Reading Time: 3 minutes Christians like circles. Especially arguing in them. I have just started reading the late biblical scholar Hector Avalos’ recent book Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Ethics of Biblical Scholarship. In the introduction, he points out a startlingly obvious and yet incredibly important observation. “My project actually began with a puzzling experience,” he writes. “If one reads […]
Circular reasoning
Posted inReligion
Let’s Play: Spot the Apologetics Fallacy!
Reading Time: 9 minutes Today, I’ve got a little treat for us: a self-proclaimed apologist who has never met a logical fallacy he didn’t love on sight. Let’s go through his recent apologetics post and see which ones we can spot!
Posted inReligion
Churches: No Country for Doubters (Gospelbound)
Reading Time: 8 minutes TGC’s people think that churches need to step up to be safe harbors for Christians struggling with their faith. That’s an impossible demand, but also a very safe one for them to make.
Posted inReligion
Sean McDowell’s Third Easter Question Also Fails Spectacularly Hard
Reading Time: 12 minutes In this video, Sean McDowell sought to answer three big important questions through the use of one Gospel myth: the Resurrection of Jesus. So far, he’s been batting zero! Today, we tackle Sean McDowell’s third big question, and we’ll see if he manages to salvage his reputation a bit this time around.
Posted inUncategorized
Know Jesus, Know Peace/No Jesus, No Peace: That Wasn’t True Either
Reading Time: 11 minutes Christians love to claim that their religion brings believers a state of peace–and not only peace, but a specific sort of peace: a peace that passes all understanding. Over time, this claim became a popular marketing slogan! Today, let me show you what the slogan means, how I tested it, and how it fared in those tests.
Posted inReligion
Antiprocess: How Christians Deal With Challenges to Their Beliefs
Reading Time: 11 minutes When people receive information that challenges a cherished belief, they have at their disposal a number of methods to help them negate that information. We call those methods antiprocess. The further from reality the belief is, the more antiprocess believers bring to bear to protect it–so you can imagine that authoritarian Christians bring their A game to that task! Today, I’ll show you how antiprocess works, how it looks in the wild, and what it means for Christianity’s future.
Posted inReligion
Stan Gudmundson and His PROOF YES PROOF
Reading Time: 11 minutes By far the biggest dishonesty Stan Gudmundson commits in his LTTE centers on what he claims constitute PROOF YES PROOF of his various claims. Today I want to examine those claims–and to show you why Christians like them.
Posted inReligion
The Handbook: The Zebra Rule, Occam’s Razor, and Robby Dawkins
Reading Time: 10 minutes Robby Dawkins is telling some porkie pies about helping to resurrect someone who died! Is it true? (Seriously? Of course it’s not.) Let’s look at what happened, and what it shows about Christianity that he’s gotten any traction at all with his fish story.
Posted inReligion
The Handbook: Circular Arguments.
Reading Time: 11 minutes I’ve compared the efforts of Christian apologists to watching a Roomba repeatedly hit a wall, and nowhere do we see that analogy in action better than with a circular argument. That was one of the early topics I tackled here here on this blog like a year and a half ago, but I want to discuss circular arguments because since then I’ve noticed even more that Christians like circular arguments–almost as much as this tuxedo cat likes riding its Roomba.
Posted inReligion
The Handbook: Knowing What a Claim Looks Like.
Reading Time: 8 minutes There is a book. The book details everything people need to know. Everything. But especially it tells us about The Place. It tells us where The Place is. Who gets to go there. Who the owner decides to invite. Where they will stay when they arrive. What they will do when they’ve gotten there.