When I came to the conclusion that I could no longer accept Christianity, it was only after several years of research and intense self-reflection. During the course of that transformation and afterwards, I wrote several essays which I thought some people might find interesting. This collection documents the thought process that I went through in abandoning Christianity, and explains a little bit the beliefs that I have, now.

While the essays are all collected here in one place, they were originally written as stand-alone essays, so they can be read in any order and still make sense. The arguments within them may not be entirely consistent, as my stance regarding religion has developed over the time that the essays were written. I have made some editorial changes to the essays in an attempt to make certain sections more clear, but I've tried not to change the sentiment, even if it's one of those areas where my stance has changed. I should also add that some of these essays were written originally for other sections of my website, and have been adapted, sometimes with liberal editing, for this collection.

Additionally, I realize there are already essays and even entire books on this subject by philosophers and famous scientists which are no doubt better than what I've written, but I figure it doesn't hurt to add one more voice. Perhaps it will strike a chord with some readers, and help them to see things differently. Even for those not questioning their faith, I would hope these essays show the thought that goes into abandoning one's religion, and allows them to at least respect and tolerate, if not agree with, atheists.

If during the course of reading these essays, you want to double check my use of a Bible passage, or check the passage in a different translation of the Bible, I've found the site, BibleGateway.com, to be very useful.

All Essays Combined
Religious Essays.booklet.2008-10-03.pdf (564 kB)
This .pdf contains all of the essays in one file. If you plan on reading all the essays, this is probably the easiest way. It also allows you to download, save, and share the essays. Note that the file was formatted for 5.5" x 8.5" paper (a normal sheet of paper folded in half). If you have a printer with duplexing and appropriate settings, you could print this out as a booklet on regular letter size paper. Even with a less fancy printer, Adobe Reader has the option (under Page Scaling: in the Print dialog box) to print multiple pages per sheet of paper. Also note that since this is a .pdf file, you will need Adobe Reader to view it.

Individual Essays
If you don't want to download a .pdf file, or if you just want to read the descriptions of the essays before downloading anything, here are all the essays available individually. These are normal .html files, so you can view them directly in your browser without any additional software.

Abandoning Christianity
This is the main essay, and the one that I would hope that everybody who visits this page reads. It discusses my reasons for coming to this conclusion, and a bit about my personal journey in abandoning Christianity. It started off by consolidating three individual essays with a fair amount of overlap that I had written during my "deconversion" process.

Musings on the Existence of the Soul
This was written several years ago, actually, before I ever began to question Christianity. I do still find it interesting and compelling, even if I am a little less certain about my conclusion. It was originally an e-mail correspondence, and had already been published as a page on my website. (previously published with different introduction on a web page).

Further Musings on the Soul
This essay was written after giving further thought to the idea of the existence of souls, but more importantly, after doing some research into ideas other people had already come up with, and some research into how the physical aspects of the brain control our personalities. (adapted from web page).

E-mail Correspondence- Children & Religion
This is a copy of an e-mail correspondence I had with someone regarding how to raise children in a largely Christian nation when you're no longer religious.

Benevolent Dictator
When I went through the period of questioning my acceptance of Christianity, the single question that I was trying to figure out was whether or not God exists. At the time, it seemed obvious to me that if God did exist, then I should worship him, and if he didn't exist, then there was no need to worship him. It never dawned on me to ask, if God does exist, should I worship him?

Problems with a Day-Age Interpretation of Genesis
This essay was written while I still considered myself a Christian, but had already rejected the idea that the Bible was divinely inspired. It addresses a common modern interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis that tries to reconcile it with science - that the chapter is figurative, with the days actually being very long periods of time. (adapted from web page).

Confidence in Historical Knowledge
This essay actually originated in an e-mail reply to a creationist who had written me about some of the other essays on my site. Even though it's not specifically religious, since it counters some common creationist arguments, and helps explain why I can have so much confidence in scientific findings that contradict a literal reading of the Bible, I figured it was worth including here. (adapted from web page)

Pascal's Wager
Most people have heard some version of Pascal's Wager before, even if they haven't heard it referred to as such. The argument goes something like this. There either is a God, or there isn't, and you either believe in God, or you don't. If God is real, belief offers eternal reward, while disbelief offers eternal punishment. If God isn't real, so the argument goes, you gain or lose nothing through either belief or disbelief. So, following those odds, belief would seem to be the rational choice. While this argument may appear clever at fist blush, there are definitely some major problems that keep it from convince anybody who has given much thought to the question of the existence of a deity. (adapted from web page)

Am I Religious
Considering the attitude I had of non-religious people when I was a Christian, and considering that many people probably have similar attitudes, this short essay is an attempt to show how I still think about all the same big questions, and that I'm not just apathetic about the whole thing, or only concerned about myself.

Other People's Comments from Various Blogs
From time to time, I'll run across a comment on a blog that expresses a sentiment nearly perfectly. Here are a few of those comments (obviously written by people other than me). Some of them deal with evolution, which as I wrote in the main essay at the top of this page, doesn't necessarily conflict with Christianity, but was one of my first seeds of doubt concerning my religion, and is certainly part of a cultural conflict in this country right now.

Ein Sophistry's Genetic Evidence of Evolution
This is a little longer than the other comments, so I've put it onto its own page. It is a very, very (very) good description of some of the genetic evidence for evolution, and how this evidence just doesn't make sense from a creationist perspective, including references.

Sections on My Main Website & Blog
For a while leading up to my abandonment of Christianity, I was already starting to write out against fundamentalism and biblical literalism, even if I haven't come out and written openly about my atheism, yet. For the most part, those essays are unpolished, but a few of them are better than others.

Skepticism & Science vs. Religion Blog Category
This is a category on my blog that has several essays concerning skepticism, and the conflict between science and religion.

My Soapbox
A collection of my rants, some of which are against fundamentalists and creationists.

History of Changes to This Page & The Essays

• 2008-10-02
  • Converted the individual essays to HTML format. Hopefully, this will make the essays more accessible to people who don't want to download pdf files.
  • Revised general introduction to all essays.
  • Added an essay, Further Musings on the Soul
  • Added an essay, Pascal's Wager
  • Made numerous, small changes to several of the essays
  • Added more commentary to the essay, Problems With a Day-Age Intepretation of Genesis
• 2008-04-08
  • Made a few very small changes to the first essay, Abandoning Christianity, including rewording a few sections, and adding a few more footnotes.
  • In the essay, Confidence in Historical Knowledge, added a note about Omphalos Theory, or Last Thursdayism, to the appropriate section, and added a note about Charles Lyell to the section on plate tectonics, as well as a few slight changes to wording in other sections.
  • In the combined Religious Essays pdf, I changed the formatting of the headers & footers - adding the title of each essay to the header, and including page numbers of the format, "Page x of x," in the footer.
• 2007-11-06
  • A very small correction, that should have been caught for the September update - corrected the Table of Contents in the combined Religious Essays pdf. Previously, it showed "Error! Bookmark not defined" for one of the essays, instead of the page number.
• 2007-09-07
  • Updated the essay, E-mail Correspondence- Children & Religion, and incorporated the new version into the document for all essays combined. Since I hadn't asked the correspondent's permission for sharing his views, now that I've made this a public page, I figured I would make him anonymous.
• 2007-08-22
  • Updated the first essay, Abandoning Christianity, and incorporated the new version into the document for all essays combined. I made a few small changes to wording or added new sentences/phrases to better explain points in several places. Additionally, I added several footnotes listing references. Many of these references were simply urls to web pages, so this is still not anywhere near a scholarly article, but at least when I make statements like, "Some people say...," the reader can see who these "some people" are, and see that I'm not just making things up.
• 2007-07-10
  • Converted all essays to .pdf format for easier viewing & better compatibility with other systems (originally most were MS Word, with a few html).
  • Removed the three outdated essays that were superceded by "Abandoning Christianity."
  • Added the essay, "Am I Religious."
  • Created a .pdf combining all essays, for "one stop shopping."
  • Added dates to file names of all essays to enable easier tracking of changes in the future. Note that the current dates (2007-07-10) don't necessarily reflect when the particular essays were last changed, but rather will serve as a baseline for future changes.