“I kept my secret blog absolutely separate from my real life. It was like I was two people. I was a Christian at home and at college, but I was an atheist online and at heart.”
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The Essentials
30 Books Every Atheist Should Read
I identify as both an atheist and a bookworm. Over time, both of these identities have become so intertwined with each other that I can barely talk about one without bringing up the other. My favorite way to learn about this big, free, natural world is through reading, and in turn, most of my favorite books are about just that. So after years pursuing an atheistic, scientific, curiosity-fueled book collection that I prize and cherish, I’d like to hope that I’m qualified to give a few recommendations that budding—or lifelong—atheists would do well to read.
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Do All Lives Matter?
Yes, all lives matter.
So why, in that case, does saying so offend so many so deeply?
Since the Black Lives Matter movement began at the hands of three powerful Black women in 2013, it has been criticized for its exclusivity. “What about white lives? Asian lives? Mexican, Russian, Indigenous lives? Don’t they matter?” people say. To this, those three women, and the global network that has since grown out of their movement, would say yes, of course. All lives matter.
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Why Paleoanthropology Leads to Atheism
Interest in human origins should be more widespread regardless of which worldview it entails, because it is the study of where we came from. Especially for anyone who was once religious and entranced by the story of God creating Adam and Eve, your curiosity about our origins should increase, not decrease, significantly, when you leave the religion and discover that only science can answer your questions.
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Why I Got Married at 22
This month, I will be celebrating my twenty-fourth birthday, and last month I was celebrating my one-year marriage anniversary. That’s because I got married soon after graduating college, and I got engaged during college.
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Why Astrology is Pseudoscience
As we all know, there’s a lot of pseudoscience floating around out there today. Some people think the Earth is flat, and some people think it began 6,000 years ago. Some think vaccines cause autism, and some think that human-caused climate change is a hoax. And some people think that their being born in January makes them exceptionally sexually compatible with a person born in June. To each their own, I guess. Although I don’t believe in astrology, I can’t help but thinking that compared with beliefs like climate change denial, it’s not horribly harmful. Just silly.
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Book Review: Lucy by Donald Johanson
I had bought Don Johanson’s Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind last fall, and my copy is a first edition that I had found at Cleveland’s coolest cat-inhabited bookstore, Loganberry Books. I then realized that not only was there a Lucy exhibit at the nearby Cleveland Museum of Natural History, but that the author of the book, who was also the original founder of the Lucy fossil, had been based out of that museum at the time. We also found out that it was closed for the day and we would have to come back another time.
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Creationism’s Greatest Weakness
For the first twenty years of my life, creationism was a fact. At least, I was taught that it was. God created the earth in six days, and anyone who tells you otherwise was maliciously and purposely lying to you. Evolution was vilified; it was not only factually incorrect, but it was morally reprehensible, as if facts could sin.
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Can We Trust Our Senses?
Let me tell you a story.
I was twenty years old, and a junior in college. I was in one of Grove City’s required classes called Civilization and the Speculative Mind, a class about worldviews, philosophy, and Christian theology. I wrote my term paper for this class on why naturalism does not inevitably lead to nihilism. It was a response to the claims made by James W. Sire in the class textbook The Universe Next Door. He had made three “bridges” between naturalism and nihilism which I had set out to debunk. They were:
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Is the LCMS a Cult?
I’m excited to find out whether the LCMS could really be called a cult, especially since in a time of extreme frustration, I once made the claim that I thought it was a cult. That being said, my own analysis will be based off of my personal experience and various Lutheran doctrine that I’ve had the chance to read. I do have a personal dislike and deep disdain for the LCMS, but I’m going to do my very best to be fair and objective when pitting it against the BITE Model. Just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s a cult. Maybe it is, but maybe it’s not. Let’s find out.
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