WHAT IS IT LIKE TO LOSE YOUR CHRISTADELPHIAN FAITH?

This is the most frequent question that I am asked by Christadelphians:

"What is it like to lose your Christadelphian faith?"

Almost every week I get two or three asking that same question. Someone called me this evening and asked. I could tell that there was concern in their tone.

Evidence for bird evolution from China



What may be the earliest creature yet discovered on the evolutionary line to birds has been unearthed in China.

The fossil animal, which retains impressions of feathers, is dated to be about 160 million years old.

Scientists have given it the name Aurornis, which means "dawn bird".

COMMENT OF THE WEEK

Lasting effects has left a new comment on your post "How To Resign":

I'm pleased to have stumbled across your site, and have been reading it with great interest for the last couple of days.

   

CHRISTADELPHIANS - YOU MUST NOT VISIT THIS WEBSITE!

From this month's (June 2013) Christadelphian magazine "Letters to the Editor."

 

RECENT PICTURES FROM MARS DISPROVE YOUNG EARTH CREATIONIST/FLOOD GEOLOGY THEORY

The Shaler Rock Formation on Mars showing layers of sedimentary rock deposited by water.

COMMENT OF THE WEEK

Theo P Hilus has left a new comment on your post "Why Dr John Thomas Was Wrong":

Hi, I am not a CD but appreciated reading about the plagiarism set out above as have been reading EUREKA and particularly the 'exposition' of Revelation 11. Having read sections of Horae Apocalypticae, I wondered about plagiarism. As noted above, I was struck by the minute detail about the French Revolution in page after page. My marginal note was 'so what?'

LETTERS FROM A SISTER WHO IS LOSING HER FAITH (PARTS 3 & 4)

Contributed by Sister Dawn     

   

LETTERS FROM A SISTER WHO IS LOSING HER FAITH (PARTS 1 & 2)

We are closely involved with many Christadelphians who are either losing or have lost their faith. Almost all of this discussion is confidential and never makes it onto the pages of this website.

However one brave sister has agreed to allow us to publish and we hope that readers will learn much from this series of letters that will be published here from time to time.

SPECIAL FEATURE: EVOLUTION IS TRUE!

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology - Carl Sagan

Sinornithosaurus

reptile/bird fossil

125 million years old

The ignorance of large sections (not all) of the Christadelphian community about Evolution is profound. It is wilful ignorance of a people who won't even look at the facts. They don't want to look at the facts because the facts clearly demonstrate that the first chapters of the Bible are Iron Age myth and nonsense. The facts destroy the very foundation of Christadelphian belief.

Instead most Christadelphians learn about Evolution by reading anti-Evolution booklets and watching anti-Evolution videos that are either decades out of date or are based on writings that are obsolete by a factor of many decades.

As a consequence they know almost nothing about one of the greatest scientific discoveries in human history and they don't understand that Evolution actually happened. Evolution is true and it exposes the writers of Genesis as mistaken. God did NOT create living species; they evolved from a common ancestor billions of years ago.

It has been said that there is more evidence to prove that Evolution happened than there is for any other established fact of human knowledge. We have the evidence of our own eyes in our own times.

Faith and Proof Don't Mix

Choose one or the other
- but you can't have both!

In Hebrews 11:1 the apostle Paul declares that faith is a belief that is not based on proof.

"Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see." (New Living Translation 2007)

In Ephesians 2:8 Paul teaches that it is this kind of faith that causes God's grace to save certain people.

"By grace are ye saved, through faith."

Paul did NOT say:

"By grace are ye saved through proof."

Follow Until You're Blind (A Poem)

Ex-Christadelphian Lunches and Social Afternoons - Melbourne and Sydney

The Conservatory Restaurant at Crown Casino Melbourne

We are arranging a lunch and social afternoon for Ex-Christadelphians at the Conservatory Restaurant at the Crown Entertainment Complex in the middle of Melbourne Australia. Cost $48.00 with everything included except drinks. Tea and Coffee is included.

It will be a weekday lunch. Or we can move it to a Saturday, with an increase in cost to $61.00. Parking at the complex is cheap and often free if you buy a lunch.

If you can't afford the cost, Ex-Christadelphians funds will confidentially subsidise it for you.

Sisters DON'T have to wear hats!!

SPECIAL INVESTIGATION: The Dangers of a Christadelphian Heritage College Education





This is not how Australian
education is supposed to be

Writing about the spread of extreme religious Faith Schools like the Christadelphian Church Heritage Colleges, top Australian educator John Fleming, author of the book "The Moving School" has commented "It's very worrying." (Recent email to me.)

Professor Richard Dawkins has said that he considers Faith Schools to be child abuse. 

Here at Ex-Christadelphians we agree and we believe that for the well being of the students they should be opposed.


We do not object to Church owned schools. My own three children attend a great Uniting Church owned school, Haileybury College.  There they receive a well balanced education free from religious proselyting.

We do object to extreme Faith Schools like Heritage Colleges, where preaching to the children is a declared intention of the school. That is quite different to religious education. We think that public money should NOT be spent converting children to a religious sect.

SPECIAL FEATURE

 

Christadelphian Atheism is Christadelphian reform taken to its logical conclusion.

We Christadelphian Atheists favour The Scientific Method of thinking and discovery and we favour mainstream scientific theories such as the Big Bang, the inflation of our Universe and Evolution. But the Big Bang had to come from somewhere and because the sum total of all the mass and energy in our Universe totals zero, we think that the Universe came from nothing.

But "nothing" in that sense does not mean the "nothing" of the generally accepted English usage of the word. Obviously there would have to be "something" in that "nothing" and scientists have demonstrated that "nothing" is actually a seething mass of energy so great that its sum total cannot be imagined or even estimated.

The Triumph Of Reason Over Religion



"The Cosmos is within us. We are made of star stuff. We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself." - Carl Sagan

The atoms in our bodies
were created in exploding stars


Who can forget the measured, poetic presentation of Carl Sagan when in Cosmos (1980) he first explained to a wrapped world of television viewers the fantastic fact that we are star stuff? (Scroll down to watch the video.)

Previously existing stars had blown apart to produce some of the elements from which our human bodies are composed. More of our elemental atoms were the product of a second generation of stars accumulating that same star stuff and in their explosive deaths compressed those lighter elements further along the atomic table to produce all of the remaining heavier atoms essential for our existence.
 

Theoretical Christadelphianism

After 165 years of failed predictions
Christadelphians are confident
that they understand prophecy!

In the same way that theoretical physics seeks to expand the limits of our knowledge about the physical sciences, theoretical Christadelphianism seeks to expand Christadelphian thinking by speculating about things that are not stated or clearly explained in the Bible.


But while theoretical physicists think of experiments by which their theories can be falsified or confirmed, theoretical Christadelphians are not constrained by any sort of reality check.

For example at the recent "Rugby Prophecy Day" theoretical Christadelphianists boldly speculated whether the latest reports from Debka File, events in Syria, global seismic and volcanic activity, rough seas and closed ATM machines in Cyprus means that Christ's return after two thousand years of absence is finally about to take place.

An Open Letter To A Christadelphian Who Is Losing Her Faith

 

Losing one's faith can be
emotionally distressing.

This is an open letter reply to a Christadelphian sister who wrote to me this morning saying that she "has almost lost" her faith and is no longer attending the meetings.

If you are a Christadelphian, or a believer in another religion who feels the same way, this reply is for you.

 

When You Lose Your Faith You Gain your Reason

"The path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge." – Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

The nine words of the title to this article condense all that I have been trying to say on this blog over the past few years into a single sentence.

I was watching a video of Christopher Hitchens the other evening and he said it as a throwaway line. He never developed the idea and it was hardly relevant to what he was talking about. He almost said it as a mistake and he quickly moved on to talk about something else. But I seized upon the quote and resolved to write something about it for you.

"You Can't Prove That God Doesn't Exist"

Where is the Evidence???

I must have heard it a thousand times from Christadelphians and other believers when debating the existence of God: "You can't prove that God doesn't exist."

They say it after their initial arguments for the existence of God have crumbled and they find themselves on the defensive. They think that it is some sort of unanswerable debate clincher and indeed it is; but not in the way they expect.

Because a moment's thought will show that if you can't prove that something does not exist, then for the very same reason, you can't prove that it does exist.
 

A Square Peg In A Christadelphian Hole

An Article Kindly Contributed By A Reader

  

I was born into a Christadelphian family in the mid-70s and from a young age I had to attend Sunday school, the youth club and the evening meeting. My parents came from a long line of CDs, so this really was the traditional family religion. We led a comfortable middle class life and I had a number of non-CD friends from school but as I grew up I began to dread Sundays rolling round. Without fail I had to endure the same tedious rubbish, first a lesson at Sunday school from a teacher who could bore the tail off a donkey, then a mind-numbing evening exhortation from a dusty old speaker at the evening meeting. I really hated it with a passion, especially watching my non-CD friends enjoying a carefree day playing whilst I was carted off for yet another wasted Sunday.