Like white on rice.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

For those who care, and I understand if you don't: Today I quit being a Christian. I'm out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being "Christian" or to being part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to "belong" to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outside. My conscience will allow nothing else.

[FBM]

Infidel. Burn her in the eternal unquenchable flames of Christ's unending love and compassion!!!

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Infidel. Burn her in the eternal unquenchable flames of Christ's unending love and compassion!!!

Hmmm, how did "Quo Vadis" end, again?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

From the Baltimore Sun:

Anne Rice quits Christianity -- but not Christ

Novelist Anne Rice remains committed to Christ. But she is quitting Christianity.

The “Interview With The Vampire” author, who in recent years has spoken publicly about her faith and written a series of novels tracing the life of Jesus, wrote on her Facebook page Wednesday that she was finished with organized Christianity.

For those who care, and I understand if you don't: Today I quit being a Christian. I'm out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being "Christian" or to being part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to "belong" to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outside. My conscience will allow nothing else.

She followed that post a few minutes later with more details:

As I said below, I quit being a Christian. I'm out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.

On Thursday, Rice posted a series of passages from the New Testament:

Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household.

But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

If I speak in the tongues[a] of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

And then, more detail:

My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been or might become.

[charlou]

It's a move in the right direction ... away from organised religion and dogma ... Good on her.

[hiyymer]

For those who care, and I understand if you don't: Today I quit being a Christian. I'm out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being "Christian" or to being part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to "belong" to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outside. My conscience will allow nothing else.

Find a good liberal protestant church, Anne. Don't be so proud. "THE" church has been morally bankrupt for centuries. The only puzzle is why anyone would be surprised at the foolery of the mama's boys' club.

[maiforpeace]

Back to the dark side of vamps. Good for Anne.

I never understood how she became a Christian in the first place.

[hiyymer]

Back to the dark side of vamps. Good for Anne.

I never understood how she became a Christian in the first place.

She was born one and left. She says she returned, as a rejection of atheism. I think people get confused by that. Atheists tend to be rationalists, and rationalism is what is so debilitating. You can get that life is irrational and we aren't in control and we don't have to have good reasons without needing to personify it.

[Trolldor]

Atheists don't tend to be rationalists, they tend to be college or university students.

[hiyymer]

Atheists don't tend to be rationalists, they tend to be college or university students.

I went to one of those group meetups for atheists and there were all ages there, but few college students. Not that I doubt what you say. I think the atheist ranks get thinned out a little when people get married and have kids.

[Trolldor]

...
And what leads you to this erroneous conclusion?

[hiyymer]

...
And what leads you to this erroneous conclusion?

Which conclusion?

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Hiyymer, you appear to be lumping all atheists together - as if we all share similar reasons for being atheists and similar ideas as to what that entails. To be honest, and no offence intended, that is bollocks. Atheism is simply the lack of belief in any god; it is not a movement, a philosophy, an ideology, a state of mind and most certainly not a religion!

Rationalism is something to which many atheists aspire - but others don't care. I certainly don't try to be rational in all my actions - I recognise that i am an emotional creature and I follow my emotions on occasion just like anybody else.

Anne Rice was never a strictly scientific, rationalist, Dawkinesque style atheist. She was raised catholic but left the church in her teens. in her own words, she spent a large part of her life trying to 'make sense of a world without God' - looking for a moral and ethical purpose to the world. Personally, I view that as a fruitless task - except in its broader and more fundamental meaning of scientific enquiry, and I doubt that is what she meant by it. Her return to 'faith' happened simply because she had never really left it - merely stepped out of the church - the two things are not synonymous - and her leaving the church again is merely another phase of worshipping from outside the door - yet again, she hasn't let go completely. I doubt she ever will. If you read her books - any of them - it is clear that she values moral certainty - even her most 'evil' characters are faced with moral choices and usually end up overcoming their bestial urges in some way. I like my vampires a little bloodier, personally. :twisted:

[hiyymer]

Hiyymer, you appear to be lumping all atheists together - as if we all share similar reasons for being atheists and similar ideas as to what that entails. To be honest, and no offence intended, that is bollocks. Atheism is simply the lack of belief in any god; it is not a movement, a philosophy, an ideology, a state of mind and most certainly not a religion!

Rationalism is something to which many atheists aspire - but others don't care. I certainly don't try to be rational in all my actions - I recognise that i am an emotional creature and I follow my emotions on occasion just like anybody else.

Anne Rice was never a strictly scientific, rationalist, Dawkinesque style atheist. She was raised catholic but left the church in her teens. in her own words, she spent a large part of her life trying to 'make sense of a world without God' - looking for a moral and ethical purpose to the world. Personally, I view that as a fruitless task - except in its broader and more fundamental meaning of scientific enquiry, and I doubt that is what she meant by it. Her return to 'faith' happened simply because she had never really left it - merely stepped out of the church - the two things are not synonymous - and her leaving the church again is merely another phase of worshipping from outside the door - yet again, she hasn't let go completely. I doubt she ever will. If you read her books - any of them - it is clear that she values moral certainty - even her most 'evil' characters are faced with moral choices and usually end up overcoming their bestial urges in some way. I like my vampires a little bloodier, personally. :twisted:

Good post. You obviously know much more about Anne than I do. There certainly are different kinds of atheists, since I consider myself to technically be one. I am not sure how many different kinds of rationalists there are.

The "moral choice" is a most interesting subject, since, if you believe science, there is really nothing there to overcome our "bestial" urges except another urge. I think that all our implicit motivations are equal, they are often in conflict, we experience that as the moral choice, and the choice will never be made without the subconscious brain making it. That's because there are no actual implicit biological motivations in the cognitive conscious part of the brain which could make it. We are not animated by our thoughts, but by the limbic emotional driver. The conscious overcoming of our unconscious urges is a total illusion. The only reason we make the "reasonable" choices we make is because we are wired in the normal way, not because we are "responsible" or there are some absolute rules out there. Morality is entirely in the moment, and entirely specific to the biological wiring and associations created through past experiences of the individual chooser's brain. You could have a vampire that was pure evil and had an almost nonexistent capacity for empathy because he was wired that way. The "conscious overcoming" is rampant throughout our myths because it is our own reassurance that we are in control and the fact that we are all wired pretty much the same way means more than it does.

I'm not saying we never make conscious choices (which may or may not be true), but that we never make conscious moral choices.

[Lozzer]

Anne Rice, author of the novel "Interview with a vampire" has left Christianity. Her reasons being that she refuses to be a member of a faith with such a horrible take on secular humanism, homosexuality and anti-feminism