A skeptic's quest for books, science, & humanism
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
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.
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
I’d read three books prior to this one. The first said, “God exists.” The second said, “God does not exist.” The third said “God exists.” And the fourth said, “god is not great.”
Upon beginning this book, I had just barely made it out of Lee Strobel’s The Case for a Creator with my sanity. Strobel’s entire book was a biased scam of fallacy after fallacy in an insultingly illogical argument for intelligent design. I began God is Not Great ready to be refreshed hearing something from my own side of the argument, but what I found within its pages was even better. Read more
I once wrote an essay on why a naturalistic worldview does not invariably lead to nihilism. In this essay, I argued that morality is objective with or without a god. I tried (so hard) to use this to make the case that there is a definite law of right and wrong (yes, I used C.S. Lewis’ reasoning to make this point) within the human race, because I believed that without it, nihilism would ensue. I had been told once that anyone who is honest with herself and is a true nihilist would not be able to find any meaning in life or reason to live. It’s understandable that given this factor, I saw the link between naturalism and nihilism to be a deadly one, so I tried my very best to argue for atheistic objective morality.
In the fall of 2017, I went to a talk at school called Homosexuality and The Christian. It was a small informal thing in the student union, held by a resident director. She talked from personal experience, saying that she had close friends and family members who were gay. She went on about how to deal with “same-sex attraction” as a Christian, reiterating the views of a Christianity-homosexuality scholar named Matt Yarhouse. I believe that he ultimately advocates for celibacy if one is same-sex attracted and it disobeys one’s religion, and he suggests that one can find companionship with friends and in the church, and of course, in Jesus Christ himself. Read more
I once read an article from Grove City College where its president boasted about welcoming students who are Jews, Sikhs, and atheists. He said that while students must obtain a fixed number of chapel credits, they don’t need to be Christian or even spend time in the actual chapel! That’s every atheist’s dream, right?
If you’ve been following my rather tumultuous experience being an “undercover” atheist taking Apologetics 101, then you’ll know it’s been a rough ride. My professor tends to teach his opinions as facts, make up completely unfounded statistics, and give a lot of plain wrong or illogical information.
Hello and welcome to this week’s installment of The World’s Worst and Most Useless Class! If you’ve been following along in my Apologetics 101 series (here and here), then you’ll know that I signed up for this class to learn a thing or two about Christian apologetics and arguments for God that I could expect a Christian to use against me. You’ll also know that I’ve learned neither of these things. Actually, I’ve learned nothing. Read more
Last semester, I signed up to take Apologetics 101 in the hopes that I might learn something and that it would challenge me at least a little to think about arguments for Christianity so that I could better refute them. I didn’t have very high expectations, but what expectations I did have were certainly failed. The biggest problem within this class is that the teacher is a nutcase, and he doesn’t teach out of a textbook. Everything he teaches is self-proclaimed truth with no sources to back it up. This wouldn’t be so bad if it influenced only his personal beliefs, but I can’t stand when he feeds information that I know is wrong to a classroom of college students. I often feel that even as an atheist, I could teach Christian apologetics better than he could! Read more