Godless in Dixie - Page 4 of 57 - Skepticism with a bit of a drawl.

How Trump’s Legal Defense Mimics Christian Apologetics

June 4, 2018 By Neil Carter

This week during season two of The Trump Show in an episode entitled “How Far Will They Go?” we learned that as far back as January of this year President Trump’s legal defense team, comprised mostly of lawyers who have since abandoned his defense, wrote a 20 page memo to Special Counsel Robert Mueller arguing that the president cannot possibly obstruct the justice system because ultimately he himself IS the justice system. “It remains our position that the President’s actions here, by… Read more

There Is No Fear In Love

May 30, 2018 By Lori Arnold

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“Where will you be when reality strikes?” Once upon a time, my “Papaw and Mamaw” took me to their Assembly of God church’s production of Heaven’s Gates Hell’s Flames©. This is a play that Reality Outreach Ministries designed to produce in churches of various denominations all over the world using the members of the local congregations as the actors telling the stories of various people in their last moments of life and their subsequent first moments of eternity. Will they end up at… Read more

The S Word: Self-Esteem

May 22, 2018 By Lori Arnold

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I remember hearing once as a child – in a sermon or a Sunday school lesson or maybe a home group Bible study – that self-esteem should never be a focus in raising children. Focusing on a child’s self-esteem would teach them to look inside themselves for worth instead of looking to the Lord for their worth. Teach children to find their significance in Jesus, they said, and we will develop a far greater sense of value than any “self-esteem”… Read more

Help Me Do What I Do

May 16, 2018 By Neil Carter

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During the school year, for my day job I teach high school Algebra. Then I write in my “spare time” when I probably should be doing something else to help pay the bills (have you ever seen what teachers in Mississippi make?). Aside from a full itinerary of Daddy duties and a week in the woods volunteering as a cabin counselor at Camp Quest (find out more about that here), I try to use any free time I get during… Read more

What I Hear When You Say “Not All Christians”

May 13, 2018 By Neil Carter

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Not too long ago I restated my critique of the standard Christian teaching that, while it would take an eternity of suffering for me to pay the price of just my individual lifetime of sins (most of which appear to be “thought crimes”), Jesus paid for the sins of billions of people’s lifetimes over the span of a single Friday. I’m not sure how the math works out on that, but part of the fun of religion is that things… Read more

An Open Letter to Owen Strachan Upon Preaching to My Daughters

May 9, 2018 By Neil Carter

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Dear Owen, This past weekend you filled the pulpit at my family’s church, and I thought you did a commendable job of delivering your message. You were as articulate in your presentation as you were well-versed in the perspective you chose to express. Your message was also timely as it indirectly spoke to a crisis currently threatening the integrity of the Southern Baptist Convention, of which my family’s church is a noteworthy part. The question at hand is: What are… Read more

I Am a Q-U-E-S-T-I-O-N-E-R

May 2, 2018 By Guest Contributor

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Stop me if you know this one. I am a C! I am a C-H! I am a C-H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N! And I have C-H-R-I-S-T in my H-E-A-R-T And I will L-I-V-E-E-T-E-R-N-A-L-L-Y! (repeat ad nauseum as 10 year-olds are wont to do . . . ) This is the chant that spontaneously broke out among several members of the robotics club at my eldest son’s school a few weeks ago. I’m a parent volunteer/coach with the club and we meet for about… Read more

What If Christianity Were True?

April 27, 2018 By Neil Carter

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Defenders of the Christian faith spend a considerable amount of time trying to prove that something happened thousands of years ago. But that really shouldn’t be necessary because, if the claims of Christianity were true, the present day evidence for it should be all over the place. Let’s take a few minutes and review the things we are led to expect by reading the words of Jesus himself on the matter. I’m sticking primarily with Jesus because if I turn… Read more

How Faith Breaks Your Feeler

April 13, 2018 By Neil Carter

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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 contention is that growing up in church diminishes your capacity to detect and question factual inconsistencies, effectively breaking your irony meter and ultimately rendering an entire voting bloc susceptible to con artists and charlatans of every kind. Which reminds me: Have you ever noticed… Read more

How Faith Breaks Your Thinker

April 10, 2018 By Neil Carter

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Someone wrote me recently to ask: What drives you to be so adamant in sharing your atheistic beliefs? What is the driving force behind you? To influence others to be nonbelievers?? I have so much to say about this it will take me more than one post to get it all out, and this one won’t be short. First of all, to me this question implies that, while it’s laudable for the religious to wear their beliefs on their sleeves… Read more