Since my wife and I became freethinkers – we were formerly evangelical Christians – we've had many discussions about the culture our children are growing up in. We are Southerners, and we live in a neighborhood that is predominantly protestant. Almost everyone we come into contact with goes to church, and their kids are active in church-related activities. While this concerns my wife, it doesn't concern me. The main reason is the Internet.

Since the mainstream adoption of the Internet, I've been predicting that it would forever change religion – especially for teenagers and young adults. The main reason for this is access to knowledge.

My wife and I grew up protected from dissenting views of our faith. We were lied to (or not told enough information) about the origin of the Bible and the true history surrounding our religion, let alone all religions. Our parents and our churches used an age-old method used by all religions, which was to relentlessly educate us from a young age with a myopic worldview – one that was severely sanitized.

That approach still happens today, but something now changes when those kids become teenagers. They gain uncensored access to the Internet.

My prediction has been that access to knowledge on the Internet will forever change the religious landscape in the US. Unlike when I was a teenager, there are now numerous resources like the ExChristian.net and Think Atheist communities, books like Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why and The God Delusion, and movies like Religulous.

Based on new research by the Barna Group, my prediction (a prediction that is not unique to me) may be coming true.

Researchers found that almost three out of five young Christians (59 percent) leave church life either permanently or for an extended period of time after age 15.

While it may take another decade to see real change in our traditionally superstitious society, I believe the demise of make-believe in American society is now only a matter of time. This not only gives me hope for society, but it also gives me hope for my children.

I live in a neighborhood (just South of Nashville, TN) with a lot of evangelical Christians. This seeming majority belief in my community is usually not a big deal. The only time it gets annoying is when leaders force a truly evangelical prayer onto the festivities – something that was done a few weeks ago at our neighborhood Fourth of July celebration. It's completely inappropriate and insensitive to those who believe differently, but in the grand scheme of things, it's still not a big deal to me. For me, it's no different from having a leader thanking a Sun god or asking for a blessing from ancestral spirits. It's all just modern-day mythology, and I'm just happy nobody is sacrificing a goat or worse a virgin.

While I tolerate the evangelical god-speak at community events and in neighborhood email newsletters, there is one thing that has me continually irritated, and that's IGBOK. It irritates me because it's a patronizing statement based on false hope.

It's gonna be

The first part of IGBOK I agree with. At least they recognize what I would call the ineffectiveness of prayer.

God's "o.k." doesn't mean that the cancer will be healed, the relationship fully restored, the physical pain or emotional ache will go away in this life.

However, the second part – the O.K. part – is based on delusional false hope. The hope that even if life is a giant ball of shit, you will still spend a blissful eternity with God.

It means that because He has entered and overcome our brokenness...we can live this life with real hope — a hope that knows one day everything will be set right forever in the life to come.

Hope is the drug of choice for Christianity and many other religions. Similar to antidepressants, the false hope of life after death is meant to mask reality so you can better cope with your problems. All you have to do is believe.

Is religious hope a bad thing? I don't have a good answer for that. If the hope for a better afterlife helped keep my daughter from killing herself, or my son from living in despair now, then I would be more accepting of it, regardless of my own philosophical differences. That's simply based on wanting my children to be happy and to thrive.

However, like most drugs, there are side effects. In order to sustain hope powered by religion, a person must fully immerse themselves into its religious dogma. That means a denial of what is rational and logical (from a scientific perspective), and buying into a worldview that perpetuates exclusion and hates onto other people in the name of love.

Philosophically, I think the only true statement that can be made is, "It's gonna be."

As I've written before, the idea that anyone can explain the existence of life, let alone what happens after we die, is greater than or equal to bullshit. For me, clinging to a mistruth during a time of grief is both living on false hope, and dishonest to your being.

If you take away all of the things that cannot be observed – the superstitious beliefs that have been passed down from generation to generation, and whose origins can only be attributed to human imagination and creativity – we are left with existentialism. There was a time when we didn't exist, and now a time when we do exist. And like all living things, we will return to the same state as before we existed. There is absolutely no reason to believe otherwise, even though our survivalism mixed with higher reasoning would have us believe otherwise.

"It's gonna be." There's nothing that comes after that, and that's O.K.

This Easter was especially enjoyable because it was spent without either of our parents (don't get me wrong, we both love and enjoy our parents). There was no pressure to go to church, have our children confused by the absurdity of Christian theology (including the belief that a half-human, half-god came back to life, and if you don't believe in him, you'll go to hell for eternity). Instead, we did an Easter egg hunt at our city zoo, and on Sunday we decided to go to a local park to enjoy and celebrate the real life around us.

The freethinking blogs I follow had some interesting thoughts for this Easter that I connected with. Jody Milholland posted thoughts about past Easter morning services.

Now, with Christianity a mere reflection in the mirror of my past, I am sure it was the serenity of being with the earth at that early morning hour, and with my mom, that made it so special. Because now, I can say with true freedom and gladness that my religion-inspired guilt, shame, and fear are buried. When I rolled away from the rock of spiritual oppression and bondage, I emerged a new person. I was raised from the dead, resurrected in new life. The old is gone the new has come. I have welcomed the change, the metamorphosis of leaving behind superstitions and fears and welcoming the experience of living fully in the present. No longer with remorse for my past sins or fear of an impending doomsday, I embrace my life with enthusiasm.

Marlene Winell exclaims it is we who are alive.

We emerge from the coma of conformity and stand blinking as we get our bearings. And then we realize “We’re alive!” Here and now, in this world. We pat our own bodies and notice they are real. We pinch ourselves. We look around and see the natural world and we allow ourselves to be moved, perhaps weeping with amazement.

Not to be outdone, Atheist Revolution posted an entry called Happy Zombie Jesus Weekend. While it's a little over the top–and by over the top, most definitely offensive to many Christians–the point made is very good. Like zombies, Jesus came back to life to claim our minds, err hearts.