Conservative Pastor Comes Out as an Atheist 

As a new atheist I can truly say that I am happier and feel more free then when I was a christian

Thank you so much for coming out, I was licensed at 6 yrs of age in the Southern Baptist Convention, and it took 58 years to finally be free of it. Again, thank you.

Greets and welcome, Carter! We're glad you joined us!

I feel free. After years of guilt for no reason, and free from religion. Happier than ever.

What a great coming out to freedom and reality ! BRAVO ! The new Adam !

"I'm yearning and I'm learning". So many roads to travel now, it's truly freedom.

LOVE THIS, Carter! I'll say it again: It's great to have you standing with us in the light!

I was once a minister with the Church of Christ, myself. It was studying the bible, theology and religion that slowly turned me into an atheist, beginning as a "liberal Christian", eventually 'evolving' into an anti-religion atheist. It was in my liberal/progressive Christian phase that I was 'pushed' out of the ministry by having first my Sunday school classes taken from me, then all preaching opportunities denied, and finally an informal "shunning", of sorts. I stopped attending right around the time I began to identify as an atheist.

“I didn’t lose my faith, I discarded it.” Yup. I didn’t lose mine; I remember exactly where I left it. And why. (I was not a clergyman, but I was a vp of a bible college.)

If you listen to or watch The Atheist Experience, Matt says this happens more often than you think. Many preachers become atheists or agnostics but are afraid to "come out" so to speak, in fear of disappointing their family, friends, and congregation. And it means actually losing a pretty good job. The Atheist Experience says they get calls from preachers all the time that want to remain anonymous and don't want to have their calls online. P.S. I've been an atheist for nearly 30 years and in my teens I was a Christian. Everyone just assumes you left the church because you had a bad experience. But, like he said, my experience too with the church was pretty much a good experience. However, I have lost most of those old friends in the church.

Thanks for the video and the bravery of those who chose to become freethinkers!

You know, I think that would be an excellent song for atheist gatherings that seek to have the same community feel of church.

I'm a born again Atheist.

A priest, a minister, and a rabbit walk into a bar. The bartender asked the rabbit what he's doing there and the rabbit says, "I don't know; I think I'm a typo."

welcome to the world. Adam

I only wish that something like this was in operation in 1992. I was a fully ordained Reverend Professor in Australia. If there were, I would have joined up.

Congratulations! Welcome to the fold.

It was a great convention! "Adam" was a highlight of the weekend.

I remember feeling the same way about why God wouldn't want us to eat fruit from a tree of knowledge. I now believe that it is disclaimer for the Bible. The tree of knowledge of Good and Evil to me represents moral absolutes/religion/black & white thinking. Until Adam and Eve ate it's fruit, they were happily naked/unclothed. Metaphorically it makes sense that they became afraid of their own nakedness if they began to think the way we are also taught in religion. Religion teaches us to be ashamed and cover ourselves up. While it's ironic that such a story exists in the Bible, part of me hopes it was intentional. That perhaps the person/people who wrote the story of Adam and Eve meant to put such a disclaimer at the very beginning of a book of errors.

The underlying theme here is Honestly. In general I believe Atheists are Honest people, and Christians are not.

It's good to see more and more people coming to reason at this rate we will have a more common sense confident world and it's about time his song sounds a bit like what the boss would do

He sure talks like a pastor (at least like my old one). Bravo sir!

I wasn't a pastor but I did lose so-called friends when I came out. I wish I saw this video ahead of time so my coming out wouldn't have been so painful. Anyway it feels great to be free! (It sounds like Carter went to a much nicer church than I did.)

I was baptized an atheist

Wow what an amazing song!

Daniel is brilliant! Mandatory comparative religion classes will let kids decide for themselves. Critical thinking and logic classes should also be mandatory. “Teach am a man to think…”

I love his songs !

Inspirational stuff!

"We live to be honest". From a physician in the audience. Great. #SarayuthPost 22.09.2021 2020 hrs in Bangkok.

Yay for the pastor.

Oh, gosh, with that great voice he has maybe I should rethink my non-belief in god. Incredible. Nice song too.

I am a nonbeliever I would love to believe in a God life is quite painful however I can’t live in the pretend world I Do that with addiction 52 and life is horrible

It was a few years ago, we sat in our loungers on the beach in Pattaya Thailand, next to us a short, fat man without a neck who spoke a strange English, with him young men, who swarmed around him like moths the light. He drank a lot of beer and paid for food and drinks for the boys. That was on a Saturday, the next day he was sitting in the same place again and after a few beers he started talking to us ... He said he came from Germany from Lower Bavaria and was responsible for several parishes there as a catholic priest, we asked him how it worked as a gay man, to which he replied, I've been an atheist for many years, how many of my fellow students ... but since I have not learned anything else, I am fulfilling my role as an actor for the Vatican, every year i fly here what else should i do We doubted his story and then found out from the grandma who gave the loungers that everything was right. He has been here for 15 years, we all know that he is a catholic priest, he is generous and the boys love him very much, because he is in the evening mostly very drunk and doesn't ask any more sexual services from the boys ..

T-rex's have short arms and would be great at playing the piano.

*God is the clay & humanity the sculptor.* More like, _"made in our image"._

I grew up in a non-Christian environment and was an atheist for most of my life, at least in my thinking. In my youth, it became apparent that I was quite mathematically gifted. I was able to completely solve exams in the advanced course (in the years 1976 to 1978) that lasted 270 minutes (from 7:45 to 13:30) within 35 to 45 minutes. Not sometimes, but every time. This course was the one with the highest level, the teacher later told us when he retired (2005) that he had to lower the level of difficulty for this course every year. And today the exams of a selection course last a maximum of 150 minutes, many of the topics we covered no longer appear at all. Hardly anyone today would be able to solve an exam like the one I used to write regularly. I can't remember ever having practiced, nor did I do any homework, etc. It just fell to me. It just came to me. So-called higher math was child's play for me and I thought that if you had the right method, you could teach it to 4-year-old children. I was so successful that one day my older sister severely cursed me out of envy, but I didn't take it seriously. Although I sensed that she was appealing to a higher power and I was clearly aware of this at that moment, I thought to myself that this kind of thing doesn't work and I immediately forgot about the whole incident. Until 45 years later (I had become a believer in the meantime), I prayed for reconciliation with my sister (neither of us knew why we had disagreements in the first place). The day after, Christ showed me this scene (of the curse) and told me that he didn't believe I wanted reconciliation at all. The curse had been very damaging to my professional and personal life, especially in terms of career, marriage and family, because it was against both areas of life. Such was my sister's hatred and envy of me. I can't go into any more detail because it would be too long. But in relation to the video: I spent most of my time dealing with the philosophical questions mentioned in the video, especially the question of whether our world view is real or just a subjective idea created by the brain, and the literature mentioned in the video. And I was unable to resolve these questions conclusively. However, I came to the conclusion that the claimed evidence for materialism and evolution is invalid. However, the fact that the "evidence" for materialism, evolution, etc. is invalid does not prove that materialism, evolution, etc. are untrue. So that I was at a stalemate regarding these issues. I'm telling all this, not to show off, but to address people like Dawkins who implicitly claim all Christians are stupid. And I don't think a Dawkins is any kind of significant researcher. People like Dawkins etc. are very proud and I consider them to be self-centered, not interested in the truth but in themselves and ultimately also in some ways stupid and intellectually dishonest. I have been dealing with these questions for decades and did not make the decision easy for myself. In other words, I couldn't decide at all because I lacked the knowledge. Ultimately, I would never have come to believe if the truth had not been revealed to me. I was surprised by the reference because it was biblical. Materialists reject something they don't even know. The problem most commenters have here is looking at organized religion (churches) and the characteristics of Christians. And what they see there in terms of corruption and flaws determines their judgment. But that is how they are wrong about the real question.

Watched 17

I don't think for most Christians that anything good comes out of them. It's mostly bad things that come out their mouth about other people but there is a small minority that are good but rare. A few good ones but mostly bad.

Other atheists won't stand with you if they don't agree with your politics.