I find myself surprisingly emotional about it - I have been reading through and saving my personal messages from and to many of the wonderful members and friends I met here - the last 9 years, and especially the first few would have been horrendous without you all.

I remember many of the members here who made an impact on me, and many others I may have forgotten.

First I remember @bornagainathiest. Mark you were taken from us far too early. I never got a chance to thank you for all the PM's back and forth and the advice you gave me as I struggled with how to come out to my family as an atheist.

Thank you to @Margee who was always a sweetheart and so kind and gentle.

@florduh whose words of wisdom helped me greatly in those early days and I still think of them often.

@TheRedneckProfessor whose many wonderful posts I read, always witty and quite often to the point with no BS!

To my friends, some whom I've lost contact with, others I remain in contact with, some cannot be tagged as they are no longer members, and others who have not logged in for years: @disillusioned @TABA @Joshpantera @midniterider @ag_NO_stic @DarkBishop I have enjoyed many a wonderful conversation with you all.

@duderonomy Not sure where you are these days, but I still think of you and wish you all the best.

And many others that I remember fondly - thank you for the interactions we have had over the years.

And my fellow kiwi - @Wertbag @Chilledmilk @Realist - hope you guys are doing well, hopefully you have joined the FB group or the Discord group.

@SeaJay Who struggled so much with his beliefs - I still wonder how you are doing my friend, whether you have found the answers you were looking for.

@ironhorse One of our resident Christians, always polite - we had many a good conversation.

And last but not least, @webmdave without whom none of this would have been possible. Thank you again.

As the forum nears its final hours I am reminded of the chorus of the song from Forevermore by Xandria:

"I know the rivers won't be flowing on forevermore
The wind of time blows right into my eyes
My flower withers and so do they all
Nothing lasts forevermore"

I hope to see many of you in other media platforms.

All the best

LF

I guess in this.... possibly/Probably..... last post. I would like to thank everyone. First off with. 

@webmdave

Thank you for bringing this forum into existence. I hope you take pride in the fact that you helped to change and probably save lives. The support of this group has helped generations of people. I dont know what I would have done if it weren't for ExC. Your website helped me through the absolute hardest times in my life. Thank you is not enough. But THANK YOU!! None the less. 

@Margee

You were the first person that responded to my very first post. Your kind words have been a comfort to me through the years. 

In times of turmoil in my own life. I would see you counciling to others. Or even myself at times. And your sage wisdom would always put things in perspective in related experiences in my own life. 

@TABA

I went through a time during the turmoil with my wife. After my deconversion and you kept up with me and became my most trusted friend in this group. I didnt vist this site for over a year. Bit you decided to check in on me. As well as @Krowb @Hierophant @Joshpantera and @TheRedneckProfessor ..... @Citsonga even checked on me from time to time. Maybe others. But im sorry if I forgot. 

@Casualfanboy16

I said to you in your farewell post what you have meant to me. I hope the best for you and your family. Message me anytime if ya need some ole Devil Dad advice. 

@TheRedneckProfessor I know I just tagged you twice. ......... But. You have been a very big ripple in my life. Yoir perspective on deconversion, your patience with volitile ppl like myself, and your wisdom have influenced me for the rest of my life. Im so glad I can keep in contact with you on FB. You were a gem in the community. 

@Weezer

Nah.... we didnt always agree... but you are a great guy and were a positive influence on my life. You made me think differently about my world view at times. 

Thank you.

@moxieflux66

I dont know why you haven't joined my group yet. But DO IT!!! Don't make me spam you. Lol  

I have been very fortunate to come across this group of individuals. You have all made me who I am today. I hope you all realize that. The Christians. @Edgarcito I would name others but I forgot them. Yay you stood out Ed  

Probably because I REALLY hope you get through your deconversion one day. You know it's all bullshit but wont commit.

As for me and mine. My Ex and I are still together. Split for awhile. Dated others. But we are still in love. The deconversion is what was the last straw and I hope we have overcome most of that at this time. Seems to be OK. But her faith has definitely diminished. How could it not. She was married to me.... an ordained preacher.... for ten years and then he deconverts and thinks the Bible is myth.... 

Big changes mean big headaches and big drama. 

If I had advice for one last person that sees this. 

If you are deconverting. Study! Bart Erhmann is a great source for knowledge! Among many others. 

But ease your family into the new you. Don't just thrust it on them like a nuke. They may not see it like you do. 

@walterpthefirst

Im sorry we have our disagreements. The world is a chaotic place right now and I hope you understand that I am worried about my children. Myself. And my country. Just as you are yours. And I feel differently than you. I haven't lived your life. Only my own. And I have to do what is right for us. I don't want anymore war. Since I was 20. (Now 45) my country has been fighting a war. Im tired of it and want America to focus on what is best for America.

Differences of opinion on politics shouldn't make us enemies. 

And thank you for being a big influence on me in my path. We worked together quite a bit in the lions den didnt we? Lol  

If I missed anyone. 

I apologize. But thank you all so much for your influence on my life. 

Dark Bishop

I came here 8 years ago in the most devastating period of my life. I had finally realized the bible was mostly a myth and the religious tales of an ancient people. 

I will never be able to thank the people in this forum enough for helping me through this period. 

Since then, I've kinda ran the gambit at times here. From this forum, to exchristian life, to the lions den, etc. I've debated Christians and cheered those on that were debating. 

Ive not been very active in awhile because honestly. I came to a point that I needed to focus on myself. I had weight loss surgery December before last and have lost almost 100 pounds. During that time I've tried to focus on family. My Ex wife and I, who separated, majorly as a result of my deconversion got back together. I dont know if that is the best thing at times. But this whole chain of events has even weakened her resolve in God I think. Because biblically, according to preachers around here, this shouldn't have happened. 

I doubt she will ever open her eyes enough to completely step away from the lies or even consider the evidence. But.... I can't let her go and apparently she can't let me go either.

I hate to see this community go. 

I have seen this forum help many people. And if not for this community. I dont know what would have happened to me when I deconverted. I needed the support that this community offers. 

But the time of forums like these has come to an end and I understand why it is being shut down. There are other media outlets that would be more influential. And this has become an antiquity in a way, I suppose. 

I myself have even moved to other venues and created my own. I created a group on Facebook called "From Faith to Freedom". It's been active for about a year and has about 24 member. 

I would welcome anyone here.... except Christians. To join. The reason I dont allow Christians is because of the background of the group. 

I came out publicly as a non believer. I told everyone. Wished them the best and hoped they would understand my change. 

Well, it wasn't received well. And anytime I would post something that spoke to me. I would get attacked by the believers on my profile. 

So in the best interests of everyone. I made a safe place for me to post and not offend my family and friends. 

I also want to publicly let you know what my real name is. It will be easier to join the group if you friend me first. But I must tell a tale first. 

When I deconverted, if you look to the very beginning of my posting history. I had found that there was no evidence of the exodus and the story of Moses in archeology. 

My son had come out as athiest, so I wanted to show him that there was proof. So I decided to look up archeological finds revolving around the exodus. To my horror. There was none. And that was the final straw. If the very foundations of the Bible were false. Then all of it was false. 

I guess it hit so hard for me because it was part of me. Moses is my namesake. My name is Moses Ingle. 

As far as I know. I am the only one in America with that first and last name combination. Up until now I have guarded my name because I feared some lunatic Christian trying to find me and cause harm for my posts on this site. I mean. Some of these guys are pretty extreme in their beliefs. And I'm too easy to find. But I dont want the ExChristian forums to go without me letting everyone know who I really am. 

I will never forget your influence in my life and I think you all fornhelping me on my lifes journey. I hope to see you all on discord and maybe even on my profile and Facebook group. 

I'm not gonna say this is my last post. Bc. I might need to jump in the lions den for old times sake before this forum goes. I hear there is some loon trying to use math to prove the Christian God is real. Lmao ..... ok, yeah.... how many prophets have we had in history that predicted Christ's coming based on math? And we are still here..... ok.... sure buddy. Whatever math you have doesn't prove the existence of the Christian God. 

I de-converted in college, self-proclaimed agnostic, married now 20 years with 3 kids, and just within the last couple of months... would have to say I've done a complete 180 because of a "coming to God/supernatural" experience... sort of the "born again" or "Spirit filled" experience some get when you first jump into Christianity. I find it really interesting at this point, as I wasn't expecting it like this AT ALL. I haven't read the Bible in ages, only prayed a couple times in the past couple of decades,  nor attended any church services. This was in my room in the middle of the night, saying God, if you are real, please take over [out of desperation], I'm tired of trying to control everything, manifest everything, be in charge of EVERYTHING. I was immediately filled with an indescribable warmth and love that I have *never* felt to that extreme before. I realized I have tried a lot of New Age "formulas" and self-help related things during the past couple of decades, and although I get a peaceful feeling / short-term 'healing' with yoga, reiki, and other healing modalities, this definitely is NO comparison, the New Age stuff is short-lived and brings with it unwanted fear the more I would deep-dive into it, now that I've had 25 years to reflect. For the past two MONTHS I've been in a state of "wow, I feel on-fire-for-Jesus" or "Spirit-filled" walking on air type-high. I just started reading the Bible again and listening to Christian music is actually comforting. Which I definitely wouldn't have said the past couple of decades; Christian music was very triggering before. 

I'm taking this in slow steps and re-evaluating what I pulled apart in the Bible [and I pulled a part A LOT]. I have a large binder filled with biblical contradictions, inconsistencies, atheist quotes, etc. Yet, I am interpreting things differently or what seems like, from a different perspective -- which is exciting, because I'm genuinely curious about these internal changes I'm feeling and experiencing, and at this stage truly willing to dive back in with, of all things, faith. What is great, I'm no longer afraid of it. The diving in, the examining. The living portion of living out one's faith by accepting I don't know, but am willing to go for it. 

Could this all be a self-induced delusion? I could pretend it didn't happen and wasn't real and go about everyday life without diving further in...and "back out" so-to-speak, and I could just go back to the way I was as an agnostic. But I think now, I realize no matter what it IS, it is ALL a *choice* -- atheist, agnostic, christian, buddhist, etc...it is a choice to be vulnerable to a belief/God you aren't sure is real, or you decide to move further away from what you believed because of x, y, z... and it all is a choice / series of choices. And as much as I pulled apart christianity till it was threadbare and looked nothing like what would seem like a sane reality, the choice to pull it apart in a specific way and choice to believe or not believe WAS my choice. Small choices along the way make up our lives; we lead ourselves down paths ultimately believing what we want, through filtering out certain experiences [choosing what to ignore or accept]. We often convince ourselves we have no other choice than to *be* or *believe* a certain way, when in actuality we are responsible for choosing. We have autonomy to walk ourselves in and out of belief, and that action on our part won't indicate whether something is true or not or to what degree of truth it contains. We choose to filter out certain beliefs and let other beliefs reside. We will decide over time, what degree we accept or reject the choices we have made in life. 

That is my ramblings, and my developing of, and likely not completely developed thoughts being this is the beginning of a new chapter for me. 

I didn't necessarily grow up in a fundamentally Christian household. However my mom and I would pray sometimes...and there was one point where she was reading a story to me out of the bible...it was the one about Moses. Otherwise, we never really got that deep into it...I can't remember much of what it was like when I was about the age of ten-elevenish...I remember getting a long with my mom...so there was that. Growing up, I always was kind of towing the line I guess you could say...not a full blown Christian but I was around people who were super religious. At this one school event (I was in elementary school at the time), we met this one lady (let's call her...Karen...and her husband we'll call him...Chuck for simplicity reasons)...who had this big family (which has gotten bigger with time) and at the time, she had about five or six kids. Anyway, she and her husband were VERY religious...like baptist types. She was always trying to convert my mom and I to her religion, she was very judgmental, etc. My mom was friends-ish with her and she would help keep an eye on her kids sometimes. I also remember Karen being very nutty about the shows and music she allowed her kids to watch/listen.

I remember one time, I was humming a song by the Backstreet Boys. Karen told me, "that was evil" and that she would spank me if I continued to hum it...I don't really remember the context but I remember that. My mom was not happy when she found out. She (Karen) never laid a hand on me. But that has just kind of stuck with me.

I would sometimes go to church with Karen and her family...In this church...all the women damn near dressed the same and maybe the men did too. They basically would kind of let the pastor tell them what to believe, how to live their lives, etc. It almost seemed like a cult. Only young me didn't realize this at the time. And for context, this was way before I transitioned or even learned what being transgender even was. Anyway, I went to church with them sometimes and then somebody else we knew when we later moved into this temporary housing shelter. I remember this other lady's church being a lot more friendly-ish...having a rock band and stuff. And Karen's church was stuffy...I was kinda friends with her kids...sort of...BUT not really. I remember the oldest kid...a cis boy named Dan (not real name) being very angry because he was probably ignored a lot and a lot of the younger kids got all the attention in Karen and CHuck's family. Again, they had about five or so kids at the time...and there was a couple of youngins ranging about from 5/6/7ish to about 2 or so. The girl named...Alyssa (not real name) was the second oldest and maybe a few years younger than her brother Dan. The reason i mention this as well is because it kind of brings more context of what Karen and Chuck were like to these kids as parents. Kind of strict and controlling from what I remember. Again, sorry if I am all over the place. But I promise I have a point and how religion kind of ties into it.

I remember my mom and her getting mad at me because I was wearing overalls and not presenting as my gender (which I thought was female at the time..again assigned female at birth for context) and this was some time later. I don't remember everything that happened. But I remember being forced to go upstairs and change into more "feminine" appropriate clothes...and they made a big stink about it. I was wearing like a nice collared shirt under said overalls from what I can remember, and I was comfortable. I really don't understand why they made such a big deal about my clothing. I was dressed presentable for church...and I wasn't dirty. Again, even to this day it baffles me.

I am not going to continue talking about Chuck and Karen...but I'll say they were very religious and I could almost sense their youngest kids being kind of unhappy. I remember when I made a drawing of Batman or something for the middle brothers...I remember Karen and Chuck not being very happy with me. They had expressed an interest in Batman and their kids rooms had NO DECORATIONS up at all WHICH was very sad. I still remember that to this day as well. Yeah, I never felt very comfortable being around Karen, her kids, her husband because of them being strict and religious...I didn't have words when I was younger to know why I wasn't comfortable...but nowadays I do.

-=-=-=-

Fast forward to the recent past years, my dad decides to convert into Catholicism. I think he was influenced by his then fiance at the time...but anyway...I remember being a little disturbed by it (still am) since I AM a trans man, and my dad accepted me as his son...While I can't tell him what to think or believe, I can control how I deal with it. Anyway, he has become a member of the church (was confirmed last year in this long ass drawn out ceremony around Easter time) and then before that, he was taking "classes" so he could be deemed a full member of the Catholic church. Honestly, it all seemed very cultish to me. At one point he told me they "accepted" trans people to become members of the catholic church...OF course this also has put me off of Christianity even more. 

This is a very roundabout way of me saying that since my dad has become Catholic...it has made me a bit wary around him...also he's votes republican and is a bit of a boomer sometimes. So yeah..and my relationship with my dad has always been kind of...not close...it has gotten better in recentish years...but I still feel uneasy around him sometimes, especially when he starts talking about god...praying at the table feels wrong...and even the few times I have gone to his church...I felt so freaking icky in there. But I went because I wanted to spend time with my dad and brother...usually just only at Easter or Christmas however.

Oh yeah, I should also add that my brother has drank the Kool-aid as well. He is always "praising Jesus" all the damn time...He is special needs and he doesn't really have that critical thinking skill...SO sometimes he kind of just absorbs whatever beliefs or opinions he is exposed to or around. He's also a bit homophobic but accepts me as his brother. He just doesn't have that skill to think for himself and I feel bad for him. I wish I could talk to him in a way to make him understand but with my father being Catholic now, I feel like I would get yelled out or told off. Yet my dad seems to be annoyed whenever he obsesses over God or Jesus...I don't know. It's complicated. 

And also my dad has a history of being a bit of a narc, and logic tells me I should go no contact because sometimes I don't feel good emotionally when I come home from being around my dad...but I only keep a relationship with my father because of my brother....So yeah, I am very uncomfortable when my dad starts talking about his church or religion...or even praying at the table sometimes for meals...it makes me feel icky and awkward.  Had to add that as well for more context...again, I had come out to him as a trans guy back in 2017, he didn't accept me at first...eventually came around...and he does use the right name and pronouns for me..so there is that. Again, my relationship with my father is very complicated...and not great...but better if that makes sense but makes me uncomfortable because of the Catholic bullshit...That's the best way I can word that.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

I don't know if this counts as testimony of denouncing Christianity...and my relationship with God/Jesus is very complicated. I know I can't consider myself a Christian because it has been weaponized so much. Christianity has also been used as an excuse to hate on the LGBTQ+ community (which I am apart of) and other marginalized communities. Recently, my protections against discrimination was recently stripped from my state's civil rights act for the excuse of "protecting women and children" which is complete horseshit. I bring this up because the ones that passed this bill claim to be "God fearing men" yet they use their religion to spread hate and take away human rights. It makes me sick.

So for that reason and many more...I have a complicated history with Christianity, God, and Jesus...and religions as a whole. I do try to keep an open mind...I want to believe SOMETHIng IS OUT there...but I also don't want to follow hateful ideology that is often weaponized against me...under the supposed name of God. So yeah...this is my roundabout way of saying...I'm not Christian, I don't claim to be Christian...I don't know what I am...but yeah....that's a somewhat condensed version of my story.

I wanted to share my testimony of my deconversion for all those who are either interested or are in the middle of questioning their faith. I was raised as a reformed Christian in the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA). I read through the entire bible when I was 14 and accepted Jesus Christ as my savior. Since then, Christianity had always been crucial in my life. I met my wife in college and we dated 4 years before we were married. We were devoted enough to save ourselves for married which is not exactly easy when dating for as long as we did but we made it. After college, I went to further my studies to become an eye doctor. My last year of school, COVID struck and I had a lot of time to spend reading and watching youtube videos. I stumbled on the podcast about Rhett and Link's spiritual deconstruction. A long time fan of Rhett and Link, I could tell just from watching their videos that they had some Christian undertones so I assumed that they were Christians. My curiosity got the better of me and I watched their videos. During Rhett's deconversion story, he went over the scientific evidence for macroevolution and how humans descended from the great apes. As a young earth creationist, I had rejected evolution and I figured there must have been some explanation for why the earth appeared older than it was and maybe there was an error with carbon dating. I honestly had not given it a ton of thought. Well, Rhett started going through the genetic evidence for evolution and what I learned shook me to my core. I was a microbiology major in college so I took my fair share of biochemistry and genetics. When he started to go over endogenous retroviruses and the fusion of the human 2&3rd chromosome, I had finally consented that evolution must be true. That acknowledgement opened up a whole set of questions like: did Adam and Eve really exist? If not, how did original sin occur? Was the world really "good" if there was millions of years of death, and chaos? Eventually, I finally came to terms with evolution and how it could fit in with Christianity. Only, I didn't really. Those doubts laid dormant until the release of the documentary "Shiny, Happy People." I watch how such a large sect of Christians preached the toxic purity culture, and other toxic, manipulative doctrines that are indeed found in the New Testament. These people honed in on the roles of men and women and used these doctrines for their own increase of power. How could God not protect his people in his church? How could got let church leaders abuse and manipulate people and let those people go to the gave before their transgressions come to light? What about those abusive leaders who's transgressions never came to light? Were they Christians? Are they in heaven right now? And how could Christ's church be so divided? There are thousands of different denominations and each one thinks their way is the truth. I finally decided that I was going to write down every question I had and I wasn't going to care if some of those questions were offensive to God. I decided I was going to take the red pill and see where it took me. If this was true, it should surely be evident. If truth produces light, it'll shine in the darkness right? Or is christianity more like the moon, that only reflects the light of another source. Maybe Christianity only seemed like a light but ceases to shine when the light source is extinguished. So I did write those questions down and I went about searching for the answers to those questions. I read about the history of the church (Bart Ehrman), ethical problems with Christianity (Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris), Progressive Christiany (Richard Rohr), and many others. When I started to learn about why the Jews rejected Jesus, my whole world turned upside down. If you study the old testament, you'll find that Jesus simply does not fit the description of the long awaited messiah. If you're interested in this you can look up Rabbi Tovia Singer on either Youtube or his website Outreachjudaism. He broke everything down. Some of the things he said I disagreed with but he proved from the scriptures that: there is no room in the OT for the doctrine of the trinity, there are multiple ways to be atoned with God (Repentance being the main way), the book of Matthew distorts the Old Testament Text, Paul grossly abuses Scripture as well as the author of Hebrews, Hell is not a Jewish idea, Psalm 53 is not about Jesus, and many other very valid points. This man absolutely blew my mind. No, I did not convert to Judaism. There are actually some major ethical problems with the Abrahamic God. I finally put the last nail in Christianity's coffin. I'm not coming back to this faith. I just can't make myself believe no more than I can make myself believe that Middle Earth is a real place.  My story isn't even close to over. I have a 3 year old girl and a 1 month old son. My wife is still very much in the faith and I feel like I betrayed her somehow. She would have never married me if she had known this would have happened and I don't blame her. She wants to get my son baptized and we still haven't discussed what that's going to look like. I'm currently still technically a member of my church. I still attend for my wife's sake. I haven't mentioned my shift in beliefs to my pastor or any of my church friends. I live in the bible belt where >75% of the state goes to church. All of my friends are Christians. The preaching in the pulpit about persecution because of Christianity is a joke. At least in the bible belt. Acting like being a Christian in the south can make you an outcast is such bullshit. I've never felt more alone that I am now. I feel like I'm in hiding. Like my beliefs are taboo, because they are. Anyway, if there's anyone reading this who can relate, I hope you know you're not alone. And I know I'm not alone, hence this website. Thanks for the support

I'd like to let you all know about a book that was published last month (Jan 2025) which features the stories of 21 people who have deconverted from Christianity. I am very pleased to be one of the contributors.

Apostate: Stories of Deconversion - Apocryphile Press

Matthew

As I have stated more in depth elsewhere, I was an extremely committed Christian. What I mean by that is that I took the faith seriously. So serious, I was dedicated to figuring out what God wanted and what was my duty as a believer. This was actually one of the major reasons I left Christianity. I was never so hubris to think I had all the answers, I thought everyone else did though. I would scour through CARM, GotQuestions.org, Apologetics Press, and any other Christian website out there, no matter how wacky it was (for example, Dan Corner's Evangelical Outreach). Problem was, none of these groups could agree on anything. The nature of God, what did God want, what was orthodox, what was heresy. It was such a huge mess I just became disenchanted with all of it. It occurred to me that my potential eternal fate was on the line and I did not know how to get on track. Did Jesus really teach pacifism; were we supposed to sell our goods to the poor, if so, why....what would that accomplish other than everyone is poor? That does not seem like a long term economic plan (teaser....if Jesus taught the end of the age was right around the corner, it does make sense....and the NT does teach that);  was God predestining people to hell; was there freewill. On and on it went and there were no answers, because there was no evidence to back up the claims. That is the game being played - merely make a statement and then proof-text the Bible to back up the statement. Everyone in the Christian community does it, and nobody is winning.

Through all this, I went through the various stages of deconversion: full on Calvinistic fundamentalism (eventually the idea God was jettisoning people into hell started to make me physically nauseous), Arminianism, Annihilationist, Universalist, Deist, agnostic, now atheist (technically agnostic/atheist since I cannot say I know there is no god being). The deconversion process is fairly ubiquitous in the main points, that is, Believer - then Universalist - Deist (perhaps followed by spiritual but not religious) - agnostic - atheist. Make no mistake, this process can be especially painful to go through.

When I was a through and through believer, I could not even frame what atheist were trying to say. I was taught to read the Bible one way, and as Dr. Robert M. Price would jokingly put it, "The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it." Of course I believed it only from a fundamentalist standpoint. It was all I was taught growing up. I thought liberal theology was flat out heresy, and truth be told, I never even heard of the historical-critical method until a year ago.

The process of leaving religion starts with losing fear, at least that was true for me. I spent so much time defending the Bible, God, and dogma out of a fear of hell - that is, punishment. I did not want to be punished so I toed the party line no matter how absurd it may have been. It is not until you are able to defeat your fears will you be able to start framing dogmatic stances differently. My first breakthrough was when I said I would no longer defend God's character when it came to difficulties in the Bible. I stopped trying to play the game where God was innocent of all wrong doing in every circumstance. I then decided I would be honest about how I really felt about hell, especially those who believe infants are in hell. I just could not do it anymore. I could not see how eternally punishing someone was just or fair or loving. It is not, it is terrible; and to say a being that "is love" is doing so is just ridiculous. It completely evacuates the word love of any real meaning.

These were my initial breakthroughs, after which, I realized that other people do not have the answers. They do not know the Bible, God's heart, or whatever else they are attempting to claim; they are just as lost about the nature of reality as everyone else, if not more so. I say this because at least secularist are willing to go wherever the evidence takes them. Seculars do not believe something and then attempt to rationalize it (well, this holds true if they are doing it right).

It was at this moment where I was feeling extremely tumultuous. I remember getting on my knees multiple times asking God to reveal to me what it actually meant to be a Christian. I would give anything if he would just give me one hour of his time to answer my questions and get me on the right path. As others before me at this point in the journey, my fervent prayers were met with silence. Not to deviate too much from the topic, but I find this to be a good talking point. For all the talk about how much the Christian God is so loving, and can be viewed as a father, does it not seem odd that he will not actually fulfill that role? What father, or mother, if they truly had the authority to judge their child's life would not fully explain what to believe, what to do, what not to do, and the consequences for each - in person. Why the hearsay? Why the divine hiding? If this deity is so damn concerned with what we are believing and how we are living our lives, then why not just come to everyone and lay it out. To me, any good parent would do so, and if mortals are so terribly horrible compared to this thrice Holy God, it would seem the aforementioned would be natural action this deity would take. Talk is cheap, no matter who is talking.

After the failure of any deity to show up and give me divine inspiration, I finally broke down and decided to listen to what the secular atheist had to say. I had one condition, I was not willing to listen to any atheist who had not been a former Christian. Only former believers know what it is like to be in the game and to make their way out of it. I started by visiting sites such as this. After that, I began to watch YouTube videos by atheists: Seth Andrews, Matt Dillahunty, and the like. I was obsessed with what they had to say. It was the first time I ever heard anyone actually question the existence of God in a rational manner, and it made me pause. I must have listened to 24 hours of videos before moving on to other media formats. I joined the Bart Ehrman blog and ordered a few of his books. Reading what Dr. Ehrman had to say regarding the veracity of the Bible was completely uncharted territories for me. Little by little I was able to start pivoting from a fundamentalist reading of the Bible. Again, it was not easy, I was often afraid. Afraid of being wrong, that was my primary fear. I felt as though I was opening a can of worms that cannot be put back once they were out, and if I was wrong, I was going to pay for it eternally.

Following Dr. Ehrman, I ran across the name Dr. Robert M. Price. He has a couple podcasts, The Human Bible, and The Bible Geek. I went back and downloaded every Human Bible episode I could as well as Bible Geek episodes. What an eye opening discussion from Dr. Price. I listened to all the Human Bible and  Bible Geek (there are a ton of these so I have not been through all of them yet) episodes I could download on Podcast Addict. I then ran across other names such as David Fitzgerald, Dr. Richard Carrier, and Jerry DeWitt (former Pentacostal preacher). Each with YouTube videos, audio books, and the written word which aided in breaking the spell of fundamentalism.

I also found websites ran by former believers that also helped to break the spell:

https://brucegerencser.net (was a pastor for 25 years)

https://rejectingjesus.com

https://christosophical.wordpress.com

I mention all of these names because I believe others will find value in hearing and reading what they have to say. It was these authors who helped me on my journey. There were so many times I wanted to run back to the safety net of fundamentalism, but more and more I realized, I can not go back, there is nothing to go back to. Nothing changed in the Christian community, there was still no unity. Each church believed the church across the road was going to hell. In reality, hearing these secular authors discuss the Bible was the first time I was getting an honest and frank discussion regarding the Bible. No spin doctors, just academics seeking to know and understand....you do not get that in church, you get a theologically loaded discussion with an endpoint in mind.

As I mentioned before, the journey is wrought with self doubt and fear. Each breakthrough is a major victory because it is so difficult to get there. My advice would be to keep learning - keep listening and keep reading. Over time, the dogmatic beliefs you once held will start to loosen, little by little. At first it is terrifying, but as your skepticism grows, you will look back and be astounded at the ridiculous notions you once believed. Do not get me wrong, every now and then I am blindsided by my own mind and wonder if I have this all wrong and will be eternal BBQ; well, if that is the case, then so be it. I did my best to figure out the truth and if I end up eternally punished, it is the deity's fault I am there (this is a discussion for another time - long story short, the Christian God only has himself to blame for the sin in the world [not that I believe this is a true story, but merely speaking to the logical conclusions you would have to draw from biblical narratives]).

Looking back, I am not really sure when I started on the journey towards atheism, but it was relatively recent, only within the past year and a half. I can say this, if you stick through it, it can be liberating. No longer the guilt, the shame, the sense of worthlessness, but it can also be troubling. I had to come to terms that this is probably the only life I have to live. Once I go, I likely will never see my son again, I will never experience pleasure, or pain, or love, or a sunset, or all of these aspects of our human existence. That was a tough pill to swallow, but I got through. I gave other religions a cursory look to get over my anxiety regarding death, but none of them made any sense either, and eventually I abandoned the whole notion. All I can say is this, I made peace with the idea that this is probably my only life to live. How I did it, I am not exactly sure, it was not one single thing that brought me peace about it, it was a myriad of thoughts; again, this would be a whole other conversation. Perhaps another time when I am able to put thoughts to words.

Everyone on this site is at a different point on the path. I happened to be on the super highway to atheism, but for others, it takes years to find chinks in the armor and expose them. Make no mistake, I am still educating myself and re-framing Christianity. I am currently listening to The Case Against the Case for Christ by Dr. Robert M. Price and On the Historicity of Jesus by Dr. Richard Carrier.

Never hesitate to reach out to me if you are questioning and are stuck on the path. I may have some words of wisdom to impart (or at least I have some resources you should look at) because I have been there, and likely I know what it is like to be where you are. I hope this post helps some people. I am grateful for the fact this website exist and there are others on here who have helped me escape the death grip of religion.

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“Could we with ink the oceans fill / and were the skies of parchment made”

I was raised mostly by a single mother, predeceased, who was highly manipulative and verbally, emotionally, and physically abusive. However, she could also be spoiling, smothering and overprotective. To put it in perspective, I later found that she was planning on driving off a pier with me in the backseat in the 4th grade. I basically went through the last three years of high school between her place and granny's, mom kicking me out some 30-odd times in circular screaming matches, culminating in disowning me the night of my high school graduation. Barring only a few of the relatives’ places I stayed at, privacy seemed like far fetched luxury. I’ve struggled with housing insecurity most of my life. The DCF was entangled in my vipers’ pit of a family for much of my adolescence. Mommy dearest had them send me to a troubled teen program when I was 16, but that's a whole other story. My father and I reconnected in college (unfortunately) after seeing him in supervised visits for years as a kid.

Granny was quite doting and did have a hand in teaching me some adulting skills and facilitating basic milestones, to her begrudging due credit. But through every time I stayed over, invariably, she imposed her religion on me, had on Fox News or a televangelism channel on 24/7 and slept to it as white noise, and made me read books by Glenn Beck, Bill o'Riley, and Ben Carson to her aloud. she set attending her Church of the Nazarene, service with her after Sunday school, and later youth group, as the sine qua non ("without which, nothing") condition of my staying there.

The Christmas pageant, once thrown over a week into the new year, Vacation Bible School, and competitive bible quizzing all are ideas of wholesome and edifying pastimes for “[town name] Naz”. When mom was in one of her “stable periods” enough that she allowed me to live there again – and foolishly, battered daughter that I was, her “special Paddington boy” I felt guilty and went back every time – sometimes gran would even make me attend church in exchange for paying a month of mom’s rent.

“And I Will Cling to That Old Rugged Cross”

The Church of the Nazarene is a fundamentalist protestant denomination, claiming a “Wesleyan-Holiness” tradition, but theologically they are more similar to Roman Catholicism. For example, they fabricate their social construct of god in three persons (father, son, holy spirit) and give out a closed communion during services. But they aren't as big on the formal rites, and don't answer to Rome – but rather Lenexa, Kansas. A program of ceremonies is there, but these are minimalist and rote. Nazarenes believe that all Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Heathens, Atheists, Indigenous “pagans”, occultists, etc. are going to burn in Hell for all eternity simply because Christians are the "one true faith". Those murdered during the Shoah or the Crusades are no exception, in Nazarenes’ book.

But nonetheless, these evangelical fanatics stand with israhell because they believe that ecumenical critical support to the Zionist settlers actively perpetrating a genocide and "civilizing the savages ” in Palestine will invoke the second coming of Christ faster like in Revelations chapter blah verse blah blah. nazarenes don’t care for the apartheid claim to the Levant invented by Lord Balfour that powered some of the early Zionist movements, but rather see israel as America’s biggest ally in their bloodthirsty crusade against Islam and desperate refugees created by AmeriKKKa’s carpet-bombing foreign policy. How Christ-like. Their churches typically have all the architectural and interior design choices of the homeowners' associations that their dwindling congregations make up. As far as I'm concerned, the Nazarenes are a flock of mafiosos much like the vatican.

* * *

“Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.” (Matthew 11:29 – 30 KJV)

I was 10 years old in summer of 2006 and giddy about the idea of summer camp in New Hampshire, which borders where I live. Anything to break up the endless monotony of tagging along to open houses across my state, PS2 games, and the backdrop of my screeching mom and Hep B or C stricken (I forget which) – dad separating. Gran provided this, hyping it up whenever I’d come over to her real estate office to use the computer, but did not tell me before that this was a jesus camp. (My grandmother’s alma mater, set to close at the end of this academic year, is the college whose chapel is the church I was raised in) I remember vividly that this was the summer a loose bolt caused a ceiling tile in a then-newly finished tunnel to fall and crush a woman in her car to death. I know this because when granny drove me in her realtor’s second-hand ’99 Cadillac she chose this route, reasoning there’d be less traffic since other drivers were spooked.

“Loving God, loving each other”

Arriving late, the first thing I see at the campground are the flock of resplendent little lambs gathered around a nationalist golden calf for an American flagpole, heads bowed in prayer. The place was called Windsor Hills Retreat Center. Now, I was a terribly behaved child with zero social skills and often emotionally dysregulated so I stood out and made for an easy target. I did archery, canoeing, arts and crafts. The Vacation Bible School theme for that summer was "live out loud". And to tell you the truth, the songs in chapel every night after dinner were a Spanish inquisition torture-like violation enough. I was more preoccupied with the hype train for then-upcoming Metal Gear Solid 4 (featuring the huge character upgrade to sexually-confusing-in-his-own-right cyborg twink ninja Raiden and the latest showcase of Hideo Kojima’s particular brand of crazy) than “fellowship” with the parishoners and “keep[ing] in step with the spirit” (Galatians 5:25 NIV).

I really wanted to go swimming but didn't know how, so was confined to the roped-in shore of the lake. The lifevest I had to wear (probably the only advisable safety measure stuck to at this camp) felt like a scarlett letter on my soft 10 year old chest. I resented the other campers who all seemed like Michael Phelps from my point-of-view for having learned how to swim by that age. So the swimming counselor assigned to keep me from flipping a shit and going all “Reagan MacNeil” and I were alone except for the other apathetic youths sunbathing and lifeguards stationed on shore. Already, he got very close to me already and basically cuddled me teaching me how to tread water.

He saved me from drowning once, so maybe he felt I was obligated to put out. Maybe my out-of-pocket comments in God’s house, poking holes in the Sunday school lessons, obscene references I didn’t understand to shows I overheard but wasn’t allowed to watch, and precocious interest in sex acts and positions before “getting” what they are made me such a disruptive presence… that maybe, in Nazarene doctrine, an exceptional form of reprisal discipline, sanctioned by centuries of Christian tradition, was needed so as to maintain cohesion of God’s flock and to send a message. This intimate “tutoring method” for the catechism goes back to the pre-christian bonds between Greek aristocrats and their catamite slaves.

I’d like to think we’ve “evolved” a bit since then.

Right wing moralists are not above state-sponsored child sexual assault to enforce heteronormativity and punish anything that might resemble an expression of queerness. It’s in their playbook. I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it.

“Happy the one who takes and dashes Your little ones against the rock.” (Psalm 137:9 KJV)

What triggers me so much about my molestation was how little I remember about it and how fuzzy the details are. Trauma can fuck up your memory. the powers that be will conveniently use this unreliable narrator of our traumatized brains to justify saying we’re delusional psychotics or liars, opportunists, echoing some of the most evil anti-feminist, MRA portrayals of women seeking accountability from their abusers in Hollywood or other industries, and the system that enables these monsters. because the Church of the Nazarene is a Protestant denomination, makes them innocent? Catholics are not unique. Hierarchy is key here, hierarchy is what enables a monster like Diddy or Weinstein to do what he did, that and a legion of apologists and enablers. I am forever excommunicated from CoN simply by virtue of lack of contact and the fact that I am a transgender woman. I'm paranoid for fear of reprisals and sometimes doubt that it even happened.

At some point on Thursday night before my mom picked me up and all the campers went home I was carried to staff housing, the room was nicer than a cabin. Venetian blinds. Bed made up. So I was most likely roofied. I’m pretty sure the staffer who carried and handed me off was not the same person as the swimming counselor. Was this vertigo? I just remember my vision losing all color and my head getting held down and my body bent over watching helplessly through the gaps in the ceiling fan as I was anally raped. To this day I damn near hallucinate the faint whiff of my own feces tumbling out of my vacated anus when I think back to the events of that night.

“He Touched Me”

I woke up in my bunk with the safety wristband clearing me to swim in the deep end of the lake.

There was no swimming scheduled on Friday.

in line for breakfast, the counselor went over and hugged me. Instinctively, and because I came from a fucked-up home life and could’ve used more hugs anyway, I hugged my “summer friend” back. In chapel, I took a glance at the program for next summer’s camp theme, the flying car and laser pistol year of 2007, which I would not attend: a clip art caricature of a GI holding a Tommy gun grinning around his cigar with this slogan in a faux-military stencil font : GOD’S GOT AN ARMY.

On return to my home state, gran took mom and I out for pancakes at a Bickford’s, long-demolished, much like my 10 year old asshole, much like my keep in heaven, much like any allegiance I might have had to their Christian god.

The reverend of children's ministries at that church back then and for years after showed up at my grandma's memorial service, when I still was presenting as male. Her husband, as of my last attending church, was principal of a high school (I vividly recall a guest sermon during youth group when he said that even cussing when you hurt yourself is a sin). she has since taken on the same position at a different Church of the Nazarene. Her or some other church elder I confided in about this told me I was crying wolf, and at that point, why wouldn’t they think that? Windsor Hill Retreat Center has gone through at least two directors since when I attended, one of whom (Rick Smith) conspicuously signed on in 2007, retiring in 2016. Last I heard, the Windsor Hills property is now home to Air BnBs.

In 2015, a former counselor at WH named David Johansen of Carver, MA was convicted of child molestation. He molested his plaintiff over a hundred times. While Johansen was likely around 18, give-or-take in the summer of 2006, after looking into his clueless, doe-in-the-headlights, sociopath eyes in his mugshot, I do not recall him being the swimming counselor who violated me so. Diddler Johansen looked to have a slightly larger build and bleach-blond, Vanilla Ice hair – undoubtedly dyed to cover his tracks when working at his last place of employment, the May Institute, a private academy for the high-needs disabled.

“Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not.” (1^st John 3:1 KJV)

How could anyone who survived such incomprehensible horrors see the person who molested them as their brother? Their mentor? Empathize with someone who, by their own choice and actions, is now an inhuman monster? How can anyone on Earth claim still that Satanic ritual abuse (translation: ‘80s metal bands and Dungeons and Dragons) is a thing, or cabals who kidnap babies to drink their blood exist –

when all that is truly ‘satanic’ and evil already thrives in the real world, and is upheld by the privileged, ostensibly pure Christian faith?

Much like suicide bombings committed in a jihad, and when the IDF shoots up Palestinian hospitals to advance Israel’s borders, I was molested in the name of Jesus and Christian family values. Against a target classified as subhuman as I was, any atrocity is justifiable, and all a means to an end.

“I Can Only Imagine”

The weeks after summer camp in 2006 were a blur, but I remember my behavior in 5^th grade was just incorrigible. I played a ton of ToonTown Online and Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2: Yuri’s Revenge and remember my dear aunt taking me to see Flushed Away in theaters. then-principal of my elementary school told me I had the dubious honor of being the child sent to the office more times than any other in the history of that school. I got in-school suspension for the first and only time this year. (He was so unpopular – and rode this unpopularity so well – he threw an assembly and had a pig from a local farm brought in in a stroller and kissed it.) I didn’t even have the words to articulate what was going on – saintly patient, speech-language pathologist be damned.

Everyone – school psychologist, my therapist, the DCF social workers whose service plan was LAW – wanted to blame me for how fucked-up I was and pathologize me for behavior they never once even considered having any environmental cause. (Years later I made the mistake of asking the DCF to mail me all materials relating to my family’s case. this one absolute Karen wrote in her service plan around the time my parents’ first separated saying that I have no strengths or talents except for my grades. Opening line: “[deadname] is one complex child.” whaaaat, me? Never)

* * *

I never forgot how to swim after July 2006.

Now at least there’s an explanation for why I came on too strong to the rich girls in my 7^th grade class who wore Lululemons. Why my whole concept of what it meant to be sexually attracted to someone was distorted, and why that once was all stuffed in a confusing, hormonal ball with gender-envy, romantic love and platonic affection. Why I replayed my violation for years as a masturbation fantasy, inhabiting the victim role.

I was raped in the name of Jesus. I was 10 years old. I’m done lying to myself or writing off best recollection of my truth as a delusion. I know damn well what happened to me.

This compound fracture of my soul, my fragile young sense of self splintered into a trillion atoms, all my justified hatred for Christianity and spiralling void of questions and disassociating is just immeasurable. I desperately hope not, but suspect there were other kids who grew up in this Hell church's congregation who can say "me too". The ranks of those Christianity has violated fill stadiums.

With all that said, I think we are due for a reckoning in our nation. I believe that in our lifetimes whole denominations of Christianity, Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox alike will be made to answer for their industrial-scale harboring of chomos and centuries of forced conversions. I have faith truth and reconciliation will prevail... someday.

“That all flesh may know that I the LORD have drawn forth my sword out of his sheath: it shall not return any more.” (Ezekiel 21:3 KJV)

    I was born in 1977 weighing only 2 pounds, 9 ounces, having been born three months early. The oxygen that they had given me while in the newborn ICU left me with retinal detachment, a condition called retinopathy of prematurity. Before I go any farther, I must say that I am not a pity pity me sort of guy. I have other health issues, but I don’t let them get me down. I am living!!!!!!!!!!

    My stay in the hospital was lengthy, and during that time, I had several apneic episodes during which I stopped breathing. I was discharged in March 1978. I give many thanks to my deceased mother and my aunt, both of whom watched over me as I thrived. my start was quite rocky, and because of that, my mother and my aunt both took turns staying up and watching over me in two-hour shifts to make sure I kept breathing.

    My mother discovered my blindness when I was about three months old. At the time, we had moved to an apartment that was carpeted. She would come in to take me out of my bassinet, and I would stiffen up and shake all over, totally scared to death because I didn’t see her coming.  She took me to the hospital, and test revealed that I had retinopathy of prematurity. Today, I can see light and shadow in my left eye. My right eye is artificial.

    My childhood wasn’t like any other. I came from a family of nine siblings – eight boys and one girl. One baby brother, died of crib death as it was called back then, but is now known as SIDS or sudden infant death syndrome. To keep names, private, I have decided to refer to my siblings by other names. There was myself, my sister, who I will call Ingrid, and my brother, who I will call Trent. At the time on my birth, Trent was 12 and Ingrid was six. My other siblings lived far from home.

    My mom was a strong woman. In fact, I believe she did more than she should have. She was a single mom, though, and she worked hard to make life good for us kids. She had two marriages that had gone to hell, but she was bound and determined to make life good for us. She had to be mom and dad, and yes, we got our butts paddled when we needed it. We had to be doing something drastic though in order for that to happen.

    Like all of you ex-Christians, I attended church on Sunday, and I sang, said my prayers, etc. In early summer of  1983, Mom, my big brother Trent, sister, Ingrid, and I packed and moved to Colorado. The reason was because I had a brother I knew nothing about. I found out much older that our father had an affair with another woman. I will refer to our dad as Henry. I will refer to my little brother as Paul. our stay in Denver Colorado was rocky. My father was a full-time drunk. He devoted himself to the booze and chasing other women. He did not care about us kids. My memories of daddy Henry are of him passed out on the couch or fighting with mom. Mom would beg him to play games with Paul and me, but he wouldn’t. She would beg him to take us on rides, but he wouldn’t.  Meanwhile, Paul was bounced around from Foster home to Foster home and he stayed with us on the weekends. God only knows what happened to him at those foster homes.

    I remember late one night when all Hellbrook loosen our house. I woke up to a rip roaring commotion. Dad, or if that’s what I should call him, because he was anything but, came into the room Paul and I shared, and he slammed our twin beds together, hurting Paul’s hand. At the time, Paul was 3 years of age. Mom was not happy at all. She ripped into him when he left our room. I remember it clearly to this day. The argument I heard from Paul’s and my room dragged on for hours. That was how it seemed anyway. I lied in my bed and listened as mom and dad argued in the living room. Finally, things reached a climax when Mom told dad to take his booze and his bar and shove them where the sun doesn’t shine. A couple of days later, dad picked another fight with Mom, and Ingrid took me and hid at the neighbors house. Trent was visiting his dad in Ohio. Keep in mind that I was only 5 1/2 years old when all of this took place. As we hid in the neighbors’ basement, dad took Mom down in our kitchen floor and choked her. Sometime later, Paul’s and my father in a drunken rage, called the police and tried to say that the neighbors were holding us kids hostage. I don’t know where Paul was at the time, but I was hiding with Ingrid in the neighbors basement. Meanwhile, mom was shouting in the background that dad was full of it, and that he was lying. Suddenly, the dispatcher asked dad what he tried to do to our mother, and he said that he tried to kill her. Needless to say, the cops came and arrested him.

    That night, we were supposed to go to a shelter for battered women and children, but instead, we ended up in the county poor farm. Why? Because of a discrepancy. Something happened and we were not allowed in to the shelter. The cab driver we had was extremely nice, and he told mom that she did not have to pay a thing. He drove us to a police station, where a snarky cop told him to take us to the county poor farm. Mom was hurt by this. All of her life, my grandfather told her no matter what she did, to never end up in the county poor farm, and that’s where we were headed.

    To make a long story short, we ended up in Manitou Springs, at the McLaughlin family Lodge. It was against the rules, but mom felt she had no other choice then to take Paul with us. By sheer luck, she was granted the OK. Since then, Paul was a part of our lives. He didn’t have to stay in the foster homes anymore. I could best describe the winter of 1983 as brutally hard. To start things off, my father came to visit us in Manitou Springs. He told mom that she should put water in the radiator instead of antifreeze. He said it wouldn’t hurt a thing. Mom had planned on taking us to spend Christmas in Omaha at our grandmother and grandfather‘s house. This was her parents house, not my father‘s mother‘s place. My grandpa on my dad‘s side had passed away sometime ago. I didn’t know him at all. Well, we started off on our way to grandma and grandpa’s. We reach the Kansas border and the car froze up. A police officer came sometime later and took us to a police station, where we stayed for hours.     I remember getting tired and lying down on the cold tile floor with just coats under me to keep me from freezing my butt off. Finally, a caseworker came and drove us to a hotel, where we stayed for several days until the Pinto was fixed. Needless to say, we didn’t make it to grandma and grandpa‘s place and we just had to spend Christmas with my drunken granny in Denver and listen to her breathe down our necks. I will never forget the night when she threw me out on the balcony because she was mad at me. Ingrid and Trent went to my father’s sister’s house to hang out with my cousins. Where dad was, I could only guess. He was probably at the bar, getting drunk. Mom had gone to the store or someplace, and the only ones that were there besides grandma if that’s what I should call her, were Paul and myself. We weren’t making that much noise at all. We were lying in her waterbed, talking softly, and she got mad. She made Paul stay in the room by himself and she threw me out on the cold balcony, and I stayed out there for at least a couple of minutes before she let me in, but it felt like a long time being that I was only six years old. My biggest regret is that I didn’t come out and tell Mom about what had transpired while she was gone. My reason for doing so was because grandma threatened that if I told her, I would get into big trouble. So I kept my mouth shut. Boy, do I regret it now!

    That Christmas was lousy. Oh, Paul and I got gifts, but we were not allowed to play with them. We weren’t allowed to touch them at all, and shortly after that, they disappeared.

   All my life, I was taught that the Bible says thou shoal honor thy father and thy mother. How can I honor the drunk who choked my mother, slammed us two boys beds together and Hurt Paul, lied on the neighbors, ruined our Christmas vacation, and so much more?  as I grew older, I began to have serious doubts about what I was taught.
    In early summer of 1984, when school was let out, mom had had enough, and she moved us back to the Midwest.
 

major Changes

    I prayed, and I prayed for things to get better, but it seemed that they only got worse starting when Ingrid grew distant and cold. When she turned 13 years old, she was bound and determined to do what she wanted to do. She started hanging around the wrong crowd and running wild. Mom had to chase her down and wrangle her back home. there were even times when she treated me badly.

    When I was almost 9 years old, and the summer of 1986, we took a trip to Ohio, and that’s where my big brother, who I will call darrell, entered our lives. He was a bully to state at best. He stayed with us for a while and then went back to Ohio. We moved to Indiana in the summer of 1987, and we rented a large farmhouse on the edge of a small town. Guess who moved in with us again. At the time, his wife, who I will call Carmen, was pregnant with her and Darrell‘s first child. darrell thought he could lay claims to everything I had. Even my interest came under scrutiny by king Darrell. One day and early fall, my uncle Leonard, who came to visit us from New York, gave me an old antique wind up fire alarm. It was a red bell with a disk in the center that would pop off if it got too hot. If there was a fire, this was how the alarm worked. It had a small knob that you turned on the back to wind it up.  at the time, another brother, his wife, and three kids were living with us. I will call him Lewis. I will refer to his wife as Betty. The kids, I will refer to as James, Jordan, and Kelly. At the time, Kelly was two years old. 

    Paul, James, Jordan, and I used to play without old antique fire alarm, as if it were a school bell. It wasn’t like we played with it all the time, and besides, we were having harmless fun. The closest neighbor to us was over a mile away. Yeah, the bell was quite loud when we set it off, but we were having fun. We would give it a quarter of a turn to mark the end of one make belief class and the start of another. For fire drills, we wound the thing up all the way, set it on a tree stump, and let her go.  Then we had fun racing each other down the mile long driveway. It wasn’t like we played with the bell all the time, but Darrell will say otherwise. One day, I went to look for the bell because Paul, Jordan, James, and I wanted to play.  I found the bell missing. When I asked where it was, darrell got up in my face and had a rip roaring conniption fit, telling me how I did not need that damn fire alarm by God, and that it was stupid and ignorant. Come to find out, he destroyed in his words, “the son of a bitch.’ oh, how ignorant it was for me to play with a harmless fire alarm, but sometime later, Darrell and our big brother Lewis had fun detonating a pipe bomb that Lewis built. They detonated it in the backyard and it was powerful enough to shake the house. Oh, but that fire alarm was so ignorant. Today, Darrell insisted that I wanted to set that thing off at 10:30 at night. When was I ever out that late as a child? I don’t remember when. The cardinal rule was that we were to be in the house by sundown. The only time we were out later than we should’ve been was in the company of adults, especially when school was out.

    After school was out in the summer of 1989, Mom, our family friend Byron, Paul, and I moved back to the Midwest. By then, Ingrid married her first husband, a man I will refer to as John. It felt good to get away from Darrell and his tyranny for a while, but our time of peace only lasted for what, a year and a half? I turned 13 in the winter of 1990, and I had plans to compete in the fifth grade science fair. At the time, mom, Paul, and I lived in Onawa, Iowa.

    Before I continue with the story, I must backtrack and talk about my fascination with electricity and power transformers, and where it all began. Back when I was 6 1/2, mom, Trent, Ingrid, Paul, and I lived in a mobile home on the outskirts of Sergeant Bluff. One day, Paul and I were playing in the yard. Across the road from our trailer was a power pole on top of which was an electrical transformer and some high voltage lines. The pole was base. I touched the pole and noticed that it was vibrating. That sparked my curiosity, and when I stuck my ear against the pole, I heard a telltale hum.  I was fascinated by that, and I remember running into the house, excitedly, telling mom how the pole was humming! She explained to me that it was because of the power going through the lines and transformer. Since that day, I had been interested in electricity and power transformers. I wanted to inquire more about them.    Fast-forward to 1991 I was 13 years old that spring, and I competed in the fifth grade science fair at Central Elementary, which is now defunct. My now deceased paraeducator at the time, Nancy, works hard to compile the things I needed, and thus, we busted our butts to make that project all it was. I had a nice display of electrical transformers, small ones, which were pulled from old appliances and other things. We stripped their coils of their paper insulation so they could be seen. One of my transformers had red copper coils. It looked sharp. Using a variety of resources, I wrote the following report. The text is written below:

“a transformer is a device used by power companies to increase or decrease voltage from high voltage and low amperage to low voltage and high amperage through powerlines without having to increase or decrease the size of the wires. The typical transformer consist of an iron core with two copper coils. the first copper coil, the primary coil, receives electricity from the source of power, such as a power plant. The second coil, the secondary coil, as it is called, receives an electromagnetic field from the primary coil and converts this to either higher voltage or lower voltage, depending on how many windings are in the secondary coil. The secondary coil is not connected to the primary coil. Instead, both coils sit so close to each other that one receives an electromagnetic field from the other. The two ends of the primary coil are connected to the source of power, whereas the two ends of the secondary are connected to the circuit which uses the power such as a home or an appliance. The number of turns in the secondary coil is proportional to that in the primary. If the number of turns in the secondary coil is less than the number in the primary coil. The voltage is lower. If the number of turns in the secondary coil is higher than that in the primary, the voltage is higher. If the number of turns in the secondary coil is equal to that in the primary coil, the voltage is the same.’

    I was proud when I found out my project one first place, and yes, I talked about it a lot. What boy wouldn’t? That was a big achievement for me at the time. I took the display and the report home and set them up on a card table in the bedroom I shared with my brother Paul in our mobile home. Later that summer, while I was at the Iowa brail school, attending summer school, Darrell, his wife, Carmen, and their two kids, whom I will refer to as Logan and Whitney, move back from Indiana. I don’t blame Mom for letting him and Carmen move in for a while. He was her son.  He’s just as much her son as Paul and I are. I didn’t understand though how she could put up with all the crap. I was at my wits end.

    I remember it like it was yesterday. At the time, I had been keeping audio journals and written journals. I started when I was 12 years old. I realize that life was going by faster than I wanted it to, and I wanted to capture precious moments; However, I wanted to document some of the ugly things as well because I wanted proof because some family members are such big phony liars and they will stop at nothing to discredit me and disprove me. The date was Thursday, July 4, 1991, when all hell broke loose and our trailer, which was supposed to be Mom’s, Paul’s, and my house, but Darrell thought it was his. At the time, my big brother Trent, who had himself a girlfriend at the time and an infant daughter, were going to come down to spend Fourth of July weekend with us. Mom and Carmen had gone to the store to buy some things for tacos. the only ones there at the house were Darrell, Logan, Whitney, and myself. Paul had gone off with his friend and they were out somewhere riding bikes or doing whatever. Keep in mind that all of the windows were closed and the central air conditioner was running.  If the windows had been opened, I’m pretty sure the whole neighborhood would’ve heard the way. I screamed and cried as Darrell wailed me for what seemed like hours.

    The moment mom‘s car pulled out of the driveway, Darrell started in on me about my “stupid interests’ and how that transformer project I had done was so ignorant. He cussed the people who helped me with the project and he really had a fit. Now keep in mind that his son Logan was 3 1/2 years old and his daughter Whitney was a year and a half. here, this grown man sat on our couch, belittling me about my project that I loved so much. Ignoring him, I went to the room that Paul and I shared. It was located at the end of an L-shaped hallway. I shut the door, and right now, Darrell burst through the door and chewed me out, telling me that I had no right walking away from him when he was telling me something. He then shoved me aside and grabbed my display from the card table.  I gave pursuit. ‘Wait, darrell!’ I said. ‘I worked my butt off on this thing!’ Darrell elbowed me and knocked me against the wall so hard that he knocked the wind out of me. When I told him that I was going to tell Mom, he made mockery of me as he went out the back door with my project in hand. I heard him outside as he threw my things into the back of his truck. He then came back in and started toward our living room. Seeing my opportunity, I was going toward the back door to get my things. I opened the door and just stepped out when Darrell came right up behind me, grab me by the hair of my head, pulled me back in the house, shoved me against the wall with his hand on my chest, and said, ‘don’t even think about it,’ and followed that with a vulgar slang for a particular bodily orifice and the word, ‘baby.’ That is his favorite thing to call people when he’s mad at them. They are nothing but a**hole babies.

    Hurt and angry, I called him exactly what I thought he was acting like, a spoiled pig. I then ran to the room I shared with Paul. Darrell came bursting through the door and slapped me in the head. ‘Do you want to talk back to adults some more?’ he said, and he shoved me to the floor, pin me down, and beat and beat and beat my butt for what seemed like hours. There I was, faced down, screaming, and crying as the big bully beat a tom-tom on my rear end. After the beating, he stood over me and ridiculed me for what seemed like forever.

    That winter, he, Carmen, and the kids were living in a two-story house. Mom, Paul and I went there to spend Thanksgiving. We have always been modest, and thus, we had to share one bed upstairs. The house had no heat upstairs, and thus, mom came up and slept with us two boys. We all had our clothes on for Christ sake, but Darrell thought that we were being perverted. In his warped, mind of holiness, everything we did was wrong. it was, the next morning, he came up the stairs and yanked Paul and me out of bed. He then told us in a quiet voice us to keep from waking our mother up that we were too old to sleep with mommy, and we were acting like weirdos. I got it the worse.

    Darrell claims to be a Christian, but he is so hell-bent on making others lives miserable. He will preach to me about not judging others, but he will sit in judgment of others. This is the type of man he is. If you are Mexican, black, or LGBTQ, look out because the walls are coming down.  I am neither of these things, but I am not going to ridicule somebody who is. I have Mexican friends. There is nothing wrong with being Hispanic. There is nothing wrong with being black. I was raised that being gay is unacceptable according to the Bible. However, I am not going to worry about who is gay, and who isn’t. If, indeed, there is a maker, I leave it up to the maker to decide.

To make a long story short, it got worse as I got older. in 2018, my and darrell, we’re having a heated argument about me, and to see what he would say, Mom said she knew something about me. Right away, Darrell asked the assumptive question if I were gay. It couldn’t have been anything else. It couldn’t have been the question of me having money, finding a good girl to marry, whatever. It had to be the first thing that he has constantly worrying about and griping about. “what, he’s gay?’

    After our mother’s untimely death in 2021, I decided once and for all to distance myself from my brother and his teachings. The reason for this was because he said something very crude to me. We were in an argument, and he said to me, “Mom‘s not here, and you can’t prove it one way or the other. Can ya?’

    Darrell wasn’t the only reason why I have decided to walk away from religion, but there are other things as well. One of these is the whole notion that I don’t have the right to be angry when somebody is backing me into a corner and wailing away on me? I don’t buy it. I’m supposed to turn the other cheek and let somebody beat on me? Since when? Why is it OK for David to throw a stone at Goliath but I have to turn the other cheek? I don’t buy it. Then, there is the whole thing with hell fire and all that nonsense. I had a preacher tell me that a baby who had not sent at all and who had only spent a month outside. The womb could be roasting in a place called hell to this very day. That made me think of my infant brother who died of SIDS. another preacher, having not received enough in the offering plate, thought it was best to rip the congregation to shreds, saying ‘Looks like a lot of people aren’t being all they could be in the army of God on this Sunday morning.’ There are other things that I just don’t get either. For instance, the Bible, or at least our version, states that we are hellbound if we masturbate; however there is ultrasound imagery of babies doing it in utero. Not to gross anybody out, but I  have fond memories of myself as a one year-old baby boy in the middle of the living room floor humping with both fists between my legs and a hot load of poop, or as I referred to it when I was around 2 years of age, ‘gurr,’ in the seat of my diaper, lol. So how and why is it so taboo when babies do it? Not to gross people out, but every now and then, I relive these early toddler memories and use them as a coping outlet for dealing with the fact that I am bowel incontinent and must wear diapers. I feel completely innocent when I am all alone in the privacy of my own home and I am doing my thing. Why is this a hell-worthy sin when I am not thinking a single nasty thought, but instead, reliving the very moments during which I was overjoyed as a baby boy?

    The other thing I don’t buy is that we are not supposed to find things that satisfy us continuously. We cannot reach for new Heights. We cannot have anything else. We have to have nothing at all because that is continual satisfaction. Some will even preach that having any earthly possessions is utterly evil and wrong. Again, I don’t buy this. There are many many reasons why I have stepped away from all religion. I will never be mean or spiteful toward anyone else, but I am not a part of any cult. my brother Darrell wants told me that if somebody is gay, well, in his eyes, they are automatically deemed pedophiles. Says who since win? That is jumping the gun. This is another slap in the face, and I don’t buy it. I have friends who are gay, and they speak out against pedophilia. They think children should be entitled to their own innocence. They think that anyone who touches a child should be hurt severely. So how can all gays be pedophiles?  That would be like someone saying all Kentuckians are incestial or all people who come from Waco Texas must be like David Koresh. How about this question all Mormons are like Warren Jeffs? Now that is an unfair statement. How can somebody preach about judging other people and then stand up and speak in judgment of people themselves? I just don’t get it. I found peace when I walked away and struck out on my own, declaring myself my own man for the first time ever, a single independent individual not bound by any indoctrination, domination, etc. I am who I am and I will always be. I don’t set out to hurt others, I don’t hate, I am compassionate, and I stand for what is right. If somebody else is being hurt by another individual, I will speak loudly. I stand for the underdog in our society. I stand for the kid who has hurt by somebody bigger than him or her. I stand for , love, truth, honesty, compassion, and everything else that is good and right in this world. Will not, however, be pushed around or bullied because of my beliefs, fascinations, etc. Like I said, in the beginning of this text, I am living  despite everything that has been thrown at me over the years. I must close by saying I love you all.  

The next big ah ha moment was when my oldest child tried to tell me she heard from god about a minor decision that needed to be made. I jolted back in my chair and barked at her to not say that to me. Took a deep breath and explained that if god told her something it was for *her* and not me. And again...I realized my words were in total contrast to most of scripture. I got on YouTube,fairly convinced whatever I found wasn’t going to stand up to thirty years of my religion and four year degree in bible college. I was wrong. It fell like a house of cards,the damn broke and I couldn’t take back what I had learned. The most important fact to me was finding out when the gospels were written in relation to the books supposedly written by Paul. I watched documentaries,Dawkins,Richard Carrier. Part of me felt like I was experiencing a death of someone I knew for my whole life. Part of me was so relived that hell isn’t real,that satan and demons aren’t real. That conditional love is damaging and destructive and wrong. I threw it all in the trash and started listening to “secular” music for the first time in my life. What was amazing to me at first was how god didn’t send me dreams or people or anything to woo me back. I realized that wasn’t going to happen. It’s only been six months since all this happened,so I still wonder about a lot of things. But I am So Much Happier now. I can be me and find out who that is and has been all this time. 

I was once happy, strong, vibrant, full of life and hope. Fearless I walked forwards in life. I had a faith (non-religious) that yielded results. 

Then, along came Christianity. From that moment, my life was ripped apart

Like a vicious bird of prey, it gripped me in it's talons and tore me to pieces. It's sweet sounding song lulled me. Destroyed my life. A state of learned helplessness. Overcome with fear and guilt. A downward spiral. Isn't it the logical conclusion for all who believe they are helpless, powerless, filthy, unworthy beings? 

Mom and Dad, I have something I have been wanting to say to the both of you. As you may have noticed, I have been more withdrawn than I used to be. I have been less talkative and I have been struggling a lot lately with some things.

I want to let you know that before I say what I need to say, I appreciate you as parents. I love you and that won't change. I also appreciate all the time and effort you put into raising me into the person I am today.

I understand your worries and concerns you have about the direction my life is going in. I understand that I'm not always the best at articulating what I need to say, but please listen to me for a moment:

I need space to grow. Whether it be with making friends and socializing with others like me, working towards independence, and other similar things. One day, I will have to leave the nest. I am 21 now; and would like to be respected not only as an individual, but also as an adult with their own wants, needs, and desires.

I want to be able to go out and make friends with people I can relate to. People I can connect with, and share both common interests and common experiences with, since it's difficult to find people like me in this area, and my options feel very limited. I would like to go out for the day and meet others and make new connections.

Furthermore, on leaving the nest, while I have made no official plans to move out quite yet, I have checked for available apartments in a variety of areas. Unfortunately with high rent prices, it may not be entirely possible to live alone. So in order for me to succeed in that area, I may have to find a roommate or two to cut down on rent and other living expenses, and help around the place whenever possible.

So, to conclude this, I would like to thank you again for raising me up from birth, all the dedication you have put into making me the man I am today, and the man I will continue to be in years to come as I mature and grow as a person. I appreciate you more than you could ever know. However, I need to spread my wings a little before I fly the nest. And I would appreciate it if I could have a little more freedom to meet with others similar to me, to be more independent, and work towards a future where I can be the best version of me that I can be. And while I would like more independence, I still need your help, and wouldn't like to be thrown to the wolves, so to speak.

Before I end it off, I just want to say: Thank you for being there for me, because it is with your love and support that I will be able to soar".

 So yeah hopefully that's good! I've been working on it for a few days. I would also like to credit @DarkBishop and some other of my internet friends for proofreading and suggesting changes/edits. Hopefully this can be used as like a template or whatever for others struggling with kind of overbearing religious parents or similar situations. Let me know what you think in the comments!

My descent into deconversion began in my quest to help my wife believe. She had questions - lots of questions. And when my arsenal of stock answers failed to satisfy her, I realized that I needed to hit the Good Book myself and get to the bottom of this.

I was aided in my mission by the fact that when we lived overseas we attended a local foreigner church (only foreigners were allowed per government regulations - seriously, they had to check your ID and if you had only a local ID, were denied entry).  In this church every denomination was represented from all the over the world. The Church of Christ missionary ran the soundboard for the band!  (remember, my experience with CofC was they didn't allow instruments). If all these various denominations from Catholic - Presbyterian - Southern Baptist - to Church of Christ could all worship under the same roof to the same god there must be some kernel of truth - something crystal clear that in the scriptures that I could present to my wife and say "Aha! Babe - this is the TRUTH.

I kept notes during my research and the first line - being a comment after the fact:

\q I have made a serious error of judgment. I actually endeavored to read the Bible. \q

Here was my approach:

• God is omniscient
• God is omnipresent
• God is omnipotent
• God is Perfect
• None is good, save God

Based on my experience with the foreign church this got me thinking, there are so many denominations and each is absolutely convinced their interpretation of the Bible is the correct interpretation, and in some cases, the only permissible interpretation.

Growing up Southern Baptist, there are few key, undeniable points about Jesus:

• He came to save the whole world
• All who seek Him shall find rest

These points imply that anyone who hears the Word will be able to understand the Word. Nothing should be hidden. Nothing should be obscure, all should be plain.

Since Jesus = God, and he was the new covenant, then I needed to see what Jesus actually said about any matter.  I intentionally ignored Paul because, well, Paul =/= God.  Paul and the epistles would only be consulted to clarify or expand on a point. Any point of contradiction between the epistles and the Gospels must be judged in favor of the Gospels.

But again, the epistles should not need be consulted to be a "true christian" because Jesus made clear in the great commission that he/God wanted ALL to be saved, and he MUST have said what was necessary for salvation in a clear manner.

With this foundation in mind, I read the four Gospels back to back to back to back and ultimately:

10/24/2017 10:59 PM:

Just finished reading the gospels for the 4th time on this trip. Becoming even more certain that John is of no relation to the synoptic gospels. His account of betrayal, crucifixion, and resurrection are dissimilar to the synoptics.

After my first read through, several caution flags appeared because, while not necessarily outright contradictions, things were not adding up correctly.  I made copious notes and resolved to look at each point later in detail.  I also began at this point to look closely for answers to reconcile what I was reading from sites such as answersingenesis and apologetics sites.  In addition I wanted to know exactly the history of these books and establish their individual reliability.  This type of query very quickly leads to Bart Erhman.

During this time I also was devouring all I could from apologetics debates. And at first I sided with the apologists (such as William Lane Craig) in their debates, but there was something wrong - I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but something was off in their presentation.  This made me extremely uncomfortable that I couldn't quite get a grip on the wrongness of the apologists' argument, but at the same time I refused to accept the position the atheists were correct.  As I continued to watch, I found myself siding more and more with the atheists in the debates. I also finished every video I could of Bart Erhman to understand the history of the New Testament.

I also stumbled across the four horsemen of the apocalypse, who I found fascinating; especially Daniel Dennett. And from there you can guess the course of research and the ultimate outcome.  It has been a tough road deconverting as the process took a couple of years, but I can say that I've finally made peace with it and now can start truly living and trying to improve the well-being of all my fellow humans, instead of enforcing an ancient and backwards set of "divine" commands.

What resources helped you guys deconstruct? Whether it was a book, an article, online website, video, etc.. I would appreciate reliable resources 

Anything about the bible, science, psychology, etc.. Whatever helped you guys cause to be honest im having kind of a hard time and feel like im just reading random stuff here and there

Thank you all 

Edited:  6-8-2024    An updated version of this essay is available via email if you will contact me by personal message.  It has information about how much older ancient Sumerian writers very likely influenced the writer of the Biblical Genesis stories.

SEEKING TRUTH.odt

Experience 1

This was during the time i had a Gf. To keep the story short ill fast forward basically i worked with somebody who was a pastor. He and his wife are very devoted to God and have been for years. They also knew my parents because they had counseled them at before. So at some point they found out i had a gf and so did my mom. I was told that the pastors wife was very I guess you could say spiritually gifted so they would say she could hear God audibly, see demons and the devil, cast them out, and etc.. After knowing for a while that i had a gf the pastors wife contacted my mom with a word from God for me. So that same day my mother asked me to meet with her and them which i agreed to because i didnt think much of it. I dropped off my Gf at her house and headed over to meet them. What she told me terrified me and still does. She said God told her I would lose my soul if I stayed with my gf. She explained how the Devil even grabbed her and was choking her while telling her not to speak with me because he had placed a person in my life to destroy it, that person being my Gf. They said some things that were accurate, things i cant figure out how they knew. For example thay stated how my gf didnt want me to attend this meeting and how she tried to stop me while also wanting to come with me and those things were correct. Before dropping my gf off she did say “ Dont go, i have a bad feeling, let me go with you, and youre not coming back are you”? This whole experienced scared the crap out of me. I didnt want to lose my soul. Even now i think about this experience and it terrifies me because all i can think about is what if the pastors wife is right

Experience 2

Like ive mentioned i struggled so much with homosexuality to the point where i sought out deliverance. I went through multiple deliverances with people and at home watching deliverance videos. To be honest in none of those experiences did I feel anything change. I was still the same me. My thoughts were not different, my desires weren't different, i didnt feel anything coming out of me. This is why I went through so many because every time i was like this one might be different. This one might be the one that changes me. These people i went through deliverance with were experienced; they had been doing this for some time and shared many testimonies with me. Testimonies that have no explanation for them such as healings, knowing things about a person they've never met, and “ Demons' ' manifesting through people to the point where sometimes they even speak through them. These people offered to train me and at first i said yes until everything went downhill and i didnt go back to be trained for the deliverance ministry. How could these things be logically explained? One could think oh well maybe these people with Demons had a mental illness are were just schizophrenia but then its like well a lot of people are manifesting so in reality how likely is it that their all schizophrenic? During my time of being a Chrisian i watched so many pastors and prophets most working with deliverance. Their videos would show them preaching and bunches of people from the crowds would start manifesting “ Demons” to the point where like i said they would speak, act weird, even throw up sometimes. I would watch these pastors cast them out, touch people and they would fall, heal people, everybody being able to speak in tongues, and etc.. Maybe some of you have heard of these people or maybe have watched them too. Possibly you guys could shed some light on them or have an explanations for the things they do. These people are prophet lovy, isaiah saldivar, vlad savchuk, mike signorelli. 

Experience 3 

I came across this random lady i had never met before at a grocery store this was before i was deconstructing and pretty much at the start of getting saved. I was with my mom and as i was getting a cart my mom told this lady God bless you. The lady looked at me walking away and stopped me she was telling me how i was going to do something special for God and how the enemy was scared of me because what i was gonna do was gonna effect the kingdom of darkness greatly. This part i can deconstruct cause anybody can tell someone this but what affirmed it for me at the time and what i cant get passed now is at the end of all of it she goes “ Can you draw?”. I had never met her before, I hadnt mentioned that at all and i had nothing on me to tell her that. I said “ I can draw and im pretty good at it too”. Her response to that was that the Holy Spirit had shown her a person drawing and that person was me. So she prayed over my hands saying they were anointed. She then turned over to my mother and asked her a question she said “ Did you have complications giving birth?” and my mom did in fact have complications with me. The ladys response was that the reason for it was because the enemy was trying to have me not be born. Till this day i cannot explain how she knew those things having never talked to me before this. I replay it in my head trying to figure out a logical explanation for it and try to see if something gave it away but i havent gotten to a conclusion

Final thoughts 

I apologize for how long this testimony has been I’ve just been a mess and figured i would spill my thoughts out here. It still terrifies me to think im wrong if i choose non belief. It terrifies me to think there really might be a hell. It terrifies me not being sure of whats after death. It terrifies me to think when people say “ youre being deceived” that it might be true. I feel like ive read/researched ndes, history about the bible, psychology/nuerology, evolution, and yet i still feel like ive gotten no where with it. I want to know what you guys make of these “ supernatural” experiences, how you would explain them logically, what solidified yalls non belief, and what you guys read or discovered through research and study. What did you guys find through studying the bible and what really helped you deconstruct everything. Thank you all

this is going to be very long. Sorry in advance.

My childhood was… I guess “abnormal” is the kindest word. I grew up in a small, Christian-based cult. Did I know I was in a cult? No, but I knew my life was very different from other "normal" children. I envied other kids for their freedoms but also feared them. We were so different from them. 

Some of the rules we had to follow growing up were:

1. No school (homeschool only) - probably to block the voice of reason and normality from our lives. Every child in the church was homeschooled. Furthermore, we did not live in neighborhoods where perhaps we could be influenced by other children. All the twenty or so families in the church lived in secluded locations in the Oklahoma countryside.

2. No Christmas trees (pagan)

3. No magic (pagan) - including Disney movies, books with talking animals, books about dragons and fairies etc.

4. No or very limited interaction with those outside the church. We were friends with the kids in the church. They were the only kids we knew. 

5. If, God forbid, a family left the church, we could no longer interact with them. We lost several childhood friends through this.

6. Any "sin" at all, real or imagined, was handled with a switch. We would have to go to the bush outside and pick our own switch with which to be beaten. Some families froze theirs in a freezer, possibly to stiffen them for maximum pain; I'm honestly not sure why. The switching left welts for days to weeks. Some of the families were under investigation by DCF for child abuse. No one was taken away, though it probably would have been best for a few of those traumatized babies. One kid was so damaged he developed a terrible stutter. Others were silent with trauma, staring with huge, terrified eyes. One child burst out crying when his parents told him they loved him (because this was what was said to us before we were beaten- something akin to “mommy is doing this because she loves you.”). It was the saddest thing I've ever seen. This small, maybe three-year-old kid crying in terror as a response to the words, "I love you.” The adults in the room laughed like it was funny. As for myself, I learned that not crying helped the beatings not be so bad, so I took it in silence and bore my punishments without fighting back. Fighting back was pointless. I was often beaten for things I never did or things that were perceived as "wrong" but I had no idea why and I’d meant no harm when I did them. No one ever explained why I was in trouble. It was just the way it was.

7. There was no children's church or Sunday school. We were forced to sit quietly in a 2-3 hour service. We played on the floor or colored.

8. Our books were mostly Bible stories. We even had one about Sodom and Gomorrah! SODOM AND GOMORRAH, people. A fucking children's book. It's one of the most fucked up stories in the Bible! How the hell could I view a God like that as loving and safe? My poor little brother lived in terror of God turning him into salt like he does to Lot’s wife in the story. He would cry at night he was so scared. 

9. Being angry was a sin. I remember watching Mr. Rogers, who told me to hit a pillow to let my anger out. My mom told me in response that being angry was a sin and Mr. Rogers was "worldly".

10. After church, for anywhere between 3 and 5 hours, everyone stayed to "receive prayer". What this meant was a lot of people falling down, rolling around, growling, laughing hysterically, or just generally being crazy. It was like watching someone blasted on bath salts, only no drugs were involved. Sometimes there were exorcisms. I witnessed people going into trance-like seizures with evil voices coming out of their mouths. These voices made the hair on my neck stand up. I saw people screaming, writhing and foaming at the mouth. I was horrified. I will never forget the screams. These were people I’d known my whole life, by the way, people who were basically surrogate parents to me. I had been to all of their houses countless times and spent all of my free time playing with their children and immersing myself in their families. For me, a small child myself, to witness these extreme transformations in adults I trusted… it’s hard to articulate the level of trauma this caused to my psyche. 

One time in particular, I remember this incident with a member of the church named Scott, who was the father of a few of our friends. He was a very nice, funny man and all the children liked him a lot because he was the type to pull pranks and tell jokes to make us laugh. One day he "received prayer" and “demons” began to manifest out of him. It got so intense the kids were sent out of the room, but we all listened at the door as this man screamed like he was being murdered. We were scared, crying, thinking he was going to die. I was eight years old.

What I learned from these experiences was that the Devil is bigger than God. Evil is bigger than Good. And God himself is a terrifying being who destroys and kills at random, just waiting for someone to sin so he can turn them to dust (or salt lol). God was not loving. God was horrifying. This skewed image of Good and Evil messed with me my entire life and continues to this day.

Hell was also a constant shadow over my life. I have yet to shake the fear of it, even now, as a 38 year old agnostic. I asked Jesus into my heart basically every day because I was scared to be sent to hell, but I never felt like it “worked.”

I remember one time a commercial came on the radio with a joke; a guy asks God what he needs to do to get into heaven and God says something like “call this number and get your first massage free” or whatever the hell they were selling. I remember I said out loud, “I wish it was that easy to get to heaven.” My mom got upset with me and said, “It’s much easier than that! Making a call is harder than what God asks us to do!” I disagreed.

I had my first real crisis of faith when my mother began to wake up to the fact that we were in a cult and wanted us to get out. My dad didn’t think we were in a cult, so they began to fight about it constantly. For my mom, it came down to either leaving the church as a family or she would leave my dad and take us kids with her. I admire her now for this decision and the clarity of mind she managed to have despite everything, but as a 6 year old my chief concern and biggest fear was that they would get a divorce. This was the first time in my life I remember fervently praying while also knowing that God was going to do whatever he wanted, whether it would crush me or not. I realized for the first time that God literally did whatever the hell he wanted to people. People got cancer, prayed and begged for healing, and still died. People lost their belongings to fires and thefts. Good, Christian people got their lives destroyed just as often as everyone else! It was the first time I realized I couldn’t depend on God, no matter how much I begged him for help. I simply had no reassurance that he would actually help me when it came down to the wire. God was a wild card, completely unreliable. It shook my childlike faith, and I never recovered from the realization that I simply could not trust God to do what was right by me.

We started going to Christian school when I was about 9 and my mom was having trouble homeschooling all 3 of us kids. My parent’s marriage came out of the fire intact, and we left that crazy church and began going to more normal churches, but I was still steeped in fundamentalist Christianity. The Christian schools I attended were just as ridiculous as everything else I’d ever learned. I remember one of their arguments against evolution was about how the women in China used to bind their feet for thousands of years, yet all the baby girls continued to be born with normal feet. THAT was their argument about why evolution didn’t work. Sigh. 

Yet during all of this time I still fervently believed in Christianity. I just never felt like a true Christian and was worried I wasn’t really saved. Everyone always said I was supposed to be filled with God’s joy and peace when I was saved, but I never felt joyful or peaceful, so what was I doing wrong? 

When September 11th happened, I was fifteen and sure that the world was ending. I asked Jesus into my heart once again out of sheer desperation over the certainty of my upcoming demise, and this time something happened. A feeling of intense joy and peace swept through me. I felt like this was it! I’d finally “gotten it”!

I will say I did change radically and immediately. I truly fell in love with God, and I would even sing love songs to God that came on the radio. This experience convinced me for years, even up to just recently, that Christianity HAD to be real. I simply couldn’t explain the drastic change in my heart any other way. My behavior changed, my taste in music, everything. It was all about God literally overnight.

This continued on for several months until a new anxiety began to overtake me: the unforgivable sin. I had no idea what “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” was when I came across this little loaded gun of a verse during my Bible reading one day, but it bothered me to no end that there was a sin God WOULDN’T forgive, no matter how sorry you were or how much you begged for forgiveness. When I looked up the word “blasphemy” in the dictionary I deduced that it just meant bad thoughts about God. And surprise! As soon as you start trying to NOT think a bad thought about God (or anything, really), you DO! So the thought that I’d committed this unforgivable sin drove me to near hopelessness, and I started holding God at a distance again, unsure if I could really trust him to not throw me into the pits of hell the second I died. I was also bothered by the fact that I’d never been baptized, since the Bible is vague on whether or not this is a requirement for salvation, so I made a deal with God that if I was ever offered the chance, I would do it. 

Things remained this way until my second year of college. During this time (my teenage years) I was in an abusive relationship with my first boyfriend, severely depressed and self harming, and my parents also become drug addicts and alcoholics. My world was a total shit show, and God was no where to be found, as per usual. 

My little brother went to a Christian summer camp when I was 20 or 21. I was still living with my parents while attending college, and he was 17 and in high school. When my brother returned from that camp, he was a different person. He was genuinely kind, no matter what harsh words I said to him. He was happy, glowing practically! At night, when he used to play video games in his room, now I could hear him playing his guitar and singing worship songs to God instead. 

My brother’s transformation made me once again think about God and making things right with him. Obviously my brother was happier now, so why not give it a second chance? After maturing a little I no longer believed I’d committed the unpardonable sin by accident, so I had no excuses. I was miserable, my home life with my addict parents was hell on earth, and I was still in an abusive and dangerous relationship with my boyfriend. My life was shit and I needed help coping with it. 

My parents, who had returned to the cult church of my childhood at this point (but without us kids) told me about an upcoming baptism they were having. Never one to go back on my word to God, I quickly agreed to be baptized to fulfill my vow to God. 

The day of the baptism was chilly, fall weather, and it would take place at someone’s house in their pool. The water was Titanic freezing as it enveloped me. When I came up, everyone prayed for me out loud, telling me “prophecies” about my life. The supposed prophecies were all good things, and I felt my heart softening toward God again. Maybe he really did love me and care about me. Once more, the peace I’d felt when I first got saved returned to me. 

I was a Christian again. This time, I vowed, I would never slip away from God again. I was in this 100%. I was “on fire” for God and would hold nothing back from him. I wanted to do it right this time, all the way, all the days of my life.

I began going to church again and became a total fanatic. I can’t describe it any other way. I was a fanatical Christian. It consumed all my thoughts and actions. I was solely devoted to being the best Christian I could be in every single area of my life.

The only good thing that came from this time was that I was able to get out of my abusive relationship with my boyfriend because “God” gave me the strength. Though he continued to stalk me until I got married to my now-husband, I was free of him and the worst of his mind games.

My home life continued to get worse, however, but I had God to lean on now. I truly believed he was listening to me and would do what was best for me. I still couldn’t trust him 100% to help me when I really needed it, not since that realization I’d had as a child, but I devoted myself to trying to rid my mind of doubts anyway.

One day shortly after the baptism and my re-dedicating my life to Christ, I was sitting in front of my computer when out of nowhere a single thought hit me like an arrow through my heart. A crisp, bright, stunning thought: “What if none of this is true?”

A black, cold fear that I had never felt shot through my body at the mere consideration of the thought. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this thought was the beginning of the end of my faith in Christianity. It had hit some kind of crucial supporting beam in my faith, and the whole tower was doomed to collapse because of it. It took more than a decade to completely destroy the whole thing, but this thought was the catalyst that brought down Christianity in my life.

Doubts plagued my relationship with God and with other Christians after this. My Christian friends reacted to it one of two ways: they found my doubts disturbing and abandoned me, or they tried to talk me through it. My husband became one of the talkers. In fact, that’s how I fell in love with him. We would talk for hours, well into the early hours of the morning, about God and what it all meant. His faith seemed unshakeable. And therefore, he seemed safe. A safe hiding place from what I feared the most: losing God.

We married, moved to Florida, and I continued attempting to live the Christian life. In the countless sermons I sat through, the countless podcasts I listened to and the countless books I read, every Christian seemed to agree: in Christ, we have an abundant life.

But my life wasn’t abundant.

I knew it wasn’t about wealth. Prosperity gospel had never even touched me; I’d known from the beginning that Christians were supposed to suffer in this world, not get comfy in it. No, what that verse meant was that I would have an abundance of peace, joy and faith. An abundance of friendship and intimacy with God. An abundance of love from a “perfect” father in heaven. 

And yet, I was more miserable, more stressed and more burned out as a Christian than I’d ever been back in the days before my conversion. God had never delivered me from my anxiety, my depression or my doubts. In fact, he made them much worse! If he was my father, I never heard his voice or felt close to him or even felt like he cared. No father would treat his child that way, and God was supposed to be the perfect father! I was supposed to have an abundant life, but my life was in shambles constantly… and most of it was because of God.

Everything I did or stressed about, it had to do with God. The thoughts I thought (and constantly policed), the actions I did (couldn’t ever lie or run a red light or stay home from church), the choices I made (What show to watch? Who to befriend? What job to take?) it literally ALL revolved around God, and it was exhausting and depressing. I was, quite frankly, sick of it.

The biggest thing was that I was sick of being sorry and having to pray for forgiveness for normal, human things, like being pissed off in traffic or masturbating or telling a white lie to spare someone’s feelings. I was sick of ALL the policing I had to do over my thoughts and actions just to supposedly please this God who never seemed to give me the time of day in return. He demanded perfection (LITERALLY! The Bible says the exact words, “Be perfect.”) and I could never live up to it. I was burnt out. I was done. I was sick of it all. If God and I were “partners”, parent/child, husband/wife or whatever other metaphor you want to use, then I was doing 98% of the work in our relationship and God could not be bothered to meet me even halfway. Hell, he couldn’t be bothered to meet me AT ALL! No relationship could possibly survive this way! If God had been a human being, I wouldn’t have put up with his lack of effort in our relationship for even a week, let alone a lifetime! Yet here I was being expected to not only banish this frustration from my thoughts but actually convince myself God was the perfect parent and I was the one screwing it all up somehow!

I think, deep down, this is the struggle of every single Christian, but they fear putting it into words. They fear losing it all. But I guarantee, they know it’s not working. If they were given a truth potion and asked about their “abundant life” and “relationship” with God, these complaints would come tumbling out of their mouths. But the stakes are too high to admit this, even to themselves. So they go on.

Well, as for me I couldn’t go on. Not anymore. 

And I decided I wasn’t going to.

Deconstructing from your faith is a long, excruciating and oftentimes hopeless, lonely fight for your sanity. After years of deconstructing my beliefs bit by bit, the threshold of my pain had long since eclipsed my ability to endure it, and I began planning my own death. I should probably mention at this point that I’ve been diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder and have struggled with it since I was twelve. I was also in therapy during this time with a truly remarkable and amazing therapist (who did happen to be a Christian but never judged me or my honest thoughts). So, there was some mental health stuff going on that also led to this breakdown, but I ended up in the mental hospital, literally driven insane by this religion. (I am fine now, by the way, on medication and doing pretty well.)

The first thing I deconstructed was faith in the Bible. Let’s face it, there was no way on earth that it was a “perfect” and “divinely inspired” book. I’d long ago decided that the craziest stories in the Old Testament were metaphorical, but if those stories weren’t true, how could I trust that the stuff about Jesus was? How could I know if ANY of it was true? Nope, the Bible had to go.

The second thing I deconstructed was believing in hell. This was a hard won battle. It came down to a couple things. First, infinite punishment for a finite crime is simply not justifiable by any argument. Let’s take the worst person you can think of- Hitler for example. Even if you sentenced Hitler to endure the torment of EACH of the victims in the Holocaust 10 times over, a more than fair punishment for such a horrific crime, that STILL wouldn’t equal eternal punishment. Even Hitler doesn’t deserve ETERNAL torture. No one does! Why? Because we don’t live forever! Hitler’s crimes were finite. There was an end to them. Yet according to the Bible there isn’t an end to his punishment? It doesn’t make philosophical sense in any way. How can justice against any sin, even the worst I can imagine, equal being tortured forever? No rational court would ever consider such a thing! No moral human would accept it! Infinite punishment, by default, simply CANNOT be equal to a finite crime. The two concepts cancel each other out.

The second thing is, how are we going to be happy in heaven KNOWING that there are human souls (maybe some we loved on earth) being eternally, forever tortured in hell? I know I couldn’t just prance around heaven with this nightmare looming in the back of my mind. No version of me, EVER, even the sinless version in heaven, would be able to accept this as “justice.” Because it isn’t justice. It’s cruelty. It’s gross.

I refuse to believe that I am a better person than the God I serve. If I am morally superior to the God I serve, I can no longer worship that God. How can I be more merciful than God himself? And yet if hell is real I am, because I find the concept of hell repulsive and unfair. It doesn’t make any sense! I can’t worship a God who is LESS moral than me! I can’t accept a God who isn’t a better parent than me, yet I would never send my children to an eternity of torture because of something they did in their ONE lifetime on earth! Even if it was literally the worst thing anyone has ever done in the history of our planet. A finite crime will never be able justify infinite consequences for it! Never! Does this make me better than God? Then why worship him?

So hell had to go. And if there’s no hell, why do we need Jesus? Why do we need his sacrifice? 

You can see how it all crumbled very quickly from there. 

Right now I guess you could say I’m agnostic and wanting to believe in something. I’m crazy about the paranormal and listen to and read a lot of stuff about ghosts and unexplained phenomena, and I do hope there is something after death. But I don’t want religion. I don’t want to follow any rules except the rule of compassion and love for others. So that’s where I stand. I’m sorry this is so long, but writing this was really therapeutic for me even if no one reads it. 

I have joined this site not so much for support in my christian deconstruction, but about religious trauma that has been inflicted upon my family by fundamentalist "friends".  It is bizarre, extreme, and will affect myself and my children for the rest of our lives as one of my children has joined this "cult" and is now married to the girl from this fundamentalist family.   

I hope I can tell my story, warn others about the dangers of even being friends with fundamentalists, get support, and maybe find some help for the grief and overwhelming anger I feel and struggle with every minute of every day now.   

Let me know if this is ok and where I should post if it's ok.

The sect of this cult is called Open Brethren and they are pretty damn extreme.  My whole family has been damaged by them

I became an atheist in the last 2 years because of what has happened...it started the questions and then everything just fell apart.   

Thank you