Posts

One day I realized that my prayers had changed without my even noticing. But they had. When I noticed that change, that moment became a turning point in my own faith journey.

This marketing tactic is hugely dishonest, yes, but it’s also very effective against the unwary. No wonder so many Christians use it so often in their evangelism efforts: we carry around in our heads a raft of cognitive biases that ensure that even the most skeptical of us can fall for bait-and-switch evangelism. Today I’ll show you what this type of marketing is and why it works.

What angers me most about the horrible Christian movie I’m Not Ashamed is its absolutely shameless contortion of a child’s brutal, senseless death to advance a very clear political agenda. Today I’ll walk you through how that task was accomplished–and show you why we absolutely must reject it.

Here follows the mega-review and a short rant about the movie, as is traditional; we’ll talk more about it in coming days.

We’re going to be reviewing the movie I’m Not Ashamed shortly, so this is our customary pre-review post setting up the movie and outlining some of its major ideas (and problems). And man oh man, are there ever problems here.

Of all their sales techniques, their most successful is surely their creation of a sense of urgency in their marks. I’ll show you why this technique is so useful–and why it’s starting to backfire on the Christians who use it.

If it’s not fixed by Saturday (tomorrow), I’ll move the review post of I’m Not Ashamed back appropriately since I expect that to be a heavy commenting day and I’d never dream of depriving us of sharpening our claws on this movie!

Christians have an entire mythology built around their supposed monopoly on finding meaning and purpose in life, and it’s easy to see the appeal of having those big questions answered so quickly and smoothly. But there’s another (and much darker) payoff for the followers who accept these artificial constructs in place of genuine meaning and purpose that they’ve figured out for themselves.

This second myth drives people to extraordinary lengths–and leads them to make life-altering bad decisions, even after deconversion. I’ll show you why Christians perpetuate a culture based around this second myth, and in the doing hopefully show you how very earthly and non-supernatural their process and thinking really is.

Strap in and hang on–keep your hands and feet inside the SUV at all times and please don’t get excitable with the flashlights around the T-Rex–and let’s turn our attention (and that flashlight) to the topic of Meaning and Purpose in Life.