The Christians' Salvation

Website move !!

2012-08-06T07:39:00.001+08:00

This site continue on http://celeron440.blogspot.com

Famous quote by a Christian

2012-07-26T22:40:00.000+08:00

Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no
religious instruction and a general moral instruction without a
religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character
training and religion must be derived from faith.... We need believing
people.
-- Adolf Hitler, April 26, 1933

why religion are bullshit

2012-07-16T21:46:00.001+08:00

By geekyuniverse

We humans have always tried to explain how and why stuff happens
around us. And before we had more modern science, humans often
explained things they didn't understand by making up stories about
Gods or supernatural creatures. But with "modern science" we have
learned stuff like that Thor does not make thunder and lightning, it's
the sudden increase in pressure and temperature from lightning that
makes thunder and so on. Still some people believe that a god made the
earth and the universe. They don't seem to see that religion started
out as a way to explain things, but then was used as a tool to
maintain control over the people, get power, and to make money, lots
of money. Just look at the Vatican, so much money and power. So kudos
to the Christian leaders for milking that cow for what it's worth.

Even when people started to understand more and got more scientific,
the head of the church still held on to the God theory and everything
that was said in the Bible. They went as far as torturing or even
killing people who came up with new and better theories, just so they
wouldn't fuck up the sweet sweet thing they had going. Luckily for us
the Church grew weaker, science eventually became stronger, and we got
out of the "Christian dark ages". That's why we have the great
scientific advantage we have today. :)

Something that really annoys me is that many of the people who
believes that God made everything, don't believe in evolution! As they
say: "evolution is just a theory"… yeah, well, so what the fuck is the
theory of an Almighty Creator? Evolution is a proven theory, and as
far as I know, throughout history no one of the billions of people who
has ever believed in religion, has ever proven that there is a God.
And many of these people defend their beliefs by saying "well, no one
has proven that a God doesn't exist". To them I say "how the fuck can
you prove that something doesn't exist?". And how is it that of all
the religions, all of the Gods ever believed in, their God is the only
one that's real? The Christians have no more proof of "God" than the
Muslims has of "Allah".

Believing in God is a lot like believing in Santa Claus. When we are
young, we believe in Santa Claus, and that makes us happy because we
know he's gonna come on Christmas Eve and give us presents. But then
we grow up we realize that he doesn't exist, and we're fine with that.
So how come adult people still believe in God when they're grown up?
It's the same exact thing! You believe in something that makes you
happy and then later learn that it doesn't exist. In Santa Claus's
case, we eventually accept that, but when it comes to God many people
don't.

Some might say that I have the same faith in science as a Christian
has in Christianity. Well… Science adjusts its views accordingly to
the observations we make. For example we don't believe that the earth
is flat anymore, but at the time it made sense. Scientists accept that
they were wrong, and when a new and better theory comes along, they
throw away the old one and stick to the new. Religion on the other
hand is the denial of observation so that beliefs can be preserved.
And that's the main difference between science and religion. We have
far from all the answers to the universe yet, but we sure as hell
won't find them settling with the thought that a big bearded guy made
things this way.

I'm not saying that there isn't anything good with religion, because
it is. I think that the community, the camps and all the fun
activities that brings people together, that's nice. And I do
understand that some people feel that it's good to believe that there
is a mighty force that looks out for you, and can help you when you're
down or make you even happier when you're happy. And people should be
allowed to believe in whatever they want, and people who don't believe
should also be allowed to do that without being pushed into believing
in some God. But to be honest, I don't understand why we need man-made
myths and gods and mysteries to believe in. Isn't the fact that the
chance of exactly YOU being alive is so small and unlikely incredible
enough. Think about it, what are the odds that some bacterias in the
sea evolved and after billions of years of evolution it finally
evolved into humans. And then you're great great great great great
great great great great great great great great great great
grandparents had to meet each other, and all of the relatives all the
way down to your parents had to meet just each other so that you could
be born. And the unlikelihood of all of that to happen, all of those
sperm and egg cells being just right, and leed up to you is so
amazingly, infinitely small that I really can't wrap my head around
it. Isn't that enough, do we really have the need for anything larger
than life? And also think about how infinitely enormous the universe
is, and how tiny and insignificant you really are in the big picture.
And that we all come from stardust! Isn't that beautiful enough? Isn't
that incredible enough? Do we really need a god or other mysteries to
believe in to make our lifes seem exciting and worth living?

Why Christianity and God is fake

2012-07-11T22:37:00.001+08:00

By nomoregodplease ~

I lost my faith when God wouldn't take away my pain. I was in physical
agony and he just left me there to suffer. I couldn't believe in a God
who hated me so much that he would just ignore me like that. That
feeling was cemented when the Catholic hospital I'd been staying in
refused to treat me - the only medication that cures my condition is
birth control.

And just like that, it was all over.

This idea of a man on a cloud judging me, hating me, punishing me...
It didn't make sense anymore. I figured that if God is truly like
that, then I didn't want to know him.

I'm not an atheist, not yet anyway, but the Christian god is dead to me.

I gave up on the church (though not god) a long time ago. Christians
were just too much for me. So judgmental, hypocritical, spiteful and
nasty. I couldn't stand them forcing their beliefs down my throat.

Same goes for atheists. I was sick of seeing atheists attack
believers, doing the same thing as Christians in the name of "opening
their eyes" and "trying to save them".

Zealous Christians and zealous atheists are two peas in the same pod
to me, trying to make everyone see things their way.

But I'll tell you the truth, I feel lost without my faith. Not that
I'd ever go back to it. I'd rather be lost and know the truth (that
whatever god is, if there is such a thing, it's unlikely to be what
Christians say it is) than lie to myself for some false feeling of
security.

It's difficult to know where to turn. Another religion perhaps? Maybe
Buddhism... I hear they don't have a god, and I don't want a god
anymore. Not a god as careless and as cruel as the one I'm used to,
anyway.

The overwhelming feeling that I have is that I just want the truth,
whatever that is. If the Christians are right after all, and God is an
angry man who loves plagues and turning people into salt (how come
people don't get turned to salt anymore?) then I want to know that. If
God is a flying fruit salad, then I want to know that. If god doesn't
exist, then I want to know that.

But how does one go about finding that truth? Wasn't that what
Christianity was supposed to provide me with? A path to the truth, and
eternal happiness and salvation? Christianity just took me on a
journey of guilt, unworthiness and confusion.

Christianity gave me hope that not only were there answers, but a
clear path to discovering them.

Now that I've found that it was all a lie, I don't know what to do.

Now that I've found that it was all a lie, I don't know what to do.
I do know that I can't go back to praying to a god that doesn't care
about me, that ignores me, that gives people nothing other than
steadfast belief in their own awfulness and an excuse to commit horrid
crimes against humanity,

So many terrible acts are committed in the name of god.

So, now I'm lost, as I'm sure many people are after losing religion.

But I feel free. And I've never felt free before. I hear that people
who spend most of their lives in jail don't know how to function in
the real world and go crazy.

I wonder if I'll be able to handle my new found freedom?

Especially when the idea of hell keeps coming back to haunt me. I'm
going to hell for leaving, I'm going to hell for asking questions, I'm
going to hell because I want god to be more than man.

As a Christian (not a very good Christian) I'd be going to hell
anyway, so it doesn't really matter if I question my beliefs or not,
but in the face of such brainwashing, it offers little consolation.

It's not easy to lose one's faith. It's a real struggle, actually, and
I commend those that have been able to cut ties with their false ideas
about god. I'd love to be able to do the same.

Anyway, whatever the truth is, however I'm supposed to find it, if
it's even possible to, I hope that putting myself in the position of
being open to it, whatever it is, is a step in the right direction. I
have no way to confirm that, but even when I prayed to God for
guidance he didn't give me any, so nothing has really changed there.

I guess the only thing I know for sure is that Christianity offers me
nothing, and that it seems to cause more harm in the world than good.

That's more truth than I've been aware of my entire life and it's a start.

church goers = bitter human

2012-07-11T22:31:00.001+08:00

By unknown

On the brink of my unbelief, I grasped for any hope I could, usually
through local Bible studies.

The last church Bible study I engaged in was presented by a speaker
who was a divorcee and trying to understand why God would allow her to
go through something like that.

At one point in her recorded DVD message, she said something along the
lines of: An ungodly woman is a bitter woman. Most of the women nodded
an amen.

Well, I was hanging on by a thread when this echoed through my ears,
and I recall thinking, I do not want to turn into a bitter woman. My
choice was to remain a Christian and obtain joy (at some point), or
leave the faith and become a bitter, unpleasant woman. At least those
were the options I felt I was given.

After thinking on this longer, I thought of all the Christian women
and men who I saw as bitter. Either they didn't fit the speaker's
formula, or they were not really Christian. I decided the latter fit
the bill best. Presently, I see the bitter church-goers as those who
hang on out of pride, or business reasons, or whatever.

Now I see I didn't have much of choice in becoming an ungodly woman or
not. I just wasn't one, no fault of my own. But I did, however, have
the choice to become a bitter woman.

Since leaving the fold, I am stubbornly passionate to pursue and
demonstrate joy. I don't want to confirm their attitude toward
unbelievers that keeps them clinging to this faith.

letter from a lost sheep

2012-07-10T06:12:00.001+08:00

By Andrea ~

Yesterday I read an article about why younger people,and people in
general, are leaving the church.I saw it on Facebook from some
Christians I used to go to church with(they were sharing the link) I
had one of those moments where you're awkwardly staring at the
screen..wanting to find whoever wrote that and talk some sense into
them.I don't know who wrote it but I'm not surprised.It seems to be
this weird attitude that a lot of people in the church have about
''lost sheep.'' .I don't know those kind of people anymore.I'm so far
removed from the church world.But they sure seem to think they know a
lot about ''my type''! In case any of them drop by here ( and since
they think they know so much about me) to see what ''lost sheep'' are
up to ....here is my open letter to them.

Dear Christians of the World,

I've seen your articles...you've been worried about losing people in
general,but mostly it seems to be young people .You seem to be
noticing a drop of people around ages twenty to thirty.Since I'm the
perfect example, of the type of person you're talking about...I'm
going to tell the world what the problem REALLY is.You're trying to
figure it out but,as someone who has been there,I'm telling you why
you're missing something.I was raised in christian church and left
when I was nineteen years old.I was also home schooled and went to a
christian home-school group. I've had a full dose of your world..and
maybe a little more,so I know I had enough experience to say ''This is
not right.''

You might expect that this will be the part where I go into how awful
the church was and how everyone was mean and uptight. I've seen in
some of these article where you say ''People in church are too uptight
and young people don't like it.'' You seem to think I left because
everyone acted like an uptight, strict Amish person.As if it was just
too much. But that's not really what contributed to me leaving.Yes
there were some uptight people. but the majority were pretty laid back
for religious people.And that's just the problem...no matter how much
you try to make it a friendly atmosphere it will always seem too
uptight.Your version of ''laid back'' is not comforting at all.What's
laid back about everyone getting in line to drink grape juice, and
talking about how it represents being a sinner who needs to be covered
in blood?What's laid back about the fact that, no matter what I do,
it's not enough and I still need this blood sacrifice to cover me?So
yes. you actually do have some nice laid back people...but that isn't
enough to make the church feel like a ''safe place.''

You've also mentioned things being outdated in the church,and that it
makes my ''technology loving generation'' back away.You seem to think
that if you can only make the church look like an Apple store..I'll
come running back to be a member again.That's somewhat true...I'm
twenty two years old and I would rather be buying something on Itunes
than reading a Bible.But let me tell you...it doesn't matter if you
buy Ipads for everyone in your young adult group or buy them new
Iphones to take on a mission trip.There is and always will be an
outdated feeling in the atmosphere of a church who follows Bible
teaching.I'm still going to be reading about ideas that just don't
work in the modern world.If I read about why woman should stay silent
in church...how will reading that on an Ipad make it any more
''modern''?

Do you realize that you are reading a book from a time when woman were
stoned to death for being pregnant outside of marriage?Sexuality is a
huge problem within the church.You mention that you need to offer
better solutions to this problem. That if you could somehow make
christian sexuality more relatable, and less judgmental, that more
young people would stick with the plan. I sat in one your Bible
studies, and witnessed you trying to do this.You told me that saving
sex for marriage wasn't easy but I could do it with God's help.You
didn't judge me..and I thank you for that...but you also didn't offer
a solution.I can't fault you for that though..because there is no
solution when it comes to your teaching.Say I have a long time
boyfriend.We've been together for ten years but don't want to marry
until I'm older.I'm sorry but there is no ''softer'' way to to teach
me that I still can't have sex with him.There is no reason why you
HAVE to be married first and everyone in the modern world knows
that.Overall the problem with the sexuality is that your holy book is
always demanding it be changed.Ask any gay/lesbian person out there
will tell you that prayer doesn't change them..and they are fine and
happy as they are. As long as you try to fix what doesn't need to be
fixed there will be problems.

It's been mentioned also that a boring setting may drive people
away.Oh yes...you're right about that.Maybe you're planning to ditch
the youth room and build a giant amusement park outside.Sure..maybe a
roller coaster would wake me up a little bit more than a mundane get
together with hot dogs and water balloon games.(and yes that is a
little childish at eighteen) Save your money though...I can deal with
a crowded class room,or a mundane game,if something exciting is being
taught. But as far as I've seen...nothing exciting was going on in
there.I thought meeting your God(yes a GOD!) was going to be a
thrill.Or at least a little...interesting.I was always learning about
what he did,or was going to do,but he never actually seemed to be
there in THAT time.Oh I tried to ''meet him'' ....I really did.And I
really wanted to!I didn't mean to end up always feel like I was
sitting in a boring setting where I was singing worship songs to no
one...but I did.Don't even worry about your building ...if I can't
find your God then you could meet in a palace of crystal and it would
still be lacking everything.You insist he's there...well he hasn't
shown me that.

Lastly...please stop acting like certain parts of your Bible don't
exist.That's really really annoying.I think it's why you lose
intelligent people.Most atheists I've come across are careful in
looking for the truth and if you tell them ''Umm no sorry I don't read
that half of the Bible.I don't know what your talking about'' it won't
help anything.You've just shown intelligent people that you have no
clue what you're talking about.But,like other problems,I can't totally
blame you for this.If someone brings up a gruesome Old Testament story
about infants being slaughtered at God's order...what you are really
going to say?There isn't anything to say is there?Yes people have
problems with accepting a horror scene as truth...but as long as you
follow the Bible...I don't think there is any solution to it.It
presents it as truth so,as a christian,you are also forced to
represent that to the world.There is no way to make a story about God
drowning everyone more ''presentable'' to the world.

So what am I getting at here?Do you see it now?Do you see the pattern
in all these problems?I understand your effort to make church a good
place,cause I was there once.But if you're holding onto a dead
horse..nothing is ever going be right. The problem is THE BIBLE.The
teachings don't help anyone or offer anything(except what I found to
be an empty promise).What me,and a lot of other people,are finding out
is that it's a dead book with God who isn't living .The best thing to
do is stop chasing after people my age and go do something more worth
your time.And I know that would be a shock for any christian to
hear.But once you let it sink... in it starts to feel right.Life isn't
so bad elsewhere.I'm not crying! I'm trying to stay open minded but I
can tell you...in my own life I see no sign of your God chasing after
me. I was seeking..but I didn't find.Lots of people seek but don't
find.So my question to all this is...if your God isn't chasing after
people my age...why are you?Think about it...and maybe one day you
won't all feel the need for a christian church anymore.

Sincerely,

A Lost Sheep

God condemn himself

2012-07-10T06:09:00.001+08:00

Let's take a look at the Abraham Isaac fiasco. If we were to judge this event by new testament standards Abraham would be guilty of human sacrifice. Jesus tells us that if we just consider committing a sin in our mind we are guilty of it (Mat 5:28). Unfulfilled intention is as damnable as the intent fulfilling outward act itself. So, in short, we have god tempting Abraham causing Abraham to commit human sacrifice. Whether Abraham actually followed through on his intent to perform the heinous act motivated by god of sacrificing his son Isaac doesn't matter according to Jesus who is proclaimed the son of and equal to god in the new testament.

English: Abraham embraces his son Isaac after receiving him back from God (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Now, the christian god does not change (Mal 3:6). Therefore what learn of god in the NT must also be true of him in the OT. As we have already seen, unfulfilled intention is as damnable as the intent fulfilling outward act itself (Mat 5:28; 1Jo 3:15). The christian god also decrees that human sacrifice is evil (Deut 12:31, 18:10; 2Ki 21:6). The bible says the christian god cannot be tempted by evil nor does he tempt anyone with evil (James 1:13). By the christian god's own inspired words he judges himself guilty of tempting Abraham to commit a vile sin and thereby is complicit in Abraham's sin of sacrificing his son Isaac.

Does the christian god stand self condemned? The only way to partially wiggle out of this textual conundrum, in my humble opinion, is to admit the obvious, that the bible is not infallible. Careful though as once you start out on this road paved by intellectual reprobates its a slippery slope all the way down to delusion free thought.

Human Stupidity - The root of all evil

2012-07-09T22:59:00.000+08:00

What made the pope declare crusade on the Muslim and slaughter them (including women and children) without remorse ? Is it the Bible ? No, it is because his love of power and human stupidity.

What made every Christians go to church every Sunday and be the devil every other day , yet they think they deserve to go to heaven more then others ? Human stupidity.

Christians commit rape, murder, crime just like ordinary people. Actually there are more Christian than Buddhist in prison.

Where is the love ? where is the compassion ? why their mind full of evil ?

Because their church leader are all hypocrips and full of human stupidity.

During world war 2, Hitler said we must kill all the Jews because they killed Jesus.

Say no to human stupidity, leave your church. Just like what John wrote in the Revelation : "Get out of her ! get out of her ! the whore of Babylon!"

The real God

2012-07-09T05:18:00.001+08:00

Most Christian believed in the bullshit that God is a human, he got
jealous fast. He send you to hell if you are not a Christian. He send
you to hell for not giving money to the church.

All those teaching are from people who is going to hell.

If a person think he knew everything, he knew nothing.

If a person like to show off how good he is, he is the worst person.

God is not a person. God represent every wonderful thing.

You don't have to be a Christian or going to church to find God, he is
so close to you.

wasted years on religion

2012-07-03T22:23:00.001+08:00

By Megizzle ~

My parents divorced when I was 5 and my brother was 1, and we moved from the country to the city with our mother while our father stayed behind. Our mother would tell you she was a Christian if you asked her, but we never went to church or talked about Jesus much. She worked two jobs and went to night school to learn to use computers, helped with homework, read us bedtime stories, patiently answered our endless questions, and encouraged us to read often and think independently.

Our dad, on the other hand, was a complete religious fanatic, control freak, and hypocrite. Every other weekend, he would make the 175-mile drive to the city to pick us up, and we'd be subjected to a 2 1/2-hour drive in his cramped little pickup truck with Christian rock music blasting at full volume while he blared his horn at slower-moving vehicles (saving his middle finger and his F*** YOUs for those who honked back), tailgated and swerved maniacally through traffic at top speed, and, on one unforgettable occasion, rolled down his window and pointed his handgun at a man who was committing the cardinal sin of doing 65 in the fast lane (this ultimately resulted in us telling our mother, and our dad spending a week in jail). During our drives, Dad would also frequently startle/scare us with sudden, random, painfully loud screams and war-whoops, which he attributed, wild-eyed, to his being "ON FIRE FOR THE LORD!" (My brother and I privately imitated and giggled helplessly over these ridiculous displays of religious fervor.)

Once we reached his little place in the country, we generally spent most of Saturday doing intensive Bible study (I knew who St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, and Martin Luther were before I hit third grade) followed by a rousing game of Bible Trivia (groan); the next day, we'd get up at the crack of dawn to get ready for church (which was *only* 40 miles away). We participated in Sunday school and Children's Bible Study, and went on church outings to "share the Gospel" with people in poor neighborhoods. We were always anxious about going to Dad's house, not only because of the long, traumatizing drive to and from, but also because he would frequently say frightening and/or inappropriate things for young children to hear, such as "Your mother is a wh***. She only lets you come with me so you won't see her having sex with all her boyfriends."; "You know that clicking sound you hear when you first pick up the phone? That's the FBI listening to our conversations."; and "Your mother worships Satan. I'll kill both of you if it means I keep her from dragging your souls to hell with her." Our mother unintentionally alarmed us further by (sensibly) requiring us to memorize her phone number and every address we moved to, so that if our father ever abducted us and we were able to get away, we could call her and/or provide the police with her contact
information so we could get home again.

After a few years of this, my father moved to the city (he returned to the country a couple of years later) and, unfortunately, played an even more actively religious role in our daily lives since we were physically closer to him. My mother encouraged me to join Girl Scouts when I was 7 or 8, even scraping together enough money (we lived well below the poverty line) to buy me a brand-new Brownie uniform, and I happily complied only to have my father use Christianity to ruin that for me. He was furious that our Brownie Troop met on Wednesday evenings (which were also our "extra" church nights), and forced me to leave the group by accusing the Girl Scouts of being a Satanic organization which was making me choose between God and The World by having their meetings on the same nights we were supposed to be in church.

When he moved back to the country, we were once again forced to endure the white-knuckle journey to and from his house. Bible studies intensified, and we bounced from church to church as he endlessly alienated entire congregations. Our dad was a loud, aggressive, burly, tattooed man with a ninth-grade education who had done hard drugs for most of his teenage years and hard manual labor for most of his life, so he intimidated and flat-out scared a lot of people. Once, my brother and I each invited a friend up for our weekend with Dad (naively assuming that he would be nicer in front of company and perhaps allow us to skip Bible study and/or church); on the contrary, he required EXTRA Bible study and insisted that our now-captive and reluctant audience join in, whereupon he expressed shock at their ignorance of the Bible and the great theologians, ordered them to give their lives to Jesus before they died and went to Hell, and pressured them to decide whether or not they believed in predestination and the post-tribulation rapture. On the way to church the next day, he further alarmed them (and humiliated us) by cautioning them to watch out for black helicopters because they were using infrared technology to spy on us, and detailing how Bill Clinton was having people murdered in the White House. Obviously, that was the first and last time our friends accompanied us to visit our dad.

As I grew older, I began to pick fights with Dad (over the phone) so I'd have justification for refusing to go with him on his court-appointed weekends. My quieter and more easygoing brother was still obligated to go, and on one occasion this resulted in a phone call from him to tell me that Dad had captured a rat on a glue board in his kitchen and spent fifteen minutes shooting it with blowdarts before taking it outside, shooting it, and taking pictures of it. My mother and I were both horrified and furious, and it was several months before my brother made the trip up there again.

Despite my Dad's best efforts to show us that Christians were scary, paranoid people who should be confined to rubber rooms, I genuinely believed in the Bible and often read it in my spare time. One night when I was 16, I was sitting alone at my little desk in my room and reading the book of John. Suddenly my independent, reasoning mind started waking up. I had a QUESTION. Uneasily, I called Dad. He might be nuts, but he knew the Bible like the back of his hand. "Dad, Jesus said 'I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No man comes to the Father but by Me.' But He also said the Jews were His chosen people, and Jews don't believe in Jesus. So do Jews go to Heaven or Hell?" Dad hemmed and hawwed, he mumbled various vaguely-pertinent Bible verses, he hesitated and false-started a few times, and then launched into some story from the Bible that had nothing to do with my question. I chalked it up to "He doesn't know." After I got off the phone, I went back to my Bible and realized I had ANOTHER question! I called Dad back. "Dad, if belief in Jesus is the only way to Heaven, what happens to people in remote parts of the world who have lived for generations without even knowing that an 'outside world' existed, and have never had the opportunity to hear the Gospel? Do they die and go to Hell just because they were born into the wrong place?" Dad did some more hemming and hawwing, and then had an epiphany. He answered, "Well, they can still look around at the sun and moon and stars and trees and animals and think 'Some power greater than myself must have put all this here', and then choose to honor and respect the Creator of nature. Then God can work on their hearts so that they will be true Christians in His eyes." You know how, when you hear the truth, it just rings true in your ears and you recognize it for what it is? That's how I felt when he said the first sentence (not the second one). I was delighted/surprised but also puzzled, and asked "Well, couldn't everyone just do that?" He responded that Christians are instructed by Jesus to spread the Gospel. I said that didn't make any sense; why should we bend over backwards to tell everyone something they can all figure out for themselves? He said it was because we needed to tell them the Truth before they were led astray by false religions like Islam. I thought for a minute, then hesitatingly observed that everyone thinks their religion is the correct one, and asked how we could be sure that ours was right and theirs was wrong? He explained that we know ours is right because we have God's Word right there in our Bible; I rebutted by saying that they think they have Allah's Word in their Quran too. Dad started getting agitated in that way that religious people do when you start asking questions, and asked if I was turning into an atheist. I quickly reassured him that I was not, and the conversation ended there on an awkward note.

I spent the next few years telling myself that my questions were the result of inadequate faith on my part, and tried to squelch and ignore my growing doubts. When I was 19, I met a remarkably intelligent and articulate 20-year-old fellow college student with whom I shared a love of reading, learning, integrity, and intellectual debate...and excellent sexual chemistry. We began dating, but the relationship was kept secret from my father's side of the family because he was black. I had never dated outside my race before (I had barely dated even within my race because I simply wasn't particularly attracted to anyone and was a bit of an intellectual elitist), but I didn't think it was strange or unusual, although I was aware that my father hated black people (and Hispanics, and Asians, and women, and Muslims, and Buddhists, and Catholics, and foreigners, and democrats, and the elderly, and everyone else who wasn't a middle-aged conservative white Protestant male from the southern United States). We each recognized a kindred spirit in the other and spent every waking moment together when we weren't at work or school, arguing race relations, politics, religion, and foreign policy (and doing other things, of course!), and ultimately fell very much in love. Six months after we began dating, we moved into an apartment together (as far as my father knew, I was just getting my own place).

In an attempt to appease my Christian-upbringing-induced guilt over my very active sex life outside of marriage, I joined a church and began semi-regularly attending services there. The pastor and his wife invited me to their house for dinner, as was their custom with all new attendees, and both were impressed with my Biblical knowledge and theological awareness; I was repeatedly invited back for dinner and Bible-based discussion, and became something of a family friend. I was flattered by the attention and conveniently failed to mention my ongoing sexual indiscretion, although I felt increasingly like a hypocritical, lying fraud for the year or so that this went on. Then I got pregnant.

When I admitted the pregnancy to the pastor and his wife, they were upset. When they met my boyfriend, they were horrified (the whole interracial thing). They privately urged me to give the baby up for adoption and abandon the relationship, which I refused to do. Neither they nor my other church "friends" ever spoke to me again, and I stopped attending church altogether. I knew I was wrong for having lied to them, but I felt angry, hurt, and betrayed that *Christians* would drop me like a hot potato for not living the perfect Christian life. How unChristian of them. I finally began allowing my religious questions and doubts to rise to the surface, and discussed them with my boyfriend, who understood the difficulty I was facing in beginning to work against my brainwashing; he patiently encouraged me to use logic and reason to determine the truth for myself. (He was two steps ahead of me in the religion department, although I wasn't aware of this at the time; he let me figure out what I thought for myself before telling me about his own journey to similar conclusions.)

Ironically and completely unexpectedly, my dad was elated to find out he was going to be a grandfather. He wasn't even fazed when I told him who the father was (they had met once, but I had introduced my boyfriend as "my friend", and they had gotten along surprisingly well) and was utterly shocked that I thought he was a racist, which he adamantly denied being. I later figured out that, with my dad, it's nothing personal; he's just one of those people who hates everyone equally.

Shortly after our the birth of our daughter, I found out I was pregnant again, despite my faithful use of birth control. When our first child was 13 months old, our son was born. We moved into a larger apartment and I halfheartedly attended another church with a friend a couple of times, but finally had to admit to myself that I wasn't buying it anymore. I went home, looked myself in the eye in the mirror, took a deep breath, and thought (I was too nervous to say it aloud, as though I might be struck by lightning for my insolence) "I'm not a Christian anymore. I don't believe that everything the Bible says is true. I don't know if Jesus ever existed or not. Religion is a tool used to control people. I'm not a Christian anymore." If you were brainwashed from birth to believe that Christianity is the only right way to live and that to deviate is to die spiritually, then you know how hard it was to overcome that programming and dare to think what I thought. I never went back to church again, and I've never missed it.

We went on to have two more daughters, and sometimes (particularly after I get off the phone with my dad) I look at my beautiful, intelligent, happy (when they're not fighting over some stupid toy) children and am silently grateful that I "woke up" before I inflicted another senseless religious brainwashing on a new generation. They will never have to suppress their natural curiosity or shut their perfectly functioning minds down in order to accept ancient Middle-Eastern fairy tales as their basis for how to order their lives. No one will dangle the threat of hellfire and eternal damnation over them in order to frighten them into compliance with an outdated mythology. Their parents are both back in college (after several years' hiatus spent trying to cope with the sudden influx of children); their mother is working on a Bachelor's in Biotechnology (despite their grandfather's advice to "Be careful about gettin' too educated; it'll turn you into a damn lib'ral atheist."); their father is preparing to enter the Master's program as an MIS major. They're growing up in a household full of books about science and business and technology, and developing a healthy thirst for knowledge and understanding instead of an irrational fear of a vengeful, bloodthirsty god who hates women, gay people, and questions. I don't mind them learning about various religions, including Christianity, as long as they understand that different people believe different things, that it's up to them to decide what they believe, if anything, and that no one will ever force them to accept any belief system against their will. I'm so glad I "got out." Also, to my everlasting delight, I discovered just last year that my brother (who spent three years in the Navy and now lives in Hawaii) has also been questioning religion and is now at the phase where he clearly doesn't believe in Christianity anymore but is reluctant to say it aloud for the same reasons most of us are afraid to. So I'm not the only one breaking free!

The only problem is that I still can't bring myself to admit to my family that I don't believe what they want/expect me to believe. My father has mellowed considerably in recent years; our relationship has greatly improved and I've forgiven most of the insanity with which he generously peppered my childhood, so you'd think he'd seem more approachable to me than he once did, and you'd be right.

However, he still has the soul of the religious fanatic and the black-and-white worldview that will tolerate no shades of gray, making his stability questionable. In spite of everything, I do love my Dad, and I'm especially close to my grandparents (his parents). What if I tell them that I'm not a Christian anymore and they sever ties with me? (Or, perhaps worse, engage in endless and fruitless efforts to convert me back?) In my family, it could easily be THAT big of a deal. My brother hasn't told them yet either, but he's never been very family-oriented and is not nearly as close to our relatives as I am, so I think the lack of emotional investment on his part would make any excommunication by our family ineffective. For me, it would be very upsetting, even devastating.

I've been postponing telling them for years now, but I'm afraid I'm about to reach the point where I'll have to. They (my dad in particular) are bringing up the kids' religious education more and more, especially around religious holidays. For instance, my mother (who has gotten slightly more religious over the years) called on Easter morning a few months back to wish me a Happy Easter. "Have you told the kids about the true meaning of Easter? Jesus died for us on the cross and rose again from the dead to ascend to heaven. Today is a holy day. It's not all about colorful eggs and chocolate and candy, you know." (Me, rolling my eyes and thinking "To me it is!") Later, my father called and demanded to know whether the kids have a Children's Bible. I answered yes, although I didn't tell him it's in a box in the back of my closet and that I have no intention of unpacking it. He told me I needed to give it to my oldest daughter to read, and mentioned that he's "going to start really working with them to teach them about Jesus." I thought, "The hell you are!" but compromised aloud by promising him that the kids would certainly know about the Creator (and they will, as soon as they can look around at the sun and moon and stars and trees and animals and know...). Thankfully, my dad has a short attention span, so I can just - Hey look, a squirrel! - and he forgets what he was talking about, but I can't change the subject forever and I don't want to keep being such a coward. I'm a grown woman for heaven's sake; I shouldn't be so scared to tell my family. Not sure what to do at this point.

Anyway, in the unlikely event that someone is still reading after all this time, I sincerely apologize for the length and detail, but it feels better to get everything off my chest, even if no one ever reads it. I love reading the other stories on this site; although I'm not an atheist like many people on here (I consider myself a Deist), I definitely sympathize with the atheist perspective and can certainly relate to the Christian brainwashing, de-conversion experience, and familial troubles I see being shared, and it's encouraging to be reminded that I'm not the only one struggling away from lies and toward the truth.

A journey in religion

2012-07-02T22:24:00.001+08:00

by Andrew A ~

Since I was a kid religion has played a very prominent role in my life
and has ever since. When I was about 10 years old my mother and father
had me go to Sunday School in a Baptist Church. I went till I was in
high school then I sort of dropped it, my attendance waned and I
stopped going. In high school I adopted my dad's religion, he is from
the Church of God group, a break off from Armstrongism. I went there
until I was around 30 then I dropped that as well. The only reason I
went there, looking back at it, was because of my dad, and I wanted
somewhere to belong. I liked the idea of the one true Church and the
idea I thought I could prove it.

In my early 30s I became Catholic because I wanted to be part of the
one "true Church", the historical Church. I was there for essentially
less than 2 years. I wanted to go back but so many problems for me
occurred, the rigorous standards as well, not to mention I had
difficulties in overcoming certain "sins". I vacillated back and forth
for a few years but I couldn't stay with the doubts I had in my mind
and heart. I started seeing as well that many of the truth claims of
the church seemed to be able to be successfully challenged by other
Christians like the Reformed or the Orthodox. I never knew enough
history to know exactly if the historical counter claims were true. If
something is "so clear" then why can it be challenged with such ease?
The debates on these issues still rage on between different
communions, but we are told by all three major communions that the
evidence is so "clear" for their side.

In these recent years I also started critically thinking of science vs
faith issues. Why for example did the Bible seem to indicate that the
earth is less than 10,000 years old? Science has long since proved
that the earth is billions of years old, they know this through the
many different dating methods that they have today. I know Christians
will object with various scripture verses and other claims that
science is wrongly interpreting the evidence. This however seems to me
to just be arrogance of the foolish sort, how can a person who is not
a scientist even comment on science and the examination of the
material world? The only way to rightly challenge science is to
present your data in a peer review journal and let the examination of
the counter evidence begin. Religious people do NOT do this, rather
they only know how to pick holes in the evidence science presents.
Their arguments are based on ignorance and "god of the gaps"
argumentation. The major religions of the world never come up with
counter scientific theories , like I said they ONLY pick holes and use
arguments from ignorance.

There are many examples of the above, here is another example: Noah's
ark in the bible. We are told that Noah gathered all the animals and
put them on the Ark. If many creationists knew how many species there
are and the biological diversity we see in the world, they would
wonder just how they could take the account in a literal fashion. Did
Noah use snake muzzles to protect himself from the many varieties of
poisonous spiders? How did he get the deadly spiders on the Ark that
we have in the world like the Sydney Funnel Web Spider? What about
bacteria and parasites? How did the animals get redistributed all
around the world once the flood was over? Things like this puzzle me
and I have a million questions and yet you can't get consistent
answers from Christians in any communion. They all seem to contradict
one another.

One thing I have learned from my examination of these issues is that,
if you have the audacity to question anything there will always be
believers ready to pronounce you "hell worthy". The thousands of
Christian sects have a nice niche in hell for the groups that
contradict their beliefs. Seems very distasteful to me and I hope so
as well for any thinking rational person.

Questions from all different angles started "jabbing" me and they have
kept piling up for example "Why are there so many different religions
in the world? Why are people being condemned to hell for being located
in a country opposite to where the "true" religion was established?".
Why for example are Chinese who for the most part are Buddhists, who
go about their daily lives, die and then go to Hell because they had a
different religion? Christians will come up with answers like "God
decreed they would go to Hell", "God will save all people in time",
"They never had their first chance, they will have an opportunity
later". They will give their bible verses as to why they believe A, B,
C and the next Christian will just contradict them and call them a
heretic. Some Christians like using other Christians as punching bags
as well "they were never saved to begin with". No one can seem to
prove their position is infallibly the true one.

The Catholic church claims infallibility in matters of faith, doctrine
and morals and I believed that as well. It sounded so wonderful to be
infallibly sure, to have the infallible fuzzies. However when examined
the doctrine of infallibility also falls down. In order to come to the
place where the convert "to be" actually believes the Catholic church
is the one true Church, the convert must use private judgement. This
is the very thing Catholics object to in Protestants, who are told
they can't use Scripture alone as the only infallible rule of faith.
The Protestants are charged with using their own "private judgement"
to interpret Scripture. Ironic that the very claims of the Catholic
church, they appeal to Scripture in the various Catechisms. Catholics
appeal to Matthew 16:18-20 to prove the authority to bind and loose.
Should the Protestant be blamed when he reads the verses and sees that
there are different views in Church history? Should the Protestant be
blamed when he comes to a different conclusion? He sees that the
church appeals to different verses and decides to examine them in
context and uses principles of hermeneutics and exegesis, and comes to
a different conclusion using private judgement?

When I realized certainty in religion is more or less impossible to
achieve, I admit to loosening my grip on Scripture and the belief in
God. Interesting that the various religions have apologetics against
other religions for example: Judaism now has apologetic websites
against Christians and Muslims and so do Muslims against Jews and
Christians. They all have claims that they can't support. If they had
a million years to do so. Someone will ALWAYS come around to challenge
their truth claims. The debates still rage on to this very day.

Where am I NOW concerning God and the Bible? I have to admit I am not
sure. I am not even sure if you can know if a God truly exists, at
least with the current knowledge we have at present. I have tried to
believe a God exists and cares about us but examination of the world
around us seems to be screaming at us a different story. I guess I
would have to say that I am in the "half way house" philosophically.
Perhaps I can say I am an Agnostic. I am glad though for this journey
in life and at times finding things to believe in. However the journey
however has not been without its "scars" I have lost things in life
because of religion.

I have lost much precious time debating religion and trying to find
which one is the true religion. I have spent lots of money buying
books and listening to MP3s. Religion has brought me much mental
stress in my life as well...there are times I have felt like I was
going insane because of all the questions I had and couldn't solve. To
this day the religions have not solved them as well. I can only say at
this point in my life I am going to live as a rational thinker and as
a humanist. I still believe in the ideals of treating our neighbors as
we would like to be treated. No religion is needed for that.

I conclude my letter with this from Clarence Darrow:

I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be
called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men
are sure — that is all that agnosticism means.

An agnostic is a doubter. The word is generally applied to those
who doubt the verity of accepted religious creeds of faiths. Everyone
is an agnostic as to the beliefs or creeds they do not accept.
Catholics are agnostic to the Protestant creeds, and the Protestants
are agnostic to the Catholic creed. Any one who thinks is an agnostic
about something, otherwise he must believe that he is possessed of all
knowledge. And the proper place for such a person is in the madhouse
or the home for the feeble-minded. In a popular way, in the western
world, an agnostic is one who doubts or disbelieves the main tenets of
the Christian faith.

I am an agnostic as to the question of God. I think that it is
impossible for the human mind to believe in an object or thing unless
it can form a mental picture of such object or thing. Since man ceased
to worship openly an anthropomorphic God and talked vaguely and not
intelligently about some force in the universe, higher than man, that
is responsible for the existence of man and the universe, he cannot be
said to believe in God. One cannot believe in a force excepting as a
force that pervades matter and is not an individual entity. To believe
in a thing, an image of the thing must be stamped on the mind. If one
is asked if he believes in such an animal as a camel, there
immediately arises in his mind an image of the camel. This image has
come from experience or knowledge of the animal gathered in some way
or other. No such image comes, or can come, with the idea of a God who
is described as a force.

To say that God made the universe gives us no explanation of the
beginnings of things. If we are told that God made the universe, the
question immediately arises: Who made God? Did he always exist, or was
there some power back of that? Did he create matter out of nothing, or
is his existence coextensive with matter? The problem is still there.
What is the origin of it all? If, on the other hand, one says that the
universe was not made by God, that it always existed, he has the same
difficulty to confront. To say that the universe was here last year,
or millions of years ago, does not explain its origin. This is still a
mystery. As to the question of the origin of things, man can only
wonder and doubt and guess.

how to get out of Christianity cult

2012-07-02T22:19:00.001+08:00

By True Anathema ~

It has been one year now since I let go of my religious beliefs. I
realized that the God I worshipped since I was less than three was not
real, that he was a figment of my parents' imagination and that I had
believed that he was real, but was deceived. At first, I was elated
because of the new found freedom. Then came the grief and anger. Next
came the anxiety and depression, then an ever present despair.

Since I have attended many churches over the years, breaking with a
particular group was not really a problem, but now there is no social
construct for me in which to gain a sense of worth or purpose. I
continually have to remind myself that my worth comes from within, not
from without. The interaction I get now is from a group of
freethinkers that is more than one hour away. With a full time job,
family, and the price of gas, I obviously don't get to interact with
them very much.

My husband and I were joking the other day that we don't have any
friends. He has a large family and we interact with two of them. I
have yet to meet any one in my area that is not a fundamentalist
Christian and have no idea how to. And if I did, our town is so small,
there is no way I could be sure that being open with them would not
cause me harm with my family and my job.

I have always had problems with OCD and bi-polar disorder with
depression, but now have to take anxiety medicine at night and more
frequently during the day to function. I have just read an article on
Religious Trauma Syndrome and understand this somewhat, but still have
a hard time understanding how letting go of an unhealthy belief system
could have such negative effects.

My husband knows I have "doubts" and we just don't really talk about
it. Neither of us go to church and that's just fine. He has issues
with organized religion and we do have that in common.

I am learning to take it slow and read everything I can get my hands
on. I can read the bible again for the first time in a year and read
from a scholarly and not a devotional perspective. I can watch the
Family Guy and not be afraid that I will go to hell for laughing at
some extremely blasphemous, but hellishly funny story lines.

This is an anniversary that I am celebrating by myself and for myself.
There will be no cards and no cake. No congratulations. No hugs or
pats on the back. Just silence. But silence is good. There used to
voices in my head.

"You're deceived."

"You can run, but you can't hide from God, that hound of heaven."

"Worldly wisdom is foolishness, hence you're a fool."

"You were created for better things."

Now there's just silence, but silence really is golden. I hope to find
peace. Not the peace that passes understanding that the bible
promises, but a peace that comes from understanding. Understanding
that I'm human. Understanding that I don't have to be perfect.
Understanding that I don't need the approval of my family. I can just
love them for who they are and that I don't need to confess everything
about who I am to them.

I do have one person that knows what this anniversary means to me. He
keeps me in good books and mixed drinks. Three cheers for freedom, no
matter how slowly it comes.

A better world is a world without churches

2012-06-28T22:35:00.001+08:00

As you have already knew, a pastor in Singapore was charged for
illegally using 24 millions of the church money.

Billions of dollars had been wasted every month all over the world to
support pastor/priest millionaire lifestyle. More goes to building
expensive building.

Imagine all this money was given to the poor and unfortunate, the
world will be a far far better place.

Instead, it was used to produce serial killer and rapist and criminal.
Doesn't believe me ? Check the status and you will be shocked. Most
serial rapist and murderer came from strong church members.

Even Adolf Hitler was a real Christian.

No Christian Church means no war, no suffering, no hatred.

See thru the hypocrisy. Prevent your love one from going to the
church. You will save a life.

Singapore pastor charged in $19 million fraud case

2012-06-28T22:16:00.001+08:00

from AFP news:

The founder of one of Singapore's richest churches was charged in
court Wednesday for allegedly syphoning off nearly $19 million of the
congregation's money to support his wife's singing career.

Pastor Kong Hee, 47, faced three charges of "criminal breach of trust"
relating to the misuse of the funds of the City Harvest Church, one of
Singapore's biggest with a membership of over 30,000.

Kong was accused of "dishonestly misappropriating monies" from the
church's building fund over several years to support the career of his
wife Ho Yeow Sun, who had tried to become a music star in the United
States.

The church, which has affiliates in neighbouring Malaysia and other
countries, is known for services that resemble pop concerts.

The pastor's wife, now in her early 40s, was hoping international
stardom would help spread the church's message, according to previous
reports in the Singapore media.

Four other church executives were charged Wednesday before a district
court for aiding Kong and faced other charges for allegedly attempting
to misappropriate millions of dollars from the church's funds.

Kong and the four others were arrested Tuesday by the Commercial
Affairs Department, a police unit set up to fight financial crime, and
could face life imprisonment as well as a fine if convicted.

They have been suspended from their church positions and are out on
bail of Sg$500,000 each, with their passports impounded.

On Tuesday, officials overseeing charities estimated that Kong was
involved in misappropriating Sg$23 million ($18 million) in church
funds but in the charge sheet filed on Wednesday, the total was raised
to Sg$24 million.

According to court documents, the church funds were channelled through
"purported bond investments" in two companies, which were in fact
"sham transactions".

"They were devised by the accused persons in order to conceal the
diversion of the Church's Building Fund to fund Sun Ho's music
career... As well as other unauthorised purposes," the documents said.

City Harvest is a Christian group listed as a charity. The arrests
came after a two-year police investigation.

Kong, who appeared in a courtroom filled with supporters as well as
local media, stood with a grave expression as charges were laid out
against him.

After the session, Kong walked out holding hands with his wife,
declining to speak to the media as members of his entourage shoved
journalists away and tried to prevent photographers from shooting
pictures.

The couple became minor celebrities in Singapore after launching the
church, which officials estimated had net assets of Sg$103 million in
2009.

Singapore authorities have cracked down on heads of charities found to
have been involved in irregularities.

In 2009, a prominent Buddhist monk was jailed for six months for
misappropriating hospital funds and lying about it to authorities.

Christianity - the religion that promote foolishness

2012-06-24T21:40:00.001+08:00

By WizenedSage (Galen Rose) ~

The ship of fools is an allegory which depicts a vessel populated by
humans who are confused, frivolous, or deluded, and often ignorant of
their own course or destination. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the
ship of fools concept also served to parody the 'ark of salvation' as
the Catholic Church was sometimes called.

Ship of Fools
Ship of Fools (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In some ways, the Titanic could be seen as a "ship of fools." The
designers of the ship, its owners, and its captain and crew were all
fools in one way or another, leading the doomed ship to a watery
grave. Following the disaster, two official inquiries, US and British,
reached similar conclusions; the number of lifeboats aboard was
inadequate, the Captain failed to take proper heed of ice warnings,
many of the lifeboats were only partially loaded when launched (due to
inadequate crew training), and the ship was steaming through a
dangerous area at too high a speed. The whole enterprise appears to be
a matter of leadership by fools.

The Christian religion is similar in many respects. Many of its
primary movers and shakers, the architects of much Christian dogma,
were – if not downright fools – decidedly odd individuals. Below, I
offer, in their own words, some of their own foolishness. I give extra
space to Paul because he is widely considered the chief architect of
Christianity - and because he said so darned many foolish things.

Paul of Tarsus:

"Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for
there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that
exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority
resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur
judgment." - Letter to the Romans 13:1.

This is the principal of the "Divine Right of Kings." Here, Paul is
saying that one should always agree with one's political leader, even
a Hitler or Stalin.

In 1 Corinthians 1: 17, Paul claimed that God was anti-intellectual:

"Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in
the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God
decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those
who believe."

So, to be wise in the ways of the world is foolish? And, science, the
process by which we learn how the world works, is a foolish
undertaking? My life was saved several years go by colon surgery. I'm
sure glad that surgeon ignored the "wisdom" of Paul.

"All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for
reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the
man of God may be perfect (complete, adequate, competent), equipped
for every good work." - 2 Tim. 3:16-17.

So, if all scripture is inspired by god, then we can be sure that god
really wants us to stop eating shellfish, wearing mixed fabrics, and
to kill homosexuals, adulterers, and people who work on Sunday? Could
it be that Paul didn't know what was in scripture quite as well as he
thought he did?

"Tell slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give
satisfaction in every respect; they are not to talk back, not to
pilfer, but to show complete and perfect fidelity, so that in
everything they may be an ornament to the doctrine of God our Savior."
- Titus 2:9-10.

Apparently, if you're a slave then that is god's will, so you should
just shut up and enjoy it; easy to say, if you've never been a slave.

"I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she
is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was
not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor." -
1 Tim. 2: 9-15.

Thus, women are inferior because Eve was scammed by a talking snake.
Is that a good enough reason for you?

"I mean, brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short;
from now on, let even those who have wives be as though they had none.
. . For the present form of this world is passing away. - I
Corinthians 7: 29.

Here, Paul is suggesting that men abandon their wives because the
Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. His timing was off by over 2,000 years.
Was he a tad deluded, do ya think?

Tertullian (c.160-c.225 - has been called "the father of Latin
Christianity" and "the founder of Western theology."):

Speaking of the Resurrection of Christ, Tertullian wrote:

"I believe because it is absurd."

So, according to this great thinker, if something, anything, is
utterly preposterous, then it must be true? Maybe I just lack
imagination, but I can't think of a dumber reason to believe in
something.

Augustine (354-430 C.E. - was a Latin philosopher and theologian from
whose writings were very influential in the development of Western
Christianity.):

"Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith
is to see what you believe."

This reminds me of that other fairy tale where Peter Pan says that if
you really believe, then you can fly. I particularly like Dan Barker's
take on this: "Faith is a cop-out. . . With faith, you don't have to
put any work into proving your case. You can 'just believe.' "

Augustine also wrote, "There is no possible source of evil except
good." And I'm sure you all know exactly what he meant by that.

Like many Christian writers, Augustine had a talent for confounding
the Bible's teaching. In one place he wrote, "God loves each of us as
if there were only one of us." And in another place he wrote, "He that
is jealous is not in love." Now, one of these statements MUST be
false, for Bible-god admits to being jealous.

Anselm (1033-1109 - is most famous in philosophy for the so-called
"ontological argument," and in theology for his doctrine of the
atonement):

In the ontological argument, Anselm defined God as the greatest
possible being we can conceive and argued that this being could exist
in the mind. He suggested that, if the greatest possible being exists
in the mind, it must also exist in reality. Numerous writers since
Anselm have shown that the ontological could be used to prove the
existence of anything, thus the argument has absurd consequences.
After all, Anselm is basically saying that if you can think it, then
it must exist, which is silly. Anselm seems to have confused
imagination with reality.

"I have written the little work that follows . . . in the role of
one who strives to raise his mind to the contemplation of God and one
who seeks to understand what he believes."

We could paraphrase thus: "There's stuff here I don't understand, but
I believe it anyway." Hardly the mark of a deep thinker, I'd say.

Aquinas (1225-1274 – considered by some to be the Catholic Church's
greatest theologian and philosopher):

"If forgers and malefactors are put to death by the secular power,
there is much more reason for excommunicating and even putting to
death one convicted of heresy."

So, if one doesn't believe as Aquinas believes, then he should be put
to death. Clearly he was a man of great morality and compassion. Don't
believe me? Well, Aquinas also said, "That the saints may enjoy their
beatitude and the grace of God more abundantly they are permitted to
see the punishment of the damned in hell." Who would have guessed that
hell was a spectator sport? And how do you suppose Aquinas knew this,
anyway?

"It is necessary to posit something which is necessary of itself,
and has no cause of its necessity outside of itself but is the cause
of necessity in other things. And all people call this thing God."

Aquinas is speaking here of what is usually termed a first cause:
i.e., the only cause which is not also an effect of a prior cause.
But, even if we granted that a first cause must exist, why must it be
a god and not just a property or law of nature? Further, even if we
granted that a first cause must be a god, why must it be Aquinas' god
and not some other god? Aquinas' conclusion here appears to be nothing
but hand waving.

"We can't have full knowledge all at once. We must start by
believing; then afterwards we may be led on to master the evidence for
ourselves."

Again, he wants us to just believe, regardless of evidence.
Interestingly, the Buddhist, the Muslim, and the Hindu all say pretty
much the same thing. They all want us to just believe. Most people
take their advice and this is why we have hundreds of religions with
millions of followers and none of them can prove a damned thing. And
none of them thinks that matters. If science worked that way, we would
still be living in caves dreaming of creating fire.

Martin Luther (1483-1546 - was a German monk, priest, professor of
theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation.):

"Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding. "

Should we ever follow one who defames reason? Could that ever be
reasonable? Luther is also credited with saying, "Reason is the enemy
of faith."

"I feel much freer now that I am certain the pope is the Antichrist."

Did you get that? He is "certain!"

"You should not believe your conscience and your feelings more
than the word which the Lord who receives sinners preaches to you."

So, if the "word" the Lord preaches to me says homosexuals should be
killed (Leviticus 20:13), then I should just ignore my conscience? If
I "feel" that killing people who work on the Sabbath is wrong, then I
am in error because the "word" of the Bible preaches otherwise? This
sounds like the philosophy of a guy who thinks reason is the enemy of
faith.

John Calvin (1509-1564 - was the leading French Protestant Reformer
and the most important figure in the second generation of the
Protestant Reformation.):

"Knowledge of the sciences is so much smoke apart from the
heavenly science of Christ."

Right. And Jesus thought disease was caused by demons. Curiously, the
Harvard Medical School course catalogue no longer lists a course on
demon possession.

"Yet consider now, whether women are not quite past sense and
reason, when they want to rule over men."

So, Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, Queens Elizabeth I
and Victoria, and thousand of other women leaders all lacked sense and
reason? Calvin certainly gives Paul of Tarsus a run for his money when
it comes to misogyny.

These men are all widely considered by Christians to be great
thinkers. They are in large measure those who made the Christian
religion what it is today. But isn't it obvious, from their own words,
that each of them was foolish in one way or another?

Ah, you say, but what matters most are the teachings of Jesus Christ.
Surely Christ never said anything foolish? Think again.

"But I tell you, do not resist an evil person."

The people of Europe should not have resisted Hitler?

"If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it
away. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw
it away."

This is where the profane is mistaken for the profound. Isn't this the
kind of advice you hope no one takes? If people really believed this
nonsense, wouldn't there be a whole lot more one-eyed, one-armed
people in this world?

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will
eat or drink . . . Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or
reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them."

Jesus says, don't plan ahead, god will provide. Even squirrels know
this is foolish advice! And so does everyone else who seeks a good
education, buys insurance, or has a retirement plan.

"For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their
mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of
men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the
kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him
receive it"

Well, there you go men, if you can handle it, just cut 'em off. This
is clearly sick, dangerous, nonsense advice which no one in his right
mind would take, and deserves no further comment.

And here's the bottom line, Jesus sometimes didn't even take his own
advice. He said, "But anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger
of the fire of hell." Then he proceeds to call people fools. "Ye fools
and blind." (Matthew 23:17). Was he confused, or what?

Now, here is the elephant in the living room that Christians try their
best to ignore: even a casual reading of the New Testament proves
beyond a shadow of a doubt that neither Jesus Christ nor Paul had any
god-given inside knowledge of how the world works. Both stated over
and over that the "Kingdom of Heaven" was coming SOON, but, 2,000
years later it has still not arrived. That is not "soon." Clearly,
they were not relaying the wisdom of a god – so they had to be making
it up! Reverend Harold Camping twice predicted the end of the world in
2011, would you follow him and his teachings? No? Then how does it
make any sense to follow Jesus or Paul, who made the same mistake
multiple times?

Why book passage on a ship (or religion) designed by the deluded and
steered by the confused? I can think of no better real life example of
the ship of fools motif than the Christian religion.

God and Evil

2012-06-20T22:18:00.001+08:00

By Cestlavie

My mother converted to Christianity when I was a baby. My father had
returned from his army tour in Okinawa and they moved far away from
her very large family. Things changed in their relationship and she
was alone much of the time. She found a Southern Baptist church and a
new extended family to fill the void. Consequently, the church was our
second home and we were there whenever the doors were open.

I remember getting "saved" when I was about 12. It was Easter Sunday
and the preacher gave a heart-rending sermon about what horrible
sinners we were and how God sacrificed his son, Jesus for our sins,
and what a horrible, painful death it was and it was all my fault for
being such a miserable sinner. I cried with the horror and shame of it
and ran to the front of the church begging forgiveness. I was no
stranger to shame, having been molested at the age of 6. And I'm
certain that a large part of the guilt and shame I felt growing up had
more to do with the despicable act of an adult, but I perceived it to
be my own failing as a human and spent my teenage years cowered in
guilt and shame for all the normal feelings and reactions of a
maturing young woman.

At the age of 17 I had enough, and when I left for college, I also
left the church for good with the realization that a God of love would
not give us the ability to feel the things we felt and then condemn us
simply for feeling them! That is simplifying it a bit, but that's
basically what I thought. Thus began my lifelong journey to sort out
the brainwashing of my youth from the truth. I can tell you that I am
still involved in that process; the training was insidious and turns
up when I least expect it. One of the biggest things I deal with today
is the concept of punishment. Having been through two bouts of breast
cancer, I'm sure I don't have to tell you that there is still a part
of my brain that thinks a god somewhere, whom I have forsaken, is
punishing me. And that everything bad that has happened in my life is
punishment for being such a wild child of the 70's. I know my mother
believes it is!

The whole idea of god fascinates me, I have to admit. As I see it, God
is a concept that we have developed to explain the mysteries of life
(that science can't yet explain), to symbolize all that is "good" and
just and fair, and whatever else we personally need a god to
symbolize. Satan is also a concept that explains all that is "evil"
and unfair in the world. Just as Santa Claus is very real to young
children, so are God and the Devil. But somehow, unlike Santa and the
Tooth Fairy, humans remain children when it comes to the concept of
gods. They are very real beings to most believers. (This would be
considered a mental health problem by most psychiatrists.)

Somewhere along the way, humans took the concept literally and their
god evolved into a self reflection, for lack of imagination I suppose.
He became jealous, judgmental, angry, vengeful (in fact, a lot of the
things that Satan was supposed to symbolize). What we have is a very
real and
dangerous god embodied by thousands of believers who need a real life
devil to hate. This is the god that has swept across the world,
destroying countless lives in his name, time after time. It is not a
benign belief system that does no harm, and in this sense god is
horribly, frighteningly real. I can no longer sit back and say
nothing. Their god has become my devil.

Some financial fact about Vatican

2012-06-19T06:36:00.001+08:00

from http://www.vaticanbankclaims.com/

Independent.co.uk
19 April 2002
Worldly assets

• The Vatican Bank, Istituto per le Opere di Religione, manages £2bn
of assets. It does not reveal its profits or dividends, which are paid
directly to the Pope. It enjoys the status of a central bank and has a
dealing room adorned with crucifixes and papal portraits where 20
traders work.

• Despite the Vatican's assets, including the art collection in the
Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel, it relies heavily on support
from American dioceses.

• The Pope owns more than 1,000 apartments in Rome. The Vatican's
property portfolio made a profit of 25.7bn lira in 1998, equivalent to
about £10m at the time.

• The Vatican had a balance of 2.5bn lira in 1998, then worth about
£1m. It had expenses of about 336bn lira (£106m) and income of about
338bn lira (£107m).

• The 2,500 officials of the Papal curia have a combined salary bill
of 140bn lira (£44m).

• The 20,000 parishes in America had revenues of $7.5bn (£5.18bn) )in
2000, of which $6.5bn went to cover expenses and $1bn subsidised
Catholic schools.

• In the 1980s the Vatican Bank was forced to pay $241m for its part
in the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano. Roberto Calvi, who had been
advising the Vatican over its dealings with the bank, was found
hanging from a rope beneath Blackfriars Bridge.

• Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, the man tipped to be the first
American Pope, has been building a new cathedral for the past four
years. The cost is now estimated at almost $200m.

why "the fall of men" story in the Bible was bullshit

2012-06-14T22:20:00.001+08:00

By Rhonda Denise Johnson ~

I sometimes run into people who try to encourage me to visit a Church.
For a few years after diversion (April 2005), I had recurrent dreams
of being left in the Rapture. And let's face it, the music and
fellowship the Church offers can be quite enticing, especially in the
small town where I live, where if you don't go to Church there really
isn't too much to do. But the one solid thing that has sustained my
resolve to remain free is what I've read in the Bible. No matter how
sweet folks are, trying to "love me back into Church," no one can
un-write what was written, nor can I un-read what I read. I can
honestly go so far as to say that if it weren't for the Bible, I might
still be calling myself a Christian. Alas, the Bible is the foundation
of Christianity and although for a while, I thought I could maintain
my "relationship" with Jesus despite the problems in the Bible, in
time I had to admit this was neither honest nor logical. In a series
of articles, I'd like to share with you some of the things I found.

Haukipudas Church
Haukipudas Church (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Problem with the Fall of Man Story

The story of the Fall of Man is central to Christianity. Without it,
the Church could not convince indigenous people that they need Jesus
to save them from sin. Beginning with Paul, missionaries often
encounter people whose moral code is obviously superior to that of
many Christians. The idea that all humans somehow inherited a sin
nature from Adam and therefore deserve hell, was a masterful stroke.
Yet, there are not one, but two fundamental problems inherent to the
whole idea of the Fall of Man. I won't make the argument people
usually make here. The idea that all of mankind should pay hellfire
for the crime of being born, is bad enough, but that's not what we
will discuss here. The two problems I will mention are: 1. Adam had no
way to know that what he was doing was wrong, 2. Paul is the only
biblical writer who holds all humanity accountable for Adams's sin.

Let's visit Adam in the Garden of Eden. Jehovah creates this guy but
does not give him the faculty to know good and evil. It doesn't even
say that Adam did not know how to distinguish good from evil. He
simply had no concept that some things were good and some evil.
Jehovah puts that knowledge in the fruit of a tree then tells the man
not to eat the fruit. Adam had no way to know that it was evil to
disobey God. In fact, he obeyed everybody. Like a child, Adam did what
God told him to do until somebody else came along and told him to do
something else. There was no wrestling with his conscience—no acting
against his better judgment. He had none.

Eve tells the serpent, "That's the forbidden fruit, which if we eat we
die." Apparently, it occurred to her that dying was perhaps something
she did not want to do. But nothing had ever died in her world, so she
had no real concept of death; otherwise, she would not have thought
the fruit was useful for food and wisdom. If someone gave you a plate
of carrots and told you it was poison, would you eat it? Would you
say, "Well, poison or not, it's still full of vitamins?" Only if
you're a baby who doesn't really know what poison is.

I have looked and from Genesis to the Book of Acts, I could not find
one reference linking us to Adam's sin. Something so cataclysmic that
it affected the entire human race and yet not one biblical writer
thought it worth writing about?Toddlers often don't do what we tell
them to do. They have to learn that obedience will keep them out of
trouble and disobedience will land them into trouble. No parent would
put a child in the electric chair the first time it disobeys. No one
would treat their dog that way, much less a child. Yet, that's all
Adam was, a child with no life experience. He could have been taught.
Life's experiences could have developed his conscience. Instead, God
renders the ultimate punishment the first time Adam disobeys. And this
ultimate punishment was not on Adam himself. For none of the
punishments outlined for Adam were eternal. According to the Church,
the ultimate payment for Adam's sin was levied on his descendents.
Where is the justice in this?

I have looked and from Genesis to the Book of Acts, I could not find
one reference linking us to Adam's sin. Something so cataclysmic that
it affected the entire human race and yet not one biblical writer
thought it worth writing about? How odd? Actually, the whole concept
could be called "Paulianity." After all, he calls it his gospel (2
Timothy 2:8). Indeed, the concept of inherited sin is his gospel and
does not exist anywhere else in the Bible outside his writings. The
concept is not in the Old Testament. Moses decrees that "the fathers
shall not be put to death for the sins of the sons, nor shall the sons
be put to death for the sins of the fathers, but every man shall be
put to death for his own sins." (Deuteronomy 24:16) Obviously, Paul
was not present when Jesus stood in the temple with the Old Testament
scriptures and said that not one jot of it would be changed 'til
heaven and Earth pass away. Neither can I find the concept in any of
the Gospels or the non-Pauline letters of the New Testament.

Preachers tell us we can't pick and choose what we want to believe in
the Bible. With this kind of contradiction, we have no other
alternative. How does one agree with a book that does not agree with
itself? How can Christians tell me that God never changes, and then
when I see discrepancies in the Bible, they tell me that God did
change? They tell us we are in a different dispensation now. Change by
any other name…. So under the dispensation of law I only had to worry
about paying for my own sin, but under the dispensation of grace I
suddenly need a savior to save me from someone else's sin, which I
would not be held accountable for if Paul weren't trying to find an
excuse to save me. This makes no sense.

story of a former homosexual Christian

2012-06-14T22:16:00.001+08:00

By ErikJMS

It was a long time ago, but I swear I never meant to get this old and
it is disorienting to finally have hit forty, and then forty-one, ...
and then forty-nine, and now fifty, especially since I was supposed to
kill myself at twenty-five.

The story is a little complicated, but I am going to jump into the
middle of it and see how long I can stay afloat for this episode.
Things that are useful to know about me from the start:

When I was born my body was such that I was declared a girl, but I got
it in my head that I was a boy by the time I was three. A bunch of
childhood trauma drove that realization into hiding, so I came out as
a dyke after high school, somewhat gradually from about 1979-1982.
Then in about 1995 I sort of remembered that I wished to be
male-bodied, and in 1997 I started taking testosterone and
transitioned from female-appearing to male-appearing. My actual gender
identity became a bit fuzzy after transitioning, but I call myself a
transsexual male when pressed for something specific.

I was sexually abused and raped by a family member at age 11 and raped
by a stranger at age 12. That was the trauma, or about half of it. I
did not tell anyone about the stranger rape until I was 20, and I kept
the family molestation a secret for a few more years after that. I
have PTSD from that and from growing up threatened with the Lake of
Fire and the Rapture.

I am psychiatrically disabled, in part from the PTSD and in part from
a recurrent severe depression. My last big crash was the winter of
1997-98 and I am still recovering and might be for the rest of my
life. This last crash earned my diagnosis the tag of "with psychotic
features." There were voices, but they weren't hallucinations. I have
a very vivid imagination, and that became their echo chamber.

I am one of those tentatively self-diagnosed autism spectrum adults. I
am more introverted than anyone I have ever met anywhere at any time,
I was late learning to talk, and I have sensory problems and severe
social phobias around specific types of interactions. I do not have
any money to pay for an assessment now; when I was a child in the 60s
and 70s, autism was not something that was screened for unless one
were extremely non-functional.

So there's some background. You might be able to guess the story just
from those starting conditions, but I will fill in some details
anyway.

I was transplanted from the Pacific NW of the US to the Deep South at
the age of two. My parents had become born-again Xians sometime before
I was born. I don't really know much about how that happened, but when
we moved to Georgia they started attending Baptist churches and
eventually settled on Southern Baptist doctrine. The church they chose
was evangelical and about as fundamentalist as you could get:
everything in the Bible was literally true, cigarettes and alcohol
were tools of Satan, and homosexuality was so taboo it wasn't even
considered a remote possibility for a living, breathing person.

My parents took us kids to a church play when I was about six, I
think. It depicted the Last Judgment, where the "lost" were thrown
through a tinfoil covered doorway into "hell" and went screaming their
heads off through dry ice smoke, red flashing lights, and roaring
thunder. I think there were stairs leading down; "hell" was probably
the church basement.

I was scared shitless. Was that going to happen to me? No, or at least
not yet. I do not recall my mom's precise explanation except that I
think I was told I was too young to understand and I did not have to
worry about hell until I was old enough to understand. I started
worrying anyway because what I understood at that point was that
eventually I was going to be looking at that door myself, somehow.

A couple of years later I was in fourth grade, and I found a Jack
Chick tract in my classroom one afternoon: "The Beast." If you haven't
read it, you can find it at the Jack Chick website and it looks now
exactly what it looked like then. Mobile guillotines were depicted
beheading people who were left behind after the rapture and who
refused the Mark of the Beast. This was the only way to be saved after
the rapture.

I was scared shitless. I had never heard about any of this part of the
religion I was being taught. In Sunday School we got Old Testament
stories and during church services I drew pictures on the bulletin.
This was all brand new stuff. I asked my mom if she would explain this
tract to me and we sat down to read it together and she basically said
that although the details might not be exact, it was all true. This
was really going to happen, and I really would be left behind if I
were not yet saved.

I was eight years old, and I would be left behind, because my family
were all saved by that time. Sit with that for a bit.

The way to be saved at our church was to walk the aisle, alone, at the
end of the service, during the invitation. I'm sure most of you are
familiar with the ritual. When you got there you talked to the
preacher about whatever was "on your heart," but they emphasized
coming forward to be saved.

Our altar calls were subdued affairs; we did not do all the
pentocostal speaking in tongues stuff, but given my introversion and
fear of strangers (the preacher was as good as a stranger to me), I
was literally frozen in terror at the thought of walking up there all
that by myself while everyone watched. Nobody ever offered to walk
with me. Apparently it was not genuine or something if you didn't do
it by yourself.

Time passed. I was molested and raped and stayed silent about it. I
tell people had I stopped speaking altogether by the time I was 15,
which is true in some ways, but that would be getting ahead of the
story. During this time I became more and more obsessed with the
threat of being left behind. My parents bought the Hal Lindsey books.
I read them. I was certain that the rapture was going to happen at any
moment. If I was home alone and the rest of the family was late, I
would panic, sure that the rapture had happened and that I was going
to have to face the mobile guillotines if I wanted to be saved then.
It would be too late for the "easy" way.

I prayed every night. I accepted Jesus into my heart over and over,
but it never "took" because I was convinced that one was not saved
until one walked, and so I did not feel anything because I knew what I
really had to do. But walking scared me more than the rapture did,
apparently, because I could not make myself do it.

I think I must have been about 13 when my parents invited some of the
church ladies over to our house for the express purpose of saving me,
or giving me the "push" that I obviously "needed," or something. This
part of the story I really don't like to talk about, because it was
embarrassing to have to tell these ladies that yes I believed all that
you just read out of the Bible but no I hadn't walked yet. It was a
revival week, I think, or maybe it was just a Sunday afternoon--we
went to church Sunday mornings and Sunday evenings, every week.
Whatever day it was, there was church that night, and it was
understood that I would be walking.

I did. It was awful. I felt like I had been exposed and betrayed by
these people who claimed to love me, and here I was in front of the
church in all my shame. An endless line of people would queue to talk
and shake hands with all who had answered the altar call when the
service ended. Kisses from perfumed church ladies. Hugs from tobacco
smoked men (we were not sure they were really saved). Everyone touched
me in some way and I did not want them touching me at all.

I won't say I wasn't relieved--I was! I would not be left behind now.
But the whole experience was so twisted and protracted that when I
went into my near-psychosis in 97-98, the screaming voices in my head
eventually morphed into church ladies and preachers who told me that I
had to come back to the fold. That was the extent of my conditioning,
the depth of the grooves worn into my brain by an obsessive terror
that lasted almost my whole childhood.

There was other emotional abuse too, but this represented the worst of
it. Once I was saved, then the sermons that affected me the most were
those which said we had to witness to others (yes I was way too shy to
do anything of the sort) and those which said that any lag in what
should be our constant joy as born-again Christians was our own fault
for some sin or impure thought or another. I stopped obsessing about
the rapture and started obsessing over the numerous indications of my
unworthiness.

I say I stopped talking at 15. I was starting to slip into my first
recognized bout of depression (my first unrecognized bout occurred
when I was eight). Every night I prayed for help but none came. Just
more shaming sermons that convinced me this was all my fault. I began
to despair.

By the time I was 16 I was beginning to see through all the
double-binds and circular reasoning that had been used against me my
whole life. I had begun to note that although g*d was said to answer
every prayer, he seemed not to respond to mine. The catch phrase used
to cover all cases was, "g*d always answers prayer; sometimes the
answer is 'no'", but I began to wonder about a supposedly
compassionate g*d who was apparently ignoring me while I slipped off
into silent grief and bewilderment.

I think I will stop here for now. Tell me, if you have any thoughts on
the subject, how you might suppose I might have been doing around this
time. I came home to an empty house; both of my parents were working
by then. At times the person who had molested me would be there. The
molestation itself had stopped for me. In the spring and summer we had
tremendous thunderstorms and I felt like the lightning had it in for
me personally.

Well, I survived. I will say that much. And eventually I decided that
the church's doctrine was far too small for me. But right now I am
tired.

Hi!

if you meet Buddha on the road, kill him

2012-06-11T22:04:00.001+08:00

"if you meet Buddha on the road, kill him"

That was a famous teaching from Buddhism itself. What does it mean?

There are people who owned expensive mountain bike. They also owned expensive helmet, cycling gear and almost 100 cycling magazines. But they carried their bike on a SUV. Go to some remote places, and cycling for few kilometers, and go home with SUV. Are they cyclist ? A big NO.

But there are old people who owned a very cheap bicycle. They cycling for 20 kms per day. They are the REAL cyclist.

Let's look at Christians.

There are many who went to church 3 times per week. Know the verses of the Bible by heart. They thought they knew everything about life and universe.

They even truely believe that they are going to heaven and all the others are going to hell because they experienced a feeling called "born again".

But they only love their own kind.

They dig out every other errors and mistakes from other religion and people and enjoyed exposing it. But they forgot they are the biggest jerk.

They are so arrogance because they believed they are going to heaven. So arrogant that they don't have friends and even spouse. Nobody like them.

They are not followers of Christ, they are hypocrites.

why Bible is fake

2012-06-10T23:19:00.001+08:00

If you have watched the movie Dumbo, you will be amused by how it
explained where baby came from to little kids.

It show that the angel drop down small baby to mother who asking for children.

Bible is also the same. It used lies to explain thing to people who
cannot accept reality or too stupid to accept it.

Believing in something that was written 2000 years ago by someone who
doesn't even knew that the earth orbit the sun and there was dinosaurs
is not just silly.

It was madness.

Just read the story in this blog and you will discover how all this
Bible bullshit destroyed human life.

But the greatest evidence that the Bible is fake came from Christians
themselves. Just look at how bad their character is and how silly and
evil their mind is.

Evolution - No God in the making

2012-06-10T22:52:00.001+08:00

By Carls S ~

There's another term for "intelligent design" - "Not Paying
Attention." Home schooling is the last-ditch effort to keep kids from
finding out how Nature really works. Huge blinders are required and
denial is indoctrinated. Talk about failure to evolve and adapt!

The ligne is still used by French and Swiss wa...
The ligne is still used by French and Swiss watchmakers (Photo credit:
Wikipedia)
Darwin first started thinking about evolution by noting how breeders
and plant hybridizers selected for certain traits, with results such
as beefier cattle, faster race horses, splendid flowers, larger,
tastier fruits, etc.

Humans design for purposes, but evolution is not itself designed.
Natural selection is a hit-and-miss system, with a lot of misses
strewn all along the trips, and what's left is just practical enough
to get by. Adapt or perish is usually the prime criteria. There's no
designer designing nature. And what's the "purpose" of a black widow
spider, a 17 year locust, newly-discovered crabs deep in the ocean at
poisonous vents, planet quakes on nearby planets, billions of stars?
"Choice" is not a word you would use to describe their existence.
"Chaos" would be more realistic, honest.

During the few years my brothers and I spent in parochial school, we
were taught that, "God created us, and each of us had a purpose"
(outside of the obvious eventual purpose to be with him in heaven).
"Guidance" through the school years consisted in telling us how, as
individuals, just what directions God was guiding us in making choices
according to his wishes. In other words, "God has a plan for you,"
because after all, you were specifically designed to follow that plan,
that intelligently designed purpose for us, one and all. Surely, this
is a very "romantic" and reassuring way to answer life's multiple
questions and demands - one size fits all? (Don't laugh; millions
ascribe to this.) This "explanation" is itself a construct of
imaginations, except that it is by nature, incompatible with nature,
which couldn't care less what you believe, and goes on doing what it
does; you work with it. Nature has no intelligent purpose, and we are
ALL of nature, made up of all the elements of the universe, subject to
change, circumstances, bodily limits, limitations on what we can
change for our purposes. We, too, design, procreate, make tools, and
survive through adaptation and thinking, just like most organisms. If
we didn't, we wouldn't last.

The fossil record shows us that all previous species on this earth
ultimately failed. My father made a very good living adapting and
designing large scale equipment for earth-moving equipment. If he had
a similar 99+% failure rate, his family would have starved to death;
i.e., he would have been an "Intelligent Designer." If you could
compare the corn Columbus found, eaten by native Americans, with the
corn you eat today, you would see and taste the results of manipulated
hybridization, and it becomes obvious that there is no designer behind
it doing it 'right' in the first place. As that farmer being told to
"thank God" for his abundant crops said, "You should have seen it when
God ran the place alone." The very process of human tampering is
necessary to make food more fruitful, tasty, abundant - evidence of
it's inadequacy in the first place.

So, wait just a damned minute, before you go any further. Whatever
your purpose in giving MY life a purpose is, I'm skeptical. Like a
non-trusting Pinocchio, I'm not entering your Pleasureland, lest I
become a beast of burden ass, a trained slave to no purposes than
those of others. And no one else should, either. Nature and my nature
don't work that way. Are we not the designers of our own mental lives?

Hey God, I am OK

2012-06-10T22:48:00.001+08:00

By Dano ~

Every now and then I find myself wondering if there really is a way to
communicate with whatever force that caused us to exist. The thought
that I just might accidentally stumble upon a way to ask our creator
for favors, and get answers is a reoccurring, futile mental exercise,
that I delve into on occasion. The simple answer, to which, I suspect,
has always been right in front of me all along.

Big Bang!!!
Big Bang!!! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Perhaps we are already in communication, by default with whatever
pulled the trigger for the 'Big Bang'. Maybe in that millisecond of
pure energy explosion, we became a part of whatever is, was, or ever
will be. We were preordained to evolve from slime on some prehistoric
beach, and be made of the stuff of the universe.

I keep thinking that life has been difficult for some time now and I
sure would like to hit the god lottery. I've thought and thought about
it, and even looked at the writings of those who claim to speak to the
guy who made us, but to no avail. None of them appear sane enough to
me that I would want to emulate their success. Maybe it's just that
they are so entwined in the bliss that they claim has been bestowed
upon them by the big guy in the sky, that they are willing to forsake
all rational and critical thought, and just want to wallow in the
splendor of their success.

I'm sure you know a few folks who will tell you that their faith in,
say, Bible God and Jesus, is all that matters to them. I am sure that
if I had to become as gullible as a child, as the bible recommends in
several verses of that "GOOD BOOK", and had to give up the cherished
skepticism that has served me so well these many years, that I not
only would become poor in material wealth, but my mind would
degenerate into the same disconnected, circular, credulous way
thinking that I see in all Jesus freaks and bible-thumpers. No I just
instinctively , and logically feel that whatever god is, It is above
all else, by necessity, rational.

God in my humble opinion, certainly wouldn't look like, act, or
demonstrate any of the qualities of a human male. (Maybe a female)
Humans kill each other for frivolous reasons, are jealous,
narcissistic, vain, greedy and need to be loved -- qualities that a
god would have no need to possess. The fictional "Bible-god" has all
of these deficits and more.

I'm not the first person to hope that I will be rewarded somehow for
remaining true to the belief that everything is as it should be, and
that any force powerful enough to explode everything from that
infinitesimally small speck of matter with the potential of becoming
our universe, wants no part of our attempts to trivialize our
beginning with the self relevant, pathetic, magical, mystical,
cartoonish concepts of the Bible, and its anthropomorphic, very
flawed, main character.

I'm sorry to report at this writing that life is still a mystery to
me, and the older I get, not having a clue as to what or why "It" put
us here, is starting to somehow be OK with me.

conversion from Christian to a healthy person

2012-06-10T22:45:00.001+08:00

By Joseph

My story of my conversion from Christian to Critical Thinker:

This will not be a list of the contradictions that show the
reasonability of my unbelief, but more of a personal background and
narrative.

I, like many, was raised in "christian home". Religious activity was a
formative part of our family life, going to church/youth
group/lock-ins etc. We prayed before meals and before bed time.

I converted to Christianity at the age of 15. I was part of a youth
group that had a annual meeting every year called Ascension
Convention.
This is was the solidifying follow up to a conversion experience that
preyed on my fatherless home trauma. In this meeting I was shown how
to be drunk in the holy spirit. which I know now I faked, but this is
the beginning of the damage.

The modern church, with their emphasis on entertainment and fun, is
only there to sweeten the tart cautionary tale of the gospel. Believe
or suffer.
(the medieval church wasn't entertaining teens, they were scaring them
half to death by oppressing secular ideas and threatening actions)
My oh my how the modern church has evolved.

I was totally apart, my entire basis of friends and community was not
based on what we liked to do or similar interests but instead all
interaction
was predicated on the union of belief. We believed first and then
interacted. Now, I had a lot of fun and lived a relatively un
controversial life.
Except for an average amount of friction with my mom about regular
teenage things I had good relationships.

I continued my growth in the faith by becoming a veracious reader of
Christian apologetics. I always wanted to sharpen my understanding so
I could answer the objections non christians would bring up. Even then
I was probably seeking solace in the mental gymnastics of Christian
apologetics to help seal the work I wanted so badly to be complete and
absolute. It was neither, and it would never be sealed.

I went to Europe to complete a course in biblical studies, I was asked
to leave because I objected to the manipulation i saw in the
teachings.
I had traveled a bit before and maybe wasn't so enthralled by being
away from home and just "wanting to be apart" like a lot of the
others.
One teaching was when they asked the students link arms around a
wooden cross and the teachers would pretend to be demons trying to
break through. It was hardly aggressive but certainly misleading. I
was a christian then and objected based on the inconsistent metaphor.
Traditional christian teachings would realize that a believer has no
capacity to protect jesus as well as no capacity to "save" another
person.
How powerful is this god who needs us to rally together to protect him anyways?

Fast forward over the last 8 years and I spent time touring, going to
school, working and trying to figure out my path. I thought of myself
as
a christian but was nothing like the image i had in my mind as a 15
year old. I got married, had a beautiful baby boy who is now 2.5. I
love my son.

I was in counseling for the past 2 years with a christian counselor
but she didn't really talk about faith much.
My wife and I had stopped going to church, because we were generally
perplexed by the whole thing and didn't really fit.

One day in a counseling session I had a breakthrough... I was
frustrated by lack of power of my faith to change me,
to make me into the man I wanted to be. I was thinking about the
scriptures telling me that "if you love me, you'll obey me",
I knew then I didn't love god. I contrasted then the care and love and
powerful connection I have to my son to this god I had served with so
many of my years.. or tried.
Nothing really to compare there. I saw like a flash all the
sensational moments I had claimed god at work in and found them full
of my own self deception.

The spell is broken:

i lack a belief in god or any gods. This process has been wonderful
really, I have enjoyed the rediscovery of the world with much
gratitude.
I have experienced the impact of responsibility that I formally put on
a ghost but now gladly work harder for the life I want with more
optimism and joy than ever before.

My hope is that more people with think through the contradictions of
religious belief and object without fear to the inconsistency and
reclaim our responsibility and our humanity.

Thanks for reading!
Joseph

testimony of a former UCC

2012-06-05T07:01:00.001+08:00

By Zaphod

I've been posting sporadically here on Ex-C for months, so I thought
I'd finally make a formal introduction. Like so many before me, I have
written a very long story of my loss of faith. I grew up in the Church
of Christ denomination (aka the "churches of Christ.") What mainly
sets this denomination apart from others is a lack of instrumental
music in the worship services and the belief that willful baptism by
immersion is an essential step in salvation. That last bit was
particularly awkward as a kid since it implied that even the
overwhelming majority of even my church-going friends were not saved.
When my mother referred to someone as a "Christian" or as a "member of
the church," I knew she meant someone who attended a Church of Christ.
The other denominations didn't count as "Christians." I think they're
loosening up a bit on that last point, but it was how we were raised.
I didn't question Christianity a whole lot as a kid. I was baptized at
age 11 because I didn't want to go to hell. Any doubts I may have had
were usually confined to questioning the peculiarities of our
particular branch of Christianity. I do remember one Wednesday night
service when I'd been asked to give that night's lesson, as the
baptized youth were occasionally invited to do, I stood in front of
those people and told them of a recent struggle I'd had with my faith,
but I'd decided that God must exist because Jesus had said, "In my
father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told
you," and I trusted Jesus. (It made sense at the time.) I also
specifically remember telling these people that I'd also decided to
accept the Gospel for my own sanity -- I just couldn't handle the idea
of a world without God. One little old lady came up and told me how
much she'd enjoyed my lesson, but I remember feeling surprised because
I really didn't think I'd done a very good job of justifying my faith.
That was about the extent of my questioning of my faith in general. I
always hated talking about baptism and musical instruments with my
friends. These issues made my church "weird" compared to the others.
(For those interested, baptism was required because of the way we read
Acts 2:38, and musical instruments were not used because there was no
biblical record of their use in worship in the first-century church.)
I took my faith seriously in my youth. I moved away for college and
joined up with the student group at the biggest Church of Christ in
town. My entire social life revolved around church. Didn't hang out
with classmates, and even had little interaction with guys in my dorm.
The summers of my freshman and sophomore years I went on mission trips
to Ukraine to bring Jesus to the former communists, and to finally put
my foreign language skills to use. I ended up flunking out of college
my junior year just because I've taken longer than most people to grow
up, but I got a local job and stayed in that college town.
Shortly after flunking out, I talked a young teen into being baptized.
I took that event as a sign from God and decided I would become a
missionary. Our church there ran a missionary training program that
consisted of one semester of full-time bible study followed by an
18-month apprenticeship overseas. It was during this bible study that
I really came to realize that the bible was not literally true. I
remember the specific incident. We were doing a comparative study of
the gospels, and I saw something that I had never noticed before. It
was one of those things that make you ask, "How is it possible that
I've never noticed this?" It was the story of Jesus going ape-shit in
the temple and wrecking the money-changers' tables. There's a HUGE
discrepancy between the way John tells the story and… whichever other
gospel tells it, but it's not one you'd really notice when the story's
read to you out of context. John's gospel puts this incident at the
beginning of Jesus' ministry, but the other gospel portrays this as an
incident at the end of his ministry, the week of his crucifixion. This
was huge for me. At this point in my life I was OK with the fact that
Genesis might just be a non-literal, poetic allegory about creation,
but this Jesus rampage story was something else entirely to me. John's
gospel was a book of history. This wasn't about two witnesses with
different viewing angles getting different parts of the same event.
This was a change in the timeline, a rewrite. This had happened in the
editing room. I was beginning to realize that the gospels probably
tell us as much fact about Jesus as the movie "Tombstone" does about
Wyatt Earp.
So I finished my bible study and told everyone I was going to go
overseas. Long story short, I kept dragging my feet until the day a
roommate of mine told about his summer mission trip to Kenya, and how
one man had lost his children because his family objected to his
conversion from Islam to Christianity. I decided I wasn't certain
enough in my faith to rip a family apart, and I dropped the idea of
becoming a missionary.
I was probably about 22 when I decided missionary life was not for me.
At 24, after six years in this town attending the same church, I came
out of the closet as a homosexual. That journey is a whole book unto
itself. Friendships did wither about that time, but maybe my sexuality
wasn't as big a deal as it seemed since I was in my sixth year living
in a college town and my friends had mostly graduated and moved away
by then. After coming out, I stopped going to church altogether for a
few months. I remember that I read The Case for Christ in those days
and was disappointed by it. It was at a time when I was trying
desperately to cling to my faith, but Strobel sounded to me like a
lawyer questioning his own client on the stand. I was not impressed at
the questions he was lobbing at his interviewees. I still wasn't quite
ready to give up on God, though. After a few churchless months I
landed at the town's gay-friendly church, a United Church of Christ
(similar name, but completely different denomination).
It was during this time of attending church that two things happened
that were the final nails in the coffin of my Christianity. First,
internet prayer requests started to become a big thing, at least in my
inbox. You've likely seen 'em. "Little Betty Sue in Tuscaloosa is
seven and has brain cancer. Imagine what would happen if 3.7 zillion
Christians prayed for her healing!" I realized that I wasn't
comfortable with the fact that Betty Sue, an American who is a day's
drive from St. Jude's, would be getting even more preferential
treatment because she was born into a society that worshipped the
"right" god and had electronic access to other worshippers of the
right god, none of which was available to a seven-year-old girl with
brain cancer in an Amazonian jungle.
Second, I found the book Why Christianity Must Change Or Die by John
Spong. (Well, I say now that this was the final nail in the coffin,
but it's been weeks since I wrote the previous paragraph and now I'm
not entirely certain that this is what I was originally talking about.
It'll do, though.) Spong is a retired Episcopal bishop who in this
book makes the case for a non-theistic version of Christianity. I
don't think he ever used the term "atheistic" to describe his outlook.
He says that Christians have to acknowledge the reality that we live
in a world where Darwin and Einstein have been shown to be right, that
there is no afterlife, that God may not actually be an intelligent
agent, and, most heretical of all, that Jesus was not born of a virgin
and today is still dead. Finally I had found a form of Christianity
that was consistent with the world around me. It allowed me to attend
church with a clean conscience for another few months, but eventually
my work schedule changed in a way that interfered and I quit going
again. I've been calling myself a deist or an agnostic for eight or
ten years now. Though it can be depressing and disorienting at first,
the most beautiful thing I have ever discovered is that life is empty
and meaningless. It's beautiful and liberating because it means that I
can go out there and find out what life means to me, and not worry
about fitting my life into a plan laid out by a bronze-age author who
didn't even know the earth orbits the sun.
Today I find myself in the awkward position of living with my parents
as I return to school to finish the degree I didn't finish nearly
twenty years ago. I've been here for just over two years. I have told
my folks I am a deist and I went to church with them with some
regularity for close to a year after I moved in. A couple of different
sermons over the past six months have pissed me off so much that I
have quit going. However things are especially awkward because my dad
is an elder in the church, a formal position of leadership. I'm not
sure how much their church friends have figured out about me, but some
in the church might argue based on scripture that my dad should be
disqualified from that post for having a son who is an apostate and an
unrepetant homosexual. I'd feel bad for potentially taking away this
post because it's the highest honor our sect can bestow on a layman.
I'm trying to walk a balance and live my life without screwing up
everyone else's as a result. Right now, though, I don't go to church
with them and they don't hassle me about it, even though I know it
disappoints them. We all still love each other, but I'm really looking
forward to transferring to an out-of-town four-year university.