Free Inquiry essays "The faith I Left Behind"

[edhopper]

This issue deals with why these writers no longer observe the faith they once did.
Pertinent to this group, especially since this isn't about some imagined religion that atheist say they don't accept, but the reasons people left particular faiths.

Four of the articles are open and the rest are subscriber only.

https://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php/articles/category/freeinquiry

[cbayer]

1. Looks like a great project and I have marked for later reading.

[Brettongarcia]

2. A good approach;we don't need to address religion on its own terms, in its own language,to reject it

The insistence that we need to study religion 20 years, like our priests, in order to reject it, is a sort of trap. It puts atheists on religionists' own turf. Where they have been arguing often, all their life. Where they have memorized hundreds of standard defenses of the faith, or "apologetics," defensive sermons and homilies.

Rather than fall into the trap of arguing religion in its own grounds, as David Hart insists, those atheists who don't know much about it from the inside, can still contribute a valid external perspective.

Just enough knowledge to say, hear the claims of "miracles," and then enough science to know their promises are false, is good enough for instance.

[edhopper]

3. My problem with the

"priest who have been studying for 20 years" is they start with the premiss that there is a God and the rest is figuring out what he said and wants them to do.
While those theological discussions can be interesting, they rarely give a good argument for the existence of God.

[dimbear]

4. Call me a cynic (again) but an article titled Free Inquiry should be free.

It's implied by the terminology.

[cbayer]

5. Lol. Great point.

[edhopper]

6. Well since we are taking things literally

you must be a bit dim to not understand the usage of Free here.