Jim Spiegel recently invited me to check out the blog that he and his wife Amy run.
I’m glad I did. Finding really good, scholarly and yet actually interesting and enjoyable blogs on philosophy, faith and culture and so forth isn’t easy, and this one is definitely a keeper. Check it out.
Jim is a Professor of philosophy at Taylor University.
Samson
Thanks for the link, Glenn. First-time poster here; I’m going to post the same comment I just posted on Jim’s site:
Jim, I’m very pleased to have come across your blog, and I think I may consider ordering your book, as it seems to argue for exactly the point I have been making for several years now. As I’ve become steadier in my faith over the past few years, I’ve observed that people who call themselves “ex-Christians” will invariably portray their loss of faith as something like this: “Well, I used to believe in all that God stuff, but then I learned it was all bunk, so now of course I’m engaging in unbiblical behavior X. It feels good and I’ve realized there’s no reason not to!”
That’s how they’ll portray it, when in fact the opposite has occurred: the desire to engage in the activity comes first, then the actual behaviour begins, and then the person says, “Gee, you know, I don’t think I ever believed in all that God stuff anyway.” This has been exactly the case with, e.g., John Loftus and his adultery, if you know of him.
On websites I’ve debated on in the past, I’ve seen people say that as Christians, we should drop the accusations of “argument by emotion”, and just stick to the facts. I can see the appeal of this approach, but the problem with it is that very often, atheists genuinely do commit themselves to atheism because of their emotional desires. Therefore, it’s relevant to talk about this.
Count me in as a new blog reader, Jim.
Glenn
Samson, without going into the details of any one person’s sins, here’s an excerpt of a publicly accessible online discussion that I had with a reasonably well known atheist blogger:
Yes, it was Loftus.