Happy Fourth of July! Today, I want to offer a funny palate cleanser for our holiday, something I noticed while researching the Unchurched series. In this little tidbit, you see, Lee Strobel accidentally illustrated the completely nonexistent power of prayer. I wonder if anybody in his audience even noticed? But I sure noticed, Read more
In this installment, we examine the Yoda-like superpowers of ancient widow Edith Duster. Along the way, we’ll discover a deep and cherished core of victim-blaming within the tribe. Today, Lord Snow Presides over a doctrine that accidentally reveals a deeply-unpleasant and narcissistic core running through evangelicalism.
Hi! Lately, we’ve been talking about a terrible Christian marriage-advice book, If Only He Knew. In it, author Gary Smalley promises his readers surefire techniques they can use to save their ailing marriages. Last time, I offhandedly mentioned my surprise at seeing Gary Smalley described as kindhearted. This dude’s anything but! Today, let Read more
A while ago, I wrote about why I deconverted. I’ve also written about some of the reasons I believed in Christianity. Or at least, these were the reasons I thought I believed. Today, I want to show you what the main underpinnings of my belief were, and how I figured out that those underpinnings weren’t true.
Christians seeking to sell their religion to others rely on two main methods. They can try to sell their religion on its own merits. Or they can try to knock down whatever they view right then as their main competition. It’s a big ole game of Last Ideology Standing, and for some reason it’s not working as well as expected these days.
Today I’ll show you what this problem looks like, what the women dealing with the problem make of it, and what it means for the religion as a whole.
Last time we met up, we were talking about Christian marketing and why it sucks. Christians are required to put faith in stuff that simply isn’t true–and their magical thinking carries through to their strategies around revitalizing their brand, guaranteeing failure.
There really are two types of Christian in this world, and one of them hates the other with every fiber of its hate- and rage-filled little body.
Logical Christians care a lot more about being correct and soothing that cognitive dissonance than they do about anything their Savior is supposed to have actually told them to do. And now they’ve got metaphysics to do that with.
Given the demonization done of ex-Christians and atheists, given how little most folks–especially fundagelical parents–know about either group, given how poorly most Christian denominations understand real love, I can totally get why parents might worry about the state of their kids’ spiritual health. It’s misplaced, but it’s still there.