Richard L. Fricks

Writing Journal—Tuesday writing prompt

Your gamer protagonist discovers that the person he’s been talking to in a chat room is a murderer. Worse, the person seems to know his real name. Write the exchange and your protagonist’s reactions and thoughts.

One Stop for Writers

Guidance & Tips

Write the scene of discovery (i.e., tell a story), or brainstorm and create a list of related ideas.

Here’s five story elements to consider:

Character
Setting
Plot
Conflict
Resolution

Never forget, writing is a process. The first draft is always a mess.

The first draft of anything is shit.
Ernest Hemingway

Faith vs. Fact, by Jerry Coyne. Reading Session #4 (continuing Chapter 1, The Problem)

This is a great book. Eye-opening, especially to those who’ve never considered the incompatibility of science and religion.

I encourage you to watch my computer screen, listen, and think as I read aloud the words written by the brilliant evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne.

Click the link below to begin Reading Session #4. It begins at Kindle Page 21, Location 385.

Reading Session #3, 2, and 1 can be found here, here, and here.

https://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/c0nY37Vy38g

02/20/23 Biking & Listening

Biking is something else I both love and hate. It takes a lot of effort but does provide good exercise and most days over an hour to listen to a good book or podcast. I especially like having ridden.

Here’s my bike, a Rockhopper by Specialized. I purchased it November 2021 from Venture Out in Guntersville; Mike is top notch! So is the bike, and the ‘old’ man seat I salvaged from an old Walmart bike.

Here’s a link to today’s bike ride. This is my pistol ride.

Here’s a few photos taken along my route:

Here’s what I’m currently listening to: The Third Deadly Sin, by Lawrence Sanders

Sanders was a tremendously talented writer.

Amazon abstract:

New York Times Bestseller: A retired cop hunts for a female serial killer no one would suspect in this “first-rate thriller . . . as good as you can get” (The New York Times).

By day, she’s a middle-aged secretary no one would look at twice. But by night, dressed in a midnight-black wig, a skin-tight dress, and spike heels, she’s hard to miss. Inside her leather shoulder bag are keys, cash, mace, and a Swiss Army knife. She prowls smoky hotel bars for prey. The first victim—a convention guest at an upscale Manhattan hotel—is found with multiple stab wounds to the neck and genitals. By the time retired police detective chief Edward Delaney hears about the case from an old colleague, the Hotel Ripper has already struck twice. Unable to resist the puzzle, Delaney follows the clues and soon realizes he’s looking for a woman. As the grisly slayings continue, seizing the city in a chokehold of panic, Delaney must stop the madwoman before she kills again.

A Sample Five Star Review

M. G Watson

VINE VOICE

5.0 out of 5 stars Third Time’s the Charm

Reviewed in the United States on May 15, 2015

Verified Purchase

It is arguable that Lawrence Sanders never rose to greater heights as a prose stylist, suspense-writer or storyteller than he did with THE THIRD DEADLY SIN, the penultimate novel in his “deadly sin” series of books and the fourth of five to feature crusty, sandwich-obsessed Edward X. Delaney as a protagonist. Though once referred to as “Mr. Bestseller” and nearly as prolific in his day as Stephen King, Sanders seems to be forgotten now, except for his “McNally” series which was hardly representative of his best work; but at his best he was both compulsively readable and immensely satisfying, and this novel is both.

Zoe Kohler is the world’s most boring woman. Hailing from a small town somewhere in the Midwest, divorced from a husband who treated her like she was invisible, virtually friendless, and stuck in a mindless, dead-end job in the security office of an old hotel in Manhattan, she worries incessantly about her health and indulges in only one hobby: murder. Sexing herself up every Friday night, Zoe picks up unsuspecting businessmen attending conventions in different hotels around town, and delivers to each the same grisly fate: a Swiss Army knife, first to the throat and then to the jewels. But because nobody ever notices the world’s most boring woman, nobody suspects her, leaving Zoe free to indulge her hobby — over and over and over again.

Edward X. Delaney used to be a cop — and not just any cop, but the NYPD’s Chief of Detectives. Now, of course, he’s just a bored retiree, living in a Manhattan brownstone with this second wife. So when his former “rabbi” in the Department, Deputy Commissioner Ivar Thorsen, asks him to help investigate a series of baffling murders being committed in hotels around the city, Delaney agrees, but has little idea what he’s getting into: a search for a faceless, motiveless “repeater” (1970s slang for serial killer) whose vicious talents with a short-bladed knife are wreaking havoc with New York’s once-thriving convention trade. Acting as an unofficial adviser to the “Hotel Ripper” task force, Delaney begins to suspect that male prejudices, including his own, may be blinding his fellow detectives to the possibility of that the Ripper may not be a man. But he has no suspects, no witnesses, no fingerprints, and no hard evidence. Only instincts. And a growing pile of victims.

THE THIRD DEADLY SIN is a very attractive suspense novel for many reasons. Aside from Sanders prose style, which is beautiful, memorable and incredibly evocative, it works on multiple levels. Firstly, the character of Zoe Kohler. She is at once both a pitiable loser, struggling with health problems and sexist attitudes at work a burgeoning relationship with a sweet and unsuspecting man…and a remorseless, relentless killer, who hunts men for the sheer thrill of it. Second, Edward X. Delaney. This crusty, hard-nosed, sandwich-obsessed detective is neither sexy, flashy, nor gifted with any great deductive genius: he’s simply like a boulder that, starting slowly, gathers investigative momentum until he crushes just about everyone in his path, yet at the same time possesses a sensitivity — largely through his wife’s softening influence — that allows him more nuances than a typical, cigar-chewing, old school detective. And this leads me to the books third major strength, which is its examination of sexual attitudes, gender roles and (unintentionally) police procedure during the period it was written — about 35 years ago. At that time the pathology of serial killers was scarcely understood, forensic science still in its infancy, and the idea of gender equality more of a punchline than a serious idea. Delaney, an aging Irish cop with flat feet, is both brimming with cheauvanistic, patronizing, old-school attitudes and open to the possibility that those attitudes may be wrong.

No novel is perfect, of course, and this one is no exception. Sanders sometimes makes small but basic errors in matters of police procedure, slang and etiquette; the sort of mistakes which are the result of never having been a cop himself. Occasionally he tries too hard to make characters colorful, giving them a contrived rather than a naturalistic feel; and sometimes his dialogue and description betray his overwhelming love of the English language and end up sounding pretentious or, coming out of the mouths of certain characters, simply unrealistic. (This also leads him to over-write scenes with minor characters, such as Zoe’s doctor.) Most of the criticisms I can mount a this book, however, fall in the “nitpicking” category, and even when taken in the aggregate fail to outweigh all of its many pleasures.

THE THIRD DEADLY SIN may or may not have been Sanders’ best book (you could make a case for THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT or THE SECOND DEADLY SIN or THE ANDERSON TAPES or various others). It may not even be his best suspense novel. But for my money it is not merely a good read but equally satisfying upon each subsequent reading, which is about the highest praise I can give to an author’s work. So: buy it, make yourself a sandwich, and sit down to this half-forgotten but deservedly remembered author. Murder and mayhem have never been so fun.

$100M Jesus Ads Point to Exploitable Weakness in Religious Right

Here’s the link to this article.

Article written by Valerie Tarico.

Posted on 02/20/20.

Christianity has a brand problem. If it were a corporation, brand managers would be scrambling to scrub public image—maybe by greenwashing or with corporate diversity trainings or by renaming their product, say natural gas instead of methane, or by coming up with a new catchy slogan. Or they might actually do something substantive, like ceasing to “gift” baby formula to poor moms or to use child labor in their factories. There are many ways to polish brand.

Christianity’s recently launched He Gets US campaign—millions of people got a dose during the Superbowl—tells us two things: 1. Conservative Evangelical Christians care about their brand problem. 2. Some major Christian donors have decided, to the tune of $100 million apparently, to go with the greenwashing strategy rather than substantive change. And that combination provides a possible avenue for fighting back against some of the ugly objectives and tactics of the Religious Right.

The people paying for this ad campaign are the same ones promoting homophobia, advocating against reproductive healthcare for women, and funding politicians to protect the good old pecking orders: rich over poor, men over women, pasty white people over everyone with more melanin.

Losing customers
Back when the world and I were young, Evangelical Christians were a politically diverse group. But Republican strategists recognized them as a potential political voting block. Hierarchical social structures within churches meant the strategists had to recruit only Church leaders, and those leaders would bring along their congregations. It worked for the Republican party, but at an enormous cost to Christianity as an institution. That is because right wing operatives were spending down Christianity’s good name by merging its brand with their own. The more Christianity came to be associated with ugly political priorities—and then crass power grab-‘em-by-the-pussies—the more young people fled the Church. By the millions. (Tangentially, Islam faces a similar brand problem and deconversion pattern wherever the Mullahs wield political force. Almost half of Iranians say they used to be religious.)

Losing money
Losing customers by the millions would be a problem for any corporate body—especially one with a product that people realize they don’t need when they actually take a good look. When there are better options, in this case secularism, people rarely go back to the same-old-same-old. The financial impact of deconversion is potentially huge. The Mormon Church may coerce tithes with visits from elders who review a family’s finances, but most protestant and Catholic sects rely on more subtle social and emotional pressures. Either way, market share requires mindshare. You have to get people in the door before you can pass the basket.

Losing prospects
But this isn’t merely a financial calculus. At some point, brand damage becomes a threat to identity. Evangelicals are evangelical. It’s part of the ideology. Go into all the world and make disciples of every creature. Unlike Judaism or Hinduism, Christianity is a proselytizing religion. Proselytizing (ok, coupled with colonization and holy wars) has been the strategy that allowed Christianity to spread across the planet. Missionaries may not explicitly recognize that they are recruiting paying customers who will trade cash for club benefits and afterlife services, but they do recognize that “harvesting souls” is a central commandment of their faith. For many, this mandate—called the Great Commission—is their version of praying five times facing Mecca. For some, it becomes an underlying feature in virtually every relationship: All non-Christians are potential converts; friendliness becomes friendship missions; feeding the poor becomes first-and-foremost a path to winning their souls. Evangelicals are a sales force, and as their brand becomes more and more soiled, it gets harder to do their job.

In need of a savior
Having spent down Christianity’s brand, the patriarchs of the religious right are uncomfortable with how far that has gone—the image, that is, not the substance. Most Americans used to think of the Bible as The Good Book, but not anymore. Most Americans used to think of Christianity (and religion more broadly) as benign, but not anymore. Jesus, though—the image of Jesus is relatively untainted. Even those who don’t buy into the idea of him being the perfect human sacrifice who saves our souls (Are you washed in the blood?) tend to believe that he was a good, wise, loving man. They think we know a lot more about him than we do, and what they think we know is positive. So, it totally makes sense that a $100 million rebranding and recruiting effort would center on the person of Jesus. Much of Christian theology is nasty, and the Iron Age texts in the Bible contradict what we now know about science, anthropology and—well, pretty much every other field of modern scholarship. This iconic personal Jesus is all they have left.

The fact that conservative Christians are spending $100 million on marketing Jesus means they are bad off and know it. It means they recognize the deterioration in their brand, and they feel desperate to turn it around. They have made the mistake of letting that desperation slip out, and those of us who would rather not return to the good old dark ages when the Church ruled the world can exploit that vulnerability. Their product sucks, and we need to keep saying so in every way possible. We need to make sure the general public keeps associating Christianity with what Christians are doing, not what they are saying: Those anti-abortion centers that dupe women into keeping pregnancies aren’t Crisis Pregnancy Centers, they are Church Pregnancy Centers. Fetal personhood isn’t a philosophical debate, it’s theology. Denying rights to queer folks and women isn’t conservative, it’s theocracy.

When people do ugly things that are motivated by religious dogma, we should name what’s going on. Conservative Christians are telling us that they can’t afford more brand damage. And maybe if their bad works keep getting exposed they will realize that the answer isn’t Jesus-washing; it’s substantive change.

_________________________________

Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington. She is the author of Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light and Deas and Other Imaginings. Her articles about religion, reproductive health, and the role of women in society have been featured at sites including The Huffington Post, Salon, The Independent, Quillette, Free Inquiry, The Humanist, AlterNet, Raw Story, Grist, Jezebel, and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. Subscribe at ValerieTarico.com.

Meditation in Sunlight: May Sarton’s Stunning Poem About the Relationship Between Presence, Solitude, and Love

Here’s the link to this article.

“…and joy instead of will.”

BY MARIA POPOVA

Meditation in Sunlight: May Sarton’s Stunning Poem About the Relationship Between Presence, Solitude, and Love

May Sarton (May 3, 1912–July 16, 1995) was thirty-three when she left Cambridge for Santa Fe. She had just lived through a World War and a long period of personal turmoil that had syphoned her creative vitality — a kind of deadening she had not experienced before. Under the immense blue skies that had so enchanted the young Georgia O’Keeffe a generation earlier, she started coming back to life. Her white-washed room at the boarding house had mountain views, a rush of sunlight, and a police dog and “a very nice English teacher” for neighbors. As the sun rose over the mountains, she woke up each morning “simply on fire” with poetry — new poems she read to the English teacher, not yet knowing she was falling in love with her. Judy would become her great love, then her lifelong friend and the closest she ever had to family.

Among the constellation of Santa Fe poems composed during this creative renaissance is an especially beguiling reflection on the relationship between presence, solitude, and love, soon published in Sarton’s 1948 poetry collection The Lion and the Rose (public library) — her first in a decade — and read here for us by my longtime poetry co-invocator Amanda Palmer in her lovely oceanic voice:

https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?visual=true&url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F1445390686&show_artwork=true&maxheight=1000&maxwidth=680

MEDITATION IN SUNLIGHT
by May Sarton

In space in time I sit
Thousands of feet above
The sea and meditate
On solitude on love

Near all is brown and poor
Houses are made of earth
Sun opens every door
The city is a hearth

Far all is blue and strange
The sky looks down on snow
And meets the mountain-range
Where time is light not shadow

Time in the heart held still
Space as the household god
And joy instead of will
Knows love as solitude

Knows solitude as love
Knows time as light not shadow
Thousands of feet above
The sea where I am now

Complement with Sarton on the cure for despair, how to live openheartedly in a harsh world, and her stunning ode to solitude, then revisit Amanda’s soulful readings of Jane Kenyon’s meditation on life with and after depression, Elizabeth Bishop’s timeless consolation for loss, Ellen Bass’s immense and intimate poem of perspective and possibility, and Mary Oliver’s “When I Am Among the Trees.”

Puncturing the God Fallacy, Repeatedly and Thoroughly

By David Madison at 2/17/2023

Here’s the link to this article.

Religion’s greatest harm: “…the subversion of clear thinking…”

“I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.” This famous line from the 1976 film, Network, reflects the approach of so many secular/atheist writers of our time. Outrage is reignited, continually.

This headline caught my attention a few days ago: Thousands of children abused by members of Portugal’s Catholic Church over 70 years. At the top of the article:

“At least 4,815 children were sexually abused by members of the Portuguese Catholic Church – mostly priests – over the past 70 years, a report by the commission investigating the issue said on Monday, adding the findings are the tip of the iceberg.” Child psychiatrist Pedro Strecht said “the 4,815 cases were the ‘absolute minimum’ number of victims of sexual abuse by clergy members in Portugal since 1950…Most perpetrators (77%) were priests and most of the victims were male…they were abused in Catholic schools, churches, priests’ homes, confessionals, among other locations.”

Such scandals have come to the public’s attention repeatedly, worldwide. We are entitled to wonder: Why isn’t membership in the Catholic Church down to zero by now? Systemic sexual abuse also has come to light in Protestant denominations as well. It would seem that the apostle Paul misjudged the impact of believing in Jesus: “…those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24).

If we’re surveying damage done by religion, sex-obsessed clergy is just the tip of the iceberg—and there are a lot of other icebergs. Christopher Hitchens provided a comprehensive overview in his book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Given this reality, theology is overwhelmingly incoherent, but folks keep showing up for church because they’ve perfected the fine art of tuning out. They cling to doctrines and ritual by ignoring solid arguments against god-beliefs: “Oh no, we can’t listen to that!” “Oh no, we don’t want to think about the challenges to faith!” We can suspect that such alarm is based on doubts that lurk just below the surface; they’re afraid—they know all too well—that faith is easily punctured.

There has been a long tradition of exposing the flaws of theism, especially the Christian version, e.g. Robert Ingersoll, Mark Twain, H. L. Mencken, Bertrand Russell, to name but a few. But the faith-motivated horrors of 9/11 prompted what I have called the atheist publishing surge: so many serious thinkers raising their voices because they’re mad as hell. The case against theism has been made so thoroughly, so convincingly. Of course, Christian apologists have been fighting back—there is so much at stake, above all, the hope of winning eternal life. But on the more practical, political level: they have a vested interest in the colossal Christian bureaucracy, spread over thousands of denominations: exactly what the world doesn’t need. All the more reason to expose Christianity’s fatal flaws.

We have the Debunking Christianity Blog because of the focus and determination of John W. Loftus, who has also been busy for quite a few years publishing books on the falsification of Christianity. To see them all at a glance, visit his Amazon Author Page. This is a good place to start in appreciating how thoroughly Christian theology has been smashed. Many of Loftus’ works are anthologies, and are thus helpful portals for finding books by multiple atheist authors.

I’m always on the lookout for concise refutations of theological pretense, and I found an especially good one a few years ago in S. T. Joshi’s book, God’s Defenders: What They Believe and Why They are Wrong. Among the god-defenders he takes aim at are William F. Buckley, Jr., Jerry Falwell, and C. S. Lewis. Today I want to draw attention, however, to his 18-page Introduction, a scathing rebuke of theism. He explains precisely why religions have been successful; they have been “…perpetuated not through the accumulation of additional evidence that validated their tenants, but through the systematic indoctrination of peoples into religious dogma from infancy onward, generation after generation” (p. 12).

“The dominant question thus becomes not why religion has not died away but why it continues to persist in the face of monumental evidence to the contrary. To my mind, the answer can be summed up in one straightforward sentence: People are stupid. The fundamental fact of human history is that people in the mass are irremediably ignorant” (p. 12).

Stupidity and ignorance. Certainly this is not a good place to start when I engage with devout Christians: “Oh my, how stupid you are!” “How have you managed to stay so ignorant?” There’s a better way to go about it. I ask questions about their understanding of Christian origins, their knowledge of the four gospels and how they relate. Mostly commonly, I find that their grasp of such things hovers near zero. How do stupidity and ignorance relate? Joshi suggests this:

“When I declare that religion is so widespread because people in the mass are stupid, I assert that they lack the information needed to make a well-informed evaluation of the truth-claims of religion” (p. 13).

Perhaps refusal to seek important information is one of the fundamentals of stupidity: the brain is stuck in a very bad place: the lack of curiosity, not wanting to learn, the refusal to learn—even contempt for learning, e.g.:

As the U.S. is caught up in an ongoing epidemic of mass shootings, we see members of congress wearing assault-rifle shaped lapel pins; Lauren Boebert released a photo of her four sons holding rifles, standing in front of a Christmas tree.

The Nazis kept very careful records of the Holocaust, because they were confident that killing Jews benefited humanity. In fact the Holocaust is one of the most thoroughly documented events in history. In the face of all this, there are Holocaust deniers. Certainly stupidity plays a role here, as well as arrogant and aggressive ignorance.

These factors are heavily in play when we look at the common reasons advanced for belief in god, but these arguments don’t work, as Joshi points out: “The standard ‘proofs’ for the existence of God—arguments that have held sway throughout the medieval period and well into the nineteenth century—have all been destroyed and are now discarded even by most theologians” (p.16). He mentions five of them.

The First Cause

When Christian defenders have their backs against the wall—because theology is hobbled by so many flaws—they feel confident that there had to have been a creator. And they assume that this creator god is Bible-god, apparently giving no thought whatever to how they would know this: how was it that the ancient tribal deity, Yahweh—imagined by humans who knew nothing about the Cosmos—was present at creation? And it’s risky business indeed, since Bible-god is an authoritarian bully, although this oh-so-obvious fact is usually camouflaged with feel-good Bible verses. In their confidence in the first cause argument, they neglect to consult cosmologists, the scientists who are truly curious and determined in their hunt to discover cosmic origins. Joshi points out the complications:

“…there is no reason to postulate a single First Cause: given the multiplicity of phenomenon throughout the universe, there is no logical reason for assuming that there could not be two, three, or many First Causes…It could always be asserted that God himself caused the Big Bang, but God’s existence must be established independently before one can assume that he triggered the Big Bang” (pp. 16-17).

The “Consensus of Mankind”

For millennia humans have believed in gods. How could they be wrong about these spiritual intuitions? Charles Darwin once wondered if lightening hadn’t given birth to religion: there’s an angry power in the sky. Now we know it’s a matter of electrical charges. And the diversity of guesses about the gods makes us suspicious, as Joshi notes:

“…comparative religion has shown that conceptions of godhead differ so widely from culture to culture—even from individual to individual within a given culture—that it becomes preposterous to assume that these people are believing in the same or even an approximately similar god” (p. 17).

John C. Wathey has demonstrated that the impulse to believe is not based on mysteries residing in the sky. See his two books, The Illusion of God’s Presence: The Biological Origins of Spiritual Longing and The Phantom God: What Neuroscience Reveals about the Compulsion to Believe.

The Argument from Design

This continues to have enormous appeal—“Look how wonderfully the world is put together!”—and derives in part from William Paley’s (1743-1805) analogy of the watchmaker. If you find a watch on the ground while out for a walk, of course you know there was a clever designer/maker who created it. But, again, how do you connect this designer with Bible-god? If anyone wants to make the case for this, Joshi notes the major impediment:

“…there is the plain fact that many things do not seem well designed: if the divine purpose of existence is the fostering of life, then the exact function of diseases, earthquakes, typhoons, and other such embarrassment is, to put it mildly, problematic” (p. 18).

Abby Hafer has made this case in detail: The Not-So-Intelligent Designer: Why Evolution Explains the Human Body and Intelligent Design Does Not

The Argument from Feelings

It bears repeating that feeling Jesus—or any other deity—in your heart, is evidence for what you’re feeling. The chances you’re picking up vibes about how the Cosmos runs are slim to none—unless you can provide reliable, verifiable, objective data to back up the claim. It’s not hard to locate the source of intense feelings, as Joshi notes: “…it can be demonstrated that in the great majority of cases their ‘feelings’ are the result of prior religious indoctrination” (p. 18).

The Moral Argument

“This argument is probably the weakest of all, for it does not even seek to prove that a god exists but merely that it is socially beneficial for the people to believe in a god…” (p. 19). Joshi notes that people who aren’t religious follow high moral standards, and while many devout people don’t. He also points out that so many of the “moral” teachings found in various scriptures are “the products of barbarism, are unsuited for a civilized society…” (p. 19). The list of barbarisms is obvious, including the acceptance of slavery and misogyny. And we all know the horrors committed by Christian fanatics for centuries: the Crusades, the Inquisition, virulent anti-Semitism.

While Joshi’s focus in this Introduction is exposing the weaknesses of common arguments for god, he mentions briefly the problem of evil that has “dogged religious thinkers for centuries” (p. 24). And indeed this problem abolishes the credibility of theism. Major and minor catastrophes, which have caused so much suffering for millennia, rule out the Christian claim that there is a caring, attentive, competent god. Here’s another headline that caught my attention this week: Robert Hébras, last survivor of World War II Oradour-sur-Glane massacre, has died.

This another case of Christians tuning out: Oradour-sur-Glane is far beyond their horizon of awareness. On 10 June 1944, German troops retreating from France vented their rage on this small village, killing 643 people: the men had been herded into barns, shot, and then the barns were burned. The women and children were locked in the church and machine-gunned to death. In the church. Robert Hébras was shot several times, but managed to crawl out from under corpses and escape. He dedicated much of his life to telling the story of the massacre, and working for French-German reconciliation. The ruins of the village are preserved as a memorial.

Without resorting to “god works in mysterious ways” and “god has a bigger plan that we don’t know”—both of which are techniques for not thinking—Christians need to always keep Oradour-sur-Glane in mind: women and children massacred in the church. Their god just watched.

S. T. Joshi has called it correctly:

“…it is plain that the battle against religious obscurantism must and will continue. The moment one folly is snuffed out, another and still greater folly seems to emerge to take its place. The greatest harm that religion has done, and continues to do…is the subversion of clear thinking” (p. 26).

David Madison was a pastor in the Methodist Church for nine years, and has a PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University. He is the author of two books, Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief: a Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith (2016; 2018 Foreword by John Loftus) and Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught: And Other Reasons to Question His Words (2021). The Spanish translation of this book is also now available.

His YouTube channel is here. He has written for the Debunking Christianity Blog since 2016.

The Cure-for-Christianity Library©, now with more than 500 titles, is here. A brief video explanation of the Library is here.
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What is Christianity?

This is a good place to start. This podcast reveals many truths about Christianity that most folks don’t know or don’t want to know.

Listen to the chat between Sam Harris and Bart Ehrman.

Click here: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/what-is-christianity

Here’s the episode description:

May 1, 2018

Sam Harris speaks to Bart Ehrman about his experience of being a born-again Christian, his academic training in New Testament scholarship, his loss of faith, the most convincing argument in defense of Christianity, the status of miracles, the composition of the New Testament, the resurrection of Jesus, the nature of heaven and hell, the book of Revelation, the End Times, self-contradictions in the Bible, the concept of a messiah, whether Jesus actually existed, Christianity as a cult of human sacrifice, the conversion of Constantine, and other topics.

Bart D. Ehrman is the author or editor of more than thirty books, including the New York Times bestsellers Misquoting Jesus and How Jesus Became God. Ehrman is a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a leading authority on the New Testament and the history of early Christianity. He has been featured in Time, The New Yorker, and The Washington Post, and has appeared on NBC, CNN, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The History Channel, National Geographic, BBC, major NPR shows, and other top print and broadcast media outlets. His most recent book is The Triumph of Christianity.

Mental Meanderings—A Look-Back at Yesterday (Sunday–021923)

Note, this is a good way to get some words on paper (or computer). It’s a lot like free-writing.

Most of us DO things and THINK thoughts. Both the doing and the thinking occur in consciousness.

Here’s what I recall DOING yesterday:
Alarm at 3:55 AM
Bathroom
Kitchen for coffee
Desk
Meditation—waking up app
Worked on Millie’s story
Outside to let dogs out/fed & watered dogs
Grabbed breakfast bar
Return to desk
Wandered around internet
Administrative work on website
Email
Kindle reading
Breakfast—oatmeal, banana, OJ
TV–Watched episode of Hanna (growing less interested)
Semi-napping in lazy boy
Trip to tractor supply (with Eddie/lab rescue)
Return/work on electric fence
Semi-napping in lazy boy
Biking & listening
Reading
Difficulty focusing/understanding a Marginalian article
Supper
TV—lost all interest in Hanna; watched law and order
Bed at 8:15 PM
Read chapter in ‘Stranger
Wasted ten minutes on Twitter
Sleep
Dream

I’ve listed yesterday’s DOINGs, what about yesterday’s thoughts?

I’ll start with last night’s dream. There were four characters: me, my dad (he died in 2012), and two unidentified women.

Apparently the setting was a huge house I’d acquired that was in great need of renovation. I was showing my dad a task I wanted/needed him to perform. It was a wall with missing boards, boards that needed cutting (2 x 4s), short pieces.

Then, there was a high ledge occupied by several items that were similar to garden tillers. The two women were on the ledge (20 or 30). I recall telling my dad we needed to go up there and help lower those items to the ground. Before we could act, the two women had tied a rope to each ‘tiller’ and were lowering them to the ground.

I also recall thinking there was a large section of the house that was missing.

What a dream. Where did it come from? From my subconscious? Yes, I suppose, but it entered my consciousness or I wouldn’t have ever been aware of it.

I’d like to know how many other thoughts I had yesterday. We all likely can agree that we have many, and some of them are strange. Where in heck do they come from? And, by the way, random thoughts also appear while we’re DOING things. For example, do you ever have a thought while your washing the dishes?

Thoughts just appear. We don’t create them; something else (the physics of the universe?) causes them. We, no I, better speak only for myself even though I suspect it’s the same for you.

I’ll try to recall some of yesterday’s thoughts but I’m more confident to speak broadly, of what subjects I commonly think about.

But first, try this with me. Sit still, close your eyes, and focus your attention on your breathing. Don’t do anything else for five minutes. I’ll bet you a Big Mac or a Whopper you couldn’t do it WITHOUT becoming lost in thought. If you can, jot down a few.

Notice, what likely happened with each one. They unraveled, especially if you reminded yourself to return to focusing on your breath.

The point is. It takes effort to NOT get lost in thought. The automatic operation of your minds is to become lost in thought.

In a real sense, we don’t have control over the appearance of our thoughts. They just appear in consciousness, unravel at some point, and disappear (I guess making room for another random thought).

Now, to those things that seem to routinely appear in my thoughts—including yesterday I suppose. I’ll speak broadly to not incriminate anyone—including myself.

The past. As an example, every night after I’ve removed my nightly meds from the corner nightstand I pass a framed photo of my maternal grandmother, and another one of my parents. I touch their face and tell them I love them. This is both doing and thinking. There always arises a memory of a past event that involves one or all of them. And, there’s more past thoughts. Regrets—things I wished I done, done differently, or never done.

The present. The thought of extending my daily bike ride, which, selfishly, would give me more time to listen to a podcast (I normally listen to a novel). Fact, yesterday, during my ride I had the thought of biking to Tractor Supply for an electric fence tester but chose not to—lazy I guess. And, there’s more present thoughts. I’ll just label them ‘issues.’ Things that bother me, some BIG TIME.

The future. Health, books I hope to write, family, family health issues, finances, selling restaurant building and Jonathan and I building a place here at Hickory Hollow, and road trips to out-of-state biking trails, or in-state for that matter. And, on and on.

What about you? What thoughts did you have yesterday?

Idea. Why not, at least for a while, start keeping a journal of our thoughts. I anticipate that will be rather difficult, cumbersome to say the least.

Okay, enough mental meanderings. Question: did everything I just wrote appear in my brain before it did in my consciousness? If not, do I consciously think before I think? I guess the former.

Writing Journal—Monday writing prompt

Your character undergoes hypnotherapy and uncovers one of her past lives. Write the scene as this happens.
One Stop for Writers

Guidance & Tips

Write the scene of discovery (i.e., tell a story), or brainstorm and create a list of related ideas.

Here’s five story elements to consider:

Character
Setting
Plot
Conflict
Resolution

Never forget, writing is a process. The first draft is always a mess.

The first draft of anything is shit.
Ernest Hemingway

02/19/23 Biking & Listening

Biking is something else I both love and hate. It takes a lot of effort but does provide good exercise and most days over an hour to listen to a good book or podcast. I especially like having ridden.