first installed last week causing local conversation and complaints. The pressure quickly built up and the General Outdoor sign company took it down.

The foundation's co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor was not so happy, as expressed in a statement they sent out: "Are religionists so thin-skinned they must squelch free debate?

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By Tasida

The pastor at Laker Life, a bible study that I sat in on for a few weeks, has said more than once to me, "Sid, you are wrong. You know I love you, but you are wrong." Another lady who attends the Laker Life meetings has also said to me in passing, "Love ya!" And in Denver, where a local atheist group commissioned a billboard that reads, "Don't believe in god? You are not alone," one Pastor Willard Johnson commented, "We denounce what they are doing. But we do it with love, with gentleness, with decency and with compassion."

I suppose I should feel blessed with all this freak'n love coming my way, but I don't.

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Can We Ever Be Right About Right and Wrong?

Sam Harris is the author of The New York Times bestsellers, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason, which won the 2005 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction, and Letter to a Christian Nation. His writing has appeared in Newsweek, Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, The Times (London), The Boston Globe, The Annals of Neurology, and elsewhere. He is currently researching the neural basis of religious belief while completing a doctorate in neuroscience. He is also a Co-Founder and Chairman of The Reason Project.

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In reasoning in favor of belief in a god, "Income tax doesn't not exist just because someone doesn't believe in it," says a Christian in this news video.

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Dan Barker, prominent atheist and ex-preacher, tells UC Davis his story

Written by PATRICK McCARTNEY

Dan Barker, a former preacher who has become an outspoken atheist, told his story to over 300 members of the campus community on Friday night.

Barker, the author of the recently-published Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists, spent most of his two-hour talk explaining how genuine his religious feelings and convictions were - and how they became undone by the time he was 34.

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Irreducible complexity (IC) is an argument made by proponents of intelligent design that certain biological systems are too complex to have evolved from simpler, or "less complete" predecessors, through natural selection acting upon a series of advantageous naturally occurring chance mutations. It is one of two main arguments intended to support intelligent design, the other being specified complexity. It is dismissed by the scientific community and intelligent design has been referred to as pseudoscience.

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By DocMike

I don't know if it's the approaching holiday season, the global economic crisis, or just the fact that I'm getting a little older, but I've been feeling the pain of the world lately and I really want to do something about it.

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By DocMike

I know I've done this one to death (excuse the pun), but I just love !

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Sent in by Jessica

I am 18 years old and currently in my first year of university. I have been brought up in a fundamentalist Christian environment where the family's core is the bible. Everything within my parents' lives is based on 'the word of god'. My dad was an elder in the church until they made the whole family up sticks and move away in order to start a house church. The thinking behind this was stripping church back to its old testament roots. A number of other families moved away to embark upon this venture with us. Needless to say this resulted in a closed, tight, little Christian community. All my parents friends were Christians, all of my extended family were also of the faith.

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Sent in by Danny

I don't think I've ever really sat down and wrote out the story of my deconversion. You'll have to forgive me if it comes out a bit jumbled. Like many of the stories I've read, it wasn't something that happened suddenly for me. I was a slow and arduous process.


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Ted Haggard, evangelical pastor brought down by sex scandal, says he was abused as a child

Disgraced evangelical pastor Ted Haggard says he was sexually abused as a child and that the experience "started to rage in my mind and in my heart" when he was caught up in a sex scandal involving a male prostitute. Haggard made the remarks in two recent sermons in Morrison, Ill., ABC's "Good Morning America" reported Wednesday.

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The Return of Jephtha, by Giovanni Antonio Pel...The Return of Jephthah by Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini,By Neal Stone

First off, Christians, don't give me the "That was the God of the Old Testament excuse," because in Heb 13:8 it says "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." and in Malachi 3:6 it says "I the LORD do not change..." So God is never changing, and Jesus is also God in the flesh, so your excuse doesn't work here.

In a recent post we heard a Christian call an atheist television show and engage in a conversation where the Christian went down in flames. A story is mentioned about a guy named Jephthah who sacrifices his daughter after promising God he would sacrifice the first thing to come out of his home, should he when a war.

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A video by cdk007

To deny evolution is to deny a direct observation. It's like denying the sky is blue while refusing to look up.

Truth is not a democracy.

Don't teach ideas just because they are different; teach ideas because they are supported by evidence.

Intelligence is awareness of ignorance. Stupidity is ignorance of ignorance. Think about it.

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Sent in by Jackee Gianfelice

I was brought up in a devoutly Christian household. As a child in Sunday school, I learned biblical stories (carefully selected biblical stories, to be sure) and stories about Jesus. God and Jesus were presented as loving, caring, and compassionate, with all the unsanitary parts of the bible edited out in the readings and lessons we received in church and Sunday school.

Even so, I was shocked when, at the age of about seven, I was sitting with my mother in church and the pastor began his sermon by stating, "Aside from a few cranks and revisionists, the vast majority of historians and archaeologists agree that Jesus did exist."

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Oil on canvas"Truth" (1870) by Jules Joseph LefebvreBy John Fraysse

Thesis: The Truth Needs Little or No Defense

Awhile back, I wrote a little snippet based on the premise that if religion is so important, it should also be simple to understand, easy to implement and ubiquitous in its application. I further submitted that since religions are not simple, especially the big three Abrahamic faiths, they either must be a) unimportant or b) untrue or, more than likely, both. Therefore, unnecessary complexity is a bellwether indicator of a false concept, religious Dogmas being prime examples.

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Morgan FreemanGod, as played by Morgan Freeman in Bruce AlmightyBy The Ragged Trousered Philosopher

I met god the other day.

I know what you’re thinking. How the hell did you know it was god?

Well, I’ll explain as we go along, but basically he convinced me by having all, and I do mean ALL, the answers. Every question I flung at him he batted back with a plausible and satisfactory answer. In the end, it was easier to accept that he was god than otherwise.

Which is odd, because I’m still an atheist and we even agree on that!



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A Christian calls in to discuss morality on The Atheist Experience television show.

The Atheist Experience is a weekly live call-in television show sponsored by the Atheist Community of Austin.

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John CalvinImage via WikipediaA video by ReligionIsACrutch

Some would accuse atheists of having a twisted worldview, but predestination for eternal suffering is as twisted as it gets.

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religion kills - war child XTCImage by jordi.martorell via FlickrBy Neal Stone

I have a Jewish friend who was going off about how the Koran actually had a verse about NOT to be a friend of a Christian or Jew. She took great offense. I have also had others concerned over Obama's middle name and the fact he had Muslim influences in his life.

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JENSEN BEACH, FL -- Parishioners at St. Martin de Porres Catholic Church stopped a Connecticut man from leaving Saturday morning Mass after he “attempted to steal a handful of communion wafers from the priest,” according to an arrest report.

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Ads proclaiming, "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake," will appear on Washington, D.C., buses starting next week and running through December. The American Humanist Association unveiled the provocative $40,000 holiday ad campaign Tuesday.

In lifting lyrics from "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," the Washington-based group is wading into what has become a perennial debate over commercialism, religion in the public square and the meaning of Christmas.

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Mary is a pretty five-year-old girl with big brown eyes and a father who kicked her out onto the streets in one of the most dangerous parts of the world. Her crime: the local priest had denounced her as a witch and blamed her "evil powers" for causing her mother's death.

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By Daelin

I used to believe in God and honestly even recently went to a church with a co-worker. They claimed to be open-minded and that they don't force their beliefs on others. I had a great time for a few weeks, but after being told how men and women should live and how homosexuality was an affront to God, I never went back.

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Israeli police have broken up a brawl among rival monks in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, believed the site of Jesus's crucifixion, burial and resurrection.

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By Gabe

If you have been on Myspace for a while, then you have undoubtedly read several religious bulletins. I wrote a blog recently titled, "Crazy Myspace Bulletins," which examined a popular religious bulletin that has been posted on Myspace several times. I honestly did not think I would find a bulletin more ridiculous than that particular one, but I was wrong. I recently read a bulletin entitled, "Pray for John McCain." This bulletin would appear to a lot of people as nothing more than a sincere prayer from a passionate Christian for God to intervene in the presidential election, and to grant Senator John McCain the victory. But there are many statements in this prayer that are either contradictory, extremely arrogant, or simply not well thought out.

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119.365 - ...Then comes marriage...Image by Jeff the Trojan via FlickrBy Neal Stone

This time I am going to share two stories which will be followed by my point. Back in 2000, my sister, me and a few other family and friends all got ordained through the Unity Church. Our ordination was nothing to do with wanting to be a minister or run a church. We just had so many single kids in the family rapidly approaching marrying age so to save money we all got ordained.

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By Galen

Bible pagesImage by almoko via FlickrOccasionally, the Mormons or JWs will knock on my door and offer their Mormon Bible, the Watchtower, or whatever. I wanted something brief to trade with them, so I put together the following 2-pager.

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Sent in by Lance

Let me start off by saying that I was a liberal Christian. I had gone through fundamentalist phases earlier in my 30 years as a Christian, but I moved to a somewhat liberal belief system before I ended up pitching the whole thing.

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Sent in by Eddie

I really don't know where to begin telling my story of de-conversion because it involves too many events over a long period of years. I will try to give the basic highlights and avoid a drawn out boring tale.

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By DocMike

I love finding obscure stories the kids never hear in Sunday School. Here's a nice little tale about one of the Bible-'s favorite people, .

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By Tim Whiston

In common usage, the word cult refers to a group of social outcasts who practice some obscure religion. Often there is a pointedly negative connotation to the beliefs and practices of such a group.

However, a more accurate application of the term would focus not on the bizarre nature of a group’s belief, but rather on the behavioral, cognitive, and organizational impact the belief system has on the participants. Whether a religion is built around the alleged spirits of giant mushrooms, or a carpenter from the Middle East, it can reasonably be called a cult when certain characteristics become evident among those who follow the faith.

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Another video by Pat Condell

We don't need God. God needs us.


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Sent in by Brian

I didn't leave Christianity based on past experiences, I had no bad experience.

Many people think that I am angry with god, that my "ideas" come from my traumatic past experiences. And that is not right. I hate nobody, I have nothing against anybody.

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By Courtney

Here's the thing: even the title will alert people that I'm going to be offensive, whether I am or not. In fact, just being an atheist is offensive to so many people in this country. Anytime an atheist asserts her views she has a unique disadvantage. Before she even begins explaining her position everyone is already on the defensive. It is seen as much more acceptable for a religious person to assert her beliefs with complete authority than for an atheist to do so. Atheists are one of the last groups it's still ok to slander.

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by Valerie Tarico

Within a few days of each other, on opposite sides of the world, on opposite ends of the wealth and privilege spectrums, the faithful filled two stadiums. In one, in Kismayo, Somalia, 1000 Muslim believers watched the stoning of a 13 year old girl—Aisha was her name--condemned for adultery because she dared to complain about being gang raped. In the other, in San Diego, California, thousands of Evangelicals sang and swayed and pledged their bodies and souls to the purpose of stripping gay men and women of equality under the law and specifically the right to marry. Like Aisha, those men and women have names. One of them is named Kent. Another David. Another Will. I know because I love them , as Aisha’s broken parents loved their daughter.

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A video series by TruthSurge

An eleven-part series where TruthSurge shares his knowledge about the Jesus Myth theory as espoused by the likes of Earl Doherty.

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