She Seeks Nonfiction

No True Christian

August 12, 2018October 5, 2021Rebekah Kohlhepp

Allow me to present to you a hypothetical situation. Let’s say I’ve just finished reading The Case for Christ. There was something about Lee Strobel’s ingenious and fool-proof arguments that has miraculously convinced me that Jesus exists, God exists, the bible is true, and I ought to become a Christian. Well then, what should I do next? Join a church? Get baptized? Stop drinking alcohol? Hang bible verses up on my walls? Should I love my neighbor, or should I become homophobic perhaps? There are so many options!

Reading My Professor’s Apologetics Book: Part 4

August 5, 2018October 5, 2021Rebekah Kohlhepp

In the past, each of my posts critiquing Prof Dave Hogsette’s E-mails to a Young Seeker has centered around four of five chapters, or fictional email exchanges between Prof Dave and a college student who does not exist. This post was meant to be split up into two, but a) I really hate reading this book and I am ready to be done with it, and b) splitting it up where I originally intended to would have been very awkward, because it didn’t turn out to be a good stopping point. What this means is that this post includes eight “exchanges”, although most of them are insanely repetitive, so I will try to be brief. Read more →

An Atheist’s Evolution

July 29, 2018October 5, 2021Rebekah Kohlhepp

I believe that religious deconversion is a process. Throughout this process, the person evolves. Some evolve more than others, and some endure the changes in more ways than one. For me, deconversion went like this: Christian → agnostic → atheist. My evolution underwent several transformational stages. In between Christian and agnostic, there was the initial period of doubt followed by a period of apathy. In between agnostic and atheist, there was curiosity and intrigue about general arguments regarding the existence of God. This intrigue made me very passionate about atheism itself. I have been engrossed in the interplay between religious and secular, reading about both to get the most precise answers I could. Read more →

Reading My Professor’s Apologetics Book: Part 3

July 22, 2018October 5, 2021Rebekah Kohlhepp

This summer, I’ve spent some time going through an apologetics book called E-mails to a Young Seeker: Exchanges in Mere Christianity. The author is a professor at Grove City College, from which I recently graduated and where I encountered this book during an assignment in an English class. Throughout campus, Dr. Hogsette, or “Prof Dave”, as he calls himself in the book, was praised as a gifted author and apologist, but with every page of this book I find myself disagreeing more and more. (Check out my full introduction and Part 1, too!) Read more →

A Morning Routine Without Jesus

July 15, 2018October 13, 2021Rebekah Kohlhepp

A while ago, I tried to write a post showing the absurdity that is my life by proposing a hypothetical situation in which the roles of Christianity and atheism were reversed. In order to express just how much Christianity was forced on me at school, I wanted to say, “Imagine being a closeted Christian who had to take classes on atheism, sing songs about atheism, read books on atheism, and attend atheist church.” Quickly, I realized that this entire situation is flawed because by nature, atheism doesn’t operate in the same way that religion does. Read more →

Book Review: Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris

July 1, 2018October 5, 2021Rebekah Kohlhepp

Atheists are often represented by those of us who are famous for their unbelief, namely Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett. When atheists began to speak up against religion and this was classified and demonized as “new atheism”, these four men emerged at the forefront of the movement. For years now, it has been common for atheists to be generalized as belonging to the same ilk as these four men. As someone young in her atheistic studies, I’ve looked up to them for being so steadfast in their unbelief, so sure, and so well-versed. At this point, though, I’ve read books by three of the four of them, and I don’t know that they’re all they’ve been built up to be.

Reading My Professor’s Apologetics Book: Part 2

June 24, 2018October 5, 2021Rebekah Kohlhepp

This week I was able to spend some time reading apologetics book E-mails to a Young Seeker by a former professor of mine, David S. Hogsette. I made it through to the fifth “email exchange” between Hogsette (or as he tirelessly refers to himself, Prof Dave) and his fictional “seeker” college student. Read more →

Why Church Is a Scam

June 17, 2018September 4, 2023Rebekah Kohlhepp

Since I was a little kid, I haven’t liked going to church. Since my teen years, I also haven’t believed much of what was preached to me there. For the time that I’ve been an active atheist, I’ve been disgusted about what’s taught at church and its effect on the world. But somehow it wasn’t until just recently that everything fell into place and I realized why church is the perfect formula to be a man-made money-making scheme. Church, to me, means traditional, doctrinally structured services within the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, but a lot of my apostate readers will relate, whether you were Catholic, Pentecostal, Methodist, or probably any other denomination, even nondenominational. Read more →

Reading My Professor’s Apologetics Book: Part 1

June 10, 2018October 13, 2021Rebekah Kohlhepp

I’m finally going to start a new series that I’ve been so excited to share on here for over a month, which is…. more apologetics! Rather than taking another class, I’m going to be looking at an apologetics book written by a professor from my college. I decided that it was so bad that I would review and critique it as I went along instead of one long review at the end of the book, which I usually do. Read more →

Can Religion Save America?

May 27, 2018October 5, 2021Rebekah Kohlhepp

During my final semester at Grove City College, I took a class at school on rhetorical criticism. The culmination of our rhetorical studies was a 10-15 page paper using the techniques from the class to critique a speech. We could choose a speech, and as you know, I have a passion for secularism, but I couldn’t find any legitimate speeches promoting secularism. Instead, I settled for the complete opposite: a speech on why secularism is the root of America’s “moral” chaos, and religion is the solution.