Former Christians

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Comment by Jonno on January 24, 2011 at 2:08am

Hi everyone *waves* Reading your post Wayne Andrew Meeds, another one Christians don't like is when you ask about prayer. if God has known you from the beginning of time and knows when you're born and when you'll die and you're in say as an example an aeroplane with the engines on fire, lurching violently and out of control and you pray asking for 'his' help and you survive, at best God's a sadist. If you don't survive then he's a liar because it clearly says in the Bible that if you ask you shall receive. Utter lunacy but the apologists would find a way out of it, they always do. It's great to be here.

Comment by DoktorSick on June 25, 2010 at 4:28pm

I have friend that just converted to christianty and she is annoying as hell. It's like now it's her job to convert the world. I'm hopefully this will die down after awhile because was pretty cool to talk to before the conversion. Now it's like one big infomercial for christ.

Comment by Rosemary LYNDALL WEMM on December 20, 2009 at 10:35am

My immediate family and my closest friends are all atheists so there is no problem. I guess I am lucky. We celebrate the season as a purely secular and magical one.

It was different in my youth. In those days we all went to church in the morning and revelled in singing rousing Christmas Carols.

I used to love the Carols by Candlelight celebrations put on by the local council. I miss the emotional highs which these used to produce. It is no use going now, as the singing high would be considerably dampened by the nonsense of the words. I have not found a replacement activity which I could enjoy.

A couple of years back I went to a Hannukah celebration with my next door neighbour. I suspended belief and sang along with the rest of them and fortunately no-one asked me if I was Jewish (I am not) or whether I believed any of it (I don't). I get the impression that these things are not quite so important in the Jewish culture as they are in the Christian one. I have come across atheist Jews who participate in Jewish rites as a way of affirming their cultural heritage, not their belief in the supernatural aspects underlying them. Interesting.

Comment by MaleficVTwin on December 19, 2009 at 9:31pm

I will, but it's always been about together-time and gift exchange, so religion rarely enters the picture. Along with myself, my sister and brother-in-law are atheists, so that helps. :)

Comment by L.E.S. on December 19, 2009 at 7:51pm

Is anyone else going to spend Christmas with family? I'm curious how other people deal with their families religious traditions this time of year. I've delayed going home until the 24th so I could avoid most of the church services, etc.

Comment by Rosemary LYNDALL WEMM on November 10, 2009 at 4:12pm

What a sensible mum you have, MaleficVTwin.

Comment by MaleficVTwin on November 9, 2009 at 10:23pm

Yesterday, my mom figured it out. Her oldest(me), her baby, is a heathen. An infidel. A god-damned atheist.

She mentioned an activity at church and asked if I wanted to attend. I declined, then added "You know I don't like church or religion". It snowballed from there, culminating in her question "You mean you don't believe in god?"

"No mom, I don't".

She tried to offer some reasons to believe, until I told her that it took years of thinking on my part to rid myself of belief, and there was little she could say to sway me.

To her credit, she changed the subject and we went on with our day. I love my mom. :)

Comment by Wayne Andrew Meeds on September 21, 2009 at 10:57am

I have been kicked off of many Christian forums for asking why God would place the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden if he knew in advance that Adam and Eve would sin.

Another question that has achieved this combined with the first is if God created our brains and how they function (leading to human behavior), why would he punish us for acting exactly as he designed because we are supposedly created completely by the Father?

Also, combined with the first two, how could Adam and Eve understand that it was bad to disobey God if they had no sense of good and evil? This story is obviously a primitive mythical explanation for the presence of evil and mortality as is the Greek myth Pandora's Box, which Christians freely admit is fiction.

Very few Christians are open to having a discussion with an outsider. They feel like they either must be ardently defensive or aggressively on the attack. They are, however, susceptible to being influenced by those they know and trust. This is why it would be useful to be strategically placed within a church. We trust those who we believe to be aligned with us ideologically.

I think that this sort of venture might seem more attractive to me because I am married to a theist who insists on taking our children to church. If I do not involve myself with the church, my children may view me as an outsider and not trust me. However, if I appear to be a member of the church and attend without stating my true beliefs, then I can be there when my children have questions about what they hear. I don't know if anyone else in this forum has the problem of being married to a theist, but it complicates matters.

I figure that I might as well make myself available to other parent's older children (teen age and above) for the same sort of indirect guidance I plan to use with my own children.

Regarding the God Delusion: I just had this idea yesterday but realized that it would be ineffective because it would likely be thrown away by cleaning staff or hotel management unless prior arrangements had been made.

Distribution of literature to people we do not know seem extremely ineffective because I know that I do not trust solicitors I do not know (like JWs and LDS members). Why should they trust us anymore?

Comment by Ida on September 20, 2009 at 11:15pm

Every time I get a drink from a vending machine, I mark the dollar bills. I cross out the god and replace with "reason", "no god", etc...

Something to think about, if you don't want to get yelled for defacing LOL. :P

Comment by Rosemary LYNDALL WEMM on September 20, 2009 at 10:46pm

Another thought for hotel rooms: take a collection of those stick on Warning: Content is Fictional stickers to put on Bibles and other religious texts found in the room.

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