Analyzing Christianity
Gene Bailey: Testing an evangelical’s prophecies
We check out the prophecies of Gene Bailey, a buddy of Jim Bakker’s, and see how accurate Bailey managed to be.
Analyzing Christianity
Cosmic Reversi: Inverted expectations and sudden reversals in Low Christian folklore
Christians love callings that represent a complete reversal of expectations. They enjoy stories about unexpected, inverted expectations. However, these stories must end the correct way.
Analyzing Christianity
Finding your calling when the caller doesn’t exist
In Christianese, a calling represents Jesus’ orders for what his followers are meant to be doing with their lives. But in reality, finding one’s calling works in a very prosaic–and earthly–way. Even then, it doesn’t work at all the way that Christians think it does.
Analyzing Christianity
The Jesus Aura: Why this false belief persists
Many Christians have this idea that their faith imbues them with a sort of glowing-but-invisible aura that both attracts and repels non-Christians. It’s their Jesus Aura.
Codex Disbelievium
A brief prehistory of Hell
Today, let’s talk about the prehistory of the Christian notion of Hell.
Codex Disbelievium
The Motherlode of Truth from Justin Martyr (1st-Century Fridays #15)
Hi and welcome back! Now, we come to the last 1st-Century Friday post for a while. After this, we may revisit my master list as time goes on, but I think we’ve finally hit the wall on writers who were even vaguely contemporaneous with Jesus. However, I’m taking us out Read more
Codex Disbelievium
The strawman ghosts of ‘The Great Divorce’
When Christians write parables or allegories, they never worry about their characters not acting like people at all. That’s not the point of the story. The story is meant only as a framework to use to defeat strawmen.
Codex Disbelievium
How C.S. Lewis finished the hell puzzle in “The Great Divorce”
make informed decisions about their own fates. Not even his extra-imaginary imaginary god can make that happen for him.
Codex Disbelievium
The Mystery of Justus of Tiberias (1st-Century Fridays #14)
When we checked out Josephus recently, a contemporary of his emerged from the shadows: Justus of Tiberias. We don’t know much about him, which is strange considering what he could have had to say about the earliest Christians. So today, let’s check out Justus of Tiberias — and marvel at the mystery surrounding his absence from the record.
Codex Disbelievium
Tacitus: Grabbing at Straws (1st-Century Fridays #12)
Needless to say, Tacitus is not even vaguely contemporary with Jesus. He wasn’t even born until 20+ years after Jesus supposedly died. By his adulthood, pretty much everyone contemporaneous with Jesus would have died already. Under that thinking, I, a Gen-Xer, could be considered contemporaneous with F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940).