church Archives

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 →

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 →

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 →

My Experience as an Atheist at a Christian College

May 20, 2018May 1, 2022Rebekah Kohlhepp

After four long and miserable years, I finally escaped from this mind-prison of a school once and for all at my graduation on May 19th. As far as I am concerned, this college has achieved the opposite of its goal of “nurturing my walk with Christ.” Instead, it accidentally shaped me into the dedicated atheist that I am today. It was the pivotal point in my life that pushed me from agnosticism all the way to atheism, to this blog, and out of the closet. Read more →

The Lutheran Church on Creationism

April 15, 2018February 19, 2022Rebekah Kohlhepp

A few months ago, I found myself perusing the most recent issue of the Lutheran Magazine The Lutheran Witness. I stumbled upon an impressive article called “Concerning the Six-Day Creation” by Matthew C. Harrison, the president of the entire denomination, and I was dumbfounded.

Why I Have No Morals

November 19, 2017October 5, 2021Rebekah Kohlhepp

If I’m being honest, there are times when I see my Christian friends striving to be pure and not do things they find sinful like having sex or drinking or swearing, or even skipping church, and I feel almost as if I played some kind of cheat card that allows me to be free from following the rules. Then I remind myself that these rules make no sense and are completely made up, and breaking them actually causes no harm as long as you’re responsible. So while it may be true that atheists have fewer rules to follow, it’s also the logical and realistic position.

A Look at Luther’s Small Catechism

October 22, 2017October 8, 2021Rebekah Kohlhepp

Luther’s Small Catechism is a required reading for the confirmation class that every Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod teen needs to take (against their will) in order to be a confirmed adult member of the LCMS church (which I am, unfortunately). It’s included in the Book of Concord, which is a complete collection of the confessions of the Lutheran Church; everything in the Small Catechism is to be taken as true (or at least the student should say they believe it) in order to be confirmed. So let’s take a look at what my entire family and I (and my fiancé) agreed to when we became members of the LCMS! (I just picked out the worst bits and pieces to actually discuss, but feel free to read the whole thing here.)

34 Things Atheists Are Tired of Hearing

September 17, 2017October 24, 2022Rebekah Kohlhepp

It seems that there are a lot of arguments brought against us atheists that people think we haven’t heard before. After my apologetics teacher said a number of these in class over the past week, including the watchmaker analogy, I realized that there are a lot of things that atheists have to hear all the time. Most of them haven’t been said to me, but I see them thrown around all the time. Thank you to my fiancé and to some of my Twitter followers for helping me think of ideas! In no particular order, here are 34 things that atheists are tired of hearing: Read more →