Analyzing Christianity
The Handbook: Recognizing When the Gas Lights Have Dimmed.
Do you know what gaslighting is? Here is how to identify this common religious-abuse tactic and–hopefully–escape from it.
Analyzing Christianity
The Handbook: Circular Arguments.
I’ve compared the efforts of Christian apologists to watching a Roomba repeatedly hit a wall, and nowhere do we see that analogy in action better than with a circular argument. That was one of the early topics I tackled here here on this blog like a year and a half ago, but I want to discuss circular arguments because since then I’ve noticed even more that Christians like circular arguments–almost as much as this tuxedo cat likes riding its Roomba.
Analyzing Christianity
The Handbook: That One Weird Thing That Happened Once.
Even a guy who is one of the folks behind Skeptic Magazine and a regular speaker at big atheist conferences, author of books about skepticism, and a champion of science can experience That One Weird Thing That Happened Once (TOWTTHO).
Analyzing Christianity
The Handbook: Why Arguments Aren’t Evidence.
We’ve talked before on this blog about what evidence looks like, and I don’t feel like I have much to add on that particular topic than I wrote last year. But today we’re going to talk specifically about why an argument alone should not constitute compelling evidence for the supernatural claims of Christians, how to spot someone using an argument in lieu of evidence, and how to short-circuit the tactic.
Analyzing Christianity
A Response to the Response to Ryan Bell
We’re coming back to the Handbook for the Recently Deconverted shortly, but I saw this today and it just cried out for examination. Ryan Bell is a Seventh-Day Adventist minister who decided to go one year as a functional atheist. For one year, he’d abstain from prayer and all outward Read more
Analyzing Christianity
The Handbook: How to Know Who Owns the Burden of Proof
A rather impish part of me wants to write, “The person making the claim is the one who owns the burden of proof,” and have done with the post, but there’s a bit more to it than that. Today we’ll talk about how to tell who owns the burden, and Read more
Analyzing Christianity
The Handbook: How to Know Who Owns the Burden of Proof
A rather impish part of me wants to write, “The person making the claim is the one who owns the burden of proof,” and have done with the post, but there’s a bit more to it than that. Today we’ll talk about how to tell who owns the burden, and Read more
Analyzing Christianity
The Handbook: Identifying a truth claim
There is a book. The book details everything people need to know. Everything. But especially it tells us about The Place. It tells us where The Place is. Who gets to go there. Who the owner decides to invite. Where they will stay when they arrive. What they will do when they’ve gotten there.
Analyzing Christianity
The Handbook: It. Gets. Better.
It starts, for many of us, with a crystal-clear OHMYGOSH moment where we suddenly see something that simply will never be unseen. A light shines in a dark corner for the first time, and we see what lurks there and can never forget or even ignore it. Exactly what that light illuminates varies by the person, but that’s what it feels like. Suddenly something we thought for maybe our whole lives turns out to maybe be not quite what we thought it was.
Analyzing Christianity
William Lane Craig’s moral failings are far worse than mine
Way too many Christians talk a very big game about having a monopoly on morality. They even frequently claim that non-Christians either lack the capacity for morality or are aping Christianity’s monopoly on it. But they’re wrong. The worst moral failings aren’t found in the Bible. No, for that dubious honor we must look to the people who use the Bible to excuse their own moral failings.