Jayda is the 12 years old. Her mother died when she was too young to remember. Her father is a high school biology teacher. He was very interested in exposing her to religion at a young age, so that she could have a better understanding of the belief systems and the control they have over the majority of people in the country. Between the ages of 8 and 9, he took her once a month to a variety of different churches in their city. Each time when they got home, he allowed her to ask questions. She was curious why each church had a different name than the others. She was also curious about prayer. Her father explained that all of the people in each of the churches they went to had been taught at some point in their lives that there is an invisible being called God that listens to them at all times and sometimes does things for them, although they are never actually sure if what happens is because of God or not. She thought the idea of the Devil was silly, as she had seen cartoon versions. She had a hard time understanding how so many people could believe in these things that clearly weren’t there. She wanted to know more about Heaven and the idea that people live after death. When her father explained the concept of the afterlife, she said that she would like to meet her mother, but the idea that her mother is alive somewhere seems a lot like believing in Santa Claus.

Luke was raised in a Pentecostal church. He grew up believing all of the stories about Jesus and wanted to be the best Christian that he could. When he was in his teen years he began to ask questions about things that he read in the Bible that didn’t seem to be moral. Regardless of who he talked to, the answers he received never really answered the question, rather they seemed to simply explain away what seemed to be very bad behavior of the Old Testament God. The doubts started creeping in at this point since he had always been taught that the word of God was the source for all truth. By the time he went to college, he was much less sure about his faith than he was when he was a child. When he began studying biology and learned about evolution in the big bang, he initially had a hard time excepting these, as he had been told that the world was 6000 years ago and created as is. He started learning on his own and was surprised to find out that Darwin was actually a Christian he learned a lot about science and history and how a lot of the most common scientific ideas we have today were originally considered evil by the church and hidden for sometimes centuries. He’s questioning reached in Apex in his mid-20s when he realized that his entire worldview was a man-made framework that had been put into his brain and did not actually reflect reality. Since that time, he has been very concerned with knowing right from wrong. He changed his major to philosophy. In retrospect, he sees himself as a child that truly wanted to be the best person he could, but he understands how he would have fallen far short of this if he had held onto the flawed morality he was taught in church. He is currently in grad school studying Consequentialist moral theories. His hope is that one day he can help others see through the flaws of Divine Command theory, the Biblical morality he was taught when he was a child. Even though none of his friends from childhood and his former church will talk with him anymore, he is married and feels more fulfilled than he ever did when he believed. Given that his church was an important part of his life, he now attends a local chapter of the Sunday Assembly, an alternative to church for former believers.

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