errorlevel.org

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.

The following is based on a discussion I had with my fiancée, Kristen. We were talking about her beliefs and God. The conversation was sparked by a book called The Inescapable Love of God.

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."

errorlevel has had this account made for me for a while now, so I guess I could start using it. ;)

As a Christian, many see me as a hypocrite for supporting this idea. However, that couldn't be farther from the truth. I support Separation of Church and State not to protect the government from the church, but to protect my church from politics.

Politics is corrupt by it's very nature. Making the church involved in it can only serve to make the church corrupt. We saw a small example of that with the church who expelled it's members who voted against Bush in the '04 elections. Involving the church in politics would involve it with everything that comes with it...

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.

I was reading an article titled A Culture of Death, Not Life on Common Dreams that spoke of the Right-Wing's handling of recent events such as the Terri Schiavo cases and the death of Pope John Paul II, and I couldn't help but to notice that the author alluding to the Right-Wing and Christians being almost synonymous. This caused me to remember how I used to be.

There was a time at which I would see anything done by racists, bigots, and warmongerers and see the act as being part of being Christian. If someone wanted to restrict peoples' freedoms in the bedroom, it was because that someone was a Christian. When an abortion clinic was bombed, or evolution (or science in general) was derided, it was a Christian doing it. All the wars, suffering, library burning, and progress-stifling were the fault of Christians.

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.

We shall begin the long journey of describing and explaining the reasons behind my views on the world. This article shall hopefully provide a basis for later articles delving into morality, religion, politics, freedom and the world in general.

It started out when I was a child, I would always hear of people referring to this "god" thing. I never quite understood what it was about. I was never indoctrinated into any church, I was never taught anything about religion and I never really cared. When people around me would say that they believed in "god", they would say that they believed because they "just knew" or "there has to be one." I was never given any real, tangible explanations as to what god was or why I should believe in it. (I say "it" because "he" and "she" both assume I have knowledge of god.) The weirdness of my situation really started to sink in when I heard a grown woman say that she still believed in Santa Claus. By that time I had finally weened myself away from the idea of a jolly fat man in a flying sleigh going around to all the world's houses on Christmas night so that he could take credit for the presents the children's parents bought them. I thought to myself, "if this woman can still seriously believe in Santa Claus why should I trust her or anybody else's belief in this god thing without some form of proof?"

Last weekend I went to a wedding. It was sweet, small, simple, private; and unfortunately, not recognized by the state. The wedding was between two men who wanted to declare their love for eachother. After seeing the two grooms walking down the aisle and hearing them say their vows, it became very apparent that this wasn't about sex. In fact, there was nothing sexual about any part of the ceremony. There was no mention of sodomy, fellatio or even kissing. The only exception to kissing was the customary kiss between the wedding participants.

Instead, there was love. Love tends to be forgotten when it comes to relationships between gays. People forget that relationships are more than just sex even though they'll claim otherwise. Yet when someone mentions "gay" or "homosexual" their thoughts immediately gravitate towards sodomy and other sexual acts. This is more a reflection upon their own faults than it is on gays.