sent in by David Maas I have decided to write about how I left. I was born into a Christian family. I went to a Christian school from K to 12, so I had 13 years of day in day out indoctrination. The church I was brought up in was the Christian Reform church and I was treated quite well. My family was poor and they did help us out a lot financially, so we wouldn't become homeless and go hungry. This also one of the reasons I stayed a Christian so long. My deconversion started when I was quite young. My first memory of questioning the Bible was when I was in Kindergarten. The teacher was reading to us a story about dinosaurs, and there was a line in the story the said something like "millions of years before man dinosaurs roamed the earth." Well my school taught that creation took only 6 days, so I asked, "How can this be true, if it only took 6 days to create the world?" The teacher said that she didn't know and that was that. I was always very susp...

sent in by Nvrgoingbk I can't remember a time when I didn't believe in God. I was adopted at three months old into a Catholic family and I remember watching the story of Jesus on television at Christmas time. It broke my heart that he was crucified and treated so poorly when all he did was love us. Catholic statues were common around my home as were the repetitive prayers we said every night but never understood. My parents were not particularly religious. They were what I would consider soft secularists. They believed what they believed, but they didn't force it down our throats. They were hypocrites when it served them. We didn't frequent mass too often. We attended on Christmas and Easter and there was a brief period we attended regularly, but it was short lived. Sitting through mass was agonizing for me: All of the kneeling and standing, all of the prearranged services. Still, as I said before, my family was not particularly religious, so it was easy to n...

sent in by Nicholas Brosz Logic versus religion. Thus is the concept that many people have fought and died for throughout humanity's existence. Some have fought and died for it, while far more have fought and died against it. Here is the result of my thoughts concerning the Bible and stories/miracles mentioned therein. First, one of the most logic-defying miracles appears in Joshua 10:13. "So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself on [ Or nation triumphed over ] its enemies, as it is written in the Book of Jashar. The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day." Now, in order for the sun to stand still, the earth naturally would have had to cease rotating. However, this would have caused not only gravity itself to cease, but also this would have caused worldwide temperature changes, a temporary changing of the Earth's magnetic field (causing all creatures that use said field for navigation to be thro...

sent in by Shi I don't even know where to start except to say that I am quite happy that I can see clearly now since my third eye has been restored. I no longer feel awkward, embarrassed, ashamed, uncomfortable, or guilty when I proudly and justifiable tell people that "No, I am not a believer in the program of Christianity and I don't go to church to take part in the distortion of God." Of course most think I have lost my mind when I say this, but I don't disagree because I have lost the mind that they gave me without my permission. All my life, Christianity was all I knew. I was taught that to think or believe anything else was disrespectful and devious in God's eyes. I was also told that to fellowship with anyone who believed anything different from myself would be disruptive to my soul because such people were lost and unfavorable in God's view. Never once though did anyone bring up the fact that all the images that I would see of God and/or of Jesus n...

sent in by Dan My wife and I were ultra religious up to a few years ago. If you had seen us, you would have suspected we were Amish or Mennonite (it doesn't help that we now live in Lancaster County, PA!). The women in our household wore head-coverings and I had a particular propensity toward wearing clothes that were often confused with the aforementioned religious communities. We have a LARGE family, have been home-schooling, attended church every week (some of my children and I participated in the church orchestra). At one time I aspired to the ministry and was an interim pastor for a mid-west church. Our religious "trek" took us from conservative Baptist (me) and Catholic (my wife) through the charismatic movement, evangelicalism, Reconstructionism (five-pointers, no less!), Presbyterianism and probably a few other "isms" tossed in for good measure. I was even part of a cult (Witness Lee's "local church" movement) for a year. A couple years ago...

sent in by Michelle Even as a child, I remember sitting in the pew thinking, "no thinking person would believe this stuff". As a pastor's wife, I was embarrassed to think that other's wouldn't believe the shit that I did. I pushed those thoughts down deep, because I really thought my life depended on my willingness not to think. Now I look back and see I was transferring my own disbelief onto others. Anyway, my story is much like many of you. So, I won't go into details too much. I was raised in a minister's home in the south and taught from birth fundamental evangelical hell-fire and brimstone. I was so burdened with hell...for my friends and family members...and for myself...I was never quite good enough and went to sleep at night afraid of hell. I remember my sister at age 4 or 5 asking me to pray with her because she was afraid of going to hell. Anyway, I went to a christian college, married a christian man and we went into ministry for 10 year...

sent in by Chris First off, I would like to say that I appreciate the many testimonies and stories on the site. It has given me hope and courage in the face of the trials I face daily with my decision to search for the truth as opposed to the Christian myth. Ever since I was baptised as an infant my life has been centered around the Christian religion. My mother's family is devout Catholic, which is actually quite rare in the state of Oklahoma. However, after my mother divorced my father, she decided to raise my brother and I as protestant Christians in my small, Baptist-run hometown due to her disgust with the Catholic Church's position on divorce. Everyone I knew in my hometown was a devout Christian and Church attendance was a given for just about everyone. My brother and I were thrown head first into the Christian culture during our childhood and involvement in our youth group. We started the church youth band and spent at least 5 days a week involved in some fuctio...

sent in by Kitty Everyone seems so free and liberated to get away from the oppressive Christianity. Am I the only one who had a really good time with it and am sad to leave it? My family is Christian but they are super cool and support me in anything. My Christian friends were awesome, real folks, not judgmental. I loved having a God that looked out for me and cared for me. I felt if I follow God, I would be led upon the best past for my life, and it seemed to work. I always encouraged friends to become Christian because I thought it was awesome to have a relationship with God, never because it was a job to convert them. I had amazing answered prayer experiences. I was an optimistic and cheerful, and excited for life. Christianity always seemed great for the Christians, but terrible for non-Christians. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. It should be for the whole world. But now, I am quite sad. I felt like I had a precious gift, and it has been taken from me. And I...

sent in by A I was born into a Lutheran family. My parents were both baptized Lutheran, married in a Lutheran church, and had each of their three children, of whom I was the youngest, baptized and confirmed into the Lutheran religion. I attended Sunday school and church pretty much every Sunday for the first 14 years of my life. I was in the church youth choir as well. When I was 12, we moved to another state because my dad was transferred. My father was an alcoholic, and was verbally and physically abusive to all three of us children, while my mother avoided confrontation to the point that she enabled him to get away with it. When I was a virgin, I was raped by a friend's brother. At this point in my life, at the age of 13, I renounced God. He had taken away all that I loved and let a sacred rite be stolen from me. I chose to be an agnostic, and I called on God or the devil to come take me to use. Later, I returned to Christianity at the age of 22, when I married my husband. We a...

sent in by Charmika Stewart Because I am a black American, I was born into a Christian family. I would be hardpressed to name just two other non-famous black atheists, and even the one I know is most definitely in the closet. For to be black is to be Christian in America. It's a cultural thing, I suppose, dating back to slavery. The church is a strong institution in the culture, where blacks get together and discuss life and bond, and for the longest time it was the only place that this was possible. My parents were not very religious when I was a child, attending church only about twice a month and never really mentioning God to me terribly much except when they told me it was necessary to pray. My half-sisters, however, all belonged to horrendous Christian cults that have since been disbanded. My oldest sister took me with her to church when I was fairly young, and I became a Pentacostal. My mother, rather disenchanted with the Pentacostal faith, quickly snatched me from its clut...

sent in by Matthew I am not sure where to start. I have never been creative at writing, but I will try my best. The first time I remember learning about Christianity was in a Southern Baptist church when I was about 7 or 8 years old. And I also went to my mom's friend's church (which was charismatic). They would talk about things that I could not possibly understand such as "Israelites" or "Canaanites", etc. But, when I started going to Sunday School at the Southern baptist church, they would teach me generalized things about Jesus. You know, the colorful drawings of Jesus healing someone or preaching to people. They never showed the negative side of Jesus (that wouldn't help their indoctrination process). They didn't tell me the major doctrines of Christianity (Jesus is God almighty, the trinity, the rapture, etc). They just told me that Jesus was a unique person who lived and he died for me. That was the concept I had (which was enough). ...