"Reading Books is Bad for Evangelical Christians"

Hey, I liked this post very much. I'm mentioned in it!

2 comments:

Lazarus said...

Bookz are from du Devvul. Beware and repent!!!

Well done, John. Good company to keep, that.

And remember children - keep on reading.

jwhendy said...

Great post. I agree. I still participate in my circle of believers during this time of 'questioning' and have been criticized numerous times for going about this in the 'non-recommended' way. The 'recommended' way would have been to 'have faith seeking understanding.'

To the friend who suggested this, I asked on numerous occasions how this would be different than my reformulation: 'believe that you may believe more' and never received a response.

When I encountered my initial doubts I decided to push through and find out once and for all what was the most certain truth I could stand on. I believed that 1) god would not be upset at me for seeking truth, and that 2) if god is the author of all truth, I would have no option but to return to him.

I thought that was fairly trusting in god, myself. Yet I have been criticized countless times for no reason I can see other than that I decided the most sure way to find the truth would be to suspect Christianity was false and try to reprove it to myself.

There is little hope from my perspective in re-entering the bubble. This is probably what many fear.

Lastly, two posts that deal further with this are:
1) John's recent LINK to Dr. Eller's reading of 'You Atheists Just Aren't Natural.' Fantastic article and he mentions specifically how Christians thrive because, by nature, they form communities which only encourage 'in-group' ideas, beliefs, and activities.

2) Dan Dennet's talk from the 2009 Atheist Alliance International where he discusses how even presenting the truth about biblical issues in seminaries and other counter-apologetic material for discussion led to difficulty in preachers because 1) it led to doubts and 2) it leads them specifically to have to preach 'the truth' while keeping entire congregations from really knowing the issues they are aware of. It's a great presentation and is found HERE.