Monday, December 17, 2018

What christians get right about deconversion

I've been following Christian theologian and apologist Randal Rauser's interview series with apologist John Marriott on his book about deconversion and how to prevent it. 

There is quite a lot I'd like to say on the topic, at least in critique of why John's (and purportedly Randal's) solutions are ultimately not good reasons for someone to remain a Christian; but that's not my aim today. 

Here I want to offer some agreement with their assessment of deconversions and one key area of why they happen that they touched on in their final post in the series.

The idea is that of plausibility structures and how Christians need to maintain a plausibility structure through the use of their churches.

Thursday, December 13, 2018

Grieving as an Atheist




This post is about grieving as an atheist and the complications caused by doing that while also having to interact with Christians and Christian beliefs.  My father was undergoing cancer treatments for about 3 months before dying a few weeks ago from a massive stroke.  The process of dealing with his diagnosis, treatment, complications, and eventual death has been an emotional journey, to say the least.  My father was a fundamentalist Christian, as is much of my extended family.  This made things harder for me in a variety of ways as I went through the grieving process, though on reflection I’ve been able to learn a lot from those experiences that I hope to share with others.