The Truth That Wasn’t There.
I have a real fascination with stories of liars who get found out. Today I want to talk about why these denouements are important to tell. Before we start, though, I want you to picture in your mind...
View ArticleHow Historicized Mythology Works.
Sorry about yesterday; I was laid up with one of those fun migraine-and-nausea episodes I get sometimes. All better now! On to today’s topic: the historical Jesus. We’ve talked about him before here,...
View ArticleThanksgiving 2014.
It's a good thing to reflect on our past year and to consider the coming year, and the late autumn is a good time to do that. Something about this crisp, clear weather makes the celebration of our...
View ArticleWhen Christianity Became About the Opposite of Social Justice.
When someone is convinced that the end of the world is coming, that person isn't exactly going to care what his or her credit rating looks like, so to speak. I personally knew people who didn't want to...
View ArticleThe Handbook: Learning to Move Past Religious Narcissism.
We recently added another line to that cosmic address--did you notice? After "Virgo supercluster," we now have Laniakea, a galactic supercluster that comprises Virgo and some other local superclusters....
View ArticleThe Handbook: The First Fundamental Mistake Apologists Make.
The first fundamental mistake apologists make is that they don't actually refer to any facts to make their various arguments, making their conclusions highly suspect. Indeed, apologists really can't do...
View ArticleThe Vast Comfort of Literalism.
Ever wonder how someone converts into fundamentalist or evangelical Christianity? Here's how I ended up there.
View ArticleWeekend Edition: Stuff I Wish I’d Seen.
There's a lot of weird stuff lurking in the unread pages of the Bible. Here are some of the strangest stories--ones I wish I'd seen when I was Christian.
View ArticleHere’s Why The Christian Right is Totally Wrong About This Clobber Verse.
In this post, David J. Murphy specifically addresses one of the several "clobber verses" Christians use to hammer at the idea of marriage equality for same-sex couples. The verses in question are...
View ArticleAnecdotes Aren’t Evidence: The Marshall-Carrier Debate.
In 2013, a Christian apologist named David Marshall debated historian Richard Carrier on the topic “Is the Christian Faith Reasonable?” The debate was hosted by both an atheist and a Christian student...
View ArticleBeing Doomed to Repeat It.
I recently watched a documentary that said some stuff that really touched a chord in me. Thanks to it, I'm noticing some very uncomfortable parallels between the ideas it's discussing and what I see...
View ArticleMy Mother’s Dress.
Clothes fascinate me. They're a powerful sign of our own personal individuality and a statement about how we view ourselves, our place in whatever tribe we call our own, and what aspirations and...
View ArticleThe National Day of Grandstanding and How It Fails.
Last time, I uncovered some interesting links between the National Day of Prayer (NDP) and the Red Scare manufactured by the Religious Right in the 1950s. Today I want to touch on how the "holiday" is...
View ArticleThe Big Problem with Denominational Infighting.
I'm reading this weird little sermon transcript about "The Difference Between Calvinism and Reformed" and it's making me think anew about the big problem with denominational fights: namely, that their...
View ArticleWhy Christian Art Sucks: BYU Boogaloo.
We've noted in the past (extensively, really) that Christian media sucks. And their preferences for visual art are no exception. Waverly Giles tried to make something that was off the beaten track,...
View ArticleFrom Tolerated to Dominant.
We've been talking lately about the early history of Christianity and how different it is from the history offered up by most Christian apologists and leaders. This definitely is not a history I...
View ArticleChristians’ Dominance Is Ending, But Not Without a Fight.
We've been talking lately about the various ways that Christianity rose to power as the dominant Western religion in the 2nd to 5th centuries. But the fun couldn't last, and now that power is declining...
View ArticleYou Lost Me: Why Nothing Can Change.
This past week we were talking about the 2011 book You Lost Me by David Kinnaman. The book was about why modern Christian evangelical churches were losing so many young-adult members, and how they...
View ArticleKen Ham’s Creationists Know Exactly How to Reverse Evangelical Churn.
Ken Ham says that he totally thinks that families that do not already buy into Creationism will choose to spend their vacations at his park rather than at Disney World or the Smithsonian...
View ArticleNo No, Gang, THIS Christian Is Totally Going to Fix Catholicism!
I'll pick apart his speech today, and then show you--for good measure, since I'm helpful that way--why his tribe is actually having trouble recruiting and retaining members.
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