What You Can Find Here at DC

I get new readers everyday so let me welcome them and briefly tell them what to expect here at DC. I am not a news source. There are lots of religion related news stories but I mostly comment on the high profile or interesting ones. Nor do I post many stories about the crimes or infidelities of pastors. They happen everyday and even though some of their abuses make our heads spin I mostly comment on high profile or interesting cases. Nor do I share many testimonies of deconversion, although I do so from time to time. And I don't post a great deal of obtuse philosophical arguments, or a great many things about science or cosmology. They are all useful, no doubt, and I do so from time to time.

Someone once emailed me a new philosophical cosmological argument for God's existence who thought it might convince me. I merely replied something like this:

Is this why you believe? Surely not, because you believed before ever hearing of this argument. So tell me why you first believed. That is much more interesting to me. I want to know what brought you to believe in the first place. Which religious or non-religious options did you consider before choosing Christianity? What program of study did you follow in doing so? What works of a skeptical nature did you consider before making your choice?

And I went on telling him that I'm not that interested in debating these kinds of issues concocted after a person already believes, although I can and I do. Because that's the natural bent of human beings, to confirm what we have been brought up to believe in a Christian culture by our parents. This is what cogntive bias theory is all about. We believe what we prefer to be true (several posts there). And I told him about the Outsider Test for Faith, which is pretty much my focus. The conversation basically ended. He was interested in having a debate that didn't get at the heart of why he believed.

My target audience is evangelical or conservative or fundamentalist Christianity. My aim is to knock these evangelicals off dead center and force them to think for themselves rather than proof-texting for the answers from an ancient set of superstitious canonized writings. Come on now people, what do these ancient pre-scientific people know such that we need to learn from them? I understand the arguments of the liberals. I used to be one. It's just that evangelicalism is the dominant form of Christianity in America where I live. It causes the most harm to others, both politically and scientifically.

While I have many Ph.D. and Master's degreed readers, I aim to bring the arguments of the scholars down to the intelligent person in the pew and the college student. I want to make these arguments accessible to them as best as I can. To do what I'm doing I must drive a wedge between the Bible and the brain of the evangelical. I must help them think so they can see that the Bible is nothing more than the musings of an ancient barbaric pre-scientific superstitious people.

There is plenty of discussion that takes place afterward. Sometimes I don't enter that discussion. I have some really intelligent people who do that for me just fine (thank you!). Stay on and engage us. We aim at having respectable debates, more or less. Christian, see if your faith can withstand our assault. You will grow as you do. What harm can there be in seeing if your faith can be defended? Try it and see. Test your faith here.

Keep in mind I will respond to the posts I choose to respond to if I have the time. But please don’t assume that because I didn't respond to a post it means anything at all. When it comes to posts I disagree with, don't assume that if I haven’t responded I won’t, or if I don’t respond that I can’t, or if I can’t respond that my opponents are right. There are always people who agree with me who can answer the objections I haven't studied up on sufficiently. No one can claim to be an expert on all of the relevant issues between believers and non-believers.