Preview - "William Lane Craig Welcomes You To His Cult!"

Below is a quick preview of my upcoming episode,  "William Lane Craig Welcomes You To His Cult", due for release in the next couple of weeks.

Stay posted for more previews, or may even the final product!

Dining Tip!

 A "fusion" restaurant is simply a restaurant that combines two styles of food and does neither of them well!

Stepping Away From Twitter

After a long period of personal reflection, I have decided to step away from Twitter for personal use for an indefinite period of time.

I will still be posting to the platform, but only from automated platforms in order to promote content that I produce, be it the Tall Friendly Atheist Dad podcast or other podcasts that I appear on.

But my decision comes down to these three factors (and Elon taking over Twitter is not one of them):

1. The ability of people to easily misunderstand each other on Twitter.

2. Bad-faith actors and the toxic environment.

3. Making a choice about where to put my time and energy.

One of the things I found about Twitter was how easy it is to misunderstand and misconstrue the words of someone, to the point that friendships gets ruined. Not only that, but also how toxic debate can be - ESPECIALLY if you're discussing hot-button topic like gender or abortion. And this isn't to mention the fact that ideological opponents seem more than willing to try ruin your personal life over disagreements.

I slowly realised that I got sick of taking the time and effort to couch my language and carefully select my words, only for people to accidentally misconstrue my intent (requiring more time and energy in apologies and the like), or act like asshats and deliberately misconstrue anyway.

And the other thing I realised was that I was investing way too much emotional energy in to endless arguments and unprofitable uses of time.

So yeah, if anyone who reads this sees I haven't been posting much on Twitter, that's why. I'm still creating content, but I'm doing it at my own pace and for my enjoyment. I just hope that you enjoy and find it informative!

I will be cancelling "The Great Televangelist Showdown" with immediate effect. The time and effort required to keep that up, alongside all the other stuff I do, ensured its demise.

I am still on social media, but just keeping things to myself, and I will be sporadically checking DMs incase you want to contact me directly.

Until next time, stay safe...

Episode 77 - Todd Friel's Bad Apologetics Remind Me Why I Love Mormonism!

Hey! You love provocative titles, right? And you have to admit - it did get your attention.

Some time back, Todd Frield, on his Wretched Radio show, gave some very bad apologetics and it made me realise - Todd Frield could also use those same apologetics to defend Mormonism.

And that then made me realise - the same apologetics evangelical Christians use to defend their belief in Jesus Christ, those same Christians will reject when it comes to Mormonism.

"The Nun" - A Christian Movie?

One of my favourite hobbies is movie watching. I love the art of story-telling, but I also appreciate the effort that goes in to making movies and special effects and stuff like that.

So recently, while I had some free time, I streamed a movie called "The Nun". It's apparently part of the same universe that The Conjuring and Annabelle is in, though I haven't seen any of those films, though I don't mind supernatural horror - one of the things about supernatural horror is that, like sci-fi, you can make up any number of fantastical and unrealistic plot devices and write it off as "supernatural mechanisms".

I didn't mind the movie. Sure, it's not going to win any Oscars, but it's also not winning any Razzies.

Here are some thoughts I had about the film:

1. It doesn't bash Christianity.  

It's one of the few mainstream movies around the puts Christianity, and especially Catholicism, in a positive light. This is actually refreshing.

Yes, I am an atheist, but I also do feel that Christianity/Catholicism have become VERY easy targets for mockery, to the point that I feel it's lazy scriptwriting and I'll roll my eyes.

Some examples of this were: the powerful effect of the blood of Jesus, the power of prayer, the idea that taking vows was a serious thing, a church being built over a portal to hell to try contain the evil within.

 

2. "Frenchie"-Ex Machina.

There's one point about 2/3 through where the nun and the Father have descended to underneath the church (itself a classic storytelling trope) and they're about to meet their end, but the other main character - a French-Canadian nicknamed "Frenchie" - comes back in the nick of time to vanquish the demons (with a shotgun, no less)

This really felt like a deus ex machina moment, but in a way that took away from the story. There was almost an Indiana Jones-like feel to Frenchie in this particular scene, but a poor imitation thereof. While Indiana Jones was a comedic adventure where DEM actually adds to the silliness and fun, in this movie where two people are struggling to keep the second most powerful demon at bay, it doesn't work too well.

3. "Frenchie" as an expository mechanism.

One other function Frenchie serves as is expository - the average audience may not get the Catholic jargon and mindset, so Frenchie serves as the audience where the two main characters who are steeped in Catholicism have to explain to Frenchie (i.e. the audience) what is happening and why.

4. Frenchie as a plot device.

Frenchie also serves as a link between this film and the other films in the same universe. However, what I'm not too happy about is the fact that Frenchie becomes possessed in the end despite the demon being vanquished by the blood of Jesus - shouldn't the fact that the demon was vanquished also destroy any remnants it had tried to infect people with?

Because there was one point where the novitiate nun was possessed as well, but for some reason she ends the film perfectly fine.

5. Why do evil spirits come up with the most convoluted ways to kill people?

Among some of the methods they come up with - powering up a radio to play jazz (despite there being no electricity, which begs the question: why is there a radio in the room in the first place); creating apparitions of praying nuns to encircle one of the main characters; creating a hallucination of a boy from the priest's past which magically shot a snake out, causing the priest to fall backwards into a coffin that is INSTANTLY covered over.

I give the movie a rating of 7/10 - the special effects were quite cool, a kinda fun way to waste 90 minutes (especially if you like supernatural horor), and I'm glad it didn't turn in to a Christian-bashing exercise.

Ep 74 - Capturing Christianity's 3 Questions For Atheists

In a video posted some time back, Cameron from Capturing Christianity posted three questions for atheists. Here are my responses to them.

Some atheist responders have insinuated that Cameron meant these as gotcha's. I didn't see it that way - I merely saw it as a way of asking to positively explain why an atheist doesn't believe in God.

Original video: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/89tcsb2aPLI

Episode 73 - Asian Culture Is Awesome (Part 2) - Singapore

In this post-holiday episode of The Tall Friendly Atheist Dad Podcast, I discuss my recent trip to Singapore where we had a family wedding.

And yes, I got COVID. Not fun.