Day One of the Twelve Days of Solstice Begin Now!

Christians celebrate Christmas in Mexico not just one day, but twelve days! The 12 days start on December 25th and end with a party on January 5th. Perhaps they adopted the number 12 from the the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas"? The message of that song is overtly Christian in every way. Is there a secular counterpart? Please say there is. There should be.

How about celebrating the 12 days of Solstice rather than the 12 days of Christmas? I'm done writing and editing books. So I'll be highlighting each of my twelve books leading up to the 25th of the month when we party. Your place or mine? I'll tell you something about each of them you probably don't know. [See Tag Below] 

When I first started teaching philosophy classes in 1985 for the College of Lake County, in Grayslake, Illinois, I lost about half my class because the students could not understand me. Yep, that's right. Being in a Ph.D. program at Marquette University, after earning three masters degrees, I didn't know how to bring the information down to college students. I thought my teaching career was over before it began. Luckily the chair of the philosophy department told me this happens more often than not for first time philosophy instructors. Over time I became an expert teacher, bringing highly complex ideas down to first year students. 

I eventually learned how to communicate to the average educated person in the pew! My goal is to keep it as simple as possible without being simplistic. The problem with this goal is that there are some elitist readers who think I'm ignorant, for if I was smarter and better educated it would reflect in my vocabulary. Smart, highly educated people, it's assumed, use the nomenclature requisite with their educational achievements. You can see this same "dumbing down", as elitists call it, reflected in my writings. While I could use technical philosophical language, and quote from the original Hebrew and Greek languages in the Bible, I found that so long as I was accurate I didn’t need to impress people by writing for the scholars

This is reflected in a few blurbs for my books.

Dr. Hector Avalos wrote this about my book, How to Defend the Christian Faith:

I don't know anyone who can match the High Definition clarity of John Loftus when it comes to navigating the labyrinthine world of Christian evangelical apologetics for the general public.

Dr. Stephen Law:

John Loftus is exceptionally well qualified to produce such a book (on Horrendous Suffering). Having followed his work for years - including his valuable Debunking Christianity blog - I know him to be not only a highly knowledgeable and careful thinker, but also someone who can bring philosophical issues and arguments to life.

One of the highest compliments I've received was written by biblical scholar Robert M. Price. Of my contributions in the co-edited book God or Godless? Price said that I write "with unpretentious clarity, common sense, and broad but inconspicuous erudition."

Unpretentious: I don't seek to impress my readers with Bayesian math, or technical philosophical, theological, or scientific terminology, nor do I use the original languages of the Biblical texts much at all.

Inconspicuous: Even though Price says I have a broad erudition, it's inconspicuous or unnoticeable. It wasn't inconspicuous to him. However, it can be unnoticeable to others who are uniformed and ignorant, Price intimates.

This tweet was "liked" by @RealAtheology contributors.

Unfortunately, since I aim to reach educated people in the pew, many of my readers can’t see the depth and breadth of my knowledge. That's because it takes a deeper understanding of the issues to realize I have a deeper understanding of the issues. So I have some haters because of this. They are elitists who only recommend the works by philosophers who specialize in writing highly technical language.  

 
My first book, Why I Became an Atheist, is considered my magnum opus, and went through a few self-published editions starting in 2004, and two editions from Prometheus Books, the premier atheist publisher of our generation. In it I used a simpler language style to reach down to educated readers in the pew rather than scholars. And it garnered some very high praise from Christians and atheists.

Edward Babinski heard I was a former student of William Lane Craig's when my self-published book went online. As the editor of the 1995 book "Leaving the Fold", Babinski was interested in deconversion stories, and still is. He told me it was significant I was a former student of Craig's. I hadn't kept track of Craig's doings and didn't know what a big deal he had become. It certainly didn't occur to me at that time.

Babinski told me I should engage the people at the TheologyWeb forum, where apologist JP Holding hangs his hat. It was an acid bath of hatred based on intellectual dishonesty. I was still upset about it in 2013 when I acknowledged their influence on me in the book, God or Godless, saying

When I first went online to discuss my doubts in 2005, I found a particular evangelical forum that treated me with disdain and vitriol simply because I disagreed. I knew most Christians were not like this, but this group poured gasoline on the fires of my passion like nothing else. They provoked me to go for the jugular vein of a faith that could be used to justify their treatment of people like me. If it hadn’t been for them, I probably would have moved on with my life. So I want to acknowledge them for helping to motivate me.

    I wonder what would have become of me if they hadn't so thoroughly pissed me off.

    Finally I sent my self-published book to Paul Kurtz, the editor-in-chief of Prometheus Books. He loved it and wanted his senior editor Steven Mitchell to publish it as soon as possible, putting it ahead of other books in the Que. Mitchell said he can't just stop working on other books to do that. There was a window of opportunity that vanished as my book slowly worked its way into publication in October of 2008. For there was a frenzy over New Atheist literature at the time I submitted it, beginning with Sam Harris' book in August of 2004, Daniel Dennett's book in February 2006, Dawkins' book in October 2006 book, and Hitchens' book in May 2007 book. Had it been publish as Kurtz wanted, I might be a New York Times bestselling author, who knows?

 

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