Social justice book reviews
The day has finally arrived! My time at my Christian college is finally coming to a close. I’ve finished my tests and papers, and in a week, I’ll be graduating. To take a break from writing, this week I am sharing with you my favorite quotes from Hitchens’ God is Not Great. Enjoy!
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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.
The book starts off with Lee Strobel promising the reader that he will be as skeptical and unbiased as humanly possible. He tries to warm us up so that we will believe that he’s playing the part of the skeptic for us and so that we accept every conclusion that he and his friends reach.
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.
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
When I came out as an atheist to my roommates last December, one question that they asked me was “Why do atheists like to argue with Christians and talk about God and religion so much?” It’s a question that, honestly, I think I’ve been wondering about ever since. I’m sure that it varies from person to person, but other than wanting to justify why my views are accurate, I simply enjoy pondering the arguments for and against God’s existence. It’s why I took Apologetics 101, why I love to write, and why I’m so fascinated by atheist books and YouTube channels.
I signed up for my Christian college’s apologetics class this semester purely out of curiosity, and for the sake of learning both sides of an argument. Well, classes started this past week, and the time has come for me to share what it’s like to be an undercover atheist taking Apologetics 101 at a Christian college.