This article consists of three excerpts from one chapter in my book Progressive Christians Love Jesus Too. To read more, pick up a copy of the book! Time and again, I find a common error among many conservative Christians: they confuse a healthy awareness of our own fallibility in knowledge with relativism about truth. For […]
truth
“Speaking Their Truth”? How conservative Christians make false claims to defend truth
In Progressive Christians Love Jesus Too, I rebut Alisa Childers’ erroneous attempt to claim that progressive Christians widely embrace a radical voluntarist relativism about truth according to which people can make claims true simply by willing that they be true. The example Childers cites is a person who wants bacon to be healthy by declaring “Bacon […]
Looking to Disagree: The Problem of Pugilistic Evangelicals
The other day, I posted the following tweet criticizing a t-shirt being marketed by evangelical apologist Frank Turek: “Frank Turek is selling a shirt that replaces the “Coexist” logo with one that says “Contradict” as if belief in the truth of Xianity entails that all the claims of other religions are false. That is wrong. […]
Will Truth Win Out? My Interview with “When Belief Dies”
Here is my recent podcast interview on the “When Belief Dies” podcast. This was a lot of fun: amiable, spirited, and probing the deep questions. You can also listen via Spotify, Apple or other platforms. ?
If You Defend Ravi Zacharias and Hucksters Like Him, You are Part of the Problem
This morning, I received a comment on my February 2019 article “Christians cannot sit on the fence concerning Ravi Zacharias.” It reminded me that even with the most recent shocking revelations about Ravi sexually abusing young women at his massage parlours (see here and here), there will always be people willing to defend the man […]
Are evangelicals people of truth? Maybe not.
Ravi Zacharias: Apologist or Fabulist? An interview with Steve Baughman
Ravi Zacharias has long been recognized as one of the most respected of Christian apologists. For forty years he has been a fixture in the firmament of the apologetic pantheon, lecturing worldwide and publishing popular books like The End of Reason and Jesus Among Other Gods. He founded RZIM International, a hugely important apologetics organization, […]
Genuine Inquiry vs. Partisan Advocacy: A Couple Comments
Jeff Lowder just wrote a helpful article in which he contrasts “genuine inquiry” vs. “partisan advocacy”. Jeff describes genuine inquiry as “reading opposing viewpoints, not with the goal of preparing pithy one-liners for debates, but with the goal of actually trying to learn something or consider new ways of looking at old topics.” He adds […]
False Witness, Lies, Delusions, and Bullshit … and Why the Difference Matters
A couple days ago the New York Times published an opinion piece grandly titled “Trump’s Lies.” The article purports to chronicle “nearly every outright lie he has told publicly since taking the oath of office.” The reader is then treated to a chronicle of dizzying length and breadth chronicling all the public instances where the POTUS […]
The Blustery Word Salad White Noise of Donald Trump’s Campaign Manager
I was sitting at my computer this afternoon with CNN playing in the background when Erin Burnett asked Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, why Trump retweeted a tweet questioning Marco Rubio’s legal status to become president of the United States. Burnett: “Corey why would he retweet a tweet questioning Marco Rubio’s citizenship if he […]
Ted Cruz and Climate Change Denial
The documentary Merchants of Doubt provides an excellent primer explaining how spin doctors propagate misinformation. What is especially interesting is the close parallel between the methods of big tobacco and of big oil. For years, the former denied a link between tobacco and cancer. The latter has similarly denied a link between the burning of fossil […]
Politicians, fascists, and used car salesmen
In the last two days Donald Trump has “crossed a new line” by endorsing the suggestion of a reporter that the government should begin to compile lists of Muslims living in the United States. Here is a transcript of one of the relevant exchanges courtesy of MSNBC: NBC: Should there be a database system that […]
Gift Shop Wisdom
Today one of my students stumbled upon this quote attributed to Walt Whitman: This is a great example of “gift shop wisdom”, i.e. the kind of sloganeering which may not mean much, but despite, or rather, because of that fact, it looks great on calendars and coffee mugs. In cases like this, you inevitably wonder, did […]
Do some Christian apologists spin their academic credentials?
It’s a familiar charge: Christian apologists are accused of being dishonest, of spinning the facts to suit their purposes. While I find no evidence that apologists for Christianity are on the whole any more likely to spin the facts than apologists for atheism, or naturalism, or the Republican Party, or any other topic, that hardly […]
