"It is a counterfeit love that is contingent upon authority, punishment, or reward. True love is respect and admiration, compassion and kindness, freely given by a healthy, unafraid human being."
- Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith
"Let me make one thing perfectly clear: I do not reject Christianity because of my desire to go around sinning without any guilt; I reject Christianity because I have closely examined its claims and I have found them to be unsubstantiated."
Roger Martin.
"I was constantly trying to smash the square pegs of what I was learning from science, sociology, psychology, history and comparative religion into the round hole of my conservative Christian paradigm. [........] . I reached the point where I was bordering on biochemical treatment for depression because my mind was always wrestling with philosophical problems and not getting acceptable solutions. Julian Huxley had a similar experience, which he described as developing a "thought tumor."
Dan Lewandowski
"The most annoying thing is that all the people who used to be my fellow Xians and used to believe that I was as good as the rest of them explained my losing-of-my-faith away by claiming that I "probably never had any faith anyway" or "It's just a rough period, you'll return to Jesus". I know that for that period of my life I had absolute faith and devotion and then to be told that you probably didn't is insulting."
Ben Creagh Brown