(from Charles Templeton's book, Farewell to God: My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith ) FOR MORE THAN TWENTY YEARS, Charles Templeton was a major figure in the church in Canada and the United States. During the 1950s, he and Billy Graham were the two most successful exponents of mass evangelism in North America. Templeton spoke nightly to stadium crowds of up to 30,000 people. However, increasing doubt about the validity of the Old Testament and the teachings of the Christian church finally brought about a crisis in his faith, and in 1957 he resigned from the ministry. In Farewell to God, Templeton speaks out about his reasons for the abandonment of his faith. In straightforward language, Templeton deals with such subjects as the Creation fable, racial prejudice in the Bible, the identity of Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus' alienation from his family, the second-class status of women in the church, the mystery of evil, the illusion that prayer works, why there is suffering and...

(Selected readings from Charles Templeton's book, Farewell to God: My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith ) In this section, Charles Templeton discusses God as represented in the Old Testament: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth..." These are perhaps the most familiar words in the history of Western civilization. They form the opening sentence in the Jewish Torah and the Christian Bible and are fundamental to both traditional Jewish and Christian beliefs. In Genesis, the first book of the Bible in a dramatic series of events spanning six days,........... They are enthralling tales and across the centuries they have made an indelible impression on countless millions of men and women. But are they history? Or are they no more than the traditions of a Middle Eastern Semitic tribe and best categorized as folklore? An unbiased reading of the biblical account will clearly show that, while some of the events described in the early books of the Old Testament ...

by Mark Twain from Fables of Man Mark Twain Papers Series University of California Press How often we are moved to admit the intelligence exhibited in both the designing and the execution of some of His works. Take the fly, for instance. The planning of the fly was an application of pure intelligence, morals not being concerned. Not one of us could have planned the fly, not one of us could have constructed him; and no one would have considered it wise to try, except under an assumed name. It is believed by some that the fly was introduced to meet a long-felt want. In the course of ages, for some reason or other, there have been millions of these persons, but out of this vast multitude there has not been one who has been willing to explain what the want was. At least satisfactorily. A few have explained that there was need of a creature to remove disease-breeding garbage; but these being then asked to explain what long-felt want the disease-breeding garbage was introduced to supply, the...

by Gary MacNutt Christianity has a basic set of beliefs. The fundamentalists all believe in the inerrancy of the Bible and all but the King James version are looked at as suspect by them. To successfully defeat them in debate, and have a chance to deconvert them, you must be armed with a good understanding of the Bible and use it to make your points with them. There is no other authority they will respect or listen to. They believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that he was born of a virgin, that he was the Messiah as foretold in the Old Testament. The combination of the following arguments clearly dismantles all of these basic beliefs and at the same time shows the Bible to be, not only errant, but to contain out right deceit. The prophecy referenced in Matthew 1:22-23 "Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the Prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which...

(author unknown) 1)If your neighbor's dog killed your child, and you had the power to chain this dog, blast him with blow torches, and the dog not die as a result, how long would you torture the dog for its terrible crime? A) One Day B) One Month C) One Year D) Eternity 2) As a loving parent, you give life to 5 children and give them free will to do as they see best. Each child goes his/her own way. One becomes a Buddhist, one becomes a follower of Islam, one becomes a Christian, one becomes a Wicca, and one believes in no religion. Only one of your children believes as you do. What would you do regarding your 4 children who do not believe the same way you do? A) I would kill them. B) I would disown them. C) I would torture them for eternity in hell. D) I would love them and accept them as they are. 3) If you had a critical message and wanted to make sure as many people as possible would get it and understand it, how would you go about it? A) I would send it in a time when there wa...

Objective Morality is a popular apologetic topic that frequently comes up on this site. Instead of continuously repeating the same things over and over, I'll attempt to briefly address the discussion here. First, I'd like to take issue with opening lines frequently taken by our "on-line, Christian evangelists." Rather than come right out and plainly state their ideas and the conclusions they have already formulated, they ask purposefully misleading questions, which in my opinion is a disingenuous tactic. It's nothing more than attempting to lay a verbal net from which to spring the actual agenda: convert the infidel. Here is an example of an exchange which motivated me to write this monologue: I'd like to ask you a question I've been kicking around in my own head for a while. Simply put, on what do you base your standard of morality? from josh Now at first glance it may appear that Josh is really looking for an answer, so, giving him the benefit of the d...

By Chad Docterman, copyright 1996 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Taken from: The Atheist Soapbox (a web-page that has now been taken down) Published by permission from the author -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Introduction Christians consider the existence of their God to be an obvious truth. This assumption is false, not only because evidence for the existence of this presumably ubiquitous yet invisible God is lacking, but because the very nature Christians attribute to this God is self-contradictory. Proving a universal negative Many Christians, as well as atheists, claim that it is impossible to prove a universal negative. For example, while we may not have evidence that unicorns or dragons exist, we cannot prove that they do not exist. Unless we have a complete knowledge of the universe, we must admit the possibility that somewhere in the universe, there might be such creatures. But ...

Lately I have been receiving polite requests to promote either a web page or a book by some author or other. I thought the following book was interesting in that it is written by an ex-minister of the gospel. Here is an excerpt: "As a recanted Christian minister, the greatest loss for me, besides the lack of fellowship with people who believed the way I once did, was not being able to hear from God through the bible. You don’t lose your faith in the church, its teachings and the fount it draws its convictions and teachings from, and then go back to it for solace and direction. Even though I rejected the church, its teachings and its book, I still very much loved God and wanted to live by the lofty message I once preached. It became my heart’s yearning to know: how do I hear from God, how do I speak to God and how do I experience the wisdom of God’s word in the vacuum my decision left?" Now, while I am not necessarily endorsing either the premise or the conclusion ...

by William F Henness There were at least 12 different people who did not recognize the risen Jesus of Nazareth, assuming he did rise. "Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And when they saw him, the worshiped him; but some doubted." (Matt. 28:16,17) The "some" could have been between two and more. But they had lived with him three and a half years, but "some" when they saw him, doubted it was really he. Why? "But their eyes were holden (restricted) that they should not recognize him." (Luke 24:16) These were two disciples on the road to Emmaus, who no doubt knew him but did not recognize him at all. Why not? "And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus." (John 20:14) This was Mary Magdalene, who was probably the closest disciple and the one who loved him most, and yet, she saw Jes...

Recently I have had the "pleasure" of being accused of attacking the world view of Christians everywhere. I was told that having this web site was a direct attack on Christianity and therefore an attack on Christians. Now this person presented this allegation in a rather indirect way, and I am not so sure that he was really aware of exactly what he was doing. In the exchanges I had with this young man, he would continually posit his positions on things as being presuppostionally true and therefore attempting to create the appearance that I was the one that held the responsibility to offer irrefutable proof to support each and every statement posted on this site. He would claim that since I was the one attacking the basic premises of Christian faith, I was the one who must present unquestionable evidence to support my observations on the weaknesses of the "faith" delivered to the saints. This is a neat trick being bandied about in Christian apologetic circles presen...

"Does anyone else find it odd that atheists are just as passionate about religion as Christians? I mean... if you don't believe, why are you so passionate? Why do you care? This question has been put to me quite a few times since starting this website, so I thought I would try and address my take on it here. Since Jesus was fond of answering questions with questions, I want to ask a few myself. If someone has never run for political office, why would they be passionate about politics? If someone has never played a musical instrument why would they be passionate about music? Or better yet, if someone once held political office, and then quit politics for one reason or another, shouldn't they stop caring about the political process? Or if someone used to play a musical instrument and then quite, why would they ever have an opinion about music? It seems to me that people are just plain interested in the things they are interested in. While that may seem a simplistic explanat...

by Clarence Darrow An agnostic is a doubter. The word is generally applied to those who doubt the verity of accepted religious creeds of faiths. Everyone is an agnostic as to the beliefs or creeds they do not accept. Catholics are agnostic to the Protestant creeds, and the Protestants are agnostic to the Catholic creed. Any one who thinks is an agnostic about something, otherwise he must believe that he is possessed of all knowledge. And the proper place for such a person is in the madhouse or the home for the feeble-minded. In a popular way, in the western world, an agnostic is one who doubts or disbelieves the main tenets of the Christian faith. I would say that belief in at least three tenets is necessary to the faith of a Christian: a belief in God, a belief in immortality, and a belief in a supernatural book. Various Christian sects require much more, but it is difficult to imagine that one could be a Christian, under any intelligent meaning of the word, with less. Yet there are s...

Now if that offends you, remember to turn the other cheek~!

by Paula Hay all I know, all I believe are crumbling images no longer comforting me this ground is not the rock I thought it to be thought I was high, thought I was free thought I was there: divine destiny I was wrong. This changes everything. -- Maynard James Keenan The late fall afternoon is peaceful as I cozy up on the sofa for a few hours of cable television movies. Flipping through the channels, I happen upon a prerecorded televangelist rally. I pause to observe. The small man on the stage shouts into his cordless microphone about the power of God and the salvation of Jesus, stomping up and down the length of the stage, visibly energized by the clamorous feedback of his audience. Although the program is nearing its end I know he has been performing in this manner for about an hour. He concludes his sermon with an emotional prayer backed by a solemn minor-key melody on electric piano. I watch then as hundreds of people stream from the arena seats to the stage, seeking salvation in...