by the Avangelism Project B ecause the bible is contrary, a Christian not only may, but must choose which parts to believe and which parts to reject. Those decisions will always reflect the Christian’s personality, predilections and proclivities. It’s an arrogant syncretism of life and religion that we call Self Projection as God (SPAG). I published an article about it here a few weeks ago. It’s a simple and obvious concept, but not always readily understood. One common misunderstanding (or maybe a regular misrepresentation) of SPAG is that it applies only to fundamentalist or ultraconservative Christians who attempt to harmonize the bible. That’s not the case. Faithfulness Is Meaningless In some sense, SPAG depends on an incoherent bible. A true and cogent religious revelation would make faithfulness possible. Lacking one, faithfulness is a meaningless term and the Christian, to be a Christian, must construct a god and define faithfulness to it. All Christianity is Sel...

By Neal Stone Image by whiteboy via Flickr A s I stood now looking into the gap I knew I had to make a decision. So I did. I stretched out my arms, leaned forward and fell into the gap. Some just let me fall while others reached out to try and catch me, but to no avail. Most just let me fall. I fell into the fog. At first it was a relief but as I fell I was surrounded by storm clouds. I could feel the cold wind, the rain and lightning all around me. I fell for what seemed like a life time. I was scared, unsure, but somehow I knew I made the right decision. Even in all the fear and doubt and the turbulent storm, I still felt a since of freedom. Yes, freedom. As if I was really finally free for the first time in my life since standing in the gap. I continued to fall for a long time. I could feel the storm tossing me around and the cold wind and rain would pelt me for what seemed forever. I was scared not sure if I was going to live or die. Was I going to get through ...

by Valerie Tarico Image by thetravellinged via Flickr T oday’s Seattle Times had an editorial finally about the horrendous anti-gay movement that has been spawned in Uganda by American Evangelicals. Unable to make sufficient homophobic headway at home, evangelists have been heading to Africa, with their literally perfect Bibles as proof that God hates gays. Ugandan leaders found God – the god of the evangelists—and passed a law condemning gays to death. Those who refuse to out them to the authorities get prison time. (In the face of international outrage, the law now only mandates life in prison rather than hanging.) The Seattle Times editorial was titled, “ Uganda and Gays: A Malicious Blasphemy .” The newspaper waxes eloquent about all of the good being done by loving, good-works-doing “selfless” evangelicals in the rest of the world and claims that the message brought to Uganda is, as the title says, malicious blasphemy. So, the Bible contains malicious blasphemy?? ...

By WizenedSage C hristians believe that their god created the universe. Ask them who or what created god and they will say that god always existed. Of course, precious few, if any, have considered the logical quagmire which results from this hypothesis. Now I must point out up front that the following argument has one very serious weakness; one must be willing and able to think on one’s own in order to understand it. Albert Einstein is famous for many things, among them the so-called “ thought experiment .” The process is simple enough, one merely imagines himself in a certain situation and then, using logic and whatever scientific knowledge is available, imagines how some event would unfold. This process ultimately led Einstein to the Special and General Theories of Relativity (after a hell of a lot of hard mathematics). It can be a very powerful technique in helping us to visualize and discover how the world really works. Let’s try a simple thought experiment on this problem of ...

by Brian Image by ...storrao... via Flickr I ’ve been out of Christianity for over a year now, and it’s truly liberating. Getting out of Christianity is life-changing in many aspects, and can be overwhelming. Here I would like to provide some tips on getting through for those of you who are in the process of leaving, or thinking about leaving, that I found helped me. First, realize you’re not alone. You’ll probably feel as if you’re the only one who has been in your situation. To overcome this, read people’s testimonies here and on other websites. All the testimonies are helpful, but you’re bound to find some that will make you want to scream, “This could have been written about me!” Feeling like a part of a group helps to transition away from the church and other Christians psychologically, and can also reduce the feeling of loneliness that can accompany leaving. So read others’ testimonies. Learning about others’ experiences can also lead you to books and media about le...

by Brian Flatt Image via Wikipedia O k, so pretty much everyone knows that I call myself an Agnostic. Even though I have some major issues with religion in general and Christianity in particular, I have not and still can not call myself an Atheist. A lot of Atheists spend their time destroying religion, and in many cases they have done a pretty good job of it, but they have not been able to destroy God, Nietzsche's assertion that God is dead to the contrary. Even if it was shown that God, Yawhew, Jehovah and Allah do not exist , it still would be a possibility that some sort of God exists. One of the biggest reasons I come to that keeps me Agnostic is the question of what came before the big bang, or more precisely what caused the big bang . I recently watched a couple of fantastic debates on youtube, the first being between Dinesh D'Souza , the conservative commentator and Christian apologetic, and Daniel Dennett , the noted Atheist philosopher, and the other between Dine...

by Evid3nc3 I explain my life as a born-again Christian , my deconversion, and my life as an atheist. In the deconversion section, I will show how evidence, reason, and experiences related to prayer, morality, deconverted Christians, the Bible, and my relationship with God Himself all lead to my eventual inability to believe anymore. The author of this series of videos ( Evid3nc3 ) is a PhD candidate in Intelligent Systems (a sub-discipline of Computer Science ); his focus is on evidence-justified beliefs and their argumentation as a means of conflict resolution both in computational and human systems. This 11-part video series simply continues to get better and better with each new section. Take the time to view the entire series. You'll be glad you did -- webmdave

by Jody Image via Wikipedia I t was about a year ago that I first posted on this site. At that time it was my de-conversion story . As the layers of Xtian living have been slowly peeling back from my life, there has been some hurt surfaced that, at the time I could not articulate. But, this month being the month that the church likes to flex it's " Pro life " muscles seemed a good one to share more of my story... grab a cup of coffee... it's a long one! I'm a mom. I make no apologies for the fact that I skipped the whole college trip and instead married young and started having babies -- six to be exact. For reasons I no longer believe, I also chose to home-school my kids (still homeschooling, but for different reasons now), so, as you can see, my life has revolved around the caring of children. Living and loving together has it's rewards, not to mention it's trials. When my fifth child was about two years old, I discovered that I was pregnant with b...

by Gray Image via Wikipedia I am a former Christian and a lawyer. Soon after becoming a Christian, I struggled with the concept of original sin and its moral implications. According to Christian theology , man is born into this world with the stain of original sin – the sin committed by Adam and Eve when they disobeyed God’s direct command and ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil . The consequences of original sin are two-fold. First, man is doomed to spend the rest of eternity in Hell, unless he accepts Jesus as his savior. Second, man is a slave to a sinful nature that he cannot escape during his lifetime, although accepting Jesus is supposed to curb the "lusts of the flesh". Here is my question: Would the charge of original sin and the imposition of the sentence of death on all people born after Adam and Eve stand up in an American Court? I think this question is a pivotal one, because the foundation for the need of a savior in Christian ...

By MtlRedAtheist "For many are invited, but few are chosen." Matthew 22:14 ( NIV ) C an we really be blamed? The Bible is full of passages that describe how God favors some people over others and decides in advance who will be allowed into the kingdom of Heaven . Since, the only alternative to spending eternity in Heaven in the Bible is spending eternity in Hell , it can be assumed that God also predestined people to burn in hell, by not selecting them for Heaven. I hope my Christian friends and family's fun in Heaven won't be ruined by the knowledge that a loved one is being tortured, but I guess it's as they say, "Out of sight, out of mind." I've heard many Christians tell me that it is God's desire that everybody be saved and go to Heaven, but because of free will people choose to reject him and seal their own fate, as if anybody would deliberately choose eternal suffering. Romans 9:18-23 (NIV): Therefore God has mercy on whom he w...

by Valerie Tarico A re you an atheist, agnostic, humanist, freethinker or some such who cringes at the thought of people being given the Four Spiritual Laws along with disaster relief? Do you think that promoting “eternal salvation” to five year olds is exploitative? Do you hate it that poor parents send their kids to Muslim or Christian madrassas because that’s the only way they can get them pencils and paper? Does it irritate you when fancy creationist museums are better funded than real natural history museums? A new website with a January 1 launch date, may be just your thing. Religious people tend to put their money where their mouths are—more-so, it would appear, than the rest of us, and evangelical fundamentalists even more so than open inquiring people of faith. Yes, I understand the cult recruiting aspect of the whole thing, but the bottom line is that they get things done. In order to advance their tribal truth claims, Pentecostals, Evangelicals, and other fund...

by  Charity of Shatter Nicely Image by Cayusa via Flickr I came across an article, post, whatever, the other day titled, There’s No Such Thing as a Former Christian , by someone named Charles Smith. Hmm, I thought, that sounds interesting.  And by interesting , I mean, wrong .  I am a former Christian, am I not? Needless to say, upon reading the piece, I determined that it needed a good fisking. If you scour the world-wild-web for any amount of time using atheism as your search term, you will undoubtedly find pages and pages of sites laced with the famous proclamation, “ I used to be a Christian .” While this may be intriguing to the seeker, desiring a glimpse at the testimony of a formerly professing believer turned cynic in hopes of discovering reasons to remain religiously repulsed by Christendom, or possibly the opposite – looking to see if their retroversion experience is sensible – one thing is certain… there’s no such thing as a former Christian. Exce...

by WizenedSage Image by Jason McKim's Old Account via Flickr T his is a gentle reminder for those Christians who may have happened upon this heathen web site by accident or out of curiosity. My message is simple, don’t use your head if you want to keep your faith. Whatever you do, don’t let these people make you think about it. As you and I know, salvation can only be yours through Christ, and the Bible is very clear on this. Remember: “By grace are you saved, through faith" (Eph. 2:8). When asked, "What must I do to be saved?" the apostles answered, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved" ( Acts 16:31). "Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved" (Rom. 10:13). The Bible, in its wisdom, tells us exactly what to think, and then instructs us very clearly not to use our heads on such matters. As Proverbs 3:5 says, "Lean not on your own understanding.” True, the claim that Jesus was dead for tw...

by exfundy I f you have read any of my past posts you know that one of my biggest grievances against my former religion is that it intentionally squashed my natural curiosity. A Christian needed only blind allegiance to their pastor, church, and denomination. The day finally came that I had taken as much of Fundyland as I could possibly take. I could no longer suppress the questions. I had to start asking them. At that point the first question seemed to be obvious: "Why the hell have I never been allowed to ask the tough questions?" Even though no one was around to hear me the question made me nervous. For one thing I was going against everything I had ever been taught. For another I might have pissed god off by saying hell in a way that I had always been told was inappropriate. Nervous or not though I had just let the genie out of the bottle and there was no way I was going to turn around. At this early stage I wasn't even close to questioning Christianity ...