Godless in Dixie - Page 4 of 56 - Skepticism with a bit of a drawl.

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

May 2, 2018 By Guest Contributor

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

The Most Important Decision I Made

April 9, 2018 By Guest Contributor

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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 it would be another 50 years before legal gay marriage would be a reality. And I was freaking out because my faith in God was slipping away. I never imagined I would leave my insulated, tightly controlled Christian college after 3 semesters… Read more

When Bullies Think They’re Victims

March 20, 2018 By Neil Carter

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This past weekend as I was exiting my local movie theater, the poster for the latest installment of the God’s Not Dead franchise stopped me dead in my tracks. I just stood and stared at it for a full minute, trying to process what I was seeing. The poster features the movie’s star and producer, David A.R. White, standing amidst the ruins of a sanctuary reduced to rubble by a fire of as-yet-unknown origin. Pure Flix, the religious film production company… Read more

Why Evangelicals Just Don’t Care

March 18, 2018 By Neil Carter

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A week ago, Forbes published an opinion piece by Chris Ladd, a lifelong Republican who ditched his own party in 2016, but then they took the article down because the editors felt the subject matter was too controversial for their audience. The article was spot on, in my opinion, and Ladd put his finger on something I’ve never read anyone express so succinctly. At the end of my most recent post about the passing of Billy Graham I argued that… Read more

Billy Graham Was Not a Great Man

March 5, 2018 By Neil Carter

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It has taken me several days of processing the passing and legacy of American evangelist Billy Graham to wrap my head around what’s different about the way I view who he was compared with the way others seem to see him. Over the last week I’ve seen every extreme emotion represented from pride and admiration to seething anger and disgust. People feel really strongly about the man, whether good or bad, and quite honestly both groups have valid points. I suspect… Read more

Religion Isn’t Our Biggest Problem

February 27, 2018 By Neil Carter

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Every once in a while I write about American politics and it never fails that each time I do, at least somebody chimes in and asks why a blog otherwise devoted to unpacking the post-Christian experience would wander so egregiously off topic. I always reply that atheism as an isolated subject doesn’t carry much appeal to me, abstracted as it is from every day life. What interests me and keeps me writing is that intersection of religion and daily life… Read more

Samson: An Evangelical Hero in the Era of Trump

February 25, 2018 By Neil Carter

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If you’ve never heard of Pure Flix Entertainment then you’re really missing out. It’s the Christian alternative to Netflix, and it is an unintentionally hilarious attempt at offering a poor quality substitute for the “worldly” entertainment you find on that other channel. Besides offering straight-to-laptop streaming films for home viewing, sometimes Pure Flix sponsors full-length feature films for limited release in theaters where they expect church attendance is high enough to provide a stable supply of ticket buying customers. Back… Read more