It’s a seductive storyline. I can’t deny that. It’s powerfully alluring. Just imagine: You’re the klutzy, totally undeserving, inexperienced, vastly underpowered childlike person who catches the eye of some huge, unthinkably powerful, completely in-control and self-possessed being whose monstrous will and complete focus lands, laser-like and pinpoint-accurate, on you. You Read more
We talked last time about a minister’s wife who is convinced she knows exactly how to nail this motherhood thing. I wanted to talk a little more about something in it that we only briefly touched on last time: this idea that we often see in Christians that what works Read more
Welcome back! I hope y’all’s weekends were fantabulous. I’m likely recovering from another one of those shots in the back as you read these words, so let’s all hope that Future Me is doing all right. Monday Night Me is doing fine for now. Today I want to talk about Read more
One of the biggest shifts I had to process in my thinking was my understanding of consent. Not to make it sound all dramatic or anything, but it was about the biggest 180 I could possibly have made, and chances are some of y’all are facing that same challenge now.
Christians are very, very fond of telling everybody who’ll listen that they just love non-believers. Oh my, they just love us to death. But if they keep talking, a curious thing happens: they show us exactly what they’re really thinking.
We’ve talked here about the “Christian bubble.” The Christian bubble is an insular world with its own customs, language, in-jokes, references, worldview, attitudes, and social customs–a world that only very minimally touches upon the real world that non-Christians inhabit. Today I want to devote more time to the idea.
Do you know what gaslighting is? Here is how to identify this common religious-abuse tactic and–hopefully–escape from it.
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.
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).
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.