Home: Welcome to unFundy.com
Help for former fundamentalists seeking sanity in an insane world
This website is the culmination of a very long process, actually an entire life’s journey. It began many years ago when I was a child in a small fundamentalist church in Western Ohio. I was thoroughly indoctrinated to the point that I accepted the all their teachings without question. I was completely dedicated to what I thought to be the truth, attending church, singing, speaking in tongues, eventually becoming the pastor of my own church in my early 20’s.
Like many very vocal Christian fundamentalists today, I believed in a literal interpretation of an infallible Bible and all the typical beliefs that go along with that idea. This meant that I accepted that the world we live in was approximately 6,000 years old and that a global flood destroyed the world (except for Noah and his family) shortly thereafter. It also meant that I believed that all illness could be cured by laying on of hands and that people actually do become demon possessed requiring exorcism.
I sincerely lead my congregation in what I perceived to be the ultimate truth, but over time my biblical studies led to difficulty, the world around me did not appear to mesh with what I read in scripture. I encountered several Biblical passages that appeared to be contradictory. There were also unfulfilled promises and prophecies that proved the Bible could not possibly be infallible. I saw people who I knew to be good Christians dying from cancer and other diseases no matter how much we prayed.
I limped along for two more years as a pastor while I battled with unbelief and doubt, you cannot step down from the office of church pastor without someone noticing; so whatever I decided it was going to be public and final. The stress of having to publically proclaim a faith while being riddled with doubt was completely exhausting, I dreaded each and every church service often pawning sermons off on visiting ministers as much as possible.
My Dilemma
Here was my dilemma; my religious upbringing taught me that belief was absolutely required for salvation. Yet it also taught me that pretending to believe when I actually did not was hypocrisy.
This meant that being an unbeliever was certain damnation. When a fundamentalist is asked about belief being the sole criteria for salvation, they will usually deny it; but the bedrock of all Protestantism (from the writings of Martin Luther to Pat Robertson) says that unless you believe in (and accept) Jesus as your savior, you will go to hell. In fact, Martin Luther was so stricken by Romans 1:17, “The just shall live by faith.” that he began his crusade against the Catholic Church based on an epiphany from this one verse (see link.) Deny it as much as they like; in the Christian fundamentalist’s mind, anyone unable to believe in Jesus will be eternally damned!
Even though I feared that it meant I could be lost forever, I was unable to silence my doubts no matter how hard I tried. Eventually, the internal struggle became so great that I decided I was spiritually deformed; I was a man who as incapable of having religious faith. Up until this point, my entire life was centered solely on religion, so such a discovery left me devastated and empty, everything I ever though I knew had to be rethought again. It was as though my life was taken from me and I was left with a blank slate. All I had left were questions…
- If I no longer believed in a god, what did I believe?
- Does life without God still have meaning?
- How do I decide what is right and wrong without a God?
Over the many years since then, I found answers to these questions. I now know what I do believe and I have peace that I could never find in religion. I have studied philosophy, psychology, history and other religions and have answers that satisfy me. I now understand that I am both agnostic and atheist. By that I mean that I cannot prove or disprove the existence of any god of any sort; however, I do have sufficient proof that the god taught in Judaism, Christianity and Islam does not exist. I do not believe any gods exist and if you read my entire website I will show you why I don’t.
I think that my past experience as a fundamentalist minister gives me a unique perspective that may help others make the journey from belief to non-belief. I have talked to several people who can see that Christianity and theism is not correct but they have no idea how to explore religious teachings and find the errors. Therefore, this website is dedicated to fundamentalists who are looking for answers as to how their religion came into existence and how to answer the questions of friends and family desiring to ensnare them back into the brain-washed fold.
This site is not here to convert fundamentalists who have faith, such people are beyond help and cannot be reasoned with. It is a waste of my time and anyone else’s time to try and convert such people.
The Threat of Fundamentalism
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But this is not the only threat we face… |
Religious fundamentalism in any form (Islamic, Christian, Mormon or any other you can think of) is a deadly threat to both democracy and freedom, especially the freedom to question. You can look at poor women living under the oppression of the Taliban in Afghanistan or Pakistan, the terrorist attacks around the world or remember September 11, 2001 to plainly see the reality of this threat.The Growing Fascist Theocratic Threat
Another purpose of this website is to point out error in Christian fundamentalist teaching, doctrine and beliefs to weaken the current Christian Conservative movement. Many Americans who are passive and allow Christian fundamentalists to have political influence over them would not do so if they had any idea how insane their beliefs actually are. The modern conservative movement is an evil alliance of religious fanaticism, corporate interests, bigotry and laissez-faire politics determined to establish a Christian fundamentalist theocracy. This movement has been festering in America for well over a hundred years that have completely taken over the Republican Party starting in the 1980’s. The only way to defeat this great evil is to expose their insanity to the light of day, this site is my contribution to that effort.
This sick Christian Conservative philosophy has been spread by lying talk-show hosts and Fox (so-called) News to the point that America has been radically changed from a compassionate defender of liberty and justice to a corrupt selfish state that only serves giant corporations and millionaires. They have intentionally dumbed-down America and made it almost impossible to have a reasoned debate. While they themselves throw out the words Socialist, Fascist and Communist like they were penny-candy, in fact none of them have any comprehension of the true meaning of these words.
Fascism as defined in Wikipedia is the belief that “nations and/or races are in perpetual conflict whereby only the strong can survive by being healthy, vital, and by asserting themselves in conflict against the weak. Fascists advocate the creation of a single-party state. Fascist governments forbid and suppress criticism and opposition to the government and the fascist movement.”
By this definition, the Christian Conservatives allied with their corporate overlords (banks, defense industries, insurance and drug companies) are far nearer to fascists than any liberals or the Muslims they identify as enemies. They show complete intolerance for opposing views; advocate class warfare by demanding tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations but yell “Hell no you can’t!” when it comes to helping the poor, unemployed or working people. No lie is too large and no evil too great for their agenda, for them their goals justify any means. The Christian Conservative agenda must be fought in every way to preserve freedom and our democracy.
So you could say that this website was also made out of desperation seeing powerful forces trying to change my precious United States of America from a democracy to a theocratic fascist state. My hope is to chip away at the fundamentalist base of this movement by exposing the lunacy of Christian fundamentalism.
The Work of One Person
The entire content of this website has been created by a single person (me) in my spare time between job and family. While I try to give it as much time as I can, I cannot update it or add material as often as I would like, but I humbly offer this material to any who would read it with an open mind. I have been accused of “picking” on Christianity, and even accused of coddling other religions as part of a supposed liberal bias. Be advised that I consider all religion to be equally ignorant no matter whether it is Christian, Muslim, Scientologist, Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness or whatever. I admit that I focus most of my attention on Christianity, but for good reason; I know it far better than any other religion.
Content
You will notice that this website has been separated into several pages:
- First there is a Books Page where I have put links to all my books and articles.
- I have an Author Page where I give a full account of my de-conversion.
- A Quotes Page where I put interesting things that America’s founding fathers and many others have said about religion and atheism.
- I have most recently added a Blog where you can see my latest thoughts and comments.
Technical Recommendations
This site has been tested on and can verified to have a uniform look and feel in the following web browsers on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7, both 32 and 64 bit versions:
- Microsoft Internet Explorer, Version 7 (IE7) and newer
- Mozilla Firefox, Version 3 and newer
- Apple Safari, Version 3.2 and newer
- Google Chrome, Version 1 and the previous beta release
- Opera, Version 10.61 (only tested on Windows 7 64 bit)
I have also loaded this site on my iPhone’s Safari Browser without any problems, and friends who own a Mac have told me that it looks fine on their machines as well. So hopefully this site will look as I intended on your browser as well.
If you are using any older versions of any of these browsers then I highly recommend that you upgrade to a more recent version and apply all patches to reduce the possibility of downloading anything that could be harmful to your computer.
NOTE: I am aware of some minor issues viewing my site using Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) but I do not plan on fixing them because that version is so old. These issues appear to be cosmetic and do not hide any information or block navigation. I have no idea how my pages look in older versions of any of these browsers.
Final Thoughts
I hope that you the reader enjoy my efforts. If you find it helpful, useful, interesting, or just annoying then visit my feedback page and let me know.
Thank you for your time,
Site Administrator