religion Archives

Book Review: The Making of an Atheist by James Spiegel

October 7, 2018October 5, 2021Rebekah Kohlhepp

A couple of weeks ago, my fiance and I spent a day driving around to different bookstores. When I explore bookstores, I usually spend most of my time divided between the science section (specifically biology and evolution) and the religion section (there are sometimes atheism-related books on a shelf labeled “comparative religion”). As one might guess, I found James S. Spiegel’s little book, The Making of an Atheist, among the other atheist books. I picked it up thinking it might be Spiegel’s deconversion story only to see the other half of the title, How Immorality Leads to Unbelief. I was immediately intrigued. It’s common to hear people say, “you’re only an atheist because you want to sin!” but this was the first time I’d seen someone write a 130-page book on the idea.

The Story of Antony Flew

September 30, 2018October 5, 2021Rebekah Kohlhepp

The first time I can recall ever hearing the name Antony Flew was in my college apologetics class. My crazy teacher, always trying to prove a point, had said something along the lines of “even this famous atheist, Antony Flew, changed his mind and now believes in God! That proves that God exists!” My inward reaction to this was twofold: I thought, “Well, then, he must not have been a very convinced atheist” and “That invalidates any atheistic arguments that this person must have had, because in the end he himself wasn’t even convinced by them.”

Reading My Professor’s Apologetics Book: Part 5

September 2, 2018October 5, 2021Rebekah Kohlhepp

David Hogsette’s E-mails to a Young Seeker is one of the most… fascinating books I’ve ever read. I first discovered this quirky apologetics book when I had to edit it as an assignment in a class at Grove City College—and not even a religion class, but an English class. Being the passive aggressive individual that I am, I decided that I had too many edits to be contained in one assignment, and I wanted my critique of the garbage presented to me at that school to be public. Read more →

Thoughts on the Big Bang

August 26, 2018April 23, 2022Rebekah Kohlhepp

Possibly the most common argument for the existence of God is that it is untenable to maintain that the universe came from nothing. This can come in the form of the Kalam argument, the argument from fine-tuning, and even in this popular but ignorant meme: Read more →

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 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 →