I feel as if God has been stirring me in powerful ways lately. I love Christ, and believe in him with all my heart. I am part of a forum that has one select what faith they are, and by that you get to post in certain sections and are disallowed from posting in others. Yet it says that the purpose is to unite all Christians as one body. How does seperating us make us united? I am thinking of declaring myself "other religion" in protest. If what I see there is what Christianity is becoming, then I do not want any part of this movement.

I want to go back to what Christianity used to be. I want to go back to the home churches, where people met simply out of joy and love for discussing and studying Christ. I want to go back to the days where we didn't believe that God could both be loving and send people to eternal torment for one sin. I want to go back to the time where we as Christians would live the love of Christ and "They [would] know we are Christians by our love," not because we are trying to force our beliefs on them by telling them they're on a one-way train to hell. I want to go back to the days where our main concerns were helping the "least of these" and being peacemakers and loving our neighbors as ourselves.

It really saddens me that the only cognitive dissonance I can find through conversation is people that agree with my political beliefs. Of course, even people on the same side never agree completely and that is where my little dissonance is found. However, I want to be able to talk to people that are on the Right without being called un-American. I want to be able to talk to people on the Left without being accused of being fascist. I want to be able to talk to people who vote for politicians that I find to be completely abhorrent without them getting angry that I dare question their choice. It is painful to see the media failing at its task of creating an informed electorate, but it is downright excruciating that people are not stepping up to the plate to discuss things on their own.

The following is a paper I wrote for 2005 College Student Essay Competition held by the Freedom From Religion Foundation. If I remember correctly, the writing prompt was that we were to describe growing up as an atheist or agnostic. I gladly took the opportunity to talk about religious freedom. A PDF version of my essay Growing Up Atheist is also available. You might also notice I reuse some of my prior writings from this website.

Growing up living with my grandparents, with my dad in prison and with my mom no where to be seen, I was always the odd kid. Of course, my thick glasses and skinny person did not help matters. My grandparents never brought up religion. I never was indoctrinated into a church. I would be lying if I said that I would be comfortable becoming a religious person. I have had numerous influences in my life growing up, but have finally found my place in this universe. And feel at peace with myself and my beliefs.

I grew up watching Sesame Street, Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, The Letter People and other kids television shows. Given my thick glasses, I identified with and idolized the scientists in television shows, seeing as how people looked up to them. I loved learning, soaking up every bit of information I could get. Sometimes I would catch the beginning of other shows like The 700 Club. The cynical among us might say that it was no wonder I later came to identify myself as an Atheist. Television was my first exposure to religion of any sort. Television also served to be my first introduction to the term "Atheist."

Many people that claim to be pro-life claim to be so because they want to support the life of the child. How is it, they suggest, one can claim that the being inside the mother's womb is not a human? This is nothing but a strawman argument set up to equate abortion to murder. Once abortion can be equated to murder then the case can be made for outlawing it, much like murder. However, outlawing abortion would do nothing in the interest of a person that is really Pro-Life.

Many people have fallen into the trap of assuming that religion is the only source from which one can obtain morality. As an Agnostic Atheist, it doesn't settle well with me that since I do not believe in a god nor follow a religion that I would be considered amoral. Therefore, I would like to share what I have developed as the basis of my morality and hopefully show that it is possible to have morality without religion.