Sent in by Joseph You remember Cypher? The traitor from the movie called The Matrix? There was a moment in the film when Cypher tells Neo..."Who oh why didn't I take the BLUE pill". Neo laughs at first...and then he becomes quiet...because he was silently wishing the same thing" Remember that moment in the film? Well, I had my Cypher "I wish I took the blue pill" moment today...of all days Christmas. I ruined my parent's Christmas Day and I feel very guilty. I've been harboring doubts about the existence of God for a very long time and today...I felt I had to express my feelings. I had to let them know what I felt...and now I feel guilty. I love my parents very much...but too much faith in religion and all belief involved and I had it. I had to tell them what I thought was the truth. The truth is, from my perspective...God does NOT exist. I feel guilty because I told them this on Christmas Day. Am I wrong for saying this to them? Especially on a day...

Sent in by Gabe I broke free from Christian fundamentalism in April 2006. I was a third year student at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY. This seminary is considered by many to be the intellectual hub of evangelical seminaries. The president of the seminary, Dr. Albert Mohler, has been called "the leading intellectual voice for evangelicals in America." He has been a frequent guest on Larry King Live, debating controversial topics such as gay marriage, abortion, religious tolerance, etc. Dr. William Dembski also teaches at the seminary, who is widely considered the world's leading proponent of Intelligent Design. Dr. Dembski was my professor in the fall semester of 2005. But with one year left to complete a Masters of Divinity in Theology, I could no longer ignore the questions that were piling up in my mind. My questions and doubts troubled me to the point that I simply could no longer preach and teach something that I wasn't sure if belie...

Sent in by Amy For those of you that may not know, Jim Bob Duggar is the Arkansas man whose primary claim to fame is that he has managed to father 17 children, at last count (or the last time I cared about counting…). He has also served in politics at a local level and his platform is primarily built on the total abolition of abortion. (How fitting!) Anyway, I like to credit Jim Bob and his lifestyle, broadcast for the entire world to see on the Discovery Health Channel , for my leaving religion altogether. His lifestyle is of course dictated by his fundamentalist view of the Bible, from which he and his wife have extrapolated that it is their duty to fill the world with mini-Duggars, dressed in a weird combination of fashions from the early to mid 1980’s and Little House on the Prairie . But enough about them. How did Jim Bob facilitate my complete and total apostasy from Christianity? First let me share that I was raised by nice and well-meaning parents. Their conversion to e...

Sent in by Korinne I was raised in a secular household, and never had more than background input from religion. I was always encouraged to think deeply and rationally, and ended up studying science at university. While at uni, I met some Xians, who invited me over for a chat which ended in a massive discussion about everything under the sun - the reliability of the bible, the reality of god, morals, homosexuality, all that. They were very patient and non-judgmental. We had a really open and honest discussion, but I was still unconvinced. I stayed in touch, though, and eventually went to church and had what I felt was a supernatural experience. I tingled, I felt elated, I "gave my life to Christ". I still had questions but I suspended my disbelief and threw myself into Xianity completely, alienating myself from all my gay and feminist friends, eating meat again, talking about demons and angels, and adopting quite a superior attitude - all this was encouraged on the basis t...

From Marie I grew up in a Christian Fundamentalist home, where the Bible was law and nobody questioned its authority. As a child we would watch the "Those Who Are Left Behind" type propaganda movies, and I was left with a deep fear of the so-called "End Times." I would never dream about my wedding day, having kids, or anything else most kids dream about, out of fear that I would be found "not diligently waiting with a lamp full of oil when the groom returns." I believed that it was pointless to plan ahead, as we are living in the End Times, and I would probably never get married anyway. As I grew older a new fear took its place. I was taught that God loved us so much that He sent Jesus to die for our sins. Great. Since I was saved I had nothing to worry about. Not! Enter the fear of grieving the Holy Spirit. To this day I have no idea what that means, but it is terrifying. Constantly walking on eggshells. Checking your thoughts all the time. Never dar...

Sent in by Gloria Having dismissed the former fairy tale Now standing on my own I find myself searching still For a system of belief Somewhere to direct my spirit In connection with others With souls of compassion, understanding, Acceptance, and good will. What I got from religion before Was not the answers To life's tough questions Nor hope for eternal life, I received connection, direction For love and giving Until the rules and condemnation And exclusion of So many good souls Pushed me away. It became harder and harder To find a like-minded "Christian" because I found that I am not one at all. But I do still have a need To connect somewhere Beyond myself With mankind and life And death and Something universal, Something much greater Than myself. And the Bible holds No answers for me, The church has grown cold, Yet my spirit is still reaching For me to find something To give it direction Beyond my own life Again.

Sent in by Steven G I got an e-mail a bit ago, asking me the above question regarding my change of marge after so many years a devoted Christian. Here is the bulk of my reply, which expounds upon the concepts of theism, atheism and agnosticism. Well, it all started when I began deliberating hell more completely. It was always a vague notion which church leaders purposely ignored quite a bit, or when speaking of it, did so in a non-descriptive, passive way. They would almost never preach the descriptive passages which depict agony and torment. So, during a certain phase of my life, I became very serious about studying the Bible with exegesis of various passages, and what I came to be immersed with unsettled me (to say the least!). I realized that multiplied billions of people were going to be sent to an unending torture chamber: The "Lake of Fire," like an immense bowl of lava, wherein resurrected, damned souls will flop about screaming and smoking and weeping without end...

Sent in by Wayne I can remember being sent to church as a kid. Not any specific denomination, mind you. I think it was just convenient for my folks to cart me off for a few hours every Sunday. I'd been to Protestant, Baptist, Evangelical, Lutheran and even to a few Catholic services (too much of a workout for me, however). I didn't really start seeing the cracks in the wall until one Sunday at a Baptist church just south of Seattle. I had been shipped off to this church for almost a year at this point, so I knew the routines pretty well - an hour of Sunday School and an hour of the "full service". At the regular services, there were always new families coming and going. It wasn't odd to see new faces in the pews every week... and then it happened. A black family came to church one Sunday (I'm saying BLACK because I don't know if they were "African-American, Haitian, or something else, so please try not to let a word get anybody in a tizzy). They came...

Sent in by Janet I was raised a catholic and had quite a strict catholic upbringing. I doubted as a child, but always told myself that despite the fact nothing really made sense to me (the huge contradictions in the bible and the fact that god is supposed to be all loving and power yet there is clearly so much suffering in the world), I was not ever supposed to understand god's plan. My first major doubts happened when I learned about evolution at the age of 16. The idea of evolution came as a bit of a shock to me, and I really was on the edge of losing my faith for a while, but in my mind I resolved the situation by accepting evolution as part of god's design. Evolution was just an easy way for Him to do what He wanted to do. Much later, at the age of 21, my faith finally gave way, while studying the genetics of receptors while at university. I was looking at the tiny genetic differences in receptors across species. It occurred to me that the single nucleotide changes within t...

Sent in by Jason From the first day I was able to be away from home as a newborn child, I attended church. My parents are Christians, and my mother’s parents are Christians and they believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. The vast majority of friends I ever had up until college were other kids that went to church with me. Growing up, we were taught that it was best to marry another Christian, so I did. Though we both lived pretty loosely at the time of our initial meeting, my wife and I never lost hold of the faith and traditions instilled within us. Upon marrying, my wife and I both made concerted efforts to try to live a more godly life and seemed to succeed at doing so. We have had four children (the oldest being nearly 9 years old) and have raised them the same way we were, attending church, and obeying the rules and regulations set forth by the infallible Bible give to us by the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God. As we were likewise taught, we have warned our chi...

Sent in by Joshua Religion literally made me sick. In order to fully understand what I mean by this, it is necessary to go back to before I even became a Christian. I had always been raised in church and taught by my parents to fear God and all. I went to church every Sunday and did everything that a good "Christian" was supposed to do. I even walked the isle as a child to be saved. Well, to make a long story short, I was not "saved" when I was a kid and walked the isle. When I was a teenager, I went through some trying times and had several illnesses, ultimately culminating in having surgery. This whole time friends of my mother prayed for me and my recovery. I even received a prayer letter from her friends' church. I decided that I should go and visit there. Well, we ended up joining that church and I became very active in the youth group there. Not long after joining this church, I went to an evangelism crusade and, while there, became convinced tha...

Sent in by G Up until a few years ago, I was heavily involved in “the church.” In college, I got involved with a very small storefront church that focused primarily on college age people. It was there that I was exposed to the Charismatic “gifts” of the spirit and such. It was also where my life started to get twisted. I didn’t associate with anyone other than those I went to church with. Even other Christians were not to be associated with as everyone was going to hell but us. And when we DID get to know people outside the church, it was strictly for the purpose of getting them to become believers and then to attend our church. We weren’t interested in getting to actually know anyone for the sake of developing real friendships, but only as “trophies.” As time went on, we actually began to see how messed up we were and realized that we needed to be more “in the world” if we were going to have any impact for “The Kingdom.” So we began to read much more widely and broadened our outlook. ...

Sent in by Laurie In 2000 I became a born again Christian, I read the bible, I went to church, I listened to Christian music, I guess you could say I "lived" the Christian life. And I thought that all my Christian friends were such great people, so loving and caring and understanding. But then I really found out how wonderful those so called "Christian" friends were. You see I was gay and when I came out of the closet those friends sure turned in a hurry. They were sure quick to point out that now I was going to hell, that I had turned my back on God and the church and as long as I was gay I couldn't know all the blessings God had in store for me. They even convinced me to go through one of those ex-gay classes at my church and for a short while I did and was convinced that I was straight. But in the the year or more since I convinced myself I was straight I started questioning God and the bible. Why was it that certain things in the bible were wrong while ...

Sent in by Midwest Atheist I was raised as a Lutheran. I was a very committed believer and went to church almost every Sunday. I was confirmed in the church and gave a lot of money as a child, for which the church was more than willing to freely provide the donation envelopes. When I went to college, I began to doubt my faith. Over the course of two years, I went from a stringent believer to a person willing to call myself an atheist. This was not something I woke up one day and just decided to do. It was a process of learning about the Bible: exploring the different contradictions and incorrect history that it contains. I began to see that there is no good reason to believe that the entire Bible is the inspired, inerrant words of a god. And after much reading and contemplation, I realized that if I didn't believe in certain sections of the Bible, than I needed to question what I really did believe. I needed good reasons to back up my beliefs, and I discovered that there are no goo...

Sent in by Jennifer When I was three, my mom placed a brass crucifix in my room. I had no idea what it was at that time, but I was petrified by it. It was the scariest thing I had ever seen at that point in my life. I was forced to attended Catholic school until I was eleven. I remember being in church at the age of 6 and thinking that something just wasn’t right. I thought everyone looked as if they were in a trance when reciting the Apostle’s Creed. It was scary. I also thought that the whole drinking the blood and eating the body was so ritualistic and creepy. I knew even at this young age, that my only “church,” was outside. When I was a teenager I was drawn to Wicca, but eventually stopped practicing that because I just could not believe that there were invisible people in the sky. Instead, I believed in an energy that resides within us all. I never knew there was a name for what I was, but I recently found out that I have always been a Pantheist. Pantheism is a spirit...

Sent in by Andre For years I was in bondage by Christianity — a slave to the church. For years I was pimped financially and otherwise. I was brainwashed into thinking that it is wrong to find women beautiful, that it is wrong to listen to music that didn't have the words "god" "Jesus" "lord" or "worship" in every other sentence. Then one day in the summer of 1998 I woke up to realize that life is too short to have my life dictated by a book that repeatedly contradicts itself. There are better ways to spend a Sunday afternoon in than some boring church service being told that I'm going to hell because I get more excited by a football game than the so-called word of god. And guess what? Contrary to popular Christian belief, I'm happier now than I was as a Christian.

Sent in by Ricky W. This is a somewhat concise testimonial about logic and morality, and my journey to atheism from Christianity. Firstly, I should mention that I love animals. I'm a vegetarian, in fact. Now actually - much like with atheists, there is usually a backlash against a person who even mentions that he or she is a vegetarian. As soon as that admission is made, defensive questions like, "So you think I'm immoral?" or "Why do you hate humans so much?" pop up. But I'm sure that people here will be less reactive and merely listen to how my thinking process has unfolded. So let's begin. The reason I'm writing this is that many Christians and other religious people question people's ability to act morally if they don't have a personal God who hands down rules from on high. They think that if there is no God telling you what is right and wrong, that you will have an "anything goes" attitude, and not care about anyone ...

Sent in by Sharon Christianity cut me off from the world. It still cuts me off from the world. Though I have escaped Christianity's control, it is not so easy to escape Christianity's influence. It’s so hard to write about the ways in which it affected me and affects me still. I talk and write in a kind of code, because of the influence of Christianity. My past is so riddled with trauma caused by Christianity that to feel safe telling my story, I have to speak and write in a kind of code devoid of feeling and missing great amounts of detail and description. Religion might have been okay in my life if I hadn’t been inundated with it to the point that life became unbearable. I’m thankful for dialectical behavior therapy, one of the most important tools in my deconversion process. Dialectical behavior therapy has helped me to dispense with judgment and has added balance to my life. Christianity taught me that dressing nice and looking pretty was vain. Now that I’ve escaped Christi...

Sent in by Billybee I was born (I'm 54) into a family where both my mom and dad were alcoholics. My parents' generation was highly tolerant of heavy drinking and dysfunction. Because they were so poorly equipped to raise well adjusted children, they sent their kids to parochial school in the hope that the fear tactics of Catholic nuns would offset their lack of control over our behavior. The result was the same as throwing a wool blanket over a burning tire. The flames of my bad behavior appeared to be in check, but in reality, something dark and stinky was smoldering under the cover. I followed my folks' footsteps into a lifestyle of hard drinking and yet maintaining a reasonably respectable social facade'. The religion was never pressed past the point of it's practical usefulness, but the seed of its terror was fermenting just below my boozed out consciousness. Two identities; NO WAITING! Beer chuggin' , coke snortin', acid droppin'...

Sent in by Anya When I contemplate my journey through Christianity, I’m reminded of that old Rod Steward song that goes, “If I listened long enough to you, I’d find a way to believe that it’s all true.” More than anything in the world, I wish I could sincerely believe in Jesus or God, but at this point in time, intellectually and logically, there is no reason to believe. I grew up in a household of lapsed Catholics. They taught me how to pray and we went to church occasionally, but my parents warned that the Bible wasn’t meant to be taken literally. My mom also used to dabble in astrology and even consulted psychics on occasion. Even though I lacked solid religious structure, I always wanted God to be a close part of my life. Before tests and competitions I would pray to the Almighty to help me win. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. There were times when I experienced such amazing coincidences that I was sure I was getting signs from the Almighty. In high school I had a boy...