Change your bookmarks

I’m not usually a fan of compartmentalization, so I’ve become more and more uncomfortable with the compartmentalization of my blogs: Leaving Eden as the serious, long-winded one about my Christian college experience and reasons for deconversion, and peaceful atheist as the lighter, calmer chronicle of my post-Christian exploits.  (Don’t you just hate the expression “post-Christian”?  [...]

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depression

Friendly Atheist has a post about a guy who works at a Christian university and became an atheist while he was there. He still works there, and hasn’t come out as an atheist to anyone, including his wife, who also works there. His story is pretty sad.  He also now has a blog [...]

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prone to wander

Throughout my years of being a Christian, I worried a lot about falling away. I often voiced this fear to my close friends and mentors during my first years in college, and all of them told me that it would never happen given the strength of my faith.
“Come Thou Fount” was my [...]

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new blog: peaceful atheist

I like to write, and most of my writing only seems suited to blog material.  So I’m starting another blog to write about a multitude of things that don’t quite belong on this one.  I want to keep the focus of Leaving Eden fairly specific, so if you want to read whatever I feel like [...]

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pretty damn awesome

I just wanted to report, in case any remaining readers were wondering, that my post-Wheaton life is pretty damn awesome. I live on my own in a great town that I love exploring. I have a secure job at a non-profit, which makes me poor but not in danger of being destitute. [...]

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hail and farewell

Drumroll, please…
I graduated from Wheaton College this month. Yes that’s right, I’m “free”. I’ve known for awhile that I was going to graduate early. That’s why I stayed at Wheaton after becoming an atheist.
You’re probably expecting me to divulge some personal details about myself now that I have my Wheaton degree. [...]

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Frequently Asked Questions

I decided to take a break from finals to answer some of the questions that have been inundating my email and comments lately. I’ve answered them in a separate FAQ page and made it a permanent fixture on the blog. It only includes the questions that I get asked painfully often, and/or have [...]

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Tastes like the real thing

I had hopes that my evangelical regurgitation would be detected. I had a crazy idea that someone would call me out on it, that after listening to one of my class devotions or reading one of my papers, a professor would pull me aside and say, “nice try, but this isn’t real.” That [...]

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FriendlyChristian interview

My friend Bill recently interviewed me for his site, FriendlyChristian, which is a great community he’s created for Christians and atheists alike. Bill is a stellar guy with a great blog, but many of you already know that because you only read my blog because he links to it. Our interview is posted [...]

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The Giver

Yes, that Lois Lowry book you probably read in fourth grade. It’s about a utopian society where there is no pain or suffering, but also no great joy or love– for everyone except the Receiver, the one member of society who knows the full breadth of human experience. Having Received the memories of [...]

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