Reading Time: 7 minutes Did you know that many Evangelicals think Catholics are going to Hell? Some won’t publically admit it but they believe that because Catholics don’t believe the right things about how a person is “saved,” they don’t make it into Heaven. From the Protestant point of view, Catholic theology teaches that there are certain things you […]
Neil Carter
Neil Carter is a high school teacher, a father of four, and a skeptic living in the Bible Belt. A former church elder with a seminary education, Neil now writes mostly about the struggles of former evangelicals living in the midst of a highly religious subculture. Follow him @godlessindixie
Posted inCulture, General
You Forgot to Take Up Your Cross
Reading Time: 7 minutes I want you to know how valiantly I fought writing anything about this today. I’m not big on writing about current events or “trending” subjects because that’s not what this blog is really about. I was already tired of this particular subject before it even blew up on Facebook and Twitter. Reading my news feed, […]
Posted inGeneral
Why I Keep Talking to People Who Won’t Listen
Reading Time: 7 minutes Like most skeptics, I go back and forth between a willingness to engage religious people in conversation about matters over which we disagree and complete exasperation with their inability (or else refusal) to see things from any perspective but their own. Some days I have seemingly endless patience for it; other days I’m ready to […]
Posted inGeneral, Secularism
The High Cost of Leaving Your Faith
Reading Time: 6 minutes I don’t typically share highly personal stuff on this blog because my life is intertwined with many others, and they would not want their personal matters to be put on public display. But earlier this week a reader asked me a question which I think deserves a post of its own because it’s about a […]
Posted inGeneral, Science, Secularism
What Will Save Us from Our Own Subjectivity?
Reading Time: 8 minutes One thing that modern science and the Christian religion share is an appreciation for the fallibility of human beings. Both skepticism (which lies at the heart of the scientific method) and faith (particularly the Christian faith) recognize that as much as we want to be rational beings, we don’t always do the logical thing. We […]
Posted inGeneral, Secularism
Letters to My Daughters #3: “Fighting Fear and Shame”
Reading Time: 5 minutes I can imagine that one of the first things you girls may feel upon learning I am no longer a Christian will be some mixture of worry, fear, and anxiety for my soul. I imagine it could disturb some of you a great deal because over the years you have heard people say some pretty […]
Posted inGeneral, Secularism
The Challenge of an Atheist Outlier
Reading Time: 7 minutes I’ve always had a knack for feeling out of place wherever I am. I don’t know why this keeps happening to me, but I can’t seem to escape it. It has always been true of my professional life and it usually holds true in my personal life as well. I’ve taught on many a faculty […]
Posted inGeneral, Psychology
Evangelical Christianity and Low Self-Esteem
Reading Time: 8 minutes Like most swimmers, I try to get in some laps almost every day, but there is only one health club with a pool within decent driving distance from where I live. It doesn’t call itself a Christian gym, but it plays primarily Christian music overhead, holds prayer meetings and Bible studies, and incidentally it also […]
Posted inGeneral
You Were Never Really One of Us
Reading Time: 4 minutes The mind is an amazing thing. With it, we are capable of solving such complex puzzles and real-world problems! At the same time, we are capable of shutting out large chunks of data, selecting only those streams of information which fall in line with what we expected to find in the first place. We call […]
Posted inGeneral, Science, Secularism
Let the Stars Be My Guide
Reading Time: 5 minutes Nothing clears my head like a starry night. When I was a young boy, I used to entertain myself by standing on my balcony, gazing at the moon, the stars, and the planets through my telescope. Looking up at that sea of twinkling lights, it fascinated me that, upon closer inspection, some of those lights […]