WHAT? You were fucking PUNISHED for that? That's got to be one of the most absurd things I've ever heard! What an asshole.

I guess you should be glad though since it made you realize just how ridiculous all that crap is.

I wonder why it never occured to chuches et. al. that there would be some Socratic members of their clergy.

Seems to me, with roughly 2,000 years to formulate the idealogy, they could get their stories straight.

I'm not going to rip on anybody for having faith, but the whole experience shows me that people need to be a tad more selective what they choose to throw themselves headlong into first. I'm not very fond of living in the middle of the Bible Belt and passing road signs every 5 miles telling me how many different ways I'm going to go straight to hell and not collect $200.

I don't really have a cool story.

I went to a Catholic school until after I was twelve. We had lessons in religion and so on, but they never really tried to indoctrinate us. They just kinda went "Yeah, this happened and stuff, because God is cool. So follow him if you wanna or something. We don't really care." and later I gradually stopped believing.

One thing that did hapen to me was this thought I once had. One day, I was thinking "Hmm. What would God think if I were to repeat 'The Devil is Good' in my head over and over. Oh shits, I can't stop doing it. Sorry God. God is good, not the devil. Nope, God is." and that went on for several months.

Nowadays, I realize how utterly insane that was. Logically, an omnipotent and eternal being cannot exist. and a benevolent one does not go around burning thousands of people's flesh off of their skeletons just because they didn't like walking around in a desert for forty fucking years or some shit like that. And a benevolent God does not condemn people to eternal suffering. Eternal suffering itself is a ridiculous concept anyway. Eventually you get bored of it and stop caring.

Also, if you're omnipotent, why can't you write your own fucking documents instead of having people do it for you? Materializing a great big fucking book in the sky is a much more effective way of converting people than having some obscure person write down what you tell him and then send him over to a bunch of people who regard HIM as the heathen.

Also, what makes more sense? Life starting on accident a billion odd years ago, or some guy in the sky creating us just because he felt like it, and who does not benefit from this anyway?

By the by, science is a more accurate way of finding out how the universe works, because scientific theories can be changed according to new data, whereas religious text stay the same, regardless of new discoveries.

I'm an atheist now, as are my parents. I haven't been in a church for three years, I think. Not since my grandfather died.

Anyway, fuck the religions that instill fear and hatred into people. Fuck them in their eye.

Why are your parents atheist? Was this a recent development or did you 'convert' them or what? :x I got the impression that if they sent you to Catholic school theyw ere probably religious themselves.

Would atheism be as cool if guys with white-starched shirts, dark ties and ill-fitting pants went door-to-door in an effort to convert you?

Why do I get the impression that, to christians, atheism = evil when, in fact, it is taking neither side of the duality?

They just grew tired of all the bullshit Church history, and they realize that the concept of an omnipotent higher power is flawed.

Also, that Catholic school was actually the school closest to my house, and incidentally a pretty good one too.

Location, location, location!

this entire thread seems like one massive "let's hate Christianity" circle jerk, which is unfortunate because a lot of people I respect have posted in it.

it seems to me that, to most of the people here, Christianity is merely a scapegoat. they got tired of being told they were going to Hell, or of being scared of an "invisible man," or they're sick of the self-centered nature of the congregation; well, the problems there are a little closer to home.

Nobody goes to hell. You just tithe and say the secret sacrements and all is forgiven. :groucho

I guess I will share my God story to. I was raised a luthern and I had to go to church every sunday. I hated church but I believed in god. At this point I had read through the whole bible ( I guess this was around when I was 10 or 11 ) because I hated listening to the bullshit of sermons or sunday school. When reading the book for the first time I was stunned. I couldnt believe how much shit all these religons made up. I had never seen anything about going to church or confession or any of that shit in there. I also found out that there are more peices to the bible but a committe some 1000 years after jesus decided that it wasnt safe to put them in because it had things like how to summon angles and shit like that. Needless to say im no longer a luthern but I still believe in god and jesus. I to am pretty worried though if im wrong because all the shit I have heard about hell over the years has scared the shit out of me.

Well, despite what IS says, I didn't quit Christianity out of hate. I quit it because I found it about as realistic as the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus and Allah and ghosts and witches on broomsticks.

It's a nice idea, and I suppose it keeps some people out of trouble, but it upsets me that most often Christians cannot read/hear my reasoning for not believing without coming to the incorrect conclusion that I "hate Christianity".

I'm sorry IS, but your religion is just as unbelievable to me as all of the others out there, and I'm not inclined to believe the Bible is the REAL book of God just beacuse I heard about it before I heard of the Koran or the Vedas.

If it makes you feel better to believe in God, if it helps you to be a good person, more power to you. But don't assume people who believe differently than you have some sort of problem. Right now we have people blowing themselves up and taking as many innocents out with them as possible because they think the people who believe differently than them have some sort of problem.

Also, you shouldn't be afraid of being tortured in hell if you are a former Christian. Consider the other religions have their hells too, and if it turned out they were right, you'd be cast into Muslim hell with all the Catholics, Baptists, Hindus, and atheists. So unless all your friends are the exact same religion, no matter which hell you end up in, at least you'll know somebody there.

And you won't have to worry about holidays because, apparently, all the holidays you and your friends previously celebrated were wrong.

I want to learn how to summon angles :(

for geometry :tear

I dont really get religion too much...i mean, it has more plot holes than the new war of the worlds.

I was raised in a little whitebred christian town and EVERYTHING involved God...even the damn mailman. and of course i was the ass that would go around and say i was some other religion...just to piss off the hicks. To be honest i guess these are my beliefs

1.) God is not a person, he is everything (Universe, Sun, Earth, even us) Calling God a person and giving him an identity to me is profiling a person we all dont know.

2.) Jesus was just a normal man who had good ideas...i believe he was crucified, but i think that he was in a coma for 3 days, not dead

3.) Moses could whip up a mean mix drink!!!

4.) I believe that heaven is a "Coat check" kind of place, you go there, even if your evil, but you get a new assigment=new life on earth.

5.) Never let ben affleck and Matt Damon enter any church in New Jersey!!!!!!! EVER!!!!

I wouldnt say i hate christianity. I mean, it has made my much of my childhood mostly of fear of a vengeful god, but if i'm ever i'm eating with someone and they want to say grace i will always say it with them and never try to stop them. To me, religion is mostly guidance for those who need it.

Even if we did "hate Christianity," what's the problem? We should have that right. If a Christian can hate homosexuality without hating the homo, an agnostic can hate Christianity without hating the Christian. Isn't that fair?

My thoughts are similar but backwards

I dont hate christianity but i hate the average christian. I think that most of them have forgotten the value of it and are just in it for nametag.
Look at TV, televangelist=money wanting, ad hungry power whores that dont care what you believe, just as long as you tune in to their show and donate to their cause.
Normal people, such as in my town=People who gamble, divorce, are fat and greedy who dont care about Jesus but rather the social caste system that they can climb to achieve more tax writeoffs and fuckin deals at a bake sale, just because they know the pastor or priest
Priest=Dont get me started on this shit. Two words= Lost Face, they have lost the true meaning and made catholism into a dam E! true hollywood story....when a pope dies....BAM its like fucking end of the world, just make sure all of the news stations have there soundbyte

Organized Religion is Checks and Balances and Politics at its finest! Believe what you believe, pray what you pray but dont make it my problem and dont fucking bring it on the stage so everyone can see how pathetic you act. *Ding *Ding Rocky wins!! Apollo loses!!!

What Problems??? The problem that our president claims our country is GOD's country and that we have to kill our enemy? Or that Osama's land is ALLAH's land and that they have to kill the enemy? It's the same God. How can we all realize that we kill and create problems because we cant agree on all the same shit? We cant because people always think its "the other persons" fault for not joining them in believing....Put Jesus and Mohammed in a cage match and see who wins...neither one would want to fight, but we would still place our bets and eat our Mcdonalds

...p.s. i sat on my lunch

What ARE you going on about Jello person? :posh

i have no idea....i thought i sounded smart :(

and realization is the first step!

this thread is going to be 2 pages long for eternity

Heaven's just a page away ... whoah, whoah ... just a page away.

A friend of mine once told me his theory of heaven and hell.

Alright, according to the Born-Agains the only way to get to heaven is to be...well, a Born-Again. So, after the shit hits the fan and we're all catapulting to hell, all of the Jerry Falwells and insane Megachurch people are sitting around in a huge gymnasium filled with metal chairs (like an elementary concert). God comes out, approaches a microphone, and says, "Welcome, true believers! As you can see, this is heaven! Now, there will be some refreshments coming, and I'll...just...go...get...them."

Then he walks out the front door, locks it from the outside, jumps into a Porsche with Jesus, and yells down, "Hey Satan! That bullshit worked! See you at the Hendrix concert!"

I feel that I have been locked from the outside by your humor and this gynasium smells like ass and old coffee.