What Even Are Altar Calls?

May 6, 2018 No Comments

https://audioboom.com/posts/6843737-what-even-are-altar-calls

Jon and Logan talk about altar calls, salvation, guilt, and shame! And what you could do if your Sunday isn’t spent in church.

Jon talks about the podcast listener survey responses, potential changes and updates for the podcast, and merchandise! Who wants a shirt?
http://survey.waywardwillis.com

Logan talks about quantum computing and teaches Jon how to practice safe entanglement.

Intro music by Austin Colón:
http://austincolon.wixsite.com/music
https://austincolonmusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-path-ahead

We have a Patreon page!
http://www.patreon.com/wayward/
http://www.facebook.com/thewaywardwillis
Twitter: @waywardwillis

Personal Testimony, Religion

What Even Are Jehovah’s Witnesses?

December 17, 2017 1 Comment

https://audioboom.com/posts/6557098-what-even-are-jehovah-s-witnesses

Show Notes

Jon & Logan discuss the history, controversy, and silliness of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Jon & Logan talk to Becca Ray in a candid conversation about her JW childhood and family.
http://www.sarahtalk.com
https://www.patreon.com/SarahTalk

No segment 3 this week because the interview was so good (and long). Sorry!

Jon and Logan break down a verse from the Book of Mormon about games of hide-and-seek and pointless scripture.

Intro music by Austin Colón: http://austincolon.wixsite.com/music
We have a Patreon page!
http://www.patreon.com/wayward/
http://www.facebook.com/thewaywardwillis
Twitter: @waywardwillis

Personal Testimony

s a Christian I believed that my prayers were not only heard by god but that my prayers were important enough to initiate action. As with any Christian, my basis for believing this was not grounded in reality but in scripture:

John 14:12,13
Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

Clearly, the quotes attributed to Jesus define prayer as a sort of tangible, telepathic request which (in Jesus’ name) will be heard and granted if the person praying has even the slightest bit of real faith. Jesus describes the amount of faith necessary in Matthew 17:20 as a mustard seed (long considered the smallest seed). That’s not a whole lot of faith, by anyone’s standards. However, if this amount of faith is attainable why aren’t more prayers answers and more miracles performed/observed? The answers to these questions don’t come easy (to a rational mind) but I’ll detail the Christian thought process — or, at least, the thought process as I understood it while I was a Christian — and give my best answer.

Personal Testimony

Good Enough For Me, Part II

December 30, 2011 2 Comments

n a previous post I discussed the “good enough” mentality that most Christians have regarding their faith and the infallibility of the scriptures. That post aimed broadly at the Christian faith overall but there’s a sinister implementation of this mentality I’d like to address now. This post pertains to the “good enough” mentality regarding the Theory of Evolution.

Christian Descent of Man — "If any monkey pick up his cross and follow me..."

Above is a Christian parody of the Descent of Man illustration from a fairly well-written Revelife article on the Christian misunderstandings of evolution. You may want to take a minute and read it. This post will still be here when you get back.

Personal Testimony

Family Ties

December 16, 2011 2 Comments

ne thing religious people cannot stress enough is that they’re all about family. Their organizations even have names like Focus on the Family and the American Family Association (branded a hate group out of MS). For the most part I find this to be true so long as everyone’s keeping the faith and maintaining the status quo. I can say from my upbringing (aside from corporal punishment and having no say in church attendance) that our Christian family was very tight-knit and we spent a lot of quality time together. It wasn’t perfect, but it was far better than a lot of other families I’ve seen. Now, to clarify, some of these not-so-happy families I’ve seen are religious as well so it’s not as though they have a corner on the market. I’m just speaking to the Christian view that family is important.

As I said, religious families are close-knit and happy so long as everyone’s keeping the faith. They don’t say, “The family that prays together stays together” for no reason. It’s literally true. I found this out myself when I started to upset the status quo of my family and I was made to feel like an outcast. My family’s treatment of me was mild compared to what some people endure at the hands of their religious parents, grandparents, and siblings.

Personal Testimony

Lowering the Bar

December 11, 2011 No Comments

hen I was a Christian it seemed like everything I saw pointed to the truth of god’s existence. I had the Bible, my parents’ word, my Sunday School teachers and preachers, any number of books and pamphlets, and nature itself bolstering my faith. I felt like I had good reason to believe what I did and I didn’t even have to look for evidence: everything was evidence!

That is, until I actually started examining my beliefs and my reasons for holding them. What I found was not that the evidence for god was strong, but that I was willing to accept pretty much anything as evidence so long as it adhered to my preconceptions. Those things that didn’t conform to my beliefs were simply ignored without any thought at all.

Christian evidence — Christian? Evidence? Hmmm.

Personal Testimony

Who Makes the Rules?

November 16, 2011 3 Comments

was always taught as a child that god was in charge. He was the ultimate authority, the first and last word on any subject, and the law. He took orders from nobody and had nobody to whom he had to answer. God made the laws of nature and he could break them any time he wanted. There was absolutely nothing he couldn’t do. Then I read the Bible.

At many points in the Bible god is seemingly forced to take some kind of drastic action to intercede in his creation and at every one of these points he chooses (or must choose) the most elaborate, ineffective, and sometimes flat-out silly means. It seems that every time he has to step in and take action he’s constrained by the Hollywood villain code of monologuing and setting up a trap that’s just way too complex to work. Here are some examples:

Personal Testimony

Debunking Myself!

August 25, 2011 1 Comment

I was emptying out a three-ring binder yesterday and found a paper I had written on August 3, 1999 for a Philosophy 1100 class at Webster University. I still considered myself a Christian in 1999 and it wasn’t until the following year that I even entertained the idea that I might be agnostic or an (gasp!) atheist. I’ll continue to document that journey through my regular posts, but I wanted to take a moment to transcribe this paper and show that even I, on the verge of a huge shift in worldview, could cling to the most outrageous and fallacious arguments in the hopes of retaining that failing grasp on a faith that had, for most of my life, defined me. In a strange and somewhat satisfying twist I’ll address my own faulty reasoning and debunk myself. Enjoy!

Personal Testimony

In the Beginning…

July 17, 2011 1 Comment

everal times during my childhood I heard a pastor preach on the creation story in Genesis. While I was still a Christian I thought it was just about the coolest story I’d ever heard — every time I heard it. Here’s the run-down:

In the beginning there was god. God got the urge to create stuff so he fashioned a planet with land and water and light so he could put plants and animals on it. In order to make this his crowning achievement he then placed humans and a talking serpent on the planet. The habitable area on this planet was constrained to a garden, in the middle of which was a tree that god had created knowing that it would destroy the humans someday.

Genesis Chapter 1 — In the beginning, GOD...

Pretty awesome, right? Well, kind of. When I was a Christian I followed along in my book while the pastor read and never asked questions. This is how the sermon almost always went:

“Genesis 1: 1 — In the beginning, GOD. Now, that’s all I need to know. This tells me that god was always there, is there now, and will always be there even after I die. Praise the lord!”

Personal Testimony

The Tithe That Binds

July 1, 2011 5 Comments

here’s a very strange movement in some Christian circles called “The Prosperity Gospel” that posits some kind of supernatural investment scheme where the more money you give to god (read: churches and/or pastors) the more material wealth god will give to you. While most Christian denominations denounce this theology as false or even blasphemous most of them also have their own, more subtle versions of the prosperity gospel whether they know it or not.

Becoming a Millionaire God's Way — God wants you to be rich!

The churches in which I grew up always passed the offering plate/basket around during services expecting members to give at least 10% of whatever they had. This is standard practice for Protestant churches under a doctrine of tithing. Some churches go as far as asking (“asking” is a funny word since the whole thing is done with an air of, “if you don’t, god will know”) the congregation to make pledges as to how much they’ll give for the year. This helps the church make a budget but it also very clearly shows the churches are just businesses.