Making Your Faith Impossible to Disprove
A few days ago I reshared an article entitled “Why I Broke Up with Jesus” which always inspires a predictable set of rationalizations from people defending their tradition using the same time-tested...
View ArticleFaith and the Power of a Magic Feather
“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” –Philippians 4:13 Growing up evangelical, no message featured more prominently in my understanding of the Christian life than this verse. After...
View ArticleCan You Choose NOT to Believe?
I try not to get sucked into too many arguments about religion in my friends’ social media spaces because I never know how personally their friends and relatives will take the discussion. Arguing in...
View ArticleNote From a Pastor: Finding Meaning in Our Myths
This past weekend I got an email from a Presbyterian pastor (PCUSA) asking some really good questions, and I’d like to share them with you here in abbreviated form (with permission, of course). I think...
View ArticleOur Biggest Mistake: We Did As We Were Told
Those of us who broke up with Jesus (he wouldn’t return our calls) are accustomed to having our motives and our sincerity questioned by those still happy with their faith. We get it all the time. We...
View ArticleMaybe Fighting God Isn’t the Point
Not every development in human evolution serves to perpetuate the species. Not every variation benefits us in more ways than it harms us. There ultimately is no rhyme or reason to what happens from...
View ArticleHow Faith is Like Playing Minecraft
I recently had something that was as close to a religious experience as I’ve had in a really long time, and a light bulb went on in my head that changed the way I see a whole lot of things. So much...
View ArticleWhat Bowling Can Teach Us About Prayer
I suppose I started celebrating Father’s Day a day early when I took my nine-year-old bowling yesterday, but of course that won’t stop me from doing it again today when I take her to my favorite place...
View ArticleHelp! My Grandchildren Are Becoming Calvinists
A retired friend of mine who now considers himself an agnostic has been struggling for some time to navigate his relationship with his children and grandchildren, all of whom are still religious...
View ArticleMaybe Belief Is a Matter of Choice for Some
I’ve gotten into more than my fair share of interchanges with people on the internet arguing over whether or not faith is a matter of personal volition. Can you simply choose to believe in God or Jesus...
View ArticleWhat Praising God in the Storm Reveals About Faith
Nothing puts the cognitive dissonance of faith on display like a destructive storm system ripping through a religious community. “Does disaster come to a city, unless the Lord has done it?” —Amos 3:6...
View ArticleThe Sociology of Belief
When I was still a Christian, I would often bristle whenever someone tried to analyze my faith from a scientific point of view. The tools of the scientist, I argued, could not reliably detect the...
View ArticleDoes It Take Faith to Be an Atheist?
“I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist.” I know it must be gratifying to pull out a zinger like this from time to time, but I’m here to tell you it’s not as clever as it sounds to you. When people...
View ArticleThe Most Important Decision I Made
Let’s go back in time to 2006. The iPhone had yet to be released, Facebook was the new, cool thing and Reddit was in its infancy. American Idol was a BIG deal and my social sciences professor thought...
View ArticleHow Faith Breaks Your Feeler
In my last post, I enumerated about a dozen ways faith normalizes bad thinking, teaching us to view what the rest of the world deems logical fallacies as simply “the way you’re supposed to think.” My...
View ArticleC.S. Lewis and the Argument from Spilled Milk
I see a quote from C.S. Lewis circulated quite a bit, and I’d like to give my response to the argument it presents. Perhaps when I am done explaining what’s wrong with it, you will start to see why...
View ArticleMy Favorite Moment in The Truman Show
There is a scene in The Truman Show that makes me cry every time I see it because I swear that I have lived it. It’s the moment he finally reaches the end of the little world that was constructed for...
View ArticleWhy the Church Keeps Falling for “Bad Information”
A few years back I had the pleasure of thinking-out-loud-together with Phil Vischer, co-creator of VeggieTales and voice of Bob the Tomato, and despite the passing of time our conversation has lingered...
View ArticleHow Faith Taught Me to Distrust the Rest of the World
I’ll never forget the first night I attended a youth group meeting during high school. Somehow I made it to my junior year before finding out the youth ministry was its own separate thing—I mean...
View ArticleWhat I Lost When I Lost My Faith
Despite the fact that I’m knocking on the door of a full decade without faith in Jesus, from time to time I’m still surprised by the surges of emotion that accompany a memory of what life was like back...
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