Sent in by Arthur I was forced to go to a catholic grammar school where we attended mass every weekday morning and also attended as a class on Sundays. Teachers were all nuns who weren’t very well educated and it was obvious that most didn’t choose the job because they liked children. We spent lots of time learning about all the sins we shouldn’t commit and the penalties we would face for committing them if we died before we were able to confess them to a priest. As I remember, we could go to hell for purposely missing mass on Sunday or a holy day. And eating meat on Friday was also a sin that could send you to hell. In the ‘60s the pope decided it was OK to eat meat on Friday after hundreds of years of prohibition. I’ll bet that really pissed off all those people who went to hell for doing it. Of course, it was also possible to murder someone and go to heaven if you were sorry for your sin and made a ‘good’ confession. I particularly remember a couple things the nuns told us kids. O

Sent in by Roland 'Never wishing to throw the baby out with the bathwater', I have yet to do so and won't -ever. I am part iconoclast and part theist, ExChristian to be sure, -not that it was my original intention nor have I chosen to be, -but the 'icon of Christianity' that I came to know should not have been created in the first place. I am not particularly sorry for breaking that which should never have been made in the first place (hence 'iconoclast'). I did not start 'the lie', -I only learned of it and am more than willing to post what I have learned as a result... both about the lie and, more importantly the truth (as I know and/or understand it). My 'theism' stems from (my) love... being loved and loving... (extremely difficult and private to articulate and/or explain...) of life, nature, learning, etc., etc., etc... the list is practically endless... suffice it to say that without 'love' one can not live rightly, nor under

Sent in by Brian Back in 2004 I left the Christian Faith after I found out that in reality there is no such thing as a personal and loving God who guides and directs our paths. However, according to these Right Winged Extremist Nuts, it's my fault that my faith did not work. I have grown to hate Christianity with a purple passion, and here is an example of why I have grown to hate Christianity here in the past four years. This is a constant reminder of why I have no desire to return to the cult known as the Christian faith. Just today when I went out to eat breakfast with my parents (Who are ultra conservative Christians) my father asked my mom and I to bow our heads, and say the blessing before we eat. I had stopped this practice four years ago after I left Christianity, of course. Now days when I am around my family I usually just sit there real quietly and let them pray over their food like they always do. Apparently my father did not realize that I had stopped praying over

From Annastasia Hello everyone! I'm Annastasia, 32, and I'm having a really hard time right now. I have been raised a Christian my whole life. I never knew anything else. I've been taught that all other people who did not accept Christ were going to hell regardless of belief in a higher power or a God of a different name. I never thought I was going to have a future because every year was the "Last Days" and the "end times" were here. The fact that I went to church like a good Christian girl did not make all of my questions go away. I was and still am the problem child in my family. I am the one who has continuously questioned the validity of Christianity and the one that Satan is controlling. I am now, according to them, corrupting my own children. I have been searching and studying every aspect and opinion for the truth in religion and I cannot find it. Faith aside, it's just simply not there. Just recently it occurred to me that I really DO NOT be

Sent in by Andrew The story of my faith starts out like every story here. Born and Raised in the Roman Catholic Church From Birth. Dragged To church, but eventually "became a believer". Was "Confirmed" in the church and currently a senior in a Catholic High School. You get the picture. In elementary school, I was what you would call "a retard". This was before I was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. I stabbed myself with pencils and safety scissors. I cried nearly everyday for some stupid reason. Most of all, I wanted to die because I was tired of being made fun of. The thing was that was when my belief in Christianity was at my strongest at that time. I always participated in church, had strong beliefs in the Bible and Ten Commandments. I also had strong respect for anyone who was a priest. Once I entered high school, though, that was all about to change. During my early high school years (freshman/sophomore), my views of the Roman Catholic Church c

Sent in by Jessica As most stories go, I had been raised in a Christian household. No we weren't the stable Christian family, and we didn't attend Church every week, but we were believers, said our prayers, read our Bibles... Well, that's a lie. I didn't actually read the Bible myself until my teens. I even tried once to read it from cover to cover (Oh dear... what a dire and feeble attempt I made... three pages in, I gave up.) I gave my life to Jesus quite young, around the age of nine or ten, blindly, and I can't recall why or how it came about exactly, but I put it down to living with Christians and witnessing people doing the act. Monkey see monkey do, right? I was a 'hardcore' Christian over the past few years, on the flipside of a messy divorce between my parents, and I was fully immersed in the message of the Bible. I did this partly to support my blubbering mother, who clung to her religion like she had nothing else to live for. We attended ALPHA cou

The Trying Years Sent in by Jerry The Trying Years Where to begin? Even as young as 5, I have never taken to Christianity. I was an outstanding academic pupil at the earliest age. That also got me into trouble with my religious mother. You see an inquisitive mind wants to know things that a zealous black American Pentecostal mother from rural Arkansas doesn't want it knowing. I started reading fantasy books and comics as young as kindergarten. I loved reading stories and was fascinated by the most elementary knowledge from other cultures. I devoured National Geographic, Time, Newsweek, etc... It was only when I entered early elementary classes that my mother noticed I took more to comics, fantasy books, sci fi, mysteries, and mythology than I did to the Bible. She would actually come into my room and snatch my Norse mythology tales from my hands to replace it with a Sunday School book. I found Bible stories boring and the Bible silly. It just didn't appeal, interest, or make s

Sent in by Mike I'm 21 years old and was brought up in a Christian home. My mom, dad, sister, grandma's, aunts, uncles, EVERYONE I LOVE... are all Christian. YET, it still isn’t enough to influence me to believe. I have always been very truthful with myself and was told to be a leader when I was a young child. I would ask myself even at an early age, "How does one become a leader when you must follow the bible? Isn't that a contradiction?" I made my own decisions growing up, I never smoked weed; I never drank; I didn’t follow the crowd like everyone else. I didn’t do these things because I believed in god. Rather, I believed in doing what I felt was right in my heart and brain. I find it funny how most of the people who are Christians are ones who where the followers all along -- they smoked the weed, they drank, they "sinned," and now they believe in Jesus. Why? Because to me it’s nothing but a quick fix, an easy solution to their problems, an supposed

Sent in by Brooke So my dad's wife is unfortunately one of those Christians who adamantly deny every shred of evidence against Christianity or any favorable information about other religions. She would likely ignore the fact that Paganism doesn't involve demons and witchcraft, and that Satanists don't actually believe in Satan (let alone worship him)... because it would completely contradict her entire worldview. She would instead take pains to explain why YOU are wrong, citing the negative spiritual feelings she gets from those religions and how God "told her" during prayer that they were evil and demonic. She actually thinks that my seizures were caused by demons, and even appears to believe that the only reason why my medication is working is because I'm mentally making it work and therefore driving the demons out of my brain with the medicine's placebo effect. She didn't actually say that, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's the explanati

Sent in by Carol My upbringing occurred in the 1950's and sixties and I was schooled in the mainstream religion of the Catholic Church. My mother was an extremely abusive person. However, the nuns often said that if a person was a Catholic who participated in communion and confession, who went to Church on Sundays and did not eat meat on Fridays, they would be saved. However the nuns also insinuated that my father, who was one of the best people on the planet, would not be able to enter heaven, as he was an agnostic. Even at the age of seven this made no sense to me. I could not accept that my father would be left in limbo or purgatory because he looked at the world from a more scientific point of view than the Catholics that I knew. By the time that I was in my teens, my life had become very problematic. A great deal of what happened to me involved my mother's methods of discipline. It has taken me decades to realize that just because the things she did to me were labeled &quo

Sent in by Jackie A couple of days ago, in the middle of the thread about integrity of the Christian community, somebody posted an interesting question that I couldn't wait to jump all over. He asked "Atheists... do you have a purpose?" I must have hit cancel instead of publish because my comment never went on the thread. So, I figured it would make a better discussion topic instead. My response to this question goes something like this: By purpose, if you mean divine, then of course not, because we don't believe in the divine. If you mean responsibility, then yes. We don't need motivation to do the right thing. We don't have to have a carrot dangling in front of us. (And by carrot, you could interpret that to be heaven, spiritual gifts, blah, blah...) Sometimes I get quite an ego and like to think that I have more ethics and morals in my little atheist pinky finger than most Christians do. I don't have an ulterior motive to be friends with someone.

Sent in by Justin It’s been a long, strange and incredible journey for me over the past year or so on the spiritual path. I guess it started when I began working on the fellowshipping.org website. I wanted to make it easier for Christians to connect with each other, but I also wanted to get the message of the gospel out to as many people as I could. I still believed in Hell at the time, and I couldn’t bear the thought of anyone going there (not just friends and family, but anyone). Around that time, I started a blog and in one of my blog entries I challenged myself to pray for 2 hours a day for a week. I accepted the challenge. During all of that praying, the topic of Hell kept coming up and one morning I woke up with a feeling that I should do some research on the topic. I googled Hell and a bunch of links jumped out at me claiming that Hell was not real or didn’t exist. I thought that was too good to be true, until I actually started reading some of the websites. I ended up r