In the interest of opening all for others to read, I have decided to make all my writings from the last several years public. Below you will find them categorized. Some of them are incomplete (often because I would lose my train of thought or discover a flaw in what I was writing and be unable to finish).
Hope someone enjoys them!
2008
December
Three Bible Contradictions – 12/05/08
November
Chance, Risk, and Free Will – 11/18/08
A Rational Defense of Atheism by Analogy – 11/09/08
Holiness of God and Inerrancy of Scripture – 11/02/08
October
Why I no Longer Believe the Resurrection – 10/29/08
I never finished this series. I was going to post it on Facebook but was receiving so much hate mail at this point for leaving the faith that I did not want to stir things up any more. This was a really rough time.
Conversion Calculus (incomplete) – 10/07/08
This is a really funny essay where I tried to create a mathematical formula to describe every denomination in Christianity. Too funny. Crazy thing is that it works and predicts every single denomination and exactly where people will get into fights over doctrine.
Why I no longer believe in Biblical Inerrancy – Conclusion – 10/02/08
September
Why I no longer believe in Biblical Inerrancy – Part 2 – 9/30/08
A professor at Moody Bible Institute offered a critique of this which can be found here. I never told him, but I found so many flaws in what he wrote that I was tempted to write a massive paper showing them all but decided it would not do any good.
Why I no longer believe in Biblical Inerrancy – Part 1 – 9/30/08
This received a ton of flack on Facebook. Not a soul actually dealt with what I said, but everyone agreed I was wrong.
“Mortality is not a result of the fall, mortality is a result of our existence in this universe. In a perfect world we would not need white blood cells, we would not need lymph nodes, we would not need antibodies, we would not need a liver because the existence of these faculties implies that agents harmful to the human body do exist. We have faculties for mortality because we were always mortal.” – Wow, I was really starting to crack at this point.
Somewhere around this time I became an atheist.
August
Why I am Still a Christian – 08/??/2008
I wrote this right before I became an atheist. You can see my thoughts starting to fall apart as I realize I do not have any good reasons left to be a Christian, so I just am and I do not know why. One part of my brain was still trying to catch up, I think.
Why I now believe in evolution – Clarification – 8/21/08
Why I now believe in evolution – Part 2 – 8/17/08
Why I now believe in evolution – Part 1 – 8/14/08
The tower is beginning to crumble… I got a lot of flack for this and few of those giving the flack even addressed my arguments.
July
Critique ?? (incomplete) – 7/21/08
Not sure where I was going with this one but I talk about creatures evolving out of black matter, which sounds cool, so I’ll include a link.
Another really fun little essay. In this one I explore the idea of God itself and how in the world people all across the world could invent the idea of gods and goddesses and what that meant in relation to Christianity.
March
Truth, Poetry, and the Beat of the Drummer – 3/14/08
This is a really fun little essay I wrote attempting to find why it was that reason cannot lead a man to Christ.
My Struggle with Hebrews 6 – 3/13/08
I wrote this for a man I met at Moody who said his wife had basically left the faith and one reason was her deep struggle over this passage. When I admitted that I struggled deeply with it – but was still a Christian – he asked me to write something about it, so I did.
Thoughts in Inspiration (incomplete) – 3/11/08
Some of my earlier thoughts on inspiration – when I was beginning to have doubts.
Prophecy: Ambiguous or Vague? – 3/05/08
This one is interesting. This was during a time when I was starting to see that the prophecies in Scripture did not seem to make any sense unless one imposes a particular meaning upon them. You can see my mind spinning gears as I wrote this. This was while I was at Moody. At this time I was probably spending 3-4 hours a day writing, reading, and studying every piece of information I could get my hand on.
February
Thoughts on Logic (an argument for morality’s origin) – 2/14/08
Some more practice at using logic from philosophy class at Moody. I was trying to determine where morality comes from and had concluded that whether it is true or not, appealing to a common Maker is the best way to go. Unfortunately I blew my entire argument out of the water and did not notice it.
A series of fallacious arguments against the existence of the Christian God. At this time I was taking Philosophy and was starting to try my hand at applying the arguments to my faith.
Does God Exist? An Argument from Probabilities – 2/01/08
An essay attempting to prove God’s existence.
January
Atheism – The Moral Dilemma – 1/22/08
A very short essay exposing what I believed to be a core hypocrisy in atheism. Sadly, I did not realize that just saying someone is a hypocrite does not mean they are wrong – a classic Christian argument which has been used against me on many occasions.
Moody Bible Application – 1/14/08
Hehe. Here it is folks, the application that got me into Moody Bible Institute the second time around!
Understanding Begins with Faith – 1/11/08
“My argument in this essay is that unless we understand that faith precedes understanding, we can hide ourselves from a great body of truth.”
For quite some time I was really mesmerized by the two questions “why” and “how”. For some reason the very existence of two words, the one implying “purpose”, seemed to me strong evidence that there is purpose in the universe. After all, why would humans “evolve” the word “why” if there was not genuine purpose out there?
I believe I wrote this is a satirical piece trying to demonstrate that saying Christianity is stupid is about as dumb as saying science is stupid. “John Glenn” was a joking name I used to describe some highschooler who hated science.
Some essay I wrote trying to critique atheist thinking.
2007
December
Men of Power and of Faith – 12/06/07
Not sure why I wrote this, but I do notice that last edit date was the same as the previous paper and I highly doubt I wrote them on the same day. I probably was reading them both and made small corrections in Google Docs on the same day, even though I wrote them on different days. Regardless, notice the amount of fear that was beginning to creep into my thinking regarding atheism. Deep down I think I was subconsciously beginning to realize they were right.
Why Irreducible Complexity is Destined to Fail – 12/06/07
Odd that even in 2007 I was starting to see problems by myself internal to the concept of irreducible complexity – while I was still a Christian.
November
This is a Bible lesson I believe I wrote for Sunday School when I was in Colorado.
August
That Which is Self-Evident – 8/30/07
Infinite Universe Theory (incomplete) – 8/18/07
July
Arguments from Reason (incomplete book) – 7/30/07
I was writing this book to defend the Christian faith. As I neared what I thought was completion I realized the entire thing was falling apart at the seams. My thought process was about ten steps further than what I had written, but I was already starting to think some very heretical thoughts and was pretty scared. That is when I began reading Sam Harris’ book The End of Faith and realized that Sam Harris was basically saying what I was thinking. So I decided I needed to get away from this stuff and went to Moody.
