If Contemporary American Conservatives Had Written The New Testament

September 3, 2012 By 5 Comments

It’d sound more like this:

Filed Under: Christianity, Fundamentalism, Politics, Religion 5 Comments

Blaming Rape on the Ideal of Egalitarian Marriage

July 23, 2012 By 35 Comments

Influential Evangelical pastor Doug Wilson goes there. Your Thoughts?

Filed Under: Fundamentalism, Rape 35 Comments

Why Let The Fundamentalists Define Their Religions?

June 21, 2012 By 36 Comments

Let me forestall a couple of New Atheist freak outs from the start. This post is not going to argue that we should ignore fundamentalist versions of religions as mere aberrations or perversions of their faiths. Fundamentalists exist and they pose serious risks to science, freedom, philosophical advance, and numerous other important values around the world. [...]

Filed Under: Fundamentalism, Religious Extremism, Religious Moderates 36 Comments

The Evangelicals' Fear of Knowledge

June 21, 2012 By 39 Comments

Peter Enns describes the ways that seminaries hide ideas, information, and arguments that might disturb their students’ faiths:

Filed Under: Christianity, Christianity, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism 39 Comments

Living With The Westboro Baptist Church

June 12, 2012 By 6 Comments

Rebecca Fox-Barrett did six years of ethnographical research about the Westboro Baptist Church, which included spending a lot of time with the church. You can read the resultant doctoral dissertation that she wrote on the church here.  She recently gave a very interesting interview to Sojourners. Here are just a few interesting bits to highlight [...]

Filed Under: Christianity, Fundamentalism, Religion Tagged With: , 6 Comments

Christian Patriarchy and Emotional Incest

April 4, 2012 By 17 Comments

Libby Anne has a fascinating and troubling series on emotional incest and how Christian patriarchy actively cultivates it. The whole thing is must read. Here are a few key selections:

Filed Under: Christianity, Christianity, Feminism, Feminism, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Women's Issues Tagged With: , , , , , 17 Comments

Contra de Botton: Religions Are NOT To Credit With Universalistic Humanistic Values

March 12, 2012 By 6 Comments

Alain de Botton’s chapter on community in his book Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion is filled with half-baked thinking. After one-sidedly disparaging modern social life from numerous selective (and sometimes specious) angles, he goes on to model really effectively how not to try to learn from religion (Kindle Location 189):

Filed Under: Atheism, Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Bible, Bible, Christianity, Christianity, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Ethics, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, Islam, Islam, Jesus, Jesus, Judaism, Judaism, Koran, Koran, Morality, Morality, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Religion, Religion, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Secularism, Virtues, Virtues, Women's Rights, Women's Rights, Women's Rights, Women's Rights 6 Comments

Against The Religiously Lazy Defenders of The Pious

March 4, 2012 By 8 Comments

Religious moderates and liberals come in many stripes. In this post I want to talk about a couple of related kinds of religious moderates or liberals and why they irk me. In order to do that, I want to draw some distinctions that I do not think I see anyone else making but which it [...]

Filed Under: Atheism, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates 8 Comments

Before I Deconverted: I Dabbled With Calvinism In College (Everyone Was Doing It)

February 27, 2012 By 112 Comments

I’m writing a series of posts about my Christian upbringing and the philosophical and personal road to my deconversion. Often it is easy for atheists, especially for those who never were serious religious believers, to not understand how religious thinking works from the inside. What counts as evidence for or against theological propositions when you [...]

Filed Under: Bible, Bible, Christianity, Christianity, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, God, God, Personal, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion, Religion Tagged With: , , , , 112 Comments

Libby Anne on Growing Up Fearing The Rapture

February 18, 2012 By 6 Comments

Libby Anne details some of the anxieties she and others felt growing up as true believers in the rapture: I was very afraid the rapture might occur and I might be left behind. One morning when I was ten or twelve I woke up and couldn’t find anyone in the house. Before I realized that [...]

Filed Under: Christianity, Christianity, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, Religion, Religion, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism Tagged With: , 6 Comments