“Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body. Here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind.” –Ecclesiastes What is the biblical attitude toward the life of the mind? [ iTunes | spreaker | youtube | pdf ] Is the Christian faith pro-intellect? Or does it maintain a fundamentally antagonistic posture toward learning, toward education, toward research and development, and toward academic and scientific endeavors in… Read more
December 13, 2019
Episode 24: The Bible’s Attitude Toward the Life of the Mind
December 13, 2019 By Neil Carter
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December 11, 2019
Episode 23: Paul, the True Founder of Christianity
December 11, 2019 By Neil Carter
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When I was in college I used to get so perturbed by my Bible professors because they all seemed so annoyingly liberal. It was a shock to my system, since I grew up Southern Baptist and since the school I was attending was a Baptist college as well. Our religion professors were far more liberal than any of the students, most of whom had chosen this college precisely because they wanted a conservative Christian education. Our English professors were practically fundies compared… Read more
December 6, 2019
Episode 22: The Most Failed Prayer In History
December 6, 2019 By Neil Carter
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Defenders of the Christian faith can’t stop moving discussions about their religion from objective matters to subjective ones, from measurable things to the immeasurable, and from quantifiable subjects to those which are completely nebulous—or more to the point, unfalsifiable. This is a telling compulsion, and every time it happens it reminds me why I eventually lost my ability to believe their grand narrative. I recognize these tactics because I practiced them first on myself. [ iTunes | spreaker | youtube |… Read more
December 3, 2019
Episode 21: The Greatest Story Never Told
December 3, 2019 By Neil Carter
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Do you know how many people the Bible says were raised from the dead on Easter weekend? When Christian friends engage me in debate about the reliability of the Bible, I like to ask them this question to see how well they know the book they so revere. One of the hallmarks of fundamentalism is the belief that the Bible cannot be wrong, and that has produced a plethora of problems for American society. [ iTunes | spreaker | youtube… Read more
November 29, 2019
Episode 20: Five Times Jesus Sounded Like a Humanist
November 29, 2019 By Neil Carter
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I’ve said before that I’m not much of a fan of Jesus. If the reports of what he taught his followers have any truth to them, he said a number of things to which I object (and I don’t mean just the parts about believing in invisible spirits). [ iTunes | spreaker | youtube | pdf ] The Jesus I Don’t Like For one thing, he modeled for his followers a kind of fanatical abandon which doesn’t really translate well into normal,… Read more
October 21, 2019
Episode 19: The Christmas That Wasn’t
October 21, 2019 By Neil Carter
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Growing up, my favorite superhero was definitely Superman. Hands down, no one else captured my childhood imagination more completely than he did. I was also taught to idolize Jesus growing up, and it always delighted me that my boyhood idol so closely mirrored the object of my religious devotion as well.* [ iTunes | spreaker | youtube | pdf ] Both of them were, in a sense, born “from above” but came to earth to be our savior. Both somehow had ongoing… Read more
October 17, 2019
Episode 18: Was Jesus a Real Person?
October 17, 2019 By Neil Carter
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Without googling it, would you know what a CVDP is? Would you immediately know what the CMIP and AMIP are? They are, respectively, a tool for analyzing climatological models and the frameworks climatologists use to correlate, organize, and analyze massive amounts of oceanographic and atmospheric data in order to make sense of patterns in global climates. I had to look them up to know what they are, and I’m probably doing a poor job of defining them since I am not… Read more
September 28, 2019
Episode 17: What Does the Bible Say About Abortion?
September 28, 2019 By Neil Carter
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When evangelical Christians first began debating the issue of abortion, they were nowhere near as unified about the topic as they appear to be today. Shortly after the Supreme Court made their landmark decision on the issue in Roe v. Wade (1973), influential Baptist minister W.A. Criswell, pastor of First Baptist in Dallas, TX, and predecessor to FOX News darling Robert Jeffress, said: I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from… Read more
September 25, 2019
Episode 16: I Drew the Line at Canaan
September 25, 2019 By Neil Carter
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I quit attending church nearly a decade ago, and up until that point I had already been an atheist for a couple of years. Let me tell you, it’s not easy attending “big church” as an atheist, much less attending Sunday School as one. Today, I’d like to tell you about the last time I was able to stomach going because that was a major turning point for me. [ iTunes | spreaker | youtube | pdf ] For me, this was the… Read more
September 25, 2019
Episode 15: Father Abraham Had Many Psychoses
September 25, 2019 By Neil Carter
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It’s funny how you can read a story or watch a movie at two different times in your life and see it in two completely different lights each time. The second time around, you notice things you never would have caught before. [ iTunes | spreaker | youtube | pdf ] I recently watched a favorite Bond movie and found myself saying, “Were his lines always this corny? And was the action always this…cartoony?” I also remember the first time… Read more
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