One candle on the cake!

This blog celebrated its first birthday on the 12th October. I just want to say thank you to all that have sacrificed their time to make comments. I want to thank Tin Soldier, Roger, Peter, Lui, SuperSkeptic, Cori, eddie, Skywolf, Jason Hughes, tichius, Dar, Mike, Marc and many others for challenging my thinking and providing fascinating discussion on this blog. I hope to write many more articles regarding my thoughts on religion, atheism, God, evolution and philosophy; and I’m looking forward to another year of discussion with you all.

Looking back over the 60 articles that I’ve written over the past year, there are many that provide some detail regarding the reasons to why I left Christianity. But the one article that I think adequately captures – in just a few short paragraphs – the feelings I went through during my faith struggle, is an article I posted earlier this year. It is called One-way Mirror, and is posted below.

One-way Mirror
This is a little something I wrote up. It captures the feelings I went through when I lost my faith.

I could never see what was behind the one way-mirror, but I always believed and truly felt that there was an awesome presence there; a presence worthy of the highest respect, but also – to me – an intimate friend. I used to speak directly to the mirror, believing that that the presence – possibly in some adjoining room – listened, and cared for me. Sometimes I even thought that the presence spoke back to me, although not in an audible voice, mind you. Its messages had to be found and studied elsewhere: in a book, from other people, from a feeling deep down inside of me. There was never any direct correspondence.

One day I started to doubt that there was someone behind the mirror. I asked – and then cried – for the hidden presence to reveal itself. It did not, and in a final stroke of frustration I flung my chair at it. The mirror shattered into a thousand pieces, and I suddenly froze when I saw that there was no room behind the mirror. No friend. Just a blank, solid wall.

“But this is impossible”, I cried to myself, “I know, deep down inside, that someone was there. I could feel his presence. I could hear his small, still voice. If there was no-one there, where did all these impressions come from? Where did all the certainty and belief have its source?”

I suddenly looked down and found my answer. From one of the shards of glass on the floor, I saw a reflection – a face looking back at me.

The face was my own. . .