Social justice book reviews
This week, we’re returning to Rick Warren’s evangelical Christian bestseller The Purpose-Driven Life. In this post, we will specifically be looking at what harmful and even dangerous teachings are lurking in Part Two of the book: “You Were Planned for God’s Pleasure”.
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It was January 1st, 2019.
It was the middle of the day on a Tuesday, and I was sitting on the couch, probably on my eighth YouTube video of the day, surrounded by (virtual) stacks of resumes. I had gotten married and moved in with my husband a month and a half before, and I didn’t have a job yet. There wasn’t much to do. I remembered an idea I had had before I got married, and that was that when we were settled into our own place, we should probably read the bible together.
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I remember sitting in class at Grove City College in the fall of 2015 and disagreeing with every single Christian point that the professor made. I didn’t really know about the word “atheist” then, and I didn’t exactly know what I was, but I knew I wasn’t a Christian. It was probably around this time when the events of this post took place, and when I first tried watching the famous Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham debate. It was also around this time that I first saw Zeitgeist: The Movie.
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I’ve had an interest in religion and atheism for a long time, especially since I started writing on this blog three years ago. I’ve covered topics like evolution and creationism, the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (the religion I was raised in), and a whole lot of thoughts and opinions on religion in general and the existence of God. While I’ve done plenty of research, it still shouldn’t come as a surprise to you that I tend to have my own personal biases when looking at evidence for things like God or evolution.
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Back in April, I had the pleasure of meeting Freedom From Religion Foundation co-president Dan Barker. It was a fun evening consisting of a lecture on his newest book, Mere Morality, and a following book signing. At the event, there was a table where you could buy one of Barker’s books or pick up a copy of the FFRF’s periodical, Freethought Today. Also on the table were several “nontracts,” courtesy of the FFRF. Dan explained that if you’re familiar with the tracts that religious people tend to hand out, these are the same idea except… the opposite.
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Earlier this week, I saw a video from a Christian YouTuber, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I almost didn’t click on it, because I thought it would be the same old Christian talking points that we hear all the time. But I’m glad that I watched it, because I was unable to stop thinking about it for days after—not because I was persuaded by it, but because I felt that it got so many things wrong.
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If you hang out in the atheist part of the Internet, then you’ve probably come across at least a handful of some of our cringey memes. They’re some of the more shameful creations that you’ll see from our community. You get everything from ugly fonts, low image quality, and multiple layers of filters on screenshots, to fallacies, oversimplification of philosophical questions, and things that are really just mean. Below are a few popular memes that I’ve seen since I started my Twitter, and why I think they should probably just not exist. Enjoy!
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A couple days ago I was flipping through a creationist book from my shelf, and I couldn’t help but notice that the author rarely ever used the word “evolution” when describing the theory of evolution by natural selection. Instead, he almost always called it Darwinism. Of course, we know what someone means when they say Darwinism, and even evolutionists often call it Darwinian evolution or Darwin’s theory of evolution. But I think that creationists have a very specific reason in using the term “Darwinism” instead of the word “evolution”. That is: they want to equate believing that evolution is true with belonging to a religion that worships Charles Darwin.
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As I mentioned in last week’s post, I’ve been wrapping up another book, and this week I finally finished it! I read Kenneth Miller’s Only A Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul, which arose from the 2006 court case Selman v. Cobb County School District.
This dispute began innocently, with textbook publisher Prentice Hall and a run-of-the-mill biology textbook. Frustratingly, but not surprisingly, the religious climate in Georgia at the time made teaching honest biology harder than it should be. The Cobb County School District included with every biology textbook a sticker:
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If you’re familiar with the online atheist superpower Atheist Republic, then you’ve probably heard of their book Why There Is No God, written by their founder Armin Navabi. I’ve had this book for a while, and I decided this weekend to finally read it and give my opinion here on my blog!
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