It’s been six months since I’ve posted here, but I haven’t just been sitting around, I assure you! Most of my online activity now happens over at Life After God, including the podcast. Here are one or two highlights if you haven’t heard the podcast yet. I’m going to be dusting off this blog a little bit and doing a little blogging during the remainder of the summer and then see where we go from there. But before I say more... Read more
Creating a New Future After Faith Since starting Life After God I have had a number of clarifying experiences—moments in which the vision I originally articulated for this organization teaches me something I didn’t see as clearly at the beginning. For example, it is clearer to me than ever before that there are at least two distinct but intimately related projects that Life After God is deeply invested in. First, and the one I’ve spoken the most about for the... Read more
The following is a guest post by Matthew Henry Faraday. Whenever a theologian talks about how beautiful it is that Christ came to earth and died, not to appease God’s wrath, but instead, as the image of God who suffers with us, even to the point of death on the cross, I imagine that, if it were real, it would be the worst episode of Undercover Boss ever. So, this is my parable… A fork lift driver, let’s call him “Joe”, has the worst job... Read more
This week on the Life After God podcast I speak with Humanist Chaplain Bart Campolo. I first encountered Bart in the late 1990s when he was speaking on campuses around the United States creating authentic community and spurring young people on to good works. That hasn’t changed for him, though he is no longer a supernaturalist, as he calls it. He gradually left his religious faith behind and has become a secular humanist. Today he works with students at USC... Read more
It was two years ago today that I woke up to the firestorm that Year Without God had become and just over one year since I told Arun Rath at NPR that I don’t believe in God anymore. It’s hard to imagine that two years have gone by. I’ve made so many new friends over these years—too many to name—and my life has been enriched by each interaction with people who are part of the atheist and humanist communities, however you want... Read more
Several of the ideas in this piece were hashed out in conversations with two friends: Cass Midgley and Matthew Faraday. I am indebted to their thoughtful insights in developing this piece. Any shortcomings are my responsibility alone. There is a piece being circulated widely in the past few days which appeared in the Opinion pages of the New York Times on Christmas Day. It is entitled, “The Christmas Revolution,” and makes the case that much of what can be considered... Read more
One of the perpetual challenges I get from Christians about my new non-belief in the supernatural is the impact this has on life’s present meaning, especially absent any universal, external, “objective” value anchored or the eternal nature of the Christian promise. I have thrilled in the past few days to read Philip Kitcher’s new book, Life After Faith: The Case for Secular Humanism (Yale 2015). It’s few pages and unassuming title belie a challenging and sometimes technical read. Still, it is... Read more
In January of 2014, after a long, 19-year career as a Seventh-day Adventist pastor, three theological degrees, and the slow liberalization of my belief system, I began a personal exploration of atheism that I called, Year Without God. I set out to understand the world without my “god glasses” on. In short, I wondered, how does a naturalistic worldview hold up to scrutiny? Very quickly I grew weary of the God question. In a March 10, 2014 post entitled, “Deconstructing... Read more
Earlier this week the Opinion editor at The Guardian emailed me to ask for my thoughts about Ben Carson and what relationships his Seventh-day Adventist faith might have to do with his run for the U.S. Presidency. My article was published online this morning. -:- With Ben Carson’s surge in the Republican race for the White House, the world is suddenly fascinated by Seventh-day Adventists. A small, American-born sect of Christianity that arose in New England in the early 1800s, my former church teaches... Read more
One of the most fruitful ongoing conversations I’ve had over the past two years has been with LeRon Shults. We recently met up in Newport Beach where he was attending the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. LeRon is Professor of Theology and Philosophy at the University of Agder, Norway, the author of Theology After the Birth of God: Atheist Conceptions in Cognition and Culture, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for the Bio-Cultural... Read more
Year Without God
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