Analyzing Christianity
Ray Comfort and the Cruel Dilemma
It’s a collision that doesn’t need to happen, and one that no longer gives the results Christian leaders want.
Analyzing Christianity
The critical mistakes and cosmic irony of ‘God’s Club’
Christians are fighting tooth and nail to get their indoctrination into schools whether it’s legal to do it or not, but there’s a truly cosmic-level irony at work here that they’re just not seeing.
Analyzing Christianity
The Adventures of Thom Rainer and the Strawman
Normally you’d think that inaccuracies in Christians’ perception of others is just their problem. But their cultural flaws have a tendency of creating headaches for other people, too, not just for themselves. While they’re making strawmen about non-Christians and wrestling with their fictional creations, they’re getting an entirely wrong idea of what we’re really like and why we reject their claims and sales attempts. Today I want to talk about why Christians misrepresent us so often.
Analyzing Christianity
The Handbook: The Magic Christian (Doesn’t Exist).
Once we think we’ve weathered all the manipulations Christians throw at apostates, along comes the Magic Christian: One who is totally convinced that ‘God’ told them how to resolve every issue we have with their religion.
Analyzing Christianity
Bible Verses Are Not “Magic” Cards.
It’s amazing to me that Christians can take a book compiled over thousands of years with dozens of mostly-anonymous authors, a book of (revised) history and (imagined) science, of folk magic and supposedly-divine intervention, of petty racism and soaring nationalism, of beautiful poetry and stunning brutality, of–yes–transcendent language and startling insight at times, and reduce it down to sound bites they can select, warp, and then fling at their pleasure to score points against those they view as inferior opponents. To me it seems extremely disrespectful for a Christian to treat their holy book in such a simplistic and reductionist way, but I see it all the time regardless.
Analyzing Christianity
“Left Behind”‘s Grand Disguise.
This reboot of Left Behind is actually an imitation of a bog-standard disaster-on-a-plane movie.
But even in its attempt to slavishly imitate a specific genre of movies Americans got tired of in the 1980s, it couldn’t come anywhere near the quality and enjoyability of another take on the genre: 1980’s Airplane.
Analyzing Christianity
Left Behind: Where Dreams Finally Come True.
It’s a very ugly fantasy–the demonstration of a very broken psyche on display in the lewdest possible manner–and though the movie itself isn’t a critical masterpiece, seeing that fantasy marched across a screen for that runtime made me feel like I was reading some Nice Guy’s short story about his revenge on all those high school girls who rejected him long ago. It was that obvious and that disquieting to see this movie and think, “This is what they really think of us.”
Analyzing Christianity
The Great Left Behind-a-Palooza
To my astonishment, a quick search on Netflix revealed not only the new version of the movie but also the original Kirk Cameron version–and the two Kirk Cameron sequels. I feel like a five-year-old on Christmas morning suddenly. I’d say we’re set.
History and Science
Metaphysics: Not the droid Logical Christians are looking for
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.
Analyzing Christianity
The Handbook: Recognizing an “Argument From X” Attempt
We’re going to be heading back to God’s Not Dead next week, but before we do that, I wanted to finish up something we were talking about last time we covered the Handbook for the Recently Deconverted: one of Christians’ very favorite apologetics tactics, the Argument from X. A while ago, Read more