Social justice book reviews
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 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
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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