In Alpha Course video #8, the title promises to tell us exactly who the ‘Holy Spirit’ is. But as we saw in previous videos, it’s pure folly to trust this series’ titles to live up to their promises. In this review, we’ll explore what the video says, what it studiously Read more
No longtime gamer has failed to notice how much easier video games are nowadays compared to their early days. The New York Times Magazine recently speculated that today’s easier video games may be a reaction to the increasing difficulty and chaos of modern life. More to the point, we can Read more
As I watched Alpha Course’s video about divine guidance, one fact sprang out at me above all others. Well, two facts. The first one was simple: Christians have no idea in the world how to tell what their god wants them to do. The second is that their god apparently Read more
Last month, we talked about evangelicals’ illusions of a massive revival going on with Gen Z, who are people between the ages of about 13-28. Even at the time, those claims seemed largely to derive from evangelicals’ fantasies. But if anything, these fantasies have only gotten more insistent within that Read more
In Alpha Course’s seventh video, we find some of its creators’ most fanciful guesses yet about exactly how their god and religion operate. This one covers divine guidance, which almost all Christians believe their god offers believers as a perk. Despite its nearly-universal status, however, they can’t actually tell us Read more
On September 23rd, 2025, the Rapture failed to happen. Again. Yet another totally-divine prophecy from Jesus turned out to be a false alarm. Thankfully, though this one blew up on TikTok and YouTube, it didn’t go nearly as far as some previous ones did. But what of the aftermath for Read more
Another day, another sex abuse crisis in an authoritarian flavor of Christianity. This time, it’s the Jehovah’s Witnesses facing the music. Authoritarian Christians keep thinking it won’t happen in their church, right up until it does. And when—not if—it does, they act completely shocked. They shouldn’t. Any really authoritarian religious Read more
It’s been a hot minute since the last Rapture scare, but here’s the newest one. Various grifters have latched onto September 23, 2025 as the big day when Jesus whisks all five TRUE CHRISTIANS™ on Earth up to Heaven, leaving nothing but clothes on the ground to mark where they Read more
In a 2025 article from Archaeology Magazine, Andrew Lawler suggests an interesting source of Jews’ cultural taboo about eating pork. He thinks it might have more to do with their hatred of the Roman Empire than anything else. The more I thought about this suggestion, the more plausible it sounded. Read more
Among evangelical these days, their fondest hope is for revival. They want Jesus to send them a massive new influx of fervent converts and re-stoke their own zeal with divine strength. Right now, their current belief is that there’s a quiet revival happening across the western world, particularly among Gen Read more