Reading Time: 7 minutes In a recent appearance on Drew McCoy’s Genetically Modified Skeptic, Filip Holm of Let’s Talk Religion posed an interesting question: Is McCoy doomed to Hell in every religion? To answer this, he talks to experts on each of five religions (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism). It’s a great video, both educational and entertaining. And […]
Religion
Posted inEthics and Morality
What is a ‘real man,’ according to the Bible?
Reading Time: 3 minutes A conservative Christian site has a list of biblical rules for a modern man of God. But why stop there? Let’s look to the Bible to make a more thorough list.
Posted inReligion
Why is God male?
Reading Time: 4 minutes Conservative theologians sputter with rage at the notion of using female or non-gendered pronouns to refer to God, but they have no rational explanation for why this offends them so deeply.
Posted inReligion
Answering Dan Barker’s Easter Challenge
Reading Time: 7 minutes With Easter not far away, I thought it would be instructional to examine the Easter story in some detail, and how the four Gospels seem to contradict one another on crucial details, and whether the different accounts can be harmonized. This situation inspired Dan Barker, a former evangelical Christian preacher, to issue a challenge to […]
Posted inScience
Scientist argues that both science and faith play a role
Reading Time: 4 minutes A scientist argues that science and Christianity are more compatible than we realize and argues for four shared values: curiosity, a comprehensible Nature, humility, and service.
Posted inReligion
The God of the seismologists
Reading Time: 3 minutes Natural tragedies naturally elicit religious questions. If there is a God, what kind of God permits death by earthquake, as we have seen recently in such catastrophic proportions in Turkey and Syria, with 50,000 dead? This question on suffering and the good God is ancient, but the question on earthquakes and the good God arose […]
Posted inReligion
Interfaith work needs to include the nonreligious
Reading Time: 4 minutes New York mayor Eric Adams recently objected to the idea of the separation of church and state at an interfaith breakfast event at the New York Public Library. Library President and CEO Anthony Marx offered a welcome that celebrated libraries as places of inclusion, diversity, and freedom of thought. In his speech, the mayor acknowledged […]
Posted inReligion
Why evangelicals got so excited about the Asbury Revival
Reading Time: 9 minutes Evangelicals recently celebrated the emergence of what they have come to call the Asbury Revival. Outsiders to their culture might not understand the sheer significance of this event, nor understand why they go to such lengths to participate in it and events like it. It helps to know that revival as a concept is integral […]
Posted inReligion
Damning Bible contradictions: 2 Ten Commandments, 2 creation stories, 2 Flood stories, and more
Reading Time: 4 minutes How many of your favorite Bible contradictions are in this list? This time, it’s two versions of Ten Commandments, creation, and Flood stories + resurrection and Jesus changing the plan.
Posted inDeep Dive
Top five questions for presuppositionalists
Reading Time: 2 minutes Christians defend their belief in a number of ways. One of these is called “presuppositional apologetics”. Any attempt to discuss religion with these people in any conventional sense of the term is almost impossible. The upshot of their opinion is that only the existence of a god enables the logic and reason we all use. […]