Sent in by Kyle I was raised in confusion. My mother, a devoted Southern Baptist, demanded that I attend church services every Wednesday night. On the weekends; however, I lived with my father, a devoted Southerner. Although some might think that these two worlds could peacefully coincide, nothing is farther from the truth. Monday through Friday I was a squeaky clean little boy. I didn't curse, I used my manners. The weekends were a different story. At my fathers house, I could (and did) curse excessively; I could drink if I wanted; It was pretty much anything goes. Church was never optional but devotion was. I never had faith and I still don't. That is until I was saved. After a screening of the overdramatized bullshit cake of "The Passion of the Christ", I asked the lord Jesus to come into my life. Finally, my life had direction! I didn't have a care in the world because Jesus would take care of it. It was a wonderful and magical feeling and I le...

Sent in by Jenni I was raised in your average moderate Christian home. My parents, who are nondenominational Christians, brought me up to believe in Jesus Christ, but left me up for my own interpretation of the Bible. We never attended church regularly, as they didn't agree with many of the beliefs and values of fundamentalist Christians. On times when we did attend a church service, I was left in a youth group room, where I was told that Jesus Christ was coming soon, and we'd better prepare immediately for his return. I usually never understood what the youth pastors were ever talking about. As I grew older, I started getting more interested in the Bible. There was no outside pressure do so, just my own curiosity. I believed in evolution, and since the Bible contradicted it, I was confused whether or not to take the Bible literally. I had a belief in god, but not a good knowledge of my faith. One day in middle school, I befriended a girl who rode my bus. Her name was Jackie, a...

Sent in by Amy I used to be a devout practicing Christian. It didn't take long before I realized that Christians are basically no different than anyone who isn't a Christian. People are still just people no matter what. The problem that I personally found in Christianity was that the people I had in my life who claimed Christianity took it to a whole different level. I found my life being controlled and manipulated all "in the name of God," and the pastor made decisions that directed how my life went while saying that he had been ordained by God to do so and that I would be going against the Lord if I refused to comply. It wasn't too long before I escaped that torturous environment. Now I'm out here on my own, and I've never felt so lonely. I stand here, wishing I could have the good things about Christianity in my life but not believing I am strong enough to chance the bad stuff. Walking into a new church is like walking on a field of land mines. Y...

From Brother Jeff I wrote the following in 2003 for posting to my original religionisbullshit.com website. I am sharing it again now in an attempt to relate what happened to me when I pulled a successful site off the web and suffered a reconversion to my former beliefs. Thankfully I recovered and am now seeking to mend any broken bridges that occurred as a result of that time period. I have not ever kept the fact that I have Bipolar Disorder a secret. I have openly acknowledged it on this site on numerous occasions. I was diagnosed with this mood disorder, also known as Manic-Depressive illness, in February of 1998, but the illness has affected me from the age of ten, with the symptoms becoming markedly worse and very troublesome in my teens, and the affliction continues to cause many problems in my life now, at age 37. Bipolar Disorder has a strong genetic component to it, but in my particular case, my story regarding it really begins during my birth. I was born in November of 1965....

By xrayman Most of my life I have been very superstitious. Just the thought of an upcoming Friday the 13th made me very anxious. Anything with the number 13 made me very nervous. I would avoid black cats, walking under ladders, and of course a broken mirror caused me great distress. I had lucky numbers and unlucky numbers. The same was true for colors. Along with all my superstitions I also suffered from extreme obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) which is superstition gone mad. OCD is manifested by many ridiculous rituals. I used to tap each door knob I walked by seven times and if I didn’t feel I did it right I had to do it again. My shoes had to be placed a certain way, my shirts had to hang in the same direction. I had to rinse my hair a certain way or I would have to do it again. With the obsessive compulsive disorder I became a prisoner to my rituals. They controlled my life. With OCD one gets this irrational belief it they don’t perform their daily rituals somethin...

Sent in by Nick My first doubts began when I was 8 or 9, wondering why I never saw the god I was learning about in Sunday School, while he seemed to put in so many appearances in biblical times. Was he really watching our every action from up there in the sky and jotting it all down to be used against us on Judgment Day? Though I was "confirmed" at the age of 18, mainly to please my parents, I was never a religious person, and Christianity never formed a big part of my life, until my 8-month-old daughter died. I received kind, moral support from my Seventh Day Adventist neighbors and this period in my life was the closest I ever got to becoming involved in church activities. But I gradually drifted away, mainly over the requirement to literally believe everything contained in the Bible, though much, obviously, stretched one's imagination. So my doubts grew, though to be quite honest, I really didn't give it all that much thought, nevertheless, I guess you could call m...

By writerdd of Skepchick.com …but I’m not any more. Every once in a while I get an email or a comment accusing me of being a liar, saying it’s impossible for me to once have been a “real” Christian and now to be an atheist. Of course, the people who are so sure of my history have never met me and certainly didn’t know me in my past life as a Christian. Even so, their assuredness that what I’ve said cannot possibly be true always makes me think. Reading Infidel , I’ve been made acutely aware that Muslims don’t have this problem of understanding. They are quite certain that people of their faith can fall away, and therefore have a solution to stop the apostasy from spreading: kill the infidels. Hmm. It might be the only sure-fire way to control the flock. I just finished reading an article from Psychology Today, called An Atheist in the Pulpit , by Bruce Grierson. In the article, Grierson interviews several ministers who have lost their faith for a wide range of reasons. Worth reading ...

Sent in by Sandra I was raised by my great-grandmother who during my early years taught the small children in the Mormon church we went to. I was a sickly child so she often read the lessons aloud. So I was reading "Little House on the Prairie" when I was five years old. At the age of eight I was reading from the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible. I was a voracious reader. The library was my favorite playground and curiosity my playmate. And I had questions by the bucketful. I would read the Old Testament and would feel really confused, so around the age of nine I started pestering Mama with many "Why does the Bible say...?" and "Why do we (Mormons) believe...?" Now here is the answer she gave that put my feet down the path of not accepting vague answers. She looked me square in the eyes and simply replied "I don't know." And then we would look stuff up together. Fast forward four years and I am living on my own, pregnant and dumped by ...

Sent in by Wesley When I was young, and I mean real young (five at the oldest), I had like pretty much most of us, no real concept of human mortality, meaning I did not know I was going to die one day. I mean, death was just not something I ever had to consider. No family members I had ever spent time with had died, so my parents had just not really explained the whole death thing to me. Now my parents were not really religious people. My mother was a self-confessed agnostic and non-practicing Presbyterian (by baptism), and my father was just a non-practicing Catholic (just weddings and funerals), So, I had never really had any contact with strict beliefs in god. However, my mother’s mother had started to become heavily involved in a new style of Christian church, a new American-style church led by a dashing dynamic young man with the title of “Pastor Mike.” He offered the reward of eternal life and happiness, but to achieve this status, there were rules to follow. And these rules were...

Sent in by Norm “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.” 1 Corinthians 13:11-12. When Christian acquaintances learn that I am a former fundamentalist that became an atheist, their shocked response is, “What horrible trauma did you suffer at the hands of some evil person to cause you to lose your faith?” This is expressed with an expression of a combination of fascination and horror, as if they were looking at a poisonous snake. But the only horrible thing that happened to me was a liberal education. Of course, the most horrible thing that could happen from a Christian fundamentalist's standpoint. But, I should start at the beginning of my story. My parents were moderate Christians. They occasionally attended church and never indo...