It’s the same message over and over, over and over, OVER AND OVER: “Christianity in America is dying, Christianity in America is dying, Christianity in America is dying, Christianity in America is dying, Christianity in America is dying, Christianity in America is dying, Christianity in America is dying, Christianity in America is dying, Christianity in America is dying, Christianity in America is dying, Christianity in America is dying, Christianity in America is dying…..” As an ex-Christian, you’d think I’d be happy by this news. But my critical thinking doesn’t get turned off because the content says what I WANT to believe; that is known as confirmation bias.
There are two things fundamentally wrong with Professor Archive’s content. First, it is clear that every single video is made with tons of images generated with A I rather than genuine pictures of real people. Second, that channel releases TWO videos every day. This is what I call “flooding”, a brazen attempt to get as much attention as possible via excessive content, even if that content is inferior in quality.
Because of this, I am certain there will be a HUGE backlash against Professor Archive’s content. Christians who come across it will rightfully call his videos fake and therefore argue that everything he says are lies. His credibility will soon be destroyed before the public.
It would be better for him to only make ONE video a week and use REAL images in all of them, deal with a variety of subjects instead of obsessively focusing on bashing Christianity, and make positive statements about how some things in the world are improving or at least give advice on how to improve things. Like I do when I promote Unitarian Universalism.
I therefore reject and denounce Professor Archive’s content as worthless. For the record, I NEVER use A I content in this blog; everything I have ever made here was generated by my own natural intelligence. And that’s the only writing I think should be accepted, especially on serious academic subjects.
If you’re like most of my readers, you’re a Christian who feels a conviction to share their faith. But, if you’re like me, you’ve found that our culture is growing increasingly skeptical towards the Gospel. According to many in society, Christianity is anti-science, intolerant, and based on fairy tales.
Not too long ago, I was sitting with a couple of co-worker friends, and the conversation switched to spiritual things. I started to share Jesus, and let’s say that things didn’t go well. They shot me to shreds.
One of my co-worker friends was an agnostic and thought that science disproved God. The other was a son of missionaries, but he lost his faith while he was in college and was now a Buddhist. Both raised objections that left me speechless at the time.
Rather than accepting defeat, this pushed me into looking for answers for why I believe what I believe. I was able to find a mentor who happened to be a philosophy professor and an expert on historical apologetics. He graciously put me on an intense self-study track and made himself available for guidance. I devoured literature, podcasts, lectures, and online classrooms produced by both Christians and skeptics.
As I did, my confidence grew tremendously. I’m no longer afraid of being asked hard questions. I realized that my faith wasn’t just experiential but also rooted in history, reason, and even science. This blog is a product of my past and ongoing studies in this area.
I aim to help doubters doubt their doubts and equip believers to be able to share their faith in a skeptical culture.
I tackle issues like the reliability of the gospels, the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus, the foundation for moral values, ethical objections raised against Scripture, and other common skeptical objections to belief in God or Christianity.
What a load of crap! Let’s break that down, shall we?
If you’re like most of my readers, you’re a Christian who feels a conviction to share their faith. But, if you’re like me, you’ve found that our culture is growing increasingly skeptical towards the Gospel. According to many in society, Christianity is anti-science, intolerant, and based on fairy tales.
One of my co-worker friends was an agnostic and thought that science disproved God. The other was a son of missionaries, but he lost his faith while he was in college and was now a Buddhist. Both raised objections that left me speechless at the time.
Maybe because their Spiritual Orientation was different from yours? Did either of them say you shouldn’t be Christian? If they did, that was wrong.
Rather than accepting defeat, this pushed me into looking for answers for why I believe what I believe. I was able to find a mentor who happened to be a philosophy professor and an expert on historical apologetics. He graciously put me on an intense self-study track and made himself available for guidance. I devoured literature, podcasts, lectures, and online classrooms produced by both Christians and skeptics.
No, it wasn’t about accepting defeat, you bigot! It was really about respecting them as fellow human beings with autonomy like your own. And based on what I know about apologists, your mentor was almost certainly a con artist and he trained you to be one too, not an honest seeker of truth.
As I did, my confidence grew tremendously. I’m no longer afraid of being asked hard questions. I realized that my faith wasn’t just experiential but also rooted in history, reason, and even science.
Anyone can say that about his faith, whether Christian or not. Apologetics is about assuming a set of dogmas must be true and constructing arguments to support that presumption, which should be seen by everyone as unethical.
An example of that being done to defend the Baha’i Faith, which nearly all Christians would reject as a false cult:
I aim to help doubters doubt their doubts and equip believers to be able to share their faith in a skeptical culture.
Doubt their doubts? What does that even mean? That’s just an absurd cliche.
I tackle issues like the reliability of the gospels, the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus, the foundation for moral values, ethical objections raised against Scripture, and other common skeptical objections to belief in God or Christianity.
…that there is no independent historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. Appeals to the accounts given in the four Gospels are circular reasoning and therefore invalid as a matter of establishing truth….
…a true foundation for moral values is based on empathy for fellow humans, not mere obedience to religious leaders and their questionable dogmas.,,,,
Looking at his videos, I see he is obsessed with bashing Islam and the Prophet Muhammad and also slams Joseph Smith and the Mormon cult he founded….while also attacking Muhammad. Of course, I have attacked Islam a few times too, but I also understand why someone would convert to Islam. This other guy is an Islamophobe and that is repulsive to me.
I don’t care what you believe, as long as it is a private matter. But when you start asserting your religion as absolute truth that all should accept and follow, I react badly to such attitudes.
OK, were you as shocked as I was? Here’s the original version of that song to restore your proper brain functions.
How desperate are Christians to mimic popular culture to try to reach out to the youth of the present age to win new converts to their religion? Well, if you are familiar with Batman and other superheros, how about the Christian version of one?
And looooooong before that, there was the “Heaven’s metal” band Stryper, which I heard so much about back when I was myself a Christian in the 1980s.
The basic premise of all these “Christian” things above is “if we give our youth versions of popular culture that meet OUR standards, they won’t be corrupted by the satanic stuff out there.”
More to the point of why the efforts to mimic popular culture is failing, even some Christians themselves can see the nonsense for what it is.
But those who know better are not in control of the Christian churches, or “Christian” media outlets. So they are alienated.
Amy Grant, one of the most powerful Christian singers, faced a crisis of faith when she found herself divorcing fellow Christian artist Gary Chapman. Their both being Christian wasn’t enough to make their marriage work, because Chapman had a toxic personality.
Chapman married Amy Grant on June 19, 1982. Grant filed for divorce from Chapman in March 1999, citing “irreconcilable differences”, and the divorce was finalized in June 1999.[16]
Chapman married Jennifer Pittman in July 2000. Chapman and Pittman divorced in 2007.[1]
On December 22, 2008, Chapman married Cassie Piersol.[1][17] The couple began a project called A Hymn a Week in 2010 to honor the musical heritage left to Chapman by his parents.[3] Chapman has stated that both his parents, who were small-town pastors for their entire lives, had a strong influence in his life and they “implanted the hymns into [his] heart”.
This is what happens when you are not firmly connected with REALITY.
On March 10, 2000, Grant married country singer-songwriter Vince Gill, who had been previously married to country singer Janis Oliver of Sweethearts of the Rodeo.[51] Grant and Gill have one daughter together, Corrina Grant Gill, born March 12, 2001.[52]
In the November 1999 CCM Magazine, Grant explained why she left Chapman and married Gill:
I didn’t get a divorce because ‘I had a great marriage and then along came Vince Gill.’ Gary and I had a rocky road from day one. I think what was so hard—and this is (what) one of our counselors said—sometimes an innocent party can come into a situation, and they’re like a big spotlight. What they do is reveal, by comparison, the painful dynamics that are already in existence.[53]
Christians everywhere need to understand that their religion does not save anyone. Having a healthy personality can save people! I myself only learned that after going into and then out of ANOTHER dogmatic God-centered religion.
After I left the Baha’i Faith, I realized that religion simply has nothing whatsoever to do with one’s character; if people have screwed up personalities, religion actually can make them worse by making them think that believing certain dogmas and following certain rituals will save them and make them great people before God and their fellow humans. I know from my own experience with myself and others that this is simply a lie.
Christianity is the most popular religion in the world, with about 2 billion followers all over the world. Islam is the second most popular religion, with over a billion followers. Part of the reason Christianity is larger is because it is older, since it is about 2000 years old, as compared with Islam being only 1400 years old.
Another reason Christianity is more popular is because of its association with imperialism. First, it took over the Roman Empire. After the Roman Empire fell in 476 AD, the religion continued as the dominant ideology of the Byzantine Empire, which was a direct offshoot of the Roman one. Later, the Arabs built a vast empire using Islam as their unifying force, challenging the Byzantines. Finally, the Turks, another Islamic power, destroyed the Byzantine Empire.
Then the European powers spread their empires all over the world, taking Christianity with them. Islam remained relatively weak until two things happened to make it more powerful: European imperialism fell apart and oil was discovered in most parts of the Middle East. Suddenly, the Arabs became extremely rich due to their oil revenues, and with that wealth came the ability to spread Islam around the world. But in Europe, Christianity declined as the people became increasingly secular. The tragic events of World War II probably did more to destroy Europeans’ faith than anything else. Today, the USA is the most powerful Christian dominated nation in the world, but it is still secular in its government. And even here, religious influence is slowly declining.
I suspect that within another generation, Islam will surpass Christianity as the most popular world religion, but its power cannot last long, because oil is a nonrenewable resource. And when that oil runs out, the economies of the Middle Eastern states that depend on oil will break down, and so will Islam.
What can freethinkers, atheists, and secular humanists do to overcome this situation? They must do everything possible to end the dependence on oil, and indeed all other fossil fuels, and establish societies based on renewable and sustainable sources of energy such as wind, water, the sun and geothermal sources. Once at least some parts of the world are free from needing resources that are doomed to run out, we will have even less need for religions like Christianity and Islam.
One of the great tragedies of the Protestant Reformation, in addition to destroying forever the unity of the Christians in western Europe, was that it enshrined the Bible as the sole source of dogma among Protestants. Now, I will grant that the incredible corruption and tyranny of the Roman Catholic Church during the Middle Ages made the Reformation both necessary and inevitable, but the way it was done by most Protestants made spiritual tyranny inevitable among them as well. This was because they simply replaced the Catholic papacy and church councils with the Bible itself, or rather, how Protestant leaders read the Bible. Calling the Word of God what is actually your INTERPRETATION of words of men writing in the name of God is stretching things beyond any bounds of logic you can imagine, which is why Christians constantly emphasize faith as their standard.
Can you bear yet another poll today? The initial results of this one, before all of you readers get to work and use your magic clicky fingers, is mildly interesting. The readership of Christianity Today consists primarily of scientific illiterates and wishful dreamers, split between people who seriously believe the earth is 6000 years old, those who think the Bible is a science text and are willing to stretch a metaphor, and fuzzy thinkers who want a god to have guided natural processes.
I imagine the readership here can rock their little world.
After all the killings and destruction since 1948 in the “Holy Land”, we must do all we can to undo the systematic brainwashing of the American people that has been done for many decades by Christian fundamenalist leaders and propagandists. As far as I’m concerned, they are mass murderers by proxy!
First, they claim that Israel’s founding was a fulfilment of Bible prophecy and thus will lead to the return of Christ and the establishment of God’s kingdom. They must claim this because so many prophecies in the Old Testament referring to Israel were NOT fulfilled in ancient times, therefore, they assume that these prophecies will be fulfilled in modern times with the new state of Israel. But that is nothing but a rationalization.
Second, if you read what Jesus actually said in the Gospels about his return, then certain events were supposed to take place, then he would return while the generation that saw him alive still lived. Indeed, the destruction of the Jewish Temple in AD 70 and the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79 could be seen as fulfillments of what Jesus said…….but he did NOT return. So why would some Christians still be waiting for his return nearly 2000 years later? And linking his return to the JEWISH state of Israel is absurd, period!
Third, and worst of all, many Christians see what has happened in the Middle East since 1948 as a reenactment of the ancient wars described in the Bible, where many atrocities were also committed. Indeed, the Book of Joshua describes a long campaigne of conquest and genocide that would be compared with what the German Nazis did if it happened today. And that is the main reason most fundamentalist Christians are not bothered by the wrongdoings of Israel because they think, “Such things were done in Biblical times and were said to be God’s will, so why not let them happen again?” That’s a bit like expecting a teenager to wear diapers long after he has outgrown them and been potty trained. This is one reason why I am sometimes so contemptuous of religion: It actually prevents people from growing up spiritually and morally.
And Palestinians, you are not blameless either! You, just as Israel, have murdered far too many innocents in the name of your religion and your nationality. If I had my way, I’d sweep both you AND the Jews off the “Holy Land” and allow that land 100 years of healing before I ever allow any people to live there again. And then only atheists and agnostics, who would treat the land and its history more objectively than any Jew, Christian, and Muslim would.
If you want to see just how stupid the mentality I described just above can get, just go to a library and check out The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey, and its several sequels that this despicable fraud wrote in the late 1970s and 1980s. He was using religion to promote hard-line Conservative politics, and for that alone I will spit on him forever!
Published: 11/9/08, 12:25 PM EDT
By MATTI FRIEDMAN
JERUSALEM (AP) – Israeli police rushed into one of Christianity’s holiest churches Sunday and arrested two clergyman after an argument between monks erupted into a brawl next to the site of Jesus’ tomb. Continue reading →
One of the favorite arguments put forth by Christian apologists is that of “Liar, Lunatic, or Lord” in reference to Jesus. It was published by C.S. Lewis in his book Mere Christianity, and later repeated by Josh McDowell in his works. Basically, it goes like this:
“Jesus claimed to be God. If so, he must have been God incarnate in order to be accepted as a great moral teacher. If he was NOT God incarnate, then he must have been either a liar (evil) or a lunatic (diseased in the mind) and by definition someone who is evil or diseased in the mind cannot be a good moral teacher, so the only logical conclusion is that Jesus must have indeed been God incarnate, and therefore his teachings were infallible and he was by nature superior to any other moral teacher that ever lived.”
This argument is completely bogus! And here’s why:
First, we know NOTHING about Jesus that came directly from him. Everything written about him, including all quotations of his words, are second-hand or third-hand sources. See my earlier blog entry for more details:
Second, it is perfectly possible for someone to teach good morals and yet be a con artist. Indeed, you wouldn’t expect someone to openly proclaim “I am a liar and am immoral, corrupt, and serve evil causes!” You would expect someone to USE issues of morality to attract the well-meaning but gullible followers that the con artist could exploit for his personal gain later.
Third, even most insane people have some elements of lucidity in their characters. There is not an absolute distinction between the insane and those of normal mentality. Mental illness has many different manifestations and degrees of severity.
Fourth, there is an incident recorded in the Gospels of Jesus cursing a fig tree just because it had no figs to give him at the time (and it wasn’t even the season for them) and the tree soon dies: Mark 11:14, 20-23, Matthew 21:19-21. He uses this irrational action as an example of the power of faith. Sounds like insanity to me!
Fifth, the same liar, lunatic, or lord argument could be just as well applied to the founders of every other religion, including those with teachings very different from Christianity. Yet to be a Christian, you must assume that all those other religions are false!
Quite simply, this argument is an appeal to religious and cultural prejudice. It is no more valid than arguments to support astrology, palm-reading, or belief in a flat Earth.
There are four religions in the world that are classed as “Abrahamic”, being descended from the original work of Abraham. Abraham himself left no writings of his own and he may have been only legendary, as much as Greek myths are thought to be. He founded no religion that survives today.
Judaism: Considered to have been founded by Moses. He was credited with writing the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament), but this is incorrect; He may have written the laws detailed in the Torah, but not the Torah itself, since his death is recorded at the end of it and it is implied that it was made several centuries after Moses’ time. So the foundation of this religion is uncertain.
Christianity: Considered to have been founded by Jesus, but he himself wrote nothing that we have and the stories and quotations of him are entirely second-hand. In addition, most Christian doctrine was formulated by Paul, who was not even an original desciple of Jesus, but joined the Christians later after being their enemy. Thus the foundation of this religion is highly uncertain.
Islam: Founded by the Prophet Muhammad. He was said to be illiterate, and dictated most of the Quran to various scribes rather than write it directly. It wasn’t until after his death that the Quran was assembled in its final form, and it was not assembled in chronological order.
The Baha’i Faith: Baha’u’llah, the founder of this religion, is said to have written his own books. But he too relied on personal secretaries to do most of this, including Mirza Aqa Jan, who later would be condemned as a “Covenant-breaker” for opposing Abdu’l-Baha, the son and immediate successor of Baha’u’llah.
The credibilility of the Baha’i Faith is dependent on Islam, the credibility of Islam is dependent on Christianity, and the credibility of Christianity is dependent on Judaism. Yet all these religions also claim that the earlier ones were corrupted over time, making the new ones necessary. Does this make sense? What if all four religions were flawed from the beginning, because their means of recording their teachings were flawed? Their founders could have written and edited their writings all by themselves and not allowed others to make unauthorized editions after their time. Thus any possible errors or contradictions in those teachings would have been prevented. Outsiders could have been prevented from polluting the original faith with foreign concepts. Disputes between followers could have been settled without assuming blindly that the leadership was never to be questioned and that others could “agree to disagree” without being treated as traitors.
None of these were done, except by the most liberal branches of these faiths, and thus they have been sources of tyranny and ignorance rather than liberty and enlightenment. And as this essay shows, there is really no reason for ANYONE to be certain that any of them are absolutely true, especially since modern science has completely debunked the creation myth that was said to be the very root of all of them.
Dale Husband's Intellectual Rants 