Ex-Christian Testimonies

[Doubting John]

Since Paul's conversion story is used by Luke as a lite apologetic to show the truth of Christianity by one who formerly rejected it, then what about testimonies by former Christians, and former ministers?

I'm starting this thread and I'll invite other former Christians to share their testimonies here. Depending on how much they may be willing to divulge about themselves, this should be interesting. Their name is Legion!

But remember this, Christian TWEBers. These testimonies are from real people, who have blood running through their veins and hurt like we all do from time to time. If you trash them it may only serve to convince them that they were right to leave Christianity behind them in the first place.

My Testimony (in brief):

I was a former Christian minister in a conservative Christian Bible denomination, and now I sincerely doubt Christianity. My complete story is told in my new book: From Minister To Honest Doubter: Why I Changed My Mind, but I cannot tell you where to get it or it's considered an advertisement.

How have I gone from being a Christian minister to an honest doubter? This is the question of this collection of essays, and it’s not easy to answer. One thing you’ll notice is that I was a Christian apologist set for the express purpose of defending Christianity from intellectual attacks. C.S Lewis wrote something to the effect that Christian philosophy must exist if for no other reason than that bad philosophy must be answered. That was my goal, and I was not afraid of any idea, because I was convinced that Christianity was true and could withstand all attacks. But when it came to maintaining my faith against the skeptical ideas that I pondered, I wasn’t smart enough to answer the critics.

C.S. Lewis wrote: “I have found that nothing is more dangerous to one’s own faith than the work of an apologist. No doctrine of the faith seems to me so spectral, so unreal as one that I have just successfully defended in a public debate. For a moment, you see, it has seemed to rest on oneself: as a result, when you go away from that debate, it seems no stronger than that weak pillar. That is why we apologists take our lives in our hands and can be saved only by falling back continually from the web of our own arguments, as from our intellectual counters, into the reality—from Christian apologetics into Christ.” The Grand Miracle, (p. 76).

I succumbed to this danger, and I began to doubt the very things I had previously argued for. I knew most of the arguments against Christianity, and as a philosophy instructor in a secular college I could debate both sides of most any argument. As a philosophy instructor in many ways I am a purveyor of doubt. Too many people have a superficial faith handed down from their parents. As a teacher my goal is to cause them to doubt much of what they believe, be it atheist or believer, or in between. Doing so is what’s needed for them to develop a deeper faith, and it allows them to see points of view they’ve never considered before, thus making them more tolerant of other people’s beliefs. But one thing that I must do as a philosophy instructor is to eliminate from my students a smug arrogant simplistic and dogmatic belief system. Such beliefs are childlike and unbecoming of the adults they should become. Anyway, I have told people time and time again that I could teach philosophy until I was blue in the face so long as I knew I had a loving, caring, and faithful Christian community to fall back on after my class is over. When that fell through the floor, the doubts crept in my life.

There are three major things that happened in my life that changed my thinking. They all happened in the space of about five years, from 1991-1996. These are the three things that changed my thinking: 1) A major crisis, 2) plus information, 3) minus a sense of a loving, caring, Christian community. In the midst of these things I also felt rejected by my Christian denomination in my local area. For me it was an assault of major proportions that if I still believed in the devil would say it was orchestrated by the legions of hell.

Let me merely share the information (#2) that changed my thinking:

while I was still feeling the devastation from my crisis I carried on a correspondence debate with my cousin Larry Strawser who was a Lieutenant in the Air Force (now a Colonel) and teaches Bio-Chemistry at a base in Colorado. I handed him a book arguing for creation over evolution and asked him to look at it and let me know what he thought of it. After several months he wrote me a long letter and a box full of articles and books on the subject. Some of them were much too technical for me to understand, but I tried to read them. While he didn’t convince me of much at the time, he did convince me of one solid truth: the universe is as old as scientists say it is, and the consensus is that it is 12-15 billion years old. Now that by itself isn’t too harmful of an idea to Christian thinking. But two corollaries of that idea started me down the road to being the honest doubter I am today. The first is that in Genesis chapter 1 we see that the earth existed before the sun, moon, and stars, which were all created on the fourth day. This doesn’t square with astronomy. So I began looking at the first chapters of Genesis, and as my thinking developed over time I came to the conclusion that those chapters are folk literature—myth. The second corollary is this: if God took so long to create the universe, then why would he all of a sudden snap his fingers, so to speak, and create human beings? If time is not a factor with God when he created the universe, then why should time be a factor when it came to creating human beings? Astronomy describes the long process of star, planet, and galaxy formation. It then becomes uncharacteristic of God to do otherwise with human beings. God created human beings by the same long process he created the universe as a whole.

[Davidium]

A New Path
8 August 2003
Revised: 6 July 2005

I am a Philosophical, Dynamic Deist, and I too was once a
Christian. In fact, I was once one of those individuals who came to
your door on Saturday morning and asked to talk about Jesus with you.

Most of you slammed the door in my face.... And right you were.

I was raised in both the Evangelical and the Southern Baptist
churches. My mother was evangelical, and my father a Baptist. We
attended services in both. My mother is still an evangelical
missionary and minister, and I hope my father has found peace where
ever he is, for he has passed on.

My parents had tried for five years after they got married to have a
child. Everything failed. My father was in the Army at the time, and
they availed themselves of all the medical help the army could
provide to figure out what was keeping my mother from getting
pregnant. The doctors finally told her that it simply was not going
to happen.

Then my mother prayed to God asking that she be given a child. She
said that if God would grant her wish, then that child would be
dedicated to the service of God. God could use that child for
whatever he wished.... Two weeks later my mother found out she was
pregnant with me.....

You can see the correlation that occurred in her mind. God had heard
her, and answered her prayer. I (being that child) was therefore
dedicated to the service of God from the moment of my birth in my
mothers mind. She set out with that mission in mind. I had read the
bible for the first time by age 7. At 11, I had read Milton. (I did fit some Sci-Fi in here, but usually when my mother wasn't looking). Now don't get me wrong, I love my mother, and in her position I might have made similar assumptions. And it created who I am, and she has been quite accepting of me. So, for that I was grateful.

I was rather involved in our church, and in ministry from a very
early age. I was a Boy Scout, and even rose to the rank of Eagle. I
attended Sunday school, and even taught those younger than me.

But I was a mischievous child, with a sense of wit that was often too
sharp for my own good. And I also questioned everything. At 11 I
began questioning some of the contradictions in the bible (If you
don't know what I mean, I refer you to "The Age of Reason" by Thomas
Paine. ) Their responses to my questions ranged from "It is just a
mystery" to "why are you asking that? Do you want to go to Hell?" I
had been involved in the church all my life, but at 16 I realized
something was missing. I did not have something that others involved
in the church had. And I didn't know what it was. I only knew that I
looked around, and there was something that others were experiencing
that I was not.

I was eighteen when I found out what I was missing. I had continued
to go through the forms and ceremonies, keeping up the image. I had
joined the Army after graduating High School, (much to my mother's
chagrin, she expected me to go to seminary). In the Army, I found the
non-denominational services more comforting, simply because they were almost all form anyway....

My epiphany came in February of 1992. I was at Ft. Benning Georgia,
in my third week of Airborne School. For anyone who is familiar with
Airborne, week three is when you first commit the unnatural act of
walking out of a plane while it is in flight above a muddy field with
only a rather oversize silk handkerchief between you and certain
death. The Army Chaplains there told us that the Airborne school was
the most holy place in the world, because there are "no atheists at
1250 feet looking out the door of an Airplane!" They gave us all
little camouflage bibles to carry, and I saw many
soldiers "converting" to Christianity before putting on a chute. I
was struck by the hypocrisy of this..... and I wondered why they
thought it would make a difference.

At this moment, sitting in that pack-shed with the chute on my back,
it hit me what I had been lacking all these years.... I had no
inherent sense of Faith in the actions of God. It is this moment that I call the end of my Christianity. I put on that chute a Christian, but when I took it off on the drop zone and ran to the trucks to get another chute, I was no longer one. Between that realization, and the amazing feeling of
surviving my first jump, (and finding out I loved it!) I had a sense
of freedom that lasted through the rest of Airborne school....

I spent the next few years so busy that I did not give much thought
to religion at all. I was assigned as an intelligence analyst to a
Special Forces Group, and became deeply involved in counter-narcotics
and counter-terrorism in Latin America. If someone asked, I told
them I was an Agnostic, even though I didn't really know what that
meant. But mostly I kept my religious thoughts to myself, and focused
on analyzing and understanding the physical, geo-political world.
During this time, I heard someone discuss Unitarian Universalism, and I was intrigued, but as I said, I was too busy for religion, and there was no Unitarian Universalist Church around Ft. Bragg at that time. Through the years, I did attend several UU Churches, but none seemed the spiritual home I was looking for, often for political reasons.

A few years after Airborne school, I was involved in a training
accident. I fell out of a helicopter, and broke my tailbone and
jarred my spinal cord. I was lucky not to be killed. The end result
was that all would heal, but I had a month of light duty and
recovery. That, and I had been training for a mission, and my team
had to replace me and leave without me.

I had just had a brush with death, and I had a lot of time to think.
My thoughts naturally turned to what I actually believed about God. I
created (or so I thought) the basis for what would be my own personal
system of beliefs. I accepted Jesus as a philosopher, and his
teachings as the basis for my sense of morality. I rejected the writings
in the bible of Paul of Tarsus and John the Elder, because I came to
believe they were both opportunists, not teachers. I accepted the old Testament as History, and I rejected the thought that
any of the bible, and any other writing, could possibly be the word
of God....

But did I believe in God? After a lot of thought and soul searching,
I decided that there had to be one. I decided I identified with
Aristotle's concept of "the Prime Mover" or that force which created
and set into motion the natural laws by which our universe functions.
Something cannot come from nothing. For awhile I believed only that
the "prime mover existed at the moment of creation, but I have since
changed that belief to view the creative force as being timeless,
because he created the natural laws, and time is a natural law.

I also began to see the atrocities committed, not just in the name of
Christianity, but also in the name of all the religions of Faith. I
spent 6 months in Bosnia, and saw a county torn apart and bleeding
because of Religious warfare. As a soldier, I had a perspective and
understanding of the destruction that most civilians can’t understand.
I had a 70 year old grandmother (who wanted me to marry her daughter
and bring her to the US) tell me that peace was ok, but she couldn't
wait till we (the Americans) left so they could get back to "God's
work" of killing the Muslims. I am not kidding, I was shocked. This
woman did my laundry. It is at this moment I believe I became a spiritual Unitarian Universalist, because that incident made opposing religious hatred a mission for me.

I left the Army, because such thoughts helped me to change from a
grunt to an intelligence analyst. I wanted a college degree. So, I
began studying History and Political Science. I found myself
fascinated with the political history of the Roman Catholic Church,
and with the time period in Spanish history known as
the "ReConquista" (700 year war to take Spain back from the Moors)
and the Conquest of the New world. I had worked mostly in Latin
America in my first tour in the Army (before Bosnia) and I was
fascinated by organized Religions effects on politics and history.

And I came to the conclusion that organized religions of Faith had
been one of the greatest sources of war, atrocity, and evil in all of Human history. And I had been a part of one.

I had a big musty box of books that it had been given to me to
read by a fellow Sergeant, and in my second year of college, I got
to "The Age of Reason" by Thomas Paine. Amazing! The religion that I
had created for myself was not so new at all! In fact, it had a name.
I was a Deist!

In truth, I was actually quite angry. Here I was, thinking I had
created something new. Instead, I had just run over the same ground
many others had before me. It was a blow to my ego, but I soon got
over it. My beliefs had a name!

But then, I was soon deflated when I realized having a name didn't
help me much. I could find very few organizations to help Deists. I
became known on local talk radio as "David the Deist" as if I were
the only one in the area. I came to the conclusion that the price I
would pay for holding these beliefs was isolation, and a lack of
religious fellowship. I found a few fledgling websites on Deism, but
most of them seemed to know even less about Deism than I did (this
was 97). I accepted that I was on my own.

Over the years, I had discussed my beliefs with others. In fact, I
had even helped more than a few come to accept Deism. I had the honor in September of 2003 of performing a wedding ceremony for two of these. It was my first. Yet, I have always accepted that the price
for my Deism is religious isolation. I would have to sacrifice
fellowship.

I already held an ordination from the "Church of Spiritual Humanism"
but, as it is a "click here to be ordained" church, it meant little to
me. I had been ministering in Deism for years, and after some soul
searching, I asked the United Deist Church to consider me for ordination. I got to know them as they got to know me,
and was eventually ordained. I served as a member of their Board of Directors, but came to the conclusion that Deists are too individualistic to be organized in their own church, and as such resigned from the UDC. It was a wonderful experience in Church Building, and I wish them all the best. I just found my spiritual path take me elsewhere.

I had been attending the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Galveston County, and had become a member the previous year. I had finally found the Dynamic spiritual home I had been looking for. I founded an online Deist organization called “Dynamic Deism” that is Deism with a distinct Unitarian Universalist flavor. I currently am embarking on probably the greatest adventure in my Theological Development, as I have recently been accepted to the Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago, a UU Seminary and accepted as a UU Ministerial Aspirant. I hope to someday serve my denomination and nation as a UU Chaplain.
Most people stay with the religion they are born with, but that is not true of most UU’s. Most of us are “Come Outers” in that we left behind a prior religious tradition to become Unitarian Universalists. Someone once said to me they felt less of a UU because of that.
I feel the exact opposite. I never chose to be a Southern Baptist, but I did make the conscious, adult, and informed choice to become a UU. As such, this is the religion of my adulthood, not my childhood. As such, it is a decision that I take full responsibility for. I own it, and I own my involvement in it. As Forrest Church says, it is a “Chosen Faith”.

I used to not believe in the importance of Faith, but I have changed there as well. Faith is important in our lives, but my faith is not in God, but in my fellow man. It is in the future of Humanity, and in our ability to solve the problems of our world, and even the Universe… I guess you could say I am a “cosmic optimist”.
I have also found that my new faith allows me to look with more objective eyes at the teachings of Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth, and I have found much of value in them, once the myth and mysticism have been removed. The “Sermon on the Mount” is our world’s greatest lesson in “Right Relations”. I have also found much wisdom about Christianity, and a version of it I could support, in the writings of Bishop John Shelby Spong, William Ellery Channing, Matthew Tindall, and Theodore Parker.
Without Faith, Reason is cold…. But without Reason, Faith is Blind!

David G Pyle
Administrator,
Dynamic Deism
www.dynamicdeism.org

[Bill the Cat]

Moderated By: Bill the Cat

Guys,
I am going to jump out on a limb here and ask that you guys not post anything here other than posts in the nature of the request of the thread starter. If you would like, you can start a commentary thread in another area, but for all intents and purposes, this thread is more a testimony thread, so let's allow it to be just that, OK?

***If you wish to take issue with this notice DO NOT do so in this thread.***
Contact the forum moderator or an administrator in Private Message or email instead. If you feel you must publically complain or whine, please take it to the Psychotherapy Room unless told otherwise.

[spiritmech]

Does it count if I was a Christian, then atheist, then a Christian again? Technically, I have an ex-Christian testimony.
sm

[Doubting John]

Thanks Moderator. I finally got a favorable ruling from a Moderator! Wow!

Christians are always telling me that I either never left the faith in the first place, or that my doubt isn't honest now. Mad Gerbil says that maybe I've never changed religions at all. I suppose this is another way to say I never had the faith of a Christian in the first place.

Well, you simply couldn't say that if you knew me before. I still live in the small town where I was a Bible thumping minister at one of the most influential churches in town, and where I served as the president of the ministerial association, and ran a crusade against a video store which began renting x-rated videos, and wrote a score of editorials against abortion, and where I helped start a homeless shelter. I even offered Bible College classes on apologetics and ethics to this community, accredited through a Bible College I graduated from. The people of this town know, unlike you, and they are completely bewildered. They cannot claim, like you do, that I never was a Christian, and they know with my lifestyle change, that I cannot be one now. I frequent the bars a lot, because I play a lot of pool and drink. I divorced, remarried, and no longer even go to church, whereas before I was at most of the community church functions, as well as my own.

In fact, in my book a fellow pastor with me in the area, who also served with me on the ministerial association, wrote a response to it. We also engaged in a discussion about my lifestyle change.

[Bill the Cat]

Moderated By: Bill the Cat

All the non-testimony posts were split off here http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...ad.php?t=56987

Please refrain from commentary in this thread. Thanks

***If you wish to take issue with this notice DO NOT do so in this thread.***
Contact the forum moderator or an administrator in Private Message or email instead. If you feel you must publically complain or whine, please take it to the Psychotherapy Room unless told otherwise.

[Doubting John]

For other exchristian testimonies go to www.ex-christian.net where you will see several former Christians each week who tell their stories.

Then there is the book by Edward Babinski, Leaving the Fold: Testimonies of Former Fundamentalists.

Then there is John Hick, who tells his story in More Than One Way? (Zondervan, 1995).

And there is Michael Shremer, who is now publisher of Skeptic Magazine who tells some of his story in How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science.

Then there is former fundamentalist Marcus Borg, who tells his story in Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, and in The God We Never Knew.

In an older book, former fundamentalist John A.T. Robinson tells his journey in Honest To God.

There is Dan Barker who went from preacher to atheist and tells his story in Losing Faith in Faith.

And there is Charles Templeton who wrote Farewell to God.

Enjoy!

[Voltaire'sChild]

In the late 1960's and early 1970's, I became involved with the Jesus movement of that era, even living in a commune of fellow believers who had similarly left the drugs and alcohol behind in hopes of finding a better life through accepting Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.

But along the way I found out that God's "free" gift is not free at all--it is horrendously costly to any who get involved, for it necessitates the suspension of critical thinking, blind acceptance of a book as infallible or inerrant, and grafting into a system that at its heart is quite anti-intellectual and does not at all take kindly to people asking questions.

Nonetheless, I plodded on in this lifestyle during the 1970's, even receiving the "Baptism of the Holy Spirit" and being told that as a result of this experience I would be on the road to a deeper walk in God. Of course, this is a form self-righteousness on the part of those telling me this, because I soon realized that those believers who had not so experienced the "Baptism" were deemed "babes in Christ" or otherwise low-wattage Christians. Not up to par in any event.

I continued on this walk as I entered college, but there found that many of the assumptions of fact that I as a believer had held were not necessarily true. God-men born of a virgin, imparting special revelation knowledge to the faithful, a God-man that is killed and resurrected, etc. were all common stories in the Middle East before and after Christ's time. As I continued to study, eventually receiving my Ph.D. in American history, I reailzed that much of what passes for Christianity--even and perhaps especially among fundamentalists, pentecostals, and charismatics--was mythology. Worse, those believing these things and belonging to the group(s) just mentioned, could not find it in themselves to honestly question their own beliefs when confronted with scientific and historical fact--they had, to use Robert Ingersoll's words, "become traitors to themselves and the rest of the human race" in their willingness to say "Yes, Lord!" via close-mindedness guised as faith.

As I began expressing my concerns I was kicked out of a few charismatic fellowships for "unbelief" or because I had become "deceived of Satan" or perhaps "not really saved to begin with". I liked to think such narrow-mindedness was limited to the few with whom I had first-hand experience, but that was not to be the case. Across a wide band of evangelical Christianity is the notion that to disagree with their doctrine is to be willingly or not under Satan's influence.

My honest doubt eventually cost me my marriage, but I could no longer be honest and believe the nonsense I now realized conservative Christianity to be. Since I walked away from it all, I have never felt more free, more alive, than I am now. And while I dearly miss my daughter and sons, they, too, have seen through the sham than is conservative Christianity and no longer attend church or want anything to do with it. Sadly, for my ex, that leaves her alone with the sanctimonious crowd with whom she fellowships, and a stubborn belief in a system that is at best false hope. Her religion also cost her the children she thought she was protecting from my doubts.

Now, years in retrospect after leaving my Christian chains behind, I find that the same group of evangelicals has grown immensely, and has convinced many of its followers that to be a Democrat and liberal is of Satan, that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, and that there is no such thing as separation of church and state. Thus, what I walked away from is now seeking to force the nation to bend to biblical law instead of constitutional law, to force a Christian view of the universe on the rest of the public. These people--such as D. James Kennedy, Jim Dobson, Pat Robertson--are thoroughly dangerous and a true peril to a free society. Truly, and American Taliban.

I cannot and will not ever go back. I would no more do so than live in an Islamic fundamentalist state--the ideologiocal twin of America's fundamenatlist Taliban--which limits free thought, free speech, freedom of religion.

I hold no bitterness, however, and do wish fundamentalists the same freedom they seek to take from me and anyone with whom they disagree. I will stand up, however, against the bullying tactics of the movement.

To quote Skipp Porteous, "...Jesus doesn't live here anymore..." And thank God for that!

[Dan Barker]

Wow. Great story.

I posted my own story . . . but since I am new to this site, I put it as a new thread . . . former minister, now atheist.

I am also a former Christian minister. I rejected theism after 19 years of preaching the gospel.

Personal testimonies count for something, and my personal testimony is:

Life is SO MUCH better without god belief!

[Doubting John]

Dan, welcome, and thanks for your help here on TWEB.

Personal testimonies do help some!

[Furor]

My story is similar to many of yours. Although experience shows me that it will probably be in vain, I hope it opens some eyes and frees some minds.

I was born and raised in a Christian home. My parents were both firm Protestants, and I went to my first service when I was two. As long as I can remember, it was their hope that I would go into the church, and in 1965 I made their dreams come true when I was ordained. My parents, both professors at Harvard, attended my first service a few weeks later, embarassing me by applauding at the end.

I settled down into a fairly predictable groove, reading the Bible daily, taking notes for sermons, praying, and so forth. All that changed, however, when I met Beth.

Beth was the sort of girl you only see in movies or closely-worded satire. She was young, stawberry-blonde, and had an absolutely beautiful singing voice. Needless to say, she was a stunner, and I was stunned. She always sat in the front row during services, and we exchanged more than a few glances, I can tell you. We started spending time together, and I was quickly surprised by how free and happy she seemed. There was none of the modesty or politeness that I had come to love in Christian women. Beth was loud, emotional, and almost what I might, at the time, have called vulgar. I was very taken with her, however, and I put up with it as best I could.

Things continued in this way for a few weeks. Beth would alarm me with flights of humorless pettiness, and I would gently chide her. It got to the point where I was almost ready to put my foot down, but that all changed when I was invited to a party being hosted by some friends of Beth's who were into something called "free thinking." I thought it sounded a little strange, but Beth told me it was the latest thing, and that I'd enjoy myself. I had my reservations, but I decided to go, if only to please her. I had no idea even as we pulled up to that Greenwich Village brownstone that my life would change that night.

As I'm sure you know, the party was nothing like I expected. I didn't know what would happen when I, a Protestant clergyman, entered the room. Perhaps I thought some sort of alarm would go off; I don't know. I was pleasantly surprised to find nothing more than a group of erudite-looking young men and women lounging in high-backed leather chairs, sodas at their elbows, enjoying what appeared to be a pleasant conversation.

Beth introduced me as "her boyfriend, the Christian." This received a round of light titters that I found most curious at the time, although now, of course, I can hardly blame them. I was showed to a free chair and handed a soda, whereafter the conversation resumed. The topic was epistemology, or something like that (I confess that the point of the discussion eluded me completely). And so, the hours passed.

During a lull I went out to take the air and saw four or five of these "free thinkers" huddled in a group just off the steps, giggling and looking around warily every now and then. I went down to see what they were doing and discovered that they were passing around arguments and accepting them uncritically. They asked if I wanted to take a hit, told me it was the coming thing, et cetera and et cetera. The proposition that Moses could not in any regard have authored the Pentateuch had been thoroughly cashed by the time it got to the man next to me, so we had to spark a new one for my first hit. The experience is a little hazy for me, though I don't find that surprising, now; I think it might have been an Ingersoll quote. All I know is that I started coughing violently, my head swimming as tears formed in my eyes. One of the guys asked what was wrong.

"It's just... a little hard to swallow," I said. They laughed good-naturedly, assuring me that it always was the first time. It was about this time that we noticed that the girl across the circle was totally bogarting the quote, and we all got impatient. Another girl suggested we ditch the party and go to the all-night bookstore a few blocks away, which idea was greeted with widespread approval.

I should mention right now that I never did find out what happened to Beth after that night. The last I heard of her, she had taken up with one of the managing directors of some church of deists, if you can imagine such a thing. A friend told me that the people in the apartment below Beth and her new beau have it rough on account of the happy couple's tendency to noisily depersonalize God into the wee hours of the morning. These modern women, I thought, were nothing but trouble.

To return to the thread of my story, things took an odd turn when we arrived at the all-night bookstore. The clerk led us wordlessly to a section at the back of the store seperated from the main room by a colourful bead curtain. He returned to the front desk, turning up the radio so anybody who came in wouldn't hear us. I looked around warily, but nothing seemed particularly out of the ordinary. There were some books on a shelf in the corner, and some soft rugs on the floor beneath our feet. An eerie red light pervaded the scene.

Well, to cut a long story short, one of the guys sparked up a fresh Ingersoll for us to pass around while he went out to arrange for the main attraction. The attraction arrived about ten minutes later. He was short, balding, obese, and smelled faintly of eggs. I raised an eyebrow at the enthusiasm with which my new friends greeted him, but, in the spirit of Christian brotherhood, I hello'd politely.

What followed was what they called a "consciousness-raising session," wherein I had my eyes and mind opened to the free-thinking works of the likes of Thomas Paine, Bertrand Russell, and David Hume, among others. They told me about living one's own life for nobody but oneself. They rhapsodized about the virtues of doing what I felt was right rather than adhering to the failed pronouncements of some pompous long-dead Jews. They thrilled to each other's tales of drunkenness and casual sex, and of how wonderful it was to be finally free to do such things without having to feel guilty. They harrumphed in unison at tales of the abuses of the Christian Church. They demanded I reject anything I couldn't currently explain to their satisfaction, deny anything with which I had qualms, and do anything that suited my fancy.

They concluded with a communal and almost orgasmic sigh of contentment. Faces shining, they looked to me for my response. It was a long time in coming, and I fear I might have said the wrong thing.

"Isn't all of this just incredibly childish?"

There was a gasp. Each spoke up at once, vigorously denying the charge. I didn't even notice that I had uncritically accepted something from Asimov until it was too late. The dull red light, their shrill indignant chanting and the lately acquired burn of unscholarly thought had hypnotized me. I found myself nodding in response to everything they said; I was a free thinker, I didn't have to disagree with anybody anymore if I didn't want to.

The very next day I wrote the Church a letter of resignation, bought a pair of sandals and moved to Las Vegas. Between orgies I reread the Bible with an eye for potential inconsistencies. It was difficult to find any that could pass muster under the harsh sentinel gaze of competent textual criticism, but the process became much simpler after I took to doing rows of ECREE off the posteriors of impressionable young nubiles.

My first book - High on Nonbelieving - sold a modest number of copies, but not enough to warrant a second printing. I blamed the American theocracy's obvious anti-secularist agenda for turning our children into callous zombies who refuse to read unaccredited opinion. Unfazed, I wrote a second book - Immaculate Deception: How I Was Hoodwinked By the Greatest Conspiracy on Earth - which sold quite well indeed. I credit the noble public's unerring nose for fraud and deception.

At any rate, that's my story. I'm currently one of the webmasters of freethoughtornot.net, a collection of free-thinking opinion on the Internet. We don't try to restrict authors based on knowledge, experience or qualification like some of the intolerant Christian sites out there; our pages are open to anybody! If that's not your thing, you can listen to my thrice-daily webradio program, "On the Air with the New Voltaire." We take calls from inquiring minds and devout anti-sheep from all over this half of the state. Tune in; you might just find your mind mysteriously opened!

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[Harry Callahan]

Wow. Great story.

I posted my own story . . . but since I am new to this site, I put it as a new thread . . . former minister, now atheist.

I am also a former Christian minister. I rejected theism after 19 years of preaching the gospel.

Personal testimonies count for something, and my personal testimony is:

Life is SO MUCH better without god belief!

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[Darth Executor]

My story is similar to many of yours. Although experience shows me that it will probably be in vain, I hope it opens some eyes and frees some minds.

I was born and raised in a Christian home. My parents were both firm Protestants, and I went to my first service when I was two. As long as I can remember, it was their hope that I would go into the church, and in 1965 I made their dreams come true when I was ordained. My parents, both professors at Harvard, attended my first service a few weeks later, embarassing me by applauding at the end.

I settled down into a fairly predictable groove, reading the Bible daily, taking notes for sermons, praying, and so forth. All that changed, however, when I met Beth.

Beth was the sort of girl you only see in movies or closely-worded satire. She was young, stawberry-blonde, and had an absolutely beautiful singing voice. Needless to say, she was a stunner, and I was stunned. She always sat in the front row during services, and we exchanged more than a few glances, I can tell you. We started spending time together, and I was quickly surprised by how free and happy she seemed. There was none of the modesty or politeness that I had come to love in Christian women. Beth was loud, emotional, and almost what I might, at the time, have called vulgar. I was very taken with her, however, and I put up with it as best I could.

Things continued in this way for a few weeks. Beth would alarm me with flights of humorless pettiness, and I would gently chide her. It got to the point where I was almost ready to put my foot down, but that all changed when I was invited to a party being hosted by some friends of Beth's who were into something called "free thinking." I thought it sounded a little strange, but Beth told me it was the latest thing, and that I'd enjoy myself. I had my reservations, but I decided to go, if only to please her. I had no idea even as we pulled up to that Greenwich Village brownstone that my life would change that night.

As I'm sure you know, the party was nothing like I expected. I didn't know what would happen when I, a Protestant clergyman, entered the room. Perhaps I thought some sort of alarm would go off; I don't know. I was pleasantly surprised to find nothing more than a group of erudite-looking young men and women lounging in high-backed leather chairs, sodas at their elbows, enjoying what appeared to be a pleasant conversation.

Beth introduced me as "her boyfriend, the Christian." This received a round of light titters that I found most curious at the time, although now, of course, I can hardly blame them. I was showed to a free chair and handed a soda, whereafter the conversation resumed. The topic was epistemology, or something like that (I confess that the point of the discussion eluded me completely). And so, the hours passed.

During a lull I went out to take the air and saw four or five of these "free thinkers" huddled in a group just off the steps, giggling and looking around warily every now and then. I went down to see what they were doing and discovered that they were passing around arguments and accepting them uncritically. They asked if I wanted to take a hit, told me it was the coming thing, et cetera and et cetera. The proposition that Moses could not in any regard have authored the Pentateuch had been thoroughly cashed by the time it got to the man next to me, so we had to spark a new one for my first hit. The experience is a little hazy for me, though I don't find that surprising, now; I think it might have been an Ingersoll quote. All I know is that I started coughing violently, my head swimming as tears formed in my eyes. One of the guys asked what was wrong.

"It's just... a little hard to swallow," I said. They laughed good-naturedly, assuring me that it always was the first time. It was about this time that we noticed that the girl across the circle was totally bogarting the quote, and we all got impatient. Another girl suggested we ditch the party and go to the all-night bookstore a few blocks away, which idea was greeted with widespread approval.

I should mention right now that I never did find out what happened to Beth after that night. The last I heard of her, she had taken up with one of the managing directors of some church of deists, if you can imagine such a thing. A friend told me that the people in the apartment below Beth and her new beau have it rough on account of the happy couple's tendency to noisily depersonalize God into the wee hours of the morning. These modern women, I thought, were nothing but trouble.

To return to the thread of my story, things took an odd turn when we arrived at the all-night bookstore. The clerk led us wordlessly to a section at the back of the store seperated from the main room by a colourful bead curtain. He returned to the front desk, turning up the radio so anybody who came in wouldn't hear us. I looked around warily, but nothing seemed particularly out of the ordinary. There were some books on a shelf in the corner, and some soft rugs on the floor beneath our feet. An eerie red light pervaded the scene.

Well, to cut a long story short, one of the guys sparked up a fresh Ingersoll for us to pass around while he went out to arrange for the main attraction. The attraction arrived about ten minutes later. He was short, balding, obese, and smelled faintly of eggs. I raised an eyebrow at the enthusiasm with which my new friends greeted him, but, in the spirit of Christian brotherhood, I hello'd politely.

What followed was what they called a "consciousness-raising session," wherein I had my eyes and mind opened to the free-thinking works of the likes of Thomas Paine, Bertrand Russell, and David Hume, among others. They told me about living one's own life for nobody but oneself. They rhapsodized about the virtues of doing what I felt was right rather than adhering to the failed pronouncements of some pompous long-dead Jews. They thrilled to each other's tales of drunkenness and casual sex, and of how wonderful it was to be finally free to do such things without having to feel guilty. They harrumphed in unison at tales of the abuses of the Christian Church. They demanded I reject anything I couldn't currently explain to their satisfaction, deny anything with which I had qualms, and do anything that suited my fancy.

They concluded with a communal and almost orgasmic sigh of contentment. Faces shining, they looked to me for my response. It was a long time in coming, and I fear I might have said the wrong thing.

"Isn't all of this just incredibly childish?"

There was a gasp. Each spoke up at once, vigorously denying the charge. I didn't even notice that I had uncritically accepted something from Asimov until it was too late. The dull red light, their shrill indignant chanting and the lately acquired burn of unscholarly thought had hypnotized me. I found myself nodding in response to everything they said; I was a free thinker, I didn't have to disagree with anybody anymore if I didn't want to.

The very next day I wrote the Church a letter of resignation, bought a pair of sandals and moved to Las Vegas. Between orgies I reread the Bible with an eye for potential inconsistencies. It was difficult to find any that could pass muster under the harsh sentinel gaze of competent textual criticism, but the process became much simpler after I took to doing rows of ECREE off the posteriors of impressionable young nubiles.

My first book - High on Nonbelieving - sold a modest number of copies, but not enough to warrant a second printing. I blamed the American theocracy's obvious anti-secularist agenda for turning our children into callous zombies who refuse to read unaccredited opinion. Unfazed, I wrote a second book - Immaculate Deception: How I Was Hoodwinked By the Greatest Conspiracy on Earth - which sold quite well indeed. I credit the noble public's unerring nose for fraud and deception.

At any rate, that's my story. I'm currently one of the webmasters of freethoughtornot.net, a collection of free-thinking opinion on the Internet. We don't try to restrict authors based on knowledge, experience or qualification like some of the intolerant Christian sites out there; our pages are open to anybody! If that's not your thing, you can listen to my thrice-daily webradio program, "On the Air with the New Voltaire." We take calls from inquiring minds and devout anti-sheep from all over this half of the state. Tune in; you might just find your mind mysteriously opened!

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[uberkuh]

My transition from belief to doubt encompasses a long, arduous journey, but I can summarize it as follows. The Bible states in verses like Proverbs 8:17 and Jeremiah 29:13 that God wants us to learn more about Him and that, when we do, He will reveal His presence to us. These verses inspired me. I understood them as statements of a single promise, not a potential. In other words, I understood that I could count on the fact that, every time I looked for God, He would find me.

These verses initially inspired me, but they later confused me. The deeper I searched, the harder it became to believe that the Bible would fulfill its promise. No one seemed to be able to answer most of my questions and, given that I continued to ask questions when others were answered, the net result was that nothing added up. This became unbearable.

I could cite a number of problems that overwhelmed me, but one stands out because of its prevalence in theological debate. This is the problem of evil. I could not account for God's allowance of, or responsibility for, evil and suffering in the world. Consider the recent tsunami that killed over 250,000 people. These people died horribly by drowning and other effects of this disaster. Why would God allow or, worse, cause this? The Bible contains several stories in which God punished one or more people for their sins. The story of Noah's ark is one. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is another. In the first, God drowned virtually all of His creation because He had grown tired of their continual wickedness. In the second, God explicitly told Moses that he did not care about the innocent, only about the ratio of innocent to guilty, and that he would destroy everyone if Abraham could not prove that a certain number of people were “righteous.” Abraham failed to do this, so God burned alive the entire populations of two cities. In both stories, God saved one small family, but killed multitudes.

In Romans 3:10-12, it states that no one is righteous before God. Psalms 14:3, Psalms 53:3, and Ecclesiastes 7:20 support this. God gave Moses an impossible test.

Moreover, the Bible states throughout that God is perfectly good. How can this be true if He indiscriminately and brutally takes lives? Why should babies and animals suffer for the sins of rapists and prostitutes? The Bible states that Jesus carried the weight of our sins for us, and that only he could, which means that not only do I not have to be punished for my sins, but that I also certainly do not have to be punished for the sins of other people.

As I mentioned, the problem of evil represents one of a host of questions that plagued me over the course of several years. All of these questions, however different, point to one inescapable conclusion, namely, that God cannot exist. I fought this conclusion repeatedly. I hated that my struggle to know God had led me to His absence. My struggle falls under two categories, the pursuit of truth and the denial of it. Under the first, my relationship to Christianity was supremely satisfying. Under the second, it was torturous. I cannot describe the pleasures and pains I experienced because of this religion.

Religion continues to pervade my thoughts and I continue to study Christianity as well as other religions. I study religion religiously, you might say, although, I am relieved to finally admit that I am no longer religious. I am free from internal religious constraints.

[Babaloo]

I was became a born again baptized independent fundamentalist church going young-earth creationist Christian while a sophomore in high school. I still have my baptism certificate from Jacksonville Chapel in Lincoln Park, New Jersey. In college I was elected president of "Christ's Ambassadors," a non-denominational evangelical group at Mercer County Community College, Trenton, New Jersey. I made friends with Christians of other denominations as well, and was "baptized in the spirit" and "spoke in tongues." (Still can.) Later, I studied apologetics and Christian fiction, devouring C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, G. K., Chesterton, George Macdonald, Francis Schaeffer, Josh McDowell, not to mention works by some Reformed Presbyterian theologians as well, and lots of creationist books and Christian testimony books, like the works of Richard Wurmbrand ("In God's Underground") and Sadhu Sundar Singh to name two converts who suffered for their faith, and whose books I loved to read. (I gave plenty of mention to them both in my online piece, titled, "The Uniqueness of the Christian Experience")

Coming into contact with two former Christian converts, each my age or just a little bit older, who had recently left the fold, I exchanged long letters with them (pre-internet era), debating and reading books they suggested and sending them my responses for about five years. However in the end I slowly and agonizingly left the fold just as they had done. I tried clinging to a witty moderate Evangelicalism for a while ala the works of Robert Farar Capon, but that didn't work, though I still admire Capon's wit and wisdom as well as G. K. Chesterton's humor and humanity and love of his felllow man, including G. K.'s love of his atheist friend H.G. Wells, whom he expected to see in heaven; and George Macdonald's compassion (we was a universalist Christian).

My story is in Leaving the Fold: Testimonies of Former Fundamentalists (Prometheus Books, 1995) which also includes the testimonies of my two former fundamentalist friends who helped me see the light, and the testimonies of another two and a half dozen former fundamentalists, some famous like Billy Graham's closest friend who became a reverent agnostic (Chuck Templeton). About a third of the testimonies however, are of people who remained Christians, albeit of a mode moderate persuasion.