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Show 446: Deconverting from Christianity, the Sensible Thing?

De-converting from Christianity, the Sensible Thing?

Audio here!

It’s one thing to realize that science contradicts the Bible in a lot of ways, that the bible contains a lot of immoral passages (slavery, anyone?), that some passages in the bible are even contradicted by other passages in the Bible. It’s quite another thing to take the next logical step and realize God is nonexistant altogether.  After all, maybe the Bible is just a collection of metaphors, an inspired book of wisdom not meant to be literal truth.  Maybe “God” is a primal being who set the universe in motion and then did nothing else; a God like that couldn’t possibly conflict with science.  Maybe there’s a true god out there, and all the different religions are only glimpsing pieces of divine truth.  Right?

Wrong.  It turns out there’s absolutely no good reason to believe in a God of any kind, Biblical or otherwise, no matter how little it directly contradicts science or how little immorality is contained in that God’s scripture.  Few understand this better than this week’s guest Matt Dillahunty, who was a fundamentalist Christian for 25 years of his life and sincerely believed in and enjoyed his religion and God, before becoming an outspoken atheist.  He’s been hosting the cable access show “The Atheist Experience” in Austin, Texas for the past six years, and served as the president of the Atheist Community of Austin for much of that time.  He also appears in formal debates with Christian apologists and on his own YouTube channel, discussing atheism.  He co-founded the “Iron Chariots” wiki with Russel Glasser, a fellow host on “The Atheist Experience”.

Dillahunty will discuss his experience going from Christian to atheist, why it doesn’t make sense to believe in a God or gods, why theistic arguments are largely based on fallacies, and much more.

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Show 377: Jesus: Man or Myth

Jesus: Man or Myth w/ Robert Price

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Tonight is Christmas Eve. Christians around the planet will understand this evening as the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, a prophet and son-of-God. Biblical scholarship outside of Christian Apologetics have long held that the Jesus of the Gospels – the Jesus born of a virgin, master miracle worker, and the god who rose from the dead and founded a religion – never existed… That this Jesus was a mythology designed to offer metaphysical bases for a very human religion.

But did a man named Jesus ever exist, historically speaking? If not, who was it Christianity was based on? And if there never existed the Jesus of the Gospels NOR a historical Jesus, what are Christians to do?

Today we will speak with biblical scholar Robert Price on this – the core of an entire religion may much different than most Christians even suspect.

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Show 353: Easter Day Special w/ Hector Avalos and “Normal” Bob Smith

Easter Day Special w/ Hector Avalos and “Normal” Bob Smith

Audio here!

John 3:16 says “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

The gruesome, protracted, torture, and killing, of god’s son is expected to be taken by all as a sign of god’s love for humankind. This might seem as if it would be an unlikely premise on which to base a religion, yet despite its contradictions Christianity is the most popular religion on Earth.

Of course to up the ante a bit, just in case the child sacrifice wasn’t inspiring enough, John 3:18 warns:

“Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”

And if god can treat his innocent son as he did, we can just imagine what a condemned person should expect.

Continue reading “Show 353: Easter Day Special w/ Hector Avalos and “Normal” Bob Smith”

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Show 301: Sunsara Taylor chats with Robert Jensen!

Sunsara Taylor chats with Robert Jensen!

Audio here!

Robert Jensen is that rare form of “Christian Atheist” who, once having been a secularist pure, now finds himself embracing a radical leftist form of “Christianity” which he talks about in his new book, All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice.  Jensen is also an advocate of Feminism, and has written harshly on the Porn Industry in the United States.  He also may be known for his critical essay – No Thanks to Thanksgiving – where he suggests that a moral people would abandon this holiday built upon myth and the blood of hundreds and thousands of Native Americans.

Robert is a professor in the School of Journalism and director of the Senior Fellows Honors Program of the College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin.  He also is the author of Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity; The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege; Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity; and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream.