I opened my 2011 book You’re not as Crazy as I Think by chronicling some of the myriad ways that evangelical Christians invoke the rhetoric of truth as a way of reinforcing binary in-group out-group oppositions. In our age of marketing identities, I noted that evangelicals have attempted to brand themselves and their communities with “truth”. And […]
freethought
Atheism in Arizona: Debriefing the Book Tour
This morning at 2 am I arrived back in Edmonton having completed the second leg of our modest book tour for An Atheist and a Christian Walk into a Bar. Part 1 unfolded over a couple days (March 10-11) with three events in Edmonton and Sherwood Park, Alberta. Part 2 also unfolded over a couple days […]
Freethinking children? Not so much.
Today I came upon the following tweet courtesy of a retweet by Secular Outpost. (As a disclaimer, Secular Outpost does not consider a retweet an endorsement of the tweet. Nor, for that matter, do I.) Meet Zea, the 7-year-old who stood up to a homophobic hate preacher this week by holding up a rainbow sign. […]
Wheaton College, Larycia Hawkins, and Freethought
Larycia Hawkins has stated that she is “flummoxed and flabbergasted” at Wheaton College’s decision to place her on administrative leave and proceed with firing. I can’t say that I am flummoxed and flabbergasted given the current reactionary and polarized state of much of evangelicalism. But I certainly am disappointed. I see no basis in Hawkins’ original […]
What chance has she?
Richard Dawkins begins his famous 1991 essay “Viruses of the Mind” with the following words: “A beautiful child close to me, six and the apple of her father’s eye, believes that Thomas the Tank Engine really exists. She believes in Father Christmas, and when she grows up her ambition is to be a tooth fairy. […]
