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Recent Posts Tagged With 'christianity'
Bart Ehrman’s God’s Problem
I bought Bart Ehrman’s God’s Problem on the strength of reading his Misquoting Jesus, and I wasn’t disappointed. There are three things about Ehrman’s writing that help me sit up and listen t...
Null Hypothesis ≠ Presuppositionalism
It was just over a year ago that I seriously considered a range of theological, philosophical and empirical data regarding the existence of God and the likelihood that any theistic religion, particula...
The Religious Delusion
There are a few points that I would like to summarize in relation to my objection to religion. These are becoming highlighted as I read through numerous books, such as God Without Religion, What’s ...
Success without my emotional crutch (aka God)
Do you remember that climatic scene at the end of Dumbo? It’s time for his big performance. He’s poised on a ledge, clutching the magic feather that gives him the ability to fly in his trunk. He j...
Religulous - Bill Maher
The ties that bind: Factors that make de-conversion difficult
Recently poster mindbogglingly dazzled said that “there should be a post about the reasons that made/make it difficult for us to leave faith. A post about what hinders/hindered us in walking away....
Finding Faith?
I have previously written about whether or not a reasonable faith exists. Today, I'd like to share a few thoughts inspired by the book Finding Faith by Brian McLaren. In Chapter 1, titled Does It ...
From Theistic Evolution to Apostasy
For much of my evangelical Christian life, I held a Theistic Evolutionary view of creation. I’ll confess that I didn’t always adhere firmly to this view. Sometimes I wavered and veered into a fair...
My de-conversion: A discovery of deliberate lies
I was born into a very religious Christian family. My maternal grandfather was a former Baptist pastor and leading elder of his church, which he also founded. He and my grandmother had been heavily in...
Blue Like Jazz: A book for disillusioned Christian fundamentalists
For the Christian who is disillusioned with the fundamentalists (and the fundamentals), along comes Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz, supposedly the youthful and honest voice of modern Christianity (I...
A Christian Pastor influenced my de-conversion
The most influential event for me in my de-conversion was actually talking to a Christian pastor. I was visiting my brother in Kentucky, and prior to going to see Pirates 3 Saturday night, we all wen...
Putting the cart before the resurrected horse
I've heard Christians say that what one must do is look at the life of Jesus, and decide what you make of him. This is the basis of Alpha Courses and, in my experience, it's the way many Christians ap...
The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins
As a Christian, I was indecisive as to the origins of our four Canonical gospels. Ideally, they were four independent accounts by eyewitnesses, or associates to eyewitnesses, each showing a unique per...
Ethiopia and the Ark of the Covenant
The Ark of the Covenant, like many artifacts sought after because of Biblical speculation, is shrouded in mystery. According to the Book of Exodus, God commanded Moses to have the Hebrews build the ar...
Featured Blog Reaction: by Flirting with Faith
A new blogger, Joan Ball, from the "Flirting with Faith" blog, recently found herself "in the land of Christian de-conversion." According to Joan's testimony, she "woke up one morning a churchgoing ...
MythBusters: Without Religion there would be no War
Christian Commentary I can't count the number of times I have heard this 'argument' on the internet from amateur atheists. Naturally, the more seasoned of us know that this is simply not true, but i...
Shopping For God
James Twitchell, a professor of English and advertising, spent more than two years researching and writing his account of the USA’s recent rise in religiosity. He notes that consumerism is deeply in...
The Case For Christianity
The Case for Christianity is a series of transcribed radio talks given by C.S. Lewis during WWII, and edited together with additional notes into book form. It is one of three books that ultimately mad...
From Gospel Preacher to Good Atheist
My Early Years - Growing up, I was a typical American kid. I had a brother and a sister, a loving mom and dad, and we were taught to believe in Christianity, America's status quo faith. Mom and dad we...
The question of suffering and my de-conversion
"Oh God, you are my God, and I will ever serve you..." I grew up singing all the lame-ass church songs that you know are lame at the time, but you are too afraid of eternal condemnation to even whisp...
The Secretive Messiah
The gospel attributed to Mark (hereafter referred to as “Mark”) purposely perpetuates a distinctly secret nature to Jesus’ life. This concept of the Messianic secret is beyond dispute, yet the e...
I never wanted to be an Atheist
Since de-converting from Christianity, many who claim to follow Christ have accused me of wanting to lead a life of sin or wanting to hide from God, or just plain turning my back on God. I had one Chr...
In God We Trust?
As I was leaving a grocery store recently, I noticed a display that was stuffed and overflowing with Christian pamphlets. One of them was entitled, “In God We Trust: What Does It Still Mean?” Man...
Thoughts on my de-conversion, one year later
So it has been just about a year since I made public that I had abandoned the faith to which I clung so dearly for seven-plus years of my adolescent and adult life. It seemed appropriate to write down...
Fundamentalism: An Existentialist Critique
Epilogue - I have now completed my series on existentialist ideas as they pertain to fundamentalist and evangelical Christianity. It was an exceptionally brief tour of a complex and rich philosophica...
From Fundy to Orthodox to Apostate
My upbringing was entirely Protestant. My family were good Protestant “churchians” (people who go to church regularly 'cause that's what good folk do). The faith, such as it was, was just cultural...
Existentialism and the Search for Meaning
Meaning Finally, the issue of meaning resonates powerful among many de-converts, and existentialists addressed it in great depth. Yalom here usefully distinguishes between cosmic meaning and terrestr...
Existentialism: Freedom and Responsibility
So far we have reviewed the existentialist themes of death and isolation, why they are considered to be ubiquitous human issues, and why they are important. Then we looked at the fundamentalist Christ...
Atheistic attacks on Christianity
A pristine second-hand copy of What’s So Great About Christianity? by Dinesh D’Souza became available to me recently. D'Souza tackles the current onslaught of atheistic attacks on Christianity by...
To die is gain? - On religious martyrdom and forgiveness
Christian Commentary - Martyrdom is not a new occurrence nor one that is restricted to Christianity. We often hear news stories from Iraq of suicide bombers hoping to gain favor with God by offering...