If you ever discuss miracles with skeptics, the first person they’re guaranteed to bring up is 18th century Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776).

The reason why is because, unlike other “enlightenment” philosophers, Hume provided the most robust critique of the supernatural and miracles. An entire section called “Of Miracles” in his 1748 work An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, hailed by skeptics as an objective destruction of everything supernatural.

But does “Of Miracles” actually disprove miracles and the supernatural? And is it objective? Not in the slightest.

It’s a dungheap of an argument.

Before we get into why, it’s important to hash out some background on Hume because his history is inseparable from the failures inherent in his most infamous tirade.

David Hume (original last name Home) was born on May 7th, 1711 to a modest family of landowners in the Scottish Highlands. His father, Joseph Home, an attorney, died when Hume was an infant, and his mother, Katherine, raised him and his siblings as a single mom.

Hume tried his hand at academics at the age of 11-12, entered the University of Edinburgh to study classics and philosophy. But eventually he ditched school without a degree and went through a period of harsh intellectual and physical strain. Several of those off years were spent in France, where the secular humanist and socialist philosophies of Voltaire and Rousseau blazed a path of ideological terror through the former Catholic powerhouse of Western Europe. About to trigger the French Revolution.

Their ideas were like sweet honey to Hume. He gobbled them up as if they were a 5-star, 7-course meal.

And what were their ideas?

• Man is naturally good

• Society corrupts him

• Civilization is the original sin

• Morality comes from within

• The family and church oppress

• Private property inhibits liberty

• People must be “forced to be free.”

Voltaire and Rousseau also claimed that religion is the opiate of the masses long before Karl Marx. In fact, they are where Marx and Hegel got the ideas in their Communist Manifesto.

Their (Voltaire and Rousseau) resolution was that philosophical naturalism is the only truth, the supernatural is a fictional invention by humanity that threatens existence, and the ancient savages (which Voltaire and Rousseau dubbed “the noble savage”) had the proper animalistic way of life the world needs to return to. Hunt, screw multiple partners, destroy all boundaries, elevate and worship the individual self.

Embracing their naturalistic bias, Hume writes this far-from-objective spew against miracles:

• A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature, and the laws of nature rest on uniform and constant experience, so miracles are contrary to the whole of prior experience.

• A wise person proportions belief to the evidence. When two kinds of evidence conflict, the stronger evidence prevails. In the case of miracles, the conflict is between: (1) testimony and (2) the uniform experience of nature’s regularities that the miracle would violate.

• The evidence is always against miracles because: (1) Human testimony is fallible, (2) the laws of nature rest on on the most extensive and uniform experience available, (3) therefore, the probability that the testimony is false always exceeds the probability that the miracle occurred.

• Additional reasons why the evidence is always against miracles:

1. Miracle claims typically arise from ignorant or barbarous people, or in remote times and places where they cannot be easily checked

2. The human passions (wonder, religious enthusiasm, love of the marvelous) incline people to accept and transmit such reports uncritically

3. Competing miracle claims from different religions cancel one another out, since each religion’s miracles are used to support doctrines that contradict the others

• These considerations supply an “everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion.”

Together, we’re going to walk through each of these objections to miracles and the supernatural step by step, tear them to pieces, and discover why miracles and the supernatural are not only real and knowable, but likely. Then we’ll examine an argument for miracles centuries prior to Hume, from the notorious St. Thomas Aquinas, that ruined philosophical naturalism years before the so-called “enlightenment.”

Defining a Miracle

Off the bat, Hume shows serious problems through his definition of a miracle. He takes the same tactic Voltaire, Rousseau, and other 18th-century philosophers did of presuming that the laws of nature are unbreakable. Hume also presumes that nature alone is the “whole weight of prior experience.”

Not so.

Every single one of the primitive savages Voltaire, Rousseau, and Hume adored made claims of supernatural encounters, and not just the savages. The civilized as well.

Throughout the majority of human history, the whole weight of prior experiences intertwined the natural and the supernatural. In fact, until the 18th and 19th centuries, nature and supernature were seen as two sides of the same coin, always interacting and either impossible without the other. For Hume to presume the weight of all prior experience is only natural is to defy the historical record and row without a paddle.

Laws, of course, come from lawgivers, and such lawgivers typically have the authority to dictate exceptions or even rewrite laws, so if we find laws in nature, it follows that they come from an ultimate Lawgiver who spoke them into existence and retains the power to alter them or allow exceptions at will. Something Hume-y-poo and his secularist buddies don’t seem to understand.

Regularities also do not preclude singularities (one-time events) that go against the established norm. All of history, for instance, is composed of one-time, non-repeatable, specific events and would be unnatural, according to Hume’s definition of a miracle. To be consistent, we would have to dismiss the entirety of history as fiction, or at the very least unprovable, but not even the most ardent skeptic is willing to take that logical leap.

All the above should be sufficient to show David Hume’s argument against miracles is pure hogwash, but it gets worse...

Testimony as Untrustworthy

Hume claims the uniform laws of nature trump human testimony in terms of evidence.

No one in their right mind will deny that the word of a single human cannot suffice to prove an event occurred. But when we get into examination of multiple witnesses, Hume’s argument collapses into a heap of moldy dish rags.

The credibility and possible truth of testimony increases the more witnesses there are to an event. Go to any courtroom and you’ll see this on a daily basis. Hume himself, who originally entered the University of Edinburgh to go into the family business of legal advocacy (an attorney), should’ve known this, yet he dismisses all human testimony outright, which poses serious problems for human knowledge.

As already noted, history is composed of one-time non-repeatable events. Well, not only is it that, all of those singularities are brought to us by...you guessed it...human testimony. Not a single shred of the past was observed by humans today, so we have to take it on faith through the examination of available past witnesses sharing their testimony of their lived experiences.

You think that’s bad, buckle your seatbelt.

Everything we know about science comes to us from humans who witnessed what they saw, experimented on it, wrote it down, interpreted the findings, and shared with the rest of humanity those interpretations. So even the regularities are brought to you by testimony. How can we trust the natural laws then?

Hume never recognizes or answers that particular conundrum. He just presumes that naturalism will always come up with an eventual explanation for an anomaly, which is an unproven faith claim about reality, by the way, not evidence against miracles. Indeed, it’s an argument from silence which relies on the supposed immovable regularities of nature which are themselves only recognized by humans and filtered through their interpretations, so I guess we just have to close up shop and say nothing is true.

You’d think his argument couldn’t get stranger, but it does...

What Would Be a Sufficient Testimony?

Hume’s exact sentence regarding acceptable testimony is this: “No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish.”

First problem here is Hume has already dismissed miracles outright, presumed them impossible, so for something to be miraculous at all can’t happen, according to him. How, then, is one supposed to falsify his claim?

You can’t. It’s unfalsifiable.

And circular.

As C. S. Lewis aptly notes, “No, of course we must agree with Hume that if there is absolutely ‘uniform experience’ against miracles, in other words, they have never happened, why then they never have. Unfortunately, we know the experience against them to be uniform only if we know that all the reports of them are false. And we know all the reports are false only if we know already that miracles have never occurred. In fact, we are arguing in a circle.”

Furthermore, as already established, to deny human testimony is to deny all possible avenues to human knowledge, even science, since everything comes to us through human interpretation and testimony.

One major pickle of this revelation we didn’t address above is Hume’s slaughter of his own argument. His argument is his testimony. To us. Against miracles. But if human testimony is untrustworthy, then so is Hume’s. Therefore, everything he’s said so far is canceled.

No bueno.

Thus, Hume’s main argument fails. Miserably. Far from the objective, rational case he purports it to be.

But what about Hume’s other points against miracles? Do they swoop in to save the day?

The Evidence is Always Against Miracles...or is it?

By now, I’m sure you’re exhausted, but we can’t quit yet. Hume’s last ditch effort to destroy the miraculous and supernatural is to argue (1) only primitive people claim miracles or miracle claims arise during times when they can’t be tested, (2) human passions make us uncritical, (3) competing miracle claims across religions cancel each other out, and (4) modern examples of miracles don’t hold up to Hume’s criteria. Is this all true?

(1) Only primitive people claim miracles or miracle claims arise during times when they can’t be tested

Numero uno is patently false. Hume’s fourth point proves there were contemporary miracle claims during his own time. In fact, in the actual article “Of Miracles,” he goes through a few.

So, miracle don’t only happen in times where they can’t be tested.

Furthermore, plenty of intelligent and aristocratic people in every human civilization, not just primitive men, have made miracle claims. Miracle claims have came from and still come from humans in all walks of life, some of which we’ll see below when we address point four. Stories I’ve personally evaluated and shared on social media.

(2) Human passions make us uncritical

Human passions may be something we struggle with as imperfect beings, and they definitely make us uncritical or irrational at times. But that goes for everything, not just miracles.

So if Hume is going to call into question miracles based on this criteria, then he must call into question everything in human knowledge once again. It’s the same problem established by his dismissal of human testimony as a credible source of evidence.

Not to mention, there are plenty of miracle claims that come from skeptics. Some diehard naturalists, like Hume.

There have been cases where such skeptics encountered a miracle and were turned into full-fledged believers. Are we to believe these persons, prone to radical skepticism, merely shed away all their critical instincts the moment they saw a miracle? The falsehood of that assumption is more miraculous than the fact it endeavors to establish, as Hume would say.

(3) Competing miracle claims across religions cancel each other out

My response to miracle claims across religions canceling each other out is “Why?”

By Hume’s logic here, any sort of competing contradictions would inevitably cancel each other out. Across the board. In all of human knowledge and history. Including naturalism.

We’re all individual humans with worldviews we put into practice, and those worldviews become our personal religions. Sometimes when worldviews align, people then form collective religions around those worldviews. Not even atheistic naturalists are immune to this phenomenon, their own position of naturalism being a worldview that makes doctrinal truth claims about the world, doctrines that contradict other worldviews making truth claims. This is a paramount facet of human life I cover in depth in The Atheist Conversion Manual.

Since all worldviews make truth claims, and all religions and philosophical positions are worldviews that make truth claims, any contradictions between them would mean they are all wrong. Per Hume.

So, yet again, he shoots himself in the foot. Erodes the very ground upon which he stands and thus his entire argument.

The real question, which Hume misses, is which worldview best explains the available evidence we see in reality? And naturalism automatically fails because it cannot account for all anomalies, only regularities. Which means supernature is not only possible, but likely.

(4) Modern examples of miracles don’t hold up to Hume’s criteria

Miracle claims not holding up to Hume’s criteria isn’t much of a slam dunk because his criteria suck and his argument is junk.

Therefore, we can dismiss point four without the least bit of second thought.

But since he brought it up, there are tons of miracle claims still happening today that check out. They come from more than mere primitive, uneducated men, are backed up by multiple witnesses and even empirical evidence (like X-rays, EKGs, CAT scans, etc. in some cases), and have baffled even the hardest skeptics.

Here are the stories I’ve shared so far:

• A man in Suriname whose paralyzed arm flew up in the air at the mention of the name of Jesus

• Vittorio Micheli whose leg eaten away by cancer fully reconstructed after a dip in the healing waters at Lourdes

• Bruce Van Natta whose internal organs reconstructed (his small intestine doubling to 9 feet) via prayer after he was crushed in half by a massive logging truck

• Christ Gunderson who healed from an incurable stomach disease after being prayed over by Van Natta himself 5 years later and was written about in medical journal

• Delia Knox permanently healed of paralysis and walking after 22 years confined to a wheelchair, all caught on video

• John Smith revived and completely healed from the death and the onset of decay after drowning in an icy lake

• Marius Mada resurrected in a split second from a drowning death after his father did an act of kindness for a stranger

• Alcides Moreno survived a 47-story fall, 500 feet straight down at 80mph, and baffled doctors in New York

• Jeff Markin returned from guaranteed death (lividity/rigor mortis already setting in) after Dr. Chauncy Clancy prayed over him and then shocked his heart one more time, bringing instantly into a fully recovered state

• Dallas Pullum, who returned from certain brain death after a horrendous ATV accident when his brother refused to give up on him and kept praying to God for a miracle, never once doubting God would pull through

• A missionary to a savage island and his family in the 1800s are protected by a legion of God’s angels witnessed by the whole tribe who tried to attack them

• Baby G, a preemie with a severe condition that steals oxygen from her lungs, successfully escapes imminent death when family and hospital staff say the Lord’s Prayer repeatedly in a last act of desperation

• Australian Dr. Sean George comes back from an hour and a half dead after his wife holds his hand and makes a desperate plea to God for more time with him.

If even one of these miracles is true, then the supernatural is real, and God is possible and likely. And they are a tiny sample of the massive amount of miracle claims across the world.

An Everlasting Check Against Delusion?

Hume concludes that his argument is “an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion,” but surely you see by now, the emperor has no clothes.

His own argument can’t even stand up to itself.

Per the laws of logic, that makes it irrational and leaves open the possibility of miracles and trustworthiness of certain claims.

His final conclusion also shows for a fact that he was never objective in his argument. Ever. Believed naturalism was a reality and set out to destroy the opposition, whatever the cost.

Turns out the cost is steep. Utter failure.

The only way to disprove miracles would be to disprove God. As long as God remains possible, miracles too are possible. And perhaps the most notorious expert philosopher in all of human history, St. Thomas Aquinas, serves up the argument for miracles that shuts down any doubt God can, will, and is working in this world...

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Miracles happen and change the world. I’ve been sharing stories of them all October. But what are they? And what’s their value for the Christian faith?

These are questions too few ask these days, beyond philosophical circles.

The Bible calls miracles signs and wonders of the Creator, and that’s a crucial starting point because if miracles occur, we know they aren’t haphazard. They have a purpose.

Signs point to something or convey a message about something. Sometimes both. Wonders take our breath away and make us want to investigate deeper into a curiosity, an anomaly.

Together we’re going to explore what a miracle is, why atheist objections to them don’t work, and how their ongoing enactment in our world today serves as a substantial resource for defending Christianity as the truth of reality.

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Special Act of God That Disrupts Nature

Norman Geisler defined miracles in the best way I’ve seen: “A miracle is a special act of God that interrupts the natural course of events.” A supernatural singularity that never would have occurred had nature been left to its usual course.

The miracle itself can involve a change in nature (think the sudden shift in east wind for the parting of the Red Sea; healings) or have nothing to do with nature at all (think Jesus’s transfiguration or the appearance of angelic messengers).

For Christians, miracles are particularly important because our faith is built on them. God used miracles to prove His name, character, and mission to rescue lost creation from the clutches of sin and death by healing, restoring, bringing back to life, conveying His will, vindicating Himself, and much, much more. The greatest miracle is the creation of the cosmos from nothing, acknowledged at the beginning of the Bible and written into the fabric of creation, but the most essential miracle is Christ Jesus’s resurrection because through that one sin and death were stripped of all power over anyone who would believe in, repent, and follow Jesus, God-made-flesh and eternal Lord.

Miracles must be rare, otherwise they would become the regular course of nature and no longer awe us or get our attention. Yet, the resurrection miracle has the eternal ongoing effect of establishing the final promise that one day Christ Jesus will return, eradicate all evil, and restore creation through the permanent establishment of His everlasting kingdom.

Most atheists have this straw man idea that God is a genie in a bottle out there to grant our every wish, and when He doesn’t act as their slave, that means He doesn’t exist.

That argument is shallow enough you can see the absurdity. The eternal God is beyond us all and subject to no one, so He acts as He wills, subject to no one else but Himself, since He transcends everything. He doesn’t have to do a thing for you and owes you nothing. If and when He does act, it’s because He chose to of His own accord. Such is a perfectly rational explanation for the absence of God’s action in a particular instance, so the absence of evidence in the case of God’s perceived inaction cannot be evidence of God’s actual absence (or nonexistence).

But there are some other sophisticated arguments against miracles atheists have come up with that it’s important you and I extinguish...

McKinnon: Natural Law Objection

The most infamous objector to miracles is David Hume. I reserve a special future article for him. But other philosophical atheists have lobbed what they thought were clever arguments against miracles. One is Alistair McKinnon.

McKinnon took the common misconception that natural laws are unbreakable and posited this argument:

1. Natural laws describe the actual course of events.

2. A miracle is a violation of a natural law.

3. But it is impossible to violate the actual course of events (what is, is; what happens, happens).

4. Therefore, miracles are impossible.

Several worthy apologists, including C.S. Lewis, have debunked this particular argument, since it is riddled with problems.

First, as Norman Geisler points out in his Big Book of Christian Apologetics

“If McKinnon is correct, miracles cannot be identified in the natural world, since whatever happens will not be a miracle. If whatever happens is ipso facto a natural event, then of course miracles never happen. This, however, simply begs the question; this definition of natural law is loaded against miracles. No matter what happens within the natural world, it will automatically be called a ‘natural event.’ This would eliminate in advance the possibility of any event in the world being a miracles. But this fails to recognize even the possibility of that not every event in the world is of the world. for a miracle can be an effect in nature by a cause that is beyond nature. For the mind that makes a computer is beyond the computer, and yet the computer is in the world.”

Furthermore, natural laws are not descriptors of what is always the case. They describe what happens on a regular and predictable basis in the natural world when left to its own devices. Any interference from an outside source that disrupts the regular, predictable course of events would by definition be irregular and unpredictable and therefore not natural.

For example, say you walk into a jungle that’s never been visited by human ever before. Any creatures unfamiliar with humans will behave in ways against the natural course of events because until that point they never had a human in their presence, and their new behaviors in response would be unnatural.

At the quantum level, physicists run into this issue with certain particles that always behave differently when interacted with from outside sources, some so erratically that a so-called “natural” state for said particles can only be guessed at.

Miracles too are irregular and unpredictable at minimum, which means natural laws cannot rule them out.

Geisler also notes that atheists like McKinnon make a category mistake when suggesting natural laws negate miracles because miracles are singularities and natural laws are regularities. So we’re talking about two different categories of things. This isn’t to say all singularities are miracles, but miracles reside within that category of events.

Atheists fall into this category trap because of their obsession with empiricism. The majority will only accept evidence that is repeatable, but not all evidence is repeatable, as I note in The Atheist Conversion Manual.

Singularities are onetime events that can only be witnessed and documented. History, for example, is composed of singularities. Every war, famine, act, rite, etc. committed by humans and other creatures is onetime. Never happens the same exact way again. Sometimes similarities occur between singularities, but it is so rare as to be near impossible to for there to be an identical events without even minor changes twice in the history of life. And even when identical repetitions do occur, each individual occurrence is its own unique event and thus comprise singularities.

So, McKinnon fails, but that hasn’t stopped atheists from taking other avenues.

Flew: Theists Beg the Question

Well-known atheist Anthony Flew takes a different route from McKinnon. Instead of attacking miracles themselves, he admits miracles are possible, but they have no apologetic value in determining the existence of God.

His argument goes like this:

1. A miracle must be identified (distinguished) before it can be known to have occurred.

2. A miracle can be distinguished in one of two ways: in terms of nature or in terms of the supernatural.

3. To identify it by reference to the supernatural as an act of God begs the question.

4. To identify it in reference to the natural even robs it of its supernatural quality.

5. Therefore, miracles cannot be known to have occurred, since there is no way to identify them.

This argument from Flew is a clever way to attempt to shut down the conversation before it ever begins. The presumption is that we cannot know miracles to have occurred, even though they may be possible, so any conversation about miracles is dead on arrival.

But by taking the epistemological approach (how we know what we know) instead of the ontological approach (the study of what actually is), Flew shoots himself in the foot. His argument no longer pertains to the actual, so it doesn’t affect the reality of miracles in any way. In fact, by admitting miracles are possible in reality, he leaves the door open for the existence of God and His actions in this universe.

You could counter by saying, “Well, God may not have moved, so miracles could still be impossible.” But we know this to be false based on reality because since God is the Uncaused First Cause, the Unmoved Mover, of the cosmos, He has already clearly moved and is capable of doing so. By moving, He also demonstrated a desire to move, to act, so His actions are expected in this reality. Therefore, miracles are actual actions of God in this cosmos.

It gets worse for Flew, though, because his epistemological argument doesn’t even hold up. As Geisler points out, naturalists beg the question too when they presuppose the natural world is all there is and everything that occurs is natural. If we’re to maintain consistency without hypocrisy, then it’s only appropriate that theists get to presuppose God and the possibility of a supernatural explanation for certain singularity events. And Flew can’t object that he knows all events have a natural explanation because he doesn’t know that. No one does. Such a stance is one of faith in naturalism.

All Flew has done is shown that humans at every level can’t escape operating on faith in someone or something and never touched the reality (or lack thereof) of miracles.

The Reality of Miracles

The fact is miracles do happen, many don’t have possible natural explanations, and plenty of witnesses have recounted their stories, from the poorest of the poor to the richest of the rich, from the dumbest of the dumb to the smartest of the smart. And the only way to discount a story is to prove beyond a reasonable doubt it could not have been a miracle.

Here’s all the stories we’ve covered so far:

• A man in Suriname whose paralyzed arm flew up in the air at the mention of the name of Jesus

• Vittorio Micheli whose leg eaten away by cancer fully reconstructed after a dip in the healing waters at Lourdes

• Bruce Van Natta whose internal organs reconstructed (his small intestine doubling to 9 feet) via prayer after he was crushed in half by a massive logging truck

• Christ Gunderson who healed from an incurable stomach disease after being prayed over by Van Natta himself 5 years later and was written about in medical journal

• Delia Knox permanently healed of paralysis and walking after 22 years confined to a wheelchair, all caught on video

• John Smith revived and completely healed from the death and the onset of decay after drowning in an icy lake

• Marius Mada resurrected in a split second from a drowning death after his father did an act of kindness for a stranger

• Alcides Moreno survived a 47-story fall, 500 feet straight down at 80mph, and baffled doctors in New York

• Jeff Markin returned from guaranteed death (lividity/rigor mortis already setting in) after Dr. Chauncy Clancy prayed over him and then shocked his heart one more time, bringing instantly into a fully recovered state

• Dallas Pullum, who returned from certain brain death after a horrendous ATV accident when his brother refused to give up on him and kept praying to God for a miracle, never once doubting God would pull through

And there are a ton more to come.

If even a single one of these is a true miracle, then God exists, the supernatural is real, and He is still moving in reality. But we don’t even need them to tell us He is real and moves since the universe itself testifies to its Creator and is already a miracle. They just bonuses.

Miracles are a valid testament to God’s existence and power.

That doesn’t mean every miracle claim is legitimate. All must be evaluated. But there are valid miracles out there, and they serve as signs and wonders in our world for us to exhibit the glory, will, and ongoing action of the eternal King.

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I’ve been sharing miracle stories since the beginning of October, and one important lesson has become clear: Atheism is undeniably false.

The sheer number of miracle occurrences is insane.

And I’m not talking about miracle claims. Anyone can claim they experienced a miracle. I’m talking about actual verified miracles with multiple witnesses, doctor testimonies, and empirical proof, like X-rays, to back them up.

Christ Jesus is alive and active through his Spirit in this world.

So far, we’ve read on the timeline the stories of:

A man in Suriname whose paralyzed arm flew up in the air at the mention of the name of Jesus

Vittorio Micheli whose leg eaten away by cancer fully reconstructed after a dip in the healing waters at Lourdes

Bruce Van Natta whose internal organs reconstructed (his small intestine doubling to 9 feet) via prayer after he was crushed in half by a massive logging truck

And Christ Gunderson who healed from an incurable stomach disease after being prayed over by Van Natta himself 5 years later and was written about in medical journal

Anyone looking for truth would have to look at these four cases and admit something otherworldly is going on.

So why do atheists resist?

My usual answer is they aren’t really after evidence for God, and that’s true. But I think we need to go deeper.

Why don’t they want evidence for God? Here are 4 reasons that get to the heart of why atheism rebels against reality.

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1. Happines Quest

Frank Turek rightly asks many atheists who step up to open mics to ask questions after his presentations: “If Christianity were true, would you become a Christian?”

And the answer is predominantly “No.”

Why?

Because most atheists don’t want God to be real, and they most certainly don’t want Him to be Christ Jesus because then they would be accountable to someone other than themselves and wouldn’t get to do whatever they want. And they want whatever makes them happy in the temporal, not what makes them holy in the eternal.

To acknowledge the supernatural would be tantamount to giving up in the face of battle.

That’s what going on, of course. They are at war against their Creator, whom they cannot escape, whether or not atheists belive that to be the case.

Unfortunately for atheists, accountability cannot be escaped either. In this world, you will be accountable to someone or something because dependence is built into existence, and if you think otherwise, you’re deluded. What I call in The Atheist Conversion Manual the Delusion of Autonomy.

The only control you have is over the choices you make with the cards you’re dealt. Period. Beyond that, you are subject to other forces and beings in some way, shape, or form. Total independence is fantasy. Thinking and acting otherwise is what results in catastrophe since every decision we make has a ripple effect of consequences.

Atheists don’t want the above to be true because they want to think they are the masters and orchestrators of right and wrong and accountable to no one but whatever whims and fancies come their way. That’s why the only evidence they’ll accept is whatever doesn’t confirm a supernatural world and instead affirms their own biases toward a material-only universe.

A universe in which they set the “moral” terms and define whatever makes them happy.

2. The “Problem of Evil”

In a strange twist, the same atheists who think they are the masters and definers of reality have this bizarre idea that they know the mind of the perfect God and how He should behave.

They look at travesties in the world like rape, slavery, murder, environmental disasters, and so on and so forth, and claim that a perfect God never would’ve let any of it happen. Ever. He would create the perfect world of obedient robots (human slaves?) and ensure no evil could enter. So the fact that there is evil in the world means God and the supernatural don’t exist and miracles therefore can’t happen.

But where do they get these ideas of “evil,”“perfection,” “should,” “shouldn’t”? From the world?

Right? Or is it wrong? Or is it right and wrong? Who can tell?

The truth is such a universe is brute, hopeless, amoral, and doomed to extinction with no higher mode of existence to look forward to, and atheists know it. But because they want the delusion of total autonomy and control to enact fleeting feelings of happiness for themselves in their short time upon this earth, they spew outrage about fictional evil to gaslight themselves into accepting a pseudo-reality void of God.

And they’ll keep at it unless they get a God who will dance for them, not one who ignores them, allows free will, and permits evil for a time.

3. God-in-a-box

For those who are so opposed to slavery, atheists sure want to dictate God. “Do this.” “Do that” “Ope, God didn’t answer my prayer, so He doesn’t exist.”

Such is how the story goes.

We already hit on this phenomenon a little bit in the last section, but since it’s the real underlying motive behind their emphasis on the so-called “problem of evil” (which we just saw isn’t even a problem in their worldview), we must dwell on it a bit more.

Modern humanity has created this caricature of God as a genie in a bottle or a jack-in-the-box that must give humans whatever they want. Think Oprah giving away cars like candy. “You get a miracle, you get a miracle, YOU get a miracle.” That’s what many think about God. That He’s their candy slave.

And when God suddenly doesn’t deliver as expected...they throw their hands up and say, “Evil” or “God doesn’t exist.”

A recent objection to the miracle story I shared about my wife is a case in point. I shared on both Substack and X (if you missed it, I linked right below this paragraph).

An atheist in the comment section on X said sarcastically, (paraphrase) “Oh, sure. God spares your wife but lets my wife get plowed into by another driver. Some God.”

The Old Man in the sky (atheists’ favorite false description of the eternal God) acted in one instance but didn’t act in another, so He doesn’t exist. Never mind that the very notion of action requires an Actor, and the person in the story (my wife) had an experience of action.

The same atheist went on to state that my wife's and my personal experience doesn’t constitute evidence, but I immediately pointed out he is holding up his own wife’s experiences as evidence of God’s absence. So, which is it? Is personal experience valid evidence, or is it not? If it is, then we have one experience of some personal force protecting a woman from danger and not another woman, and the prior experience must trump the latter since an Actor must exist in order to act, and we are to conclude logically that the Actor simply chose not to act in the second scenario. Why? No idea. But that has no bearing on the existence or nonexistence of the Actor.

If personal experience isn’t valid evidence, then lots of questions begin to arise because literally everything established in the corpus of human knowledge was personally experienced by humans. Everything in history, in fact. And all would become unreliable, not just the experiences of two separate women in their cars on separate evenings on separate roads. Such would be the demand of logical consistency. And if we ultimately don’t know anything, then how do atheists know God didn’t protect my wife that evening in the car?

To be clear, I’m not suggesting we accept what every human says at face value. That would be foolish.

But it’s equally foolish to suggest miracles never happened because only humans can witness them and personal experience is unreliable evidence. Or because God didn’t dance as you wanted Him to.

An eternal transcendent God is subject to no other authority because He is above and before all and the necessary origin of reality. You live in His cosmos, not the other way around.

Yet it’s easy for others to hate that arrangement when God’s own children act like bullies...

4. Church Hurt

Well-meaning or otherwise, many have been driven away from faith in Christ based on the poor behavior of someone who claimed to be Christian.

I’m not talking about a Christian who was brutally honest about right and wrong and refused to affirm blatant sin. We’re commanded as followers of Christ to judge wisely and make no peace with evil. To fail that command turns the church from a hospital for sinners into funhouse for demons.

But some holier-than-thous within the church have acted like Pharisees and scoffed at the newcomer as if he or she is a parasite to be driven out instead of a soul longing for the Savior.

Others have gone the opposite extreme and scared newcomers away by expecting God to always act miracles and provide on a dime and subjecting them to experiences of “failed” interventions, which creates the atheists who would rather God didn’t exist than a God who doesn’t always fix the problem (no matter how illogical that path may be).

Whatever of the above cases one chooses, God and the supernatural are made to seem tasteless or absent to the unfamiliar mind. Because such mind has not grasped that Christians are mere sinners too who are only good inasmuch as God is good and lives among them through Christ. Which causes them (the mind) to blame Christ based on the behavior of those who imitate Him poorly.

Unfortunately, the bad apples won’t be going away. So there’s not much the church can do other than confront said apples whenever they behave as bullies or overzealous freaks.

And atheists must understand that their reaction to hurt in the church is emotional, not logical. It has no bearing on the existence or nonexistence of miracles whatsoever. To think so is to make a false equivocation between feeling and reality.

Christ is Alive and Active in this World

The only way to discount supernatural involvement is to outright dismiss the supernatural as an option from the start even though the supernatural cannot be discounted logically.

As C. S. Lewis put it:

“No, of course we must agree with Hume that if there is absolutely ‘uniform experience’ against miracles, in other words, they have never happened, why then they never have. Unfortunately, we know the experience against them to be uniform only if we know that all the reports of them are false. And we know all the reports are false only if we know already that miracles have never occurred. In fact, we are arguing in a circle.”

Atheists who do so walk on unsubstantiated assumptions that the material is all that exists and refuse to acknowledge any evidence to the contrary, despite an abundance of it. Because they’ve either been hurt by the church and come despise it and Christ, haven’t had their desires fulfilled by God through prayer on demand, can’t understand how God doesn’t snap His finger and stop all evil in a split second, or desire total control, autonomy, and power, which is a delusion even in their own worldview. Most often they rebel against God for a mixed combination of these reasons.

Regardless of which ones or combo thereof, the reasoning is irrational, driven by emotion, not logic.

Atheists refuse to accept the supernatural because they are in rebellion againt their Creator.

Yet, miracles happen, and people witness them all time. In many cases, there are upwards of 10-30 witnesses or more. And many also have empirical evidence to back them up, like X-rays, CAT scans, and other medical tests that show before and after transformations without any material explanations.

Christ Jesus is alive and active in this world and will not be denied. One day, every knee will bow and every tongue confess Him as eternal Lord.

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Atheists would have you believe that religion is the result of lack of wealth and poor education, but that’s an outdated, debunked myth they refuse to let go of.

They go so far as to insist it's a fact, like this guy who showed up in my comment section just yesterday.

However, the claim that “only the poor and uneducated are religious” is rather a crude stereotype that doesn’t match the available data. A lie pushed to keep you doubting your faith and surrendering more and more control to secularism.

To be fair, no one is questioning that those with higher education are more likely to be atheist. The evidence shows a real cross-country pattern of secular education producing secular worldviews and some overall U.S. averages on belief in a nature-only cosmos derived from secular schooling. Which makes sense since Darwinian evolution gained a forced monopoly in public schools through cases like the Scopes’ Trial and Kitzmiller v. Dover.

But the assertion that religion stems from poverty and less education fails as a description of who is actually religious in the United States and abroad and ignores large, highly educated, high-income religious populations.

Statistics get more precise when you separate (1) country-level development, (2) affiliation vs. practice vs. belief, and (3) specific groups rather than “religious people” as a bloc, and paint a much different picture than religion as “the opiate of the masses.”

The truth is much more complex than atheists make it seem.

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What do you really see?

Ordinarily when investigating statistics, I prefer to look at the big stat sites like Barna myself. But in this case, since Grok is an efficient research tool, I chose to use it for a fast look at the numbers.

I told Grok to use a mix of liberal, conservative, and neutral sources in its research, to be objective, and to tell me what the data actually shows, not what answers it thought I might want to hear.

Here is what it cranked out (I’ve cited the sources it used at the end of this article for you to check out on your own if you wish):

Global: poorer countries are more religious

Pew and other large surveys consistently show that countries with lower GDP per capita, lower average education, and higher inequality tend to report higher religious commitment (daily prayer, religion “very important,” belief in God). Nearly every country where 70%+ of adults pray daily has per-capita GDP under $20,000. Wealthy countries are generally less religious—with the United States as a notable outlier (high wealth and relatively high prayer/religiosity).

Globally, Jews have the highest average years of schooling (~13), followed by Christians and the religiously unaffiliated (~9), then Buddhists, with Muslims and Hindus lower on average—largely because those populations are concentrated in lower-income countries. Unaffiliated people are not uniformly more educated than affiliated people inside the same country.

This is the kernel of truth in the old secularization argument: as societies become richer and more educated, average religiosity often falls. It does not follow that religious individuals inside a rich country are therefore poor or uneducated.

U.S. education: mixed, not “uneducated = religious”

Pew’s 2017 analysis of its own surveys found that, among all U.S. adults, college graduates were less likely than those with a high school education or less to say religion is “very important” (46% vs. 58%), to believe in God with absolute certainty, or to pray daily. College graduates were also more likely to identify as atheist or agnostic (11% vs. 4%). Weekly attendance rates were similar across education levels.

That overall pattern is driven heavily by the unaffiliated. Among Christians, college-educated people were as religious or more religious on Pew’s commitment index. Evangelical college graduates scored high on religiosity at 87%, similar to or higher than less-educated evangelicals. College-educated Christians were more likely to attend weekly than less-educated Christians in several traditions. The same pattern appeared for Mormons and historically Black Protestants. Jews showed the opposite: more education, lower traditional religiosity. Muslims showed little difference by education.

Recent Pew Religious Landscape Study (2023–24) education figures (bachelor’s or more):

• Hindus: 70%

• Jews: 65%

• Agnostics: 53%

• Atheists: 48%

• Mainline Protestants: 40%

• Unaffiliated overall: 37%

• U.S. adults: 35%

• Catholics: 35%

• Evangelicals: 29%

• Historically Black Protestants: 24%

Atheists and agnostics are more educated than the average American and than most Christian groups. The largest unaffiliated subgroup—“nothing in particular”—has lower attainment (29% bachelor’s), which pulls the “nones” average down. Explicit atheists/agnostics look different from that group.

Large Cooperative Election Study samples analyzed by political scientist Ryan Burge show a different behavioral pattern: people with graduate degrees are more likely to attend weekly than people with a high school diploma or less, across many survey waves. The modal current churchgoer is often described as college-educated, middle-income, married, with children—not the least educated. People who did not finish high school are among the most likely to be religiously unaffiliated.

So education correlates with lower affiliation and some belief measures in the aggregate, but not with lower practice among those who remain Christian, and not with atheists being the least educated group.

U.S. income: not “only the poor”

Income tracks education closely and shows the same group differences.

Pew 2014 data (household income $100k+): Jews 44%, Hindus 36%, Episcopalians 35%, atheists ~30%, agnostics ~29%, U.S. average 19%, Catholics 19%, Southern Baptists 16%, some historically Black denominations ~9%.

More recent Pew figures: Hindus and Jews still have the highest shares at $100k+ (roughly half or more). Atheists 48% and agnostics 43% in that bracket; Catholics and mainline Protestants around 30%; historically Black Protestants 14%. Evangelicals sit below mainline Protestants. “Nothing in particular” who still say religion matters tend to have lower incomes.

Religion is not concentrated at the bottom of the income distribution. Some of the highest-income groups in America are religious (Jews, Hindus, certain mainline Protestants). Some of the lowest-income Christian groups are also highly religious. Middle-class professionals are well represented in weekly attendance.

Why the stereotype persists

A 1993 Washington Post line described followers of the Religious Right as “largely poor, uneducated and easy to command.” It was widely criticized at the time as inaccurate and has been recycled as a cultural shorthand.

The data never supported “only.”

Even then, committed churchgoers included large shares of college-educated and white-collar people.

Composition effects matter: poorer countries and some lower-education U.S. subgroups have higher average religiosity, so a casual glance at global maps or overall U.S. “religion very important” numbers can look like the stereotype. Looking inside groups, at practice rather than just identity, or at Jews/Hindus/educated evangelicals, the picture changes.

On average, less-developed countries and, in the U.S., people with less education are somewhat more likely to report high personal religiosity and less likely to be explicit atheists. That is not the same as “only the poor and uneducated are religious.”

That was a huge mouthful, so let’s look at the key takeaways you MUST remember.

What can we glean from all this?

Based on the evidence, wealth status and level of education aren’t adequate to explain religiosity.

Highly educated, high-income religious people are common in the United States; highly educated atheists are also common. Both facts coincide in the same datasets.

And while poorer countries report higher religious affiliation, religious practitioners in those countries tend to be from both rich and poor alike, showing little if any correlation between wealth status and religious practice.

But even if wealth and education could determine the spread of religion (or lack thereof), that would say nothing about whether atheism is true. Instead, it would merely show that those with higher education are more likely to embrace atheism, which we already knew from the beginning. Due to the materialistic biases inherent in modern public education.

Atheism itself is a philosophical worldview put into practice by its adherents, as I’ve argued thoroughly in The Atheist Conversion Manual and out on the timeline. Making atheism itself a religion, despite atheists pretending it’s just a lack of belief in gods:

In fact, their detachment from the divine is the only real reason they consider themselves superior, even though such detachment is not proof of the truth or reliability of atheism.

Yet your kids are being indoctrinated into their nihilistic cult whenever you surrender them to the brainwashing arm of the secular state.

What can you do keep your kids from becoming minions of their cult?

The only logical answer: Homeschool

Despite what you may think, you are capable of teaching your own children at home, and you can do better than a public school teacher. Because your child is more than a number to you.

He or she is the whole world, your legacy.

The only way to give yourself full control over what your children ingest and digest in their minds is for you to be present. Via homeschool.

Not even private school, Christian or otherwise, is safe. Public school curriculums are used in all of them too. I know because I went to one as a child and had my mind pumped full of evolutionary theory in the science and history books and detached liberal skepticism, and no amount of warning from the teachers, “This is just what the world thinks,” made it better.

You can’t teach atheistic naturalism as real and God as a nice alternative and expect kids to come home with Christian values.

If you’re a Christian and want your kids to have your values, you have to be intimately involved in their education, and homeschool is the only option which makes that 100% possible. It’s your duty.

But that’s not the only reason you should choose homeschool.

Kids who are homeschooled in dedicated, structured home environments have solid academic and social outcomes that far outweigh public education. A friend of mine who used to be a public school teacher homeschools his son now and always tells people to homeschool because kids learn much better. His son is 6-years-old and reads at a 6th grade level already, and he’s no outlier.

Homeschool kids excel in reading, math, history…everything!…in dedicated, structured homes. All it takes is discipline and care from loving parents, like yourself.

“It’s too expensive.” No, it’s not.

There are plenty of reasonable options out there. One (and I get no promotional tradeoff from this) is Classical Conversations, run by my friend and CEO, . Robert is a former homeschool kid who saw the immense value in home education. He, like so many other homeschoolers, excelled and thrived because he wasn’t just a digit on a spreadsheet.

His company develops a homeschool curriculum that not only teaches kids the basics and the Bible but gets them involved in studying the classics of literature and ancient philosophy that used to be mandatory in our school systems before Marxists subverted Western institutions and turned public school into secular indoctrination camps. Classical Conversations is reasonably priced, and they work with you side by side to ensure that home education is not only possible but the best option out there.

You can find the time and resources if you really want to secure the future of your kids, or you can let the culture claim them and turn them into lifeless husks controlled by the State, detached from the Kingdom of God.

Up to you.

Sources Used:

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2017/04/26/in-america-does-more-education-equal-less-religion/

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/05/01/with-high-levels-of-prayer-u-s-is-an-outlier-among-wealthy-nations/

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2016/12/13/religion-and-education-around-the-world/

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/02/19/which-us-religious-groups-are-most-highly-educated/

Graphs about Religion

Religion Has Become a Luxury Good

I’m in absolutely no sense a biblical scholar. I’m nothing more than a lay preacher who was called by a local American Baptist congregation because I was willing to fill the pulpit each Sunday. I took about five courses in the Bible in undergraduate…

Read more

3 years ago · 102 likes · 60 comments · Ryan Burge

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/10/11/how-income-varies-among-u-s-religious-groups/

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/02/26/age-race-education-and-other-demographic-traits-of-us-religious-groups/

https://religionnews.com/2016/09/26/the-key-religious-factor-in-the-election/

Recommended Reading:

Robert Bortins & Alex Newman, Woke and Weaponized: How Karl Marx Won the Battle for American Education, and How We Can Win It Back

Frank Turek & Phoenix Hayes, The War on Reality: Recovering Truth in a World That Celebrates Lies

Chris M. Wright, The Atheist Conversion Manual: 17 Cases that Destroy Secular Religion, Prove God, and Show You the Way to Eternal Life

We love writing for you and for our Lord Jesus Christ. All to Him we owe. And you can help keep us in the good fight.

For just $0.26 a day, you can get additional bonuses:

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• Access to all future publications.

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You can tell the difference between mere sin and the demonic by how much death is worshipped.

On Saturday 9/12/2026, I already addressed how the Lindsay Clancy case itself and her supporters evidenced demonic influence, but today, we need to go deeper. Because the craziness is far from over.

Ever since the mistrial, the holdout juror, who was identified as the only black man on the panel, has been under unrelenting attack, and every other member, especially the women, seem confused about what evil is.

This line in particular is especially disturbing: “There’s just no evidence Lindsay Clancy was a bad mother” (paraphrase).

Uttered from the mouth of a older woman from the jury who’s been going around doing interview after interview after interview, denouncing the holdout juror with vicious ire and outright stating she herself was there to “pave the way” for women’s rights (you know, instead of objectively weighing the evidence and rendering an honest verdict).

From the beginning, there wasn’t even the sliver of neutrality because these activists wanted to “make a statement” for women everywhere.

The whole debacle fortuitously coincides with Canada’s own active systematic execution of citizens through its MAID euthanasia program, which has eliminated 16,499 Canadians and murdered a grandma who explicitly rejected medically assisted suicide. Both of the above (Clancy worship and mercy killings) initiated in the name of “compassion.”

Compassion for who, though? The criminal? Society? In what way does the extermination of the human race and the protection of criminals help society?

The feminists and eugenicists can never give an answer beyond “but, but, but…feelings.”

And now, they’re going out of their way to silence “the oppressors,” the threats to their worship of death.

If allowed, they’ll come after you too. Because they want to erase all opposition. And I’m going to break down their demonic dreams…

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Ruin His Name and His Everything Else

By now, if you’ve paid attention to the Clancy case to any extent (how could you not?), you’ve learned that the holdout juror’s name is Michael Desronvil.

While he tried to remain anonymous, the other jurors and Clancy supporters slandered and doxxed him to the point where he received death threats, and people were stalking him and his family. A couple days ago I read an article which stated he was moved to an undisclosed location for his protection, but whether or not that’s true, the pushback and threats he’s received are very real.

Leftist activists want him dead.

It turns out Desronvil is the one Black conservative Republican on the panel, and what he had to say about the actual proceedings in deliberation confirms everything we suspected. Only he and one other juror honestly examined the evidence. From day one, the rest wanted to acquit Clancy regardless of what was presented at trial.

And whenever he tried to get a word in edgewise, to get them to look at the evidence, they would silence, gaslight, and/or pressure him to join their side.

Life News shared this quote:

“As I tried to explain different possible theories during deliberation, I kept getting cut off as if I had doubts based on the evidence present.”

They didn’t care about the evidence. They didn’t care about Cora, Dawson, and Callan who were brutally strangled to death by their mother. They only cared about getting Clancy off the hook.

Despite what the other jurors have said of him, Desronvil, on the other hand, looked at the evidence and concluded that Clancy knew exactly what she was doing. Had no reasonable doubt whatsoever that she killed those precious kids with conscious premeditation. And he did everything he could to get the rest to be objective, but they refused because they wanted to get a legal precedent set across the board that if you’re a woman and depressed it’s okay to murder your children. They were so persistent in their cause that even the other juror who started off thinking Clancy was guilty caved to the mob.

But Desronvil refused to go along, and because of that, the leftists want his whole life erased. Every square inch of it.

Because all oppressors must die.

All Oppressors Must Die

We’ve seen no end to atheist/leftist violence in recent years. They’ve finally exposed it as part of the program.

Far from being a bug, it’s a feature.

Because almost all of them are Marxist socialists who want to re-enact demonic communism in America. And almost all of them are in the Democrat Party because that’s where the majority of deists, atheists, and progressives are (progressivism itself being a Marxist idea).

Here’s why that makes a special breeding ground for evil:

• God is either distant or absent

• If he is around, we can reinvent him in our image (he won’t care)

• All that matters is progressing (to where, no one knows)

• We must get to nowhere at all costs

• Anyone who stands in the way of progress or reinvention is our enemy

• All enemies must be destroyed through revolution

• Those who see this clearly have been endowed with secret knowledge and a duty to act

• Only they can create utopia on earth

Karl Marx and the socialists who preceded him in the French Revolution got all the above from Ancient Gnosticism, which is the cult of secret knowledge. It takes many faces.

In The Atheist Conversion Manual, I gave a brief history of Gnosticism so you could understand the threat we face and its demonic roots:

The perversion of Genesis mentioned is the elevation of the serpent as the good guy and derision of God as the bad guy. A perversion modern atheists especially enjoy.

And since atheists (especially the socialists) are the so-called “enlightened" and everyone else besides them is “stupid,” they think they get to direct society into the grand, victorious, technological future where death has lost its sting.

Ironically, atheist socialists, who adopted the Gnostic deception and think they have the secret knowledge to ensure utopia, ensured in the 20th century the deaths of 10 million+ lives, more than all other eras, wars, and empires combined in human history. A stat that always bears repeating because now the West is actively repeating their Marxist errors in real time.

From 3 Murdered Kids to 16,499 Murdered Canadians

None of the socialists ever think about Cora, Dawson, and Callan. They’re mere numbers on the spreadsheet of death. A hindrance to the freedom and sanity of their mother. Just like the 16,449 Canadians killed through their MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying) program in 2024. 5% of the deaths that occurred that year.

Stats shared by Dino Anthony | 𝐀𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐏𝐮𝐫𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐞 on X.

For perspective, the estimated population of Canada is 41,417,056. .05 of that is 2,070,853 (rounded up). It’s only one small step from a death percentage to a population percentage.

And we know, if socialists will do it to thousands, they can and will do it to millions.

In an atheist world where nothing ultimately matters, life itself becomes an oppressor. Cultural Marxists realized that in the latter half of the 20th century and knew they could leverage it to get people of all walks of life to go along once they redefined terms…killing without remorse as long as it was perceived as good. Mercy.

It started with the unfettered mass genocide of children in the womb (initiated by Margaret Sanger as early as the 1920s, an outspoken atheist eugenicist…who also wanted to see the disabled, terminally ill, and “unfit” exterminated because they were weak links in the evolutionary chain), and now it’s led to the complete disregard for human life in general (darn that slippery slope all those pesky Christians keep warning about).

“But Canadians only do it to those who are already terminally ill, and only if requested.”

And?

Hate to break it to you, but every single human on earth is terminally ill. We’re all going to die. What happens when those in power decide to redefine “terminal” to apply to every human on Earth? What then? By what standard will you say they’re wrong? Who gets to draw the line?

Also, they aren’t just doing MAID when requested. 83-year-old Brigitte Stegemann, a Christian grandmother in Ontario, was given the death shot even though explicitly stating, “I don’t want the death shot” because it went against her faith.

But the assisted living facility kept forcibly bringing up MAID and couching what they would do in deceptive language. Made it seem nice and fulfilling. Stegemann’s granddaughter said they phrased it like this: “We’re going to give you medicine, you’re going to feel at peace. And I just want you to know that you won’t have a bowel movement.”

The facility gave Stegemann botched cognitive assessments with no clear defined measures to determine if Stegemann gave correct answers to questions. They then made her granddaughter leave, claimed shortly after that Stegemann agreed to MAID, and, when asked to provide the forms Stegemann had allegedly signed, refused to provide them to her granddaughter.

Her granddaughter stated that on the day of the MAID procedure, Stegemann told her, “If you don’t stop crying, I’m not going to sleep tonight.” Stegemann had the expectation that she would be alive that evening.

One has to wonder how many other patients Canada has done this to.

When death is seen as an escape hatch, society itself becomes a target. That’s where we are now.

Canada’s MAID program should be called MAIM (Medically Assisted Intentional Murder) since it’s a product of the ongoing demonic obsession with death. But that name would defeat the purpose because demons don’t want us figuring out their plans.

Although, we already know their plans since the Bible exposed it from the very first pages. Self-worship…

Give Yourself a Little Ego Trip

The recurring theme in the Clancy case and in Canadian euthanasia is the fulfillment of and protection of self-desire. And the worst evils in history have all been conducted in the name of self, egged on by atheistic nihilism.

If death really is the end and there’s nothing after, nothing higher, then you’re unaccountable and can do whatever you want.

Frank Turek and Phoenix Hayes summarize the above well in their new book The War on Reality when discussing the shooting of Annunciation Catholic Church and School by “transgender” Robert (Robin) Westman on 8/27/2025. Westman thought himself a woman and exposed serious mental problems in his journal, as well has hearing voices and desiring to burn down the world, which he thought would bring him fulfillment, belonging, safety, and remembrance (recall the voice Clancy heard that told her “kill the kids and you will be safe”).

On page 289, Turek and Hayes rightly say this:

Like with Eve in the garden, one lie from the serpent led to another so as to elevate the self until death was unleashed. “Did God really say…?” turned into an endless cycle of reasoning the bad into good, and then…bam!…annihilation.

You’d think we’d learn our lesson, but we haven’t. The same demonic voices still come to us relentlessly offering the precious (cue that gargly Gollum voice your head). Make the bitter look sweet, repackage the rotten in shiny colors, spew the pros and hide the cons. You just need a psychiatrist, that new experimental drug, lots of alcohol, a little adultery here and a little porn there, to mutilate your body to fit your ever-changing feelings, a doctor to help you go to sleep and never wake up…

“Just don’t think about it. Go with the program. Follow your heart.”

Never mind that

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? 10 ‘I the LORD search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.’” (Jeremiah 17:9-10)

The heart is THE WORST guide because evil strikes through it. In every human. Without fail. Sin corrupts us from the deepest parts of our being.

And when you follow it, you don’t just end up exiting this life, but losing eternity.

Hence Christ’s ample warning: “So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. 27 What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops. 28 And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:26-28).

Either Christ is King or Death is King

Christ already conquered sin and death via the cross and resurrection, and as long as we continue to abandon Christ and let the communists have free rein, nothing will change. Humanity will annihilate itself, laughing all the way, because we attempt to accomplish on our own what is impossible for us: new and permanent life.

You know it’s true. You knew before I even told you.

When the most vulnerable among us are treated like trash and society is made to live under the delusion that there is no God, everything becomes permissible. Everything under the sun. Since we can’t engineer eternity.

In an atheist world, where pitiless indifference reigns supreme and everything is about self-preservation (survival), with the illusion that everyone eventually just dies and that’s it (poof! gone!), the strong inevitably prey on the weak and want the weak dead and gone. Such is the program. And anyone who stands in the way, the Desronvils and the Christian granddaughters of the world, become obstacles to deathward progress.

You can deny that reality all you want, but you can’t escape bumping into its ugly face.

The alternative is the Christian way. Care for the poor, the orphan, the widow, and the most vulnerable. The weak. Through sacrificial, loving servanthood. Which is the duty of every church and the only method that actually values life and breeds true civilization.

Such necessitates punishing the criminals, protecting life, and seeing humans as more than numbers on a spreadsheet.

We don’t exist as followers of Christ to affirm the evils of the world, but to instead expose the darkness and live out the light of the King.

So where are you casting your lots? With Christ or damnation?

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Lindsay Clancy faced a demon and lost, then society followed.

The more I read about the case, the more I’m convinced it was no mere epic of a drugs, a failed medical system, and neglect, but something far more sinister.

The prevailing theory adored by Clancy defenders, inside and outside of court, is that she experienced a psychotic episode induced by postpartem depression and could not control herself. She wanted to die and wanted to take her children with her because she was detached from reality and out of control.

But the prosecution rightfully argued she was in full control and planned out the events carefully. She sent her husband out of the house to a place far enough away that she had the precise amount of time it would take to murder Cora, Dawson, and Callan and attempt to take her own life before he returned, even with the slow death of asphyxiation. Then she took each one to the basement, methodically executed them one by one, and afterward, slit her wrists and jumped from a second story window.

The facts are clear: Yes, she was depressed and on psychiatric medications, but she was fully in control. Retained agency the whole time and premeditated the murders. Guilty.

So why all the obsession over her and not over the 3 precious lives she removed from this earth?

Because this whole case goes beyond human sin, mental illness, Big Pharma, or simple neglect. It links to mass deceptions we all witness time and again. 9/11, Covid, Charlie Kirk…you name it. Demons are dancing on graves…

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“Kill Your Kids So They’ll be Safe”

Patrick Clancy testified that Lindsay had been in a slow decline since the birth of Callan. He did all he could to help, including hiring a nanny 3 days a week to assist at home with the children and household chores, and to help Lindsay prepare to return to work as a labor and delivery nurse.

Going into that horrid day, she was already weak, drained, drugged, and still struggling with the postpartum issues.

The planning evidence shows she had likely been considering the murders for some time. She just hadn’t gone through with them. Which tells me she resisted or was waiting for the opportune moment.

Either way, Lindsay admitted that on the day, after sending her husband out to get takeout and pick up a prescription, she heard a male voice say repeatedly, “This is your last chance. You have to kill your kids so you can kill yourself.”

She says the voice was disembodied and insisted that if she didn’t carry out her plans, she and her children would not be “safe.”

The Catholic priest who interviewed her did not conclude demonic influence, but I think that was poor judgment because all the signs I’m seeing point to spiritual oppression.

To be clear, she wasn’t possessed and still had agency, so she is guilty of the murders (in the eyes of God if not of men).

But the signs of demonic oppression are all there. And they ominously resemble Screwtape...

Wormwood’s Dilemma

For those who may not have read The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis has a senior demon Screwtape direct a lesser demon Wormwood on how keep a human soul away from Christ (dubbed the Enemy). And letters 1, 7, 8, 18-19, 22, 26, 28 all factor into the Clancy case.

L1: Keep the patient inside the fog of his or her own mind. He or she must not experience pressure as anything other than the self. Clancy’s deteriorating state.

L7: Practice a policy of “concealment.” Should a demon act outright, you get terrorism. Hide, and you get materialism. Mix of both at the right times will keep humans trapped in their own minds, skeptical of the supernatural while suffering. Clancy’s deteriorated state combined with the direct voice at the exact moment of her crime.

L8: Humans live in peaks and troughs. Demons must use the troughs to keep humans in despair and thinking that the Enemy (God) is far away and does not care. Most certainly describes Clancy’s state.

L18-19: Corrupt natural affections for spouse and children so that “love” becomes possessive, anxious, and demands control of the beloved’s fate, i.e. “kill your children so they will be safe.”

L22: Plague the human subject with ugly and annoying noise. Like a “kill” command on endless loop in the mind.

L26: Convince the human that he or she is being “unselfish.” Frame a horrific act as sacrifice. “You’re saving the children, not harming them.”

L28: Double down on safety at all costs. Humans will do anything to feel safe and, in safety, more easily forget the Enemy. You can already see where this one is going: “If you do not do this, neither you nor the children will be safe.”

You’re thinking we shouldn’t base everything about demons on a novel, and I agree. We’ll get to Scripture in a moment.

But Lewis did his theological due diligence. He wasn’t just making up Screwtape from pure, disconnected imagination. Every page and letter is a warning based on actual study of demonic movement in the world from a Christian perspective.

And you can’t deny how well the glove fits over Clancy.

Then there’s the issue of the legion of women gleefully riding to her defense...

Wine Moms or Witches?

Despite atheists wanting to claim dominance of our culture, in the U.S. astrology, tarot, affirmations, manifestations, occultism remain a formidable force. Because humanity will always worship something.

In fact, 90% of U.S, adults are syncretistic, as in they mix together religious beliefs. Including atheists.

And women in particular fall prey the most to both syncretism and the occult.

• 35% (at least) engage in astrology; for women ages 18-49, that’s 43%

• Highest belief among those with “nothing in particular” as their religious label (36%)

• Women scored higher on “spiritual and mental forces” (psychic contact, future-telling, soul travel).

• Youth across the board (boys and girls ages 13-25) 51% have used tarot card or practiced fortune-telling in some sense.

• The fortune-telling business itself racked up $2.5 billion in 2024 with 105,000 jobs across the U.S.

• Another important stat to note is LGBTQ adults. 54% consult astrology and 33% use tarot.

Women and the LGBTQ are the most involved in occult practices. All these stats come from recent Pew, Gallop, and Barna surveys.

Let’s also not forget that many women in America have murdered their own children through abortion whether involved in the occult or not, desensitizing us to the mass execution of the innocent.

Spiritualism is alive and well, people are messing around with forces they don’t understand, slaughter becomes second nature, mass confusion overtakes the land, and Satan laughs as massive crowds gather to defend a murderer.

It’s easy to limit the problem to TikTok because it has encouraged such occultism at scale of late, but the root goes much deeper.

Footage of the crowds of women who came to support Lindsay Clancy at the courthouse were mostly postmodern Boomer and millennial feminists. And as we learned over just the past couple days, the jury itself had 7 such women who admitted on video to going out of their way to push a “not guilty” verdict despite the trial evidence and would have succeeded had it not been for one black man who held out because he examined the evidence and saw Clancy as guilty. A man they are now doxing and reviling because he didn’t fall in line.

Several of the women from the panel, all older feminists, scoffed at him for “not being able to get past the fact that Clancy viciously murdered her three children.” As if he was the problem and that idea shouldn’t ever be entertained.

The screeching of the banshees is reminiscent to “don’t hate Muslim” criers after 9/11 and the rampant celebration by leftists after Charlie Kirk’s murder. You’re just “Islamophobic,” “homophobic,” transphobic,” “anyphobic” they blare, all while Western values and westerners are wiped from existence in the name of “equity and inclusion.” Which is to say Christian values.

Because the only faith system you’re not allowed to tolerate is Christianity and anything or anyone associated with Christianity.

Straight from the demonic playbook...

Principalities and Powers

Long ago, God warned us against the occult in Holy Scripture. Called it an abomination.

Deuteronomy 18:10-12: “10 There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer 11 or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, 12 for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD.”

Solomon also warned us in Proverbs 6 God hates these 7 vile evils:

And Paul:

• 1 Corinthians 6:9-10: “9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”

• Galatians 5:19-21: “19 Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21 envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

• Ephesians 5:3-6: “3 But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. 4 Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. 5 For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. 6 Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.”

• 1 Timothy 1:8-11: “8 Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, 9 understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, 10 the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, 11 in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.”

These abominations are the breeding ground for the demonic. Satan feasts upon their sight, yet we shut our eyes to all of it. Welcome every single abomination with open arms. And then wonder why Western nations suffer.

You engage in these sins, comfortably rebranded as “taboos,” thinking they’re just harmless actions. No harm, no foul. Live and let live. And the next thing you know you’re cutting yourself, screeching at the top of your lungs, a threat to society, like the Gerasene demoniac, living among the tombs, detached from reality, unable to be chained, comfortable with death and despising life:

Mark 5:1-20: “They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. 2 And when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. 3 He lived among the tombs. And no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, 4 for he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him. 5 Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones. 6 And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him. 7 And crying out with a loud voice, he said, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.” 8 For he was saying to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” 9 And Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” 10 And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. 11 Now a great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, 12 and they begged him, saying, “Send us to the pigs; let us enter them.” 13 So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the pigs; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the sea.”

Women in particular are more susceptible to deception, not because they are less intelligent but because of their heightened sense of emotion and innate design to nurture. Why do you think Satan went after Eve instead of Adam? Because he knew he could get her to imagine and lust after a world where God doesn’t exist and she could be the sole empowered ruler of the cosmos. To idolize herself and covet. Without questioning the risks.

Once detached from reality, she would be capable of and do the unthinkable. Entertain even the most egregious lie. Until dragged herself and everything she loved into the horrors of sin and death.

And the same M.O. can be seen everywhere around the U.S., not just with Clancy…

9/11, Covid, and Charlie Kirk

Demons dance on graves. It’s fortuitous that the whole Lindsay Clancy debacle is still happening in the same week as we remember 9/11 and the murder of Charlie Kirk because the mass deceptions of our age are all exposed in equal measure.

• “Mutilate your body to change your gender”

• “Kill your kids so you will be safe”

• “It was all the Jews. They’re evil”

I tag on Covid as an added bonus: “Stay locked up. Fear your fellow man. Wear your mask. Don’t go to church. Only use the drugs we, the State, tell you to. Be a good prisoner.”

All these are claims detached from reality with no evidence and pure speculation.

The idea that the Jews are the ultimate bogeyman flared up after Charlie Kirk was murdered because of Candace Owens. And her minions continue to cling to her words like flies despite her being proven a fraud.

Tyler Robinson murdered Charlie Kirk, without doubt, and did so because he was a deceived supporter of transgenderism. Had a transgender roommate he was in an intimate relationship with, participated in Discord servers where mutilating the body to make it match feelings (aka “gender affirming care”) was discussed alongside destroying “transphobes” (Charlie in particular), planned out the assassination in detail, was caught on camera fleeing the site of the crime (identified from family members who recognized him in a split second), confessed multiple times to doing the crime of his own volition, and his prints were all over the murder weapon. Everything listed here was presented at the trial hearing.

There is also the fact that leftists, most of them women and/or “transgenders,” leapt for joy and celebrated viciously just like Lindsay Clancy’s supporters. Only worse, because they made shrines and images, imitated the assassination over and over again, and partied with such glee Satan himself blushed.

But oh, it was the Jews. They did it. Despite not a shred of evidence, it was more certainly them.

We see the same deception play out with 9/11. Whenever it comes time to remember what the Muslim terrorists did to this country, the anti-Jew mobs come out of the woodworks screeching, “It was Mossad!”

Never mind that Al Qaeda openly confessed when not in U.S. custody, from their own homeland, that they committed the terrorism.

Here are several verified confessions from chief Al Qaeda voices. Someone shared them on X, and I verified that they are real video and soundbite recording when these Al Qaeda members we outside of U.S custody:

Investigators also collected multiple verified lines of evidence alongside these confessions showing Al Qaeda to be the assassins: visas, flight schools, bank wires, phone/code contacts, the Hamburg apartment (where operations were coordinated), Mohammed Atta verified as tactical lead.

There were intelligence failures on the part of the U.S., like multiple failures to get the hijackers on watchlists when they were flagged as suspicious multiple months prior to 9/11, but no tangible evidence whatsoever of Mossad’s involvement.

But because something on video when the towers were attacked didn’t look right and a couple anti-Jew conspiracists joked about how “Hey, wouldn’t it be interesting if Mossad was involved,” suddenly you can’t trust the actual evidence. Totally illogical, and also why New York now has a Muslim socialist mayor who celebrates Islam all the time and laughed while at the 9/11 memorial while the names of victims were read off as their loved ones wept. And why unvetted Muslim immigrant men of fighting age have invaded our country, tried to invoke Sharia law, raped our women, and openly mocked, derided, and threatened far worse on these United States.

As for Covid, you can’t get a more blatant example of a socialist globalist control experiment than that.

Miracle drugs like Ivermectin, which won a Nobel Prize because of how well it cures all sorts of diseases, became anathema, and “the experts” lambasted anyone who dare defend it. Churches were labeled nonessential, while liquor stores, nightclubs, and drag queen story hours got labeled essential and were allowed to stay open. Again, anyone who resisted, lambasted. You had to stand six feet apart at all times, where your mask like a good slave, see your loved ones through paned glass, and pretend it was all normal, despite the fact that it violated just about ever constitutional right imaginable.

All in the name of “safety.”

See where this is going?

Demons want you to believe the unverified, do the unthinkable, ignore the evidence of your eyes and ears, comply, comply, comply, give into the absurd, and don’t ask question. Because when you’re detached from reality, you’re blind to your own evil nature, to the real enemies (Islam, socialism, demonic influence), and capable of setting the whole world ablaze.

What are you to do?

Submit to the Eternal King

Jesus Christ is the only way past sin, death, and the demonic. The Truth of all reality. And we got where we are now because the world hates him and those who follow him, yet instead of standing strong upon him as our firm foundation and refusing to bend, we let them worship sin and death. Elevate the themselves as gods. Even joined in the revelry.

“Compassion.” “Empathy.” “Live and let live.”

Except Jesus isn’t inclusive or tolerant of evil. Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father but by him. And anyone who refuses him will be judged.

The ultimate exclusive claim of all time.

The principalities and powers, the gods (demons) of our age, know Christ and his devoted children are the only ones who can stop them, so they’ve gotten us addicted to comfort, to oneness with the debaucheries of the unrighteous. And until we break through the malaise, destroy all our idols and high places, nothing will change. Period.

Lindsay Clancy’s evil merely exposed the deception. You have to act.

As Paul said in Ephesians 6:10-18:

“10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. 11 Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. 12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. 13 Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. 14 Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, 15 and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. 16 In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; 17 and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, 18 praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.”

Paul gives these commands after first detailing the importance of the Christian family, one man and one woman, united together in mutual submission to Christ, who have children and raise them into a bold new generation of faithful warriors.

That IS the battle plan. Restore what God has joined, even if in imperfect union, focused on faithfully living out the biblical values of the cross in modern life at the foundational level. Selfless, sacrificial servanthood. In the nuclear family.

Two made one flesh, united in Spirit with the King of kings and Lord of lords, is a force no darkness can overcome. The father of lies, Satan himself, may come to steal, kill, and destroy, but he can in no way defeat those who love Christ, love truth, love each other, and live out their love with courage, refusing to bow to whatever is popular in their age.

Kill the sins of your day, kill the occult, or you yourself will be see death.

You’re in a cosmic battle, whether you like it or not, and the prize is your soul.

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Writing a book is one of the most rewarding acts you can do for yourself and others as a Christian. It shows people you’re the authority, you have a case, you can solve their problems, and you have what it takes.

Mine, The Atheist Conversion Manual, just became a #1 New Release in Religious Studies - Philosophy.

Doors’ll open fast. You’re wasting opportunities that will blow your mind.

Instead of writing that book you know needs to be out there, you sit on your sofa munching Cheetos, watching the next episode of House of Dragons.

What if I was to tell you you can write a book super quick and simple on your own? You’re only kidding yourself that you can’t.

Well, that’s exactly what I’m about to do.

I wrote my book, it released in July, and I was astonished at how easy it was to plan it, write it, get it together, get support for it, and click publish.

Here are 7 life-changing lessons I learned from writing my first book that will help you, Christian, write yours (don’t skip a single one):

1. Research like crazy, then mind-dump everything

Sounds cliché, but it works.

Before writing the book, spend several days consuming everything connected to the subject. Read books, watch interviews, revisit old notes, study opposing arguments, and reflect on your own experiences. Then sit down and mind-dump everything you know without worrying about structure or polish.

You’re not out to write the book yet. The mind dump is your time to discover how much material you already have and find the gaps.

I wake up each morning at 4:30 and do this exact process in silence for an hour straight. No phones. No tablets. No tabs. No distractions.

Highly recommend you get yourself an electronic typewriter of some kind, like Astrohaus’s Freewrite (links to your email), something only for writing and nothing else. Or get a voice-to-text app, like Wispr Flow, and talk out your book on your morning walk.

2. Decide exactly who the book is for

This step should come before or right after step 1.

A book becomes much easier to write when you can picture one specific person reading it. In my case, I chose my two-year-old son grown up. But it can be anyone of your choosing. Someone personal to you, someone you love and want to help, is best because that’ll raise the stakes.

• What problem are they facing?

• What do they currently misunderstand?

• What should they know, believe, or be able to do when they finish?

You want to teach a priceless lesson(s) that not only helps them, but helps you. If the problem you solve for them is one you’ve wrestled with or are wrestling with, you know it’s a multi-human problem or even universal, so you’ll reach more readers.

3. Turn your existing material into an outline

“I have to write an outline?”

Yes, you do. No exceptions, unless you repurpose articles you’ve written and they already form a coherent (or close to coherent) outline.

Why?

Because you need to know where you’re going.

Gather old articles, social posts, journals, presentations, notes, emails, podcast appearances, and conversations. Sort them into categories and ask which ideas belong together and relate best to what you intend to write.

I did so with articles, Substack notes, and X posts when creating The Atheist Conversion Manual. Only one chapter was brand new, and even it came from ideas I’d already discussed on X and Substack.

As the late Scott Adams says in his Reframe Your Brain, it’s easier to fix something that already exists than make up something from scratch.

So don’t make the process harder on yourself.

4. Protect 1 hour of power writing every morning

I’ve already mentioned this golden rule above, but it needs extra attention.

Grab a cup of coffee, sit at the keyboard, give yourself 30 minutes-1 hour of uninterrupted writing. No social media, no research rabbit holes, no editing every paragraph as you go, and no bathroom breaks (just kidding, you do those). Mind-dump the chapter while the ideas are fresh.

A professor I had in seminary called this “butt in chair, hands on keyboard” or BIC-HOK. If you’re using a pen, just change it to BIC-HOP. It works the same.

Your goal is to fall into what hypnotists call a trance, but what is really zoning out. Tap into the unstoppable power of your subconscious and conscious minds intertwined. This is what comprises your creative imagination and lets you spew words onto the page.

Afterward, spend five minutes fixing only the most obvious problems. Big edits will come later.

Don’t turn this writing session into a three-hour battle with one sentence.

5. Finish the ugly first draft

The first draft is going to look like a monster from the pit of hell. Sad, but true.

Nevertheless, it needs to exist. You can’t edit a blank page.

But that’s not your biggest problem with major editing. Editing is where you must move slow, exercise tremendous patience, because you’re gonna whip that demon into an angel from heaven. Your challenge will be to properly utilize time.

A busy life can get in the way, but there are opportunities throughout the day. You may have to forego downtime, and that’s okay. Your phone, TV shows, and video games can wait.

Set a deadline, and do everything you can to keep it. But don’t beat yourself up if you don’t meet it.

I had several fake deadlines I missed with The Atheist Conversion Manual, and instead of freezing up, I saw the missed deadlines as mile markers for the marathon. Sprint and you could get a face full of pebbles and dirt.

Quality comes first. Never sacrifice the quality of the book to say you finished on time. Run the race marked out for you.

6. Recruit honest readers and revise

Raw and honest feedback is like sweet honey. True friends will say what you need, not what you want.

• Which chapter felt weakest?

• Where did you become confused?

• What argument was unconvincing?

• Where did the book become repetitive?

• What did you still want to know afterward?

If all you’re getting is “great job, bro,” you’re in the wrong crowd and will get nowhere. You need someone in your corner who’s there to challenge you hard.

7. Package, publish, and profit

Your final product has to look nice and appeal to potential readers. Images, title, and subtitle put in more work than you realize.

For the image(s), you want to create something memorable that relates to your topic and sears into the brain of anyone who sees it. In my case, I did a gold cross burning up the atheist symbol. No one comes across that image and wonders, “What’s this about?”

I’ve found it best to follow best-selling ghostwriter Joshua Lisec’s advice for titles. In a thread he did a while back on X, he said the title is supposed to create curiosity and make potential customers do these 6 things:

1. Stop scrolling search results

2. Click your book title

3. Say to themselves “wow, this looks kind of cool”

4. Read the book description

5. Read the free sample

6. Buy the book

He recommends you start with the subtitle because it’s what describes the specific promises you will deliver to your readers. There are three promises your readers must understand with clarity: (1) generic functional promise (what they’ll get in general), (2) specific functional promise (what they’ll get specifically), and (3) specific emotional promise (how good they’ll feel with what they get).

My subtitle is “17 Cases that Destroy Secular Religion (general functional promise), Prove God (specific functional promise), and Show You the Way to Eternal Life (specific emotional, or spiritual, promise).”

Kinda sounds like a manual, right?

Well, that’s where “The Atheist Conversion Manual” as the title comes from. The promises in the subtitle. It leaves no doubt what the book is about and promises to solve a contentious public battle in modern society (creating curiosity).

Last, but most certainly not least, you need to gather a launch team and formal praise for your book.

Trusted friends who did your reviews (see lesson 6) are best for formal praise. I put around 8 in the front of The Atheist Conversion Manual to serve as social proof. Big names make big social proof, so if you’ve got friends who are dominating the internet, invite them onboard, give them a complete PDF copy of your book, start a group chat, provide the launch date, and have them storm Amazon with reviews the first two weeks after launch day.

BONUS: Have fun

In all you do, look for ways to make it fun. If writing isn’t fun, you’re doing it wrong.

Sorry, but it’s true.

When you write, you’re on an adventure, and adventures can be scary. But that’s what turns them into fun journeys.

You never know what you’ll encounter. If you’re focused on the danger and the risks instead of the untold bounties of knowledge and solutions out there to be staked, you’ll stay a debilitated empty husk forever.

I hate to break it to you, but eventually...all those dangers and risks will devour your little Shire...if you do nothing.

God exists, you can know him, and he made you to accomplish extraordinary feats...

The Kindle edition of my new book The Atheist Conversion Manual is on sale for Labor Day Weekend until 9/8/2026, and I wrote it for you.

In it, I explain the first two in the list: (1) why God is real and (2) who he is. I present the case that brought me to belief in Christ, wrapped in my story, presented in clear language, to take you on a journey through convincing evidence for the existence of God Most High and why he matters for you.

The case it contains convinced me and has convinced others. Here’s what early readers are saying:

• “The Atheist Conversion Manual is a no-nonsense approach to defending truth. It presents a compelling case for Christianity using the classical apologetics method in a way that is practical, engaging, and easy to understand.”

• “When I need material for the purpose of solving or addressing any kind of problem, I value and respect most an author who has had to actually do it. This book and its author, fit that exactly.”

• “Chris writes apologetics the way it should be written: plain language, real stakes, and a testimony that earns the argument.”

Many apologetics books these days read like academic monologues with boring, dense, confusing verbiage. You’d rather slam your head against the wall than turn another page.

My manual fixes that problem without corrupting the case for Christ. It will change your life.

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The Atheist Conversion Manual

Christian friends of mine in a chat recently voiced their concerns about charging for their writing on Substack, and I was taken aback by how many hesitate.

Almost every response was “I don’t want to paywall the Gospel” or “I don’t feel comfortable charging for Jesus” or “I want to keep everything accessible for readers” or “Jesus wouldn’t want me to charge money.”

If this is you, Christian, you’re thinking about it all wrong.

You’ve been given a gift, a talent. You’re commanded by Christ to multiply your talents, and that goes beyond mere skills.

The Greek word Jesus uses in the Parable of the Talents also means “money.”

Your skills and your bills matter. God wants you to invest in them and grow them. To increase them in your life same as he wants you to get married, be fruitful, and multiply. It’s all intertwined.

Below, I give you 5 reasons why charging money for your content is a most essential part of any ministry.

1. You Can’t Multitask Forever

The modern world sold you the fantasy that you have to work hard on a billion different tasks all the time to be productive. They lied.

Pick the priority that’s guaranteed to move the needle and shut out everything else until its done. You’ll be astonished how much you can accomplish.

But if you’re poor, you can’t choose your priorities. They get chosen for you.

You’re trapped in the cycle of survival.

Therefore, the poor man can’t direct his focus where it needs to go and can’t build a lasting legacy.

Monetary wealth is a tool that gives you freedom and time to become better, create better, build better, and help change others lives. To direct your focus beyond mere survival to great and greater charity.

When you refuse to sell, you refuse the tool of money, and that’s beyond foolish.

You’re also already selling when you write...

2. You Sell Everyday Whether You Believe It or Not

Creating and publishing articles and notes is a form of social persuasion. You’re making arguments, supplying evidence, applying lessons, giving calls to action.

Every day of every week.

So why do you draw the line at asking for money?

Why?

If God convicts you not to ask for money after you’ve prayed hard and consulted him about your hesitancy, that’s one thing.

But if he gives you no clear conviction not to sell and ask for money, then you’re doing a disservice to yourself, your ministry, your readers, and your God by not trying your hardest to earn wealth and freedom through your publication.

Mistaking cowardice for compassion. Simple as that.

Because if you really cared about your audience and were offering them solutions that would change their lives for the better, solve tangible problems they have in life and in faith, you would want to earn as much as you can to give yourself the capacity to solve even bigger problems and be even more generous.

Money used right is the gateway to unlimited giving...

3. You Can’t Give What You Don’t Have

If you don’t take care of yourself, you won’t have the resources, energy, and availability to impact others. Not even your own family.

It’s not selfish to tend to the body, land, family, and resources God has given you.

You need food, shelter, community, health, sanity...all of which disappear in a flash when you’re poor and struggling for survival.

Anyone who has ever been poor can tell you. Or you can just turn on the news and learn about the lost souls out there on the streets single, desperate, high on drugs, plastered by alcohol, unable to think, decide, act in any beneficial way because they’ve failed to earn and be wise with money. Many are also purposeless because they don’t have God and give up on higher meaning.

But you haven’t. You’re here writing and have the highest meaning of all: To follow Christ and spread his truth far and wide.

He’s your mission, and he provides for his own.

Why reject a possible avenue for his provision to help you succeed in the mission to which he has called you?

If you don’t use the tool of money to advance his mission, the devil will use it to advance his own...

4. Evildoers Will Use Money If You Don’t

Satan’s already using money to advance his own causes in the world, and when Christians refuse to gain wealth and power to fight back, countries and souls are lost forever.

Make no mistake. God will not be pleasant toward your lukewarm, spinless, sideline Christianity in the last days.

He will SPIT YOU OUT OF HIS MOUTH!

Because you sat by and refused to get in the good fight in every way that you possibly could.

“But this world is not our home, and Satan won’t be crushed until Jesus returns.”

Stop it. Just stop.

So get over yourself.

You’re commanded to multiply your talents and build his kingdom on earth...

5. You’re Commanded to Gain and Use Wealth

If for no other reason, gain and use wealth because your Lord commands you to.

That should be enough for you, Christian.

Read the full Parable of the Talents:

¹⁴ “For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. ¹⁵ To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. ¹⁶ He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. ¹⁷ So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. ¹⁸ But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master’s money. ¹⁹ Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. ²⁰ And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here, I have made five talents more.’ ²¹ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ ²² And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here, I have made two talents more.’ ²³ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ ²⁴ He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, ²⁵ so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’ ²⁶ But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? ²⁷ Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. ²⁸ So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. ²⁹ For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. ³⁰ And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’”

The point of the parable can’t be any clearer: If you refuse to multiply the talents God gives you, you’re just like someone who should be cast into hell for all eternity. That’s how seriously Christ takes your lack of obedience.

“But I don’t want to put a paywall on the Gospel.”

You can’t. The Gospel is free and spreads everywhere because of Christ. What he accomplished with the cross and his resurrection cannot be defeated or hindered in any way.

It can be dismissed. The world can even try to kill the messengers, but they can’t stop the song.

Putting a paywall on some of your writings, offering a course for a sum, or hosting a conference and selling tickets won’t stop the gospel at all. In fact, it will most likely attract the right people. Hungry souls desperate for solutions. Ones willing to listen.

Freeloaders, despite what you may think, are not usually desperate poor people who can’t afford your offers. Some might be, but many are just cheap and disingenuous.

It’s true.

They’re the least likely to take you seriously and see any value you in your words.

But someone who buys what you have to sell gives you their stamp of approval. Sees you as a reliable authority and will become a true fan if you let them. Such buyers become your best circle of support and lead to growth. New problems, better solutions, lifetime friends. Giving you not just wealth and resources but a reliable community to assist you, build you up, give you ideas, and critique you so you become a better servant of Christ and humanity.

You’re not paywalling the Gospel.

You’re filtering out the ears that won’t hear you and shaking the dust from your feet, while at the same time providing yourself with more time and freedom to keep on fulfilling the mission God has assigned you.

What About the Rich Young Ruler?

The most cited passage Christians cite to show they should give away everything for free is the story of the rich young ruler.

And it means nothing of the sort. Here’s what really goes down:

¹⁶ And behold, a man came up to him, saying, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” ¹⁷ And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments.” ¹⁸ He said to him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, ¹⁹ Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” ²⁰ The young man said to him, “All these I have kept. What do I still lack?” ²¹ Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” ²² When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

²³ And Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. ²⁴ Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” ²⁵ When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished, saying, “Who then can be saved?” ²⁶ But Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

As you can see, the ruler comes to Jesus asking what he must do to attain eternal life, and Jesus tells him love the Lord God and abide his commandments, sell everything he has, and follow Jesus. Nothing is more important than following the Savior.

A message the ruler sorely needed to hear because he WORSHIPPED MONEY. We know this because the passage then tells us he went away in sorrow since he had great possessions.

He was GREEDY, and money was his IDOL.

The ruler tried to worship both God and Mammon, violating Jesus’s own words in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). You cannot worship two masters, God and money, for one will own you. Either God or your worldly obsessions.

It all goes back to the delusion of autonomy I talk about in The Atheist Conversion Manual: The only autonomy you have is over your choices, whom you will serve. You must choose your master, or one will be chosen for you because of your propensity to worship. We were made to worship God Most High, Chris Jesus, but in our cursed state of sin, we go after other gods instead and erect images to them. The gods and their images become our idols, some we refuse to acknowledge.

Such was the case for the ruler and anyone else who adores money itself. A corruption of the heart. One Jesus sees right through.

Earning money is expected. Worshipping it is rejected.

That’s the consistent view of Christ Jesus throughout the gospels.

Did some followers of Christ choose to give everything up for his sake? Most certainly. But none of them were forced or coerced to give up their wealth and belongings, except the young ruler. Because Jesus knew the condition of his heart.

He chose to reject the Savior instead of this world.

“Where you treasure is, there will your heart be also” becomes manifested through his story.

Conclusion: Earn Your Keep, Flee from Greed

Aside from the rich young ruler, other examples of Christ followers staying wealthy and using their wealth generously to support the cause of Christ can be cited.

• Zaccheus

• Nichodemus

• Simon of Antioch

• James and John (their father a wealthy fisherman)

So on and so forth, everywhere.

For every rich young ruler and every greedy Judas, there are three or four honest disciples who see money as a tool to help and serve Christ, his flock, and the world, and nowhere in Scripture are those figures condemned for their wealth. Ever.

Jesus warns that it will be hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven, yes. But not that they can’t.

They have it harder because the rich have a greater responsibility to be generous and advance the kingdom with their means. As Uncle Ben says to Peter Parker, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

The rich Christian must use his wealth for the sake of the Gospel. And that isn’t a bad thing. It’s admirable. Desirable, even. Since the whole point of the Gospel is that Christ lay down his own life to save us from sin and death and commands us to lay down our own lives in return. To sacrifice in emulation of the ultimate sacrifice.

Our lives are not our own.

So activate those paid subscriptions. Sell those offers. Help people. It’s your duty.

Just never get caught up in the money itself because it’s a mere means to the end, which is Christ’s eternal kingdom.

Earn relentlessly, give generously.

To show you this ministry practices what it preaches, here’s a special announcement:

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One of my favorite quotes of all time comes from G. K. Chesterton: “If there were no God, there would be no atheists.” I keep seeing it quoted on X, floating around in Substack notes, passed along like a clever bumper sticker.

Some of you saw me quote it a day or so ago.

Many read it and think “no God” means no Creator, no Creator means no humans, so atheists wouldn’t exist as humans without God.

That’s part of it. But Chesterton says something far more profound.

Strip out the very idea of God, not just the Being but the concept, and atheism has nothing left to define itself. It becomes nothing but ash. The whole of their secular religion only makes sense as a reaction to God. Both the person and idea.

You can’t build an identity out of rejecting the foundational something that was never there to begin with. If God doesn’t actually exist and the idea of him is really just made up, then there are is no atheism.

“So what? Atheists could just redefine themselves however they want.”

No, because without God, you can’t define anything. He’s essential. Here’s why…

Before you go on, Allegiant Faith Network is a reader-supported community. Become a paid subscriber to help us keep up the good fight for Christ for ages to come and get:

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A Little Journey Through Ontology

Chesterton pulls straight from the ontological argument, first laid out by Saint Anselm in the Middle Ages, covered in chapter 9 of The Atheist Conversion Manual.

God is defined as the Greatest Conceivable Being, maximal in every way. Perfect. Transcending everything else in reality and grounding all of it. Spaceless, timeless, immaterial, intelligent, personal, powerful, unbeatable. Necessary.

That’s exactly how the Israelites, Jews, and Christians pictured him since the Old Testament. The Uncaused First Cause.

A God who lived only in the imagination would fail to be the greatest conceivable Being. But since all humans can conceive of a Greatest Being of all beings, and have since the dawn of time, such a Being must be there and must exist in every possible reality.

So that you can understand Anselm’s argument isn’t mere mental games, I reframe it this way on pages 134-135 of the manual:

1. Reality has a necessary beginning

2. A necessary beginning requires a necessary pre-existent Being

3. Humans can conceptualize such a necessary pre-existent Being in their minds

4. A necessary pre-existent Being is necessary in mind and reality

5. A necessary pre-existent Being must exist or it isn’t necessary in mind or reality

6. Therefore, a necessary pre-existent Being exists

By “reality,” I mean this universe, based on the cosmological argument (chapter 7). The universe had a clear beginning point, so the universe must have a Cause. The beginning and the Cause are both necessary. And since the Cause pre-exists the universe, it must be wholly other from it.

The universe would also necessarily possess some (though by no means all) traits derived from the Cause since the Cause made everything.

Following Anselm’s logic, since such a Being is possible in mind and evident in reality, he must exist in every possible world, not just ours.

No atheist has ever managed to refute the ontological argument. To do so would be to deny maximal greatness, even though we all believe greatness real and achievable, or declare the whole concept of a necessary Being illegitimate while still leaning on ideas of “necessity” and “possibility” everywhere else in their reasoning.

But reason itself, which atheists worship so much, becomes impossible without necessity and possibility, all three of which (reason, necessity, possibility) have no place in a purely material, uncreated reality…

Matter Can’t Trust Itself

C. S. Lewis is the one who artfully articulated the contradiction between matter and thought.

Take away spirit and soul, and all that’s left is matter, bouncing around randomly, aimlessly, with no design and no order behind it. If that’s genuinely all thought is, chemical noise with no order and no purpose, then thought itself becomes untrustworthy because it is random chaos from atoms and neurons arranging themselves haphazardly and spurting the illusion of consciousness.

Atheists try to skirt the issue by arguing for emergent properties, that thought necessarily emerges from material interactions in the brain.

But that argument fails because it offers no validation for the immaterial abstractions of thought, reason, trustworthiness, necessity, possibility, or any others, nor can it explain how those abstractions could possibly arise from the material.

Atheists have to think of a valid alternative to material, and what is there? Energy? Energy just is. It doesn’t do anything apart from emit from sources, so in accordance with the theory, it too is an emergent property, one atheists think is eternal. But if it’s eternal, then it must have an eternal source, which can’t be the universe, so we’ve circled right back to God.

A materialist bridge from brain chemistry to inner experience has been theorized plenty of times and demonstrated exactly zero and emergent properties turn out to be no salvation.

Furthermore, cognitive faculties, according to atheistic evolutionary theory, are shaped only for survival and were never aimed at producing true beliefs. Only at keeping an organism alive long enough to reproduce. Therefore, any perceived beliefs are meaningless unless they have some alleged survival benefit.

What’s the benefit of believing in God if he doesn’t actually exist? What’s the benefit of atheism? And how do we know what a benefit is since beneficence is an immaterial abstraction itself?

Reasoning itself dissolves on atheism and requires God. So where did atheists get the notion that reason itself is a worthy idol?

I Think, Therefore I Might Be

Atheists get the idea of reason as the ultimate eternal starting point from none other than Rene Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am.”

They argue that if you don’t think, then you aren’t actually a being.

That argument surfaces most bluntly in the abortion debate. Abortionists (mostly atheists and progressives) claim that babies in the womb are expendable because they lack personhood, which is defined as conscious awareness. Derived straight from Descartes.

A major problem with that (there are many, but we’ll focus on just one) is in history according to the Bible, and even the alleged history of evolution, if we go back far enough, there was a time with no humans, and humans are the only thinking beings. Animals, of course, have instinctual “thought,” but again, Descartes refers to actual conscious awareness. The ability to contemplate and ponder the cosmos.

There was a point where there were no humans, and therefore there were no thinking beings. Ergo, there was a time where there was no being, just substance. Yet, according to Descartes’ theory, beings are the only ones that are ontological. They also happen to be the only ones that can willfully create.

So where did the substance come from? Substance itself is thoughtless and inactive, and if it came first or just is, then nothing else would exist. Life can’t come from non-life. There would be no being. But there are beings, with conscious thought aimed outside the thinker, so there must be an ultimate Being beyond humanity.

And just like that…Anselm wins again.

To go against God is intellectual suicide.

Intellectual Suicide

Chesterton sees both arguments issued by Anselm and Lewis and lands on a stark realization.

Atheists are willing to erase themselves to erase God.

They don’t just look into the abyss. They dive in headfirst, laughing like maniacs as they vanish into oblivion.

Atheism can only exist if the idea of God exists, and ideas only exist inside conscious minds. Deny God, and you lose the idea of him along with any mind capable of containing it, which means you lose atheism too. Neither God nor the idea of God nor the atheist thinking about either one survives the fall.

Knock out the first domino and all the rest go tumbling down until you’re left with nothing but a heaping pile of rubbish.

But atheists and other humans obviously exist and obviously think, which means the mind capable of conceiving God exists, which means the Being that mind was built to receive must be real. He’s the necessary Being. And if the necessary Maximally Great Being (God) is real, atheism is false by definition.

All that packed into a single quote by a master thinker.

Atheism is one giant contradiction. Parasitic rebellion masquerading as pursuit for truth. Squashed like a bug by the eternal Maker.

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Christian apologists spend their time proving evolution false. Fair enough, the science deserves every ounce of criticism it receives.

But few stop long enough to ask why the theory needed to exist in the first place, what it hands the men who fight for it hardest.

Not just racism. Everybody’s already exposed that rot.

Darwin was a racist, not by accident, by design. His writings on human origins ranked whole peoples on a ladder…civilized at the top, savage at the bottom, based on “racial” differences…a reality of history framed to elevate the strong over the weak.

Eugenicists like Margaret Sanger seized the opening. If some races sat lower on the ladder, removing them counted as tidying up. Spring cleaning. Speeding up evolution to a superior race.

But their experimentation and racism are only side effects. The real problem is far more treacherous.

Something sinister drives theory of evolution that rarely gets addressed, something far more alluring to men who wanted God erased from the picture.

Lack of purpose.

Evolution carries the promise of infinite human progress. No ceiling, no Author, no accountability. And that should scare you.

The Witch Doctors’ Poison Pill

Socialist circles during the French Revolution, men like Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, chased the promise infinite beneficial progress before Darwin ever put pen to paper.

Erase God, and humans inherit no limitations. Total control becomes a livable delusion instead of a fantasy.

Lamarck’s idea of living things transforming upward tangled itself into hopes for political reform and human perfectibility, nature bending toward improvement with no fixed boundary set by a Higher Cause outside the intervention of man. Which made all the God-haters salivate because they could replace the Almighty as rulers of the cosmos. Or think they could.

In The Atheist Conversion Manual, I call this the delusion of autonomy. The idea that we have absolute power and control over reality as individuals and can make it do what we want.

Control is our obsession.

But the only real autonomy any of us holds is over the choices we make with the cards we’re dealt, and you will end up serving some sort of master, whether you want to or not.

Past the line of personal choice, control runs out. Everybody senses this in their gut, watches it unfold before their very eyes, yet so many deny it outright, because we’ve never left the Garden. We’re still there, trying to usurp God’s throne.

And the illusion of progress keeps the machine churning.

Road Trip to Nowhere

Why is “progress” such a bad word? Shouldn’t humans want to get better? Yes.

But evolution can’t deliver progression toward better. Consider this analogy:

Evolution can’t even meet step 1.

Ask an evolutionist to defend point A and watch him get sucked into a black hole of endless mental gymnastics.

A single cell, supposedly assembled by chance inside some primordial soup. Non-living matter somehow flipped the switch into life. From there, an alleged unbroken chain of never-once-observed slow, stepwise transitions carries you from that first cell to the staggering variety of creatures alive today, yourself included.

Nobody has shown how raw chemical building blocks reliably chain themselves into the long, precisely ordered sequences proteins and genetic material demand under early Earth conditions, let alone how those chains ever learned to sustain or copy themselves. Dead matter and the simplest living cell remain separated by the Grand Canyon of imagination.

Talk about yikes.

But let’s say point A is confirmed. Evolution can’t hand you point B either.

You’re told you’re in this linear progression of ongoing evolution and that it’s somehow good for you, but where is the progression going? What’s the end of the journey?

Big ditch of nothingness. That’s what.

Evolutionists demand you accept a winding, dangerous route which will culminate in your death (that’s guaranteed) with no defined ulterior endpoint, and they just expect you to be happy with that. Some say death itself is the endpoint. But what’s the value in living just do die and disappear forever? Where’s the purpose?

You’ll live, you’ll die, you’ll long for more, you’ll never get more (and if you do, you can take nothing with you), but by nature, you’ll be glad. If you question the status quo, you’re stupid.

And it gets worse. Evolution can’t tell you if the road is real…

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On 8/11/2026, I posted a meme of Willem Dafoe showing atheists just make stuff up when it comes to morality, since they have no standard outside themselves.

One guy in the comment section on X lost his mind. Accused Christians of making up stuff too.

He went on and on about the many interpretations of the Bible. Said Christians invent things, since our standard, the Bible, gets read a dozen different ways by a dozen different people, which he thinks means the Bible can’t be the ultimate, holy standard. God’s righteous revelation.

The Bible can’t even be understood, according to him.

What you see with his argument isn’t what you get. It’s clever and tricky, but so detached from reality that, like with most atheist accusations, it shrivels like a dead, dried-up worm as soon as you think about it for five seconds.

I already dismantled his line of thinking in The Atheist Conversion Manual, and in a long conversation with him on X, but let’s do it again.

If disagreement disqualifies a source from being true, then nothing is true.

Historians argue over evidence.

Scientists question the meaning of data.

Philosophers spent centuries fighting over what knowledge even is.

Then there’s the nature of human memory. Ask five witnesses to describe a murder, and you’ll get five different renditions of what happened. Can’t be avoided.

So, if competing interpretations erase truth, the whole exploration of reality crashes into oblivion.

But there’s more to it than that.

In this article, we’re going to walk through why interpretation can’t defeat the Bible, can’t be a standard for defining what is true, holy, and good, and why atheism, left with only human interpretation and nothing else, gets utterly annihilated.

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Memories of Mishap and Messiah

Let’s start with a car accident analogy.

500 people witnessed a 30-car pile-up. Word spreads. Some tell the story straight. Some retell what they heard from a friend who heard it from someone else who heard it from a witness, and a little interpretive flair gets added in along the way.

Does any of that retelling change whether the crash happened?

No, because you have the original witnesses, and first responders are trained to document all details from as many as possible as soon as they arrive on scene, when memory is fresh for everyone present.

At most, ongoing interpretation means the event happened and was assessed by those who heard about it through their own perspectives, which resulted in some embellishment or distortion via false interpretations. But THAT the event happened isn’t in question.

What would put the event into question would be perfectly aligned witness statements from those who allegedly saw everything.

If the 500 witnesses gave word-for-word identical reports, the identical wording would be a red flag. Real witnesses prioritize different aspects of an event in their minds.

• One remembers the colors of the cars

• Another remembers the sound of screaming victims

• A third remembers the drivers’ bloodied faces and limbs

• A fourth remembers nothing but flames and the smell of burnt rubber

• A fifth remembers the chain snapping on the 18-wheeler that started the accident

Natural variations combined with rock-solid agreement on the core facts prove them valid witnesses, whereas perfect alignment between each story suggests rehearsal.

Some of you already know where I’m going with this: The former is what we find when we examine the Bible.

He appeared to individuals fully restored, to small groups who had known him for years, to skeptics whose doubt disintegrated the moment they touched him, and to family who had questioned him his whole life. The stories they shared of their encounters align in core details while diverging in interpretation and on minor aspects, signs they are telling the truth.

Then those who heard the stories first recorded them into creeds and later into the Gospels.

Here’s where the guy on X thought he had me: If the witnesses shared the story, others heard the account, retold what they heard, filtered the retelling through their own perspective, doesn’t that mean we only inherited interpretations of interpretations and no one knows what they’re talking about?

No.

We inherited the witness statements themselves, gathered and preserved in the gospel accounts and across the New Testament, collected as early as humanly possible in the ancient setting of the Greco-Roman period. Within living memory. When the witnesses were still alive and around to correct any errors!

The letters may not match on every detail, but they were never supposed to because they’re real, and their central claims agree across every page.

Crucifixion under Roman authority. Burial. An empty tomb. Bodily appearances after the fact.

Small stuff shifts the way independent testimony always shifts, but the meat and bones retain their place and shape. Real testimony looks exactly like what we find in the Gospels.

Theology came after witness…

1 Story, 40 Writers, 17 Centuries, 3 Continents

Later writers further fleshed out the theology and Christology of the Messiah based on the inherited witness statements and interpretations from witnesses themselves.

Deeper reflection on who Jesus was, what his death and resurrection accomplished, how his story connects back through everything that came before.

None of their reflection, however, changes the ultimate fact that Jesus really rose from the grave.

Sin and death lost. Beat to a pulp by God Most High. Which the earliest churches determined by noticing how everything in the Old Testament pointed forward to the Savior.

Atheist treat the Bible like it’s one book, but it’s a vast collection of interrelated writings by 40-plus authors across at least 17 centuries (source material for the writings stems much earlier, some arguably as early as 3000+ years ago), on 3 different continents, and every page maintains the same coherent story from beginning to end.

• God Most High made creation

• We ruined creation with sin and death

• Jesus, God-made-flesh, resurrected us and creation

• One day he’ll return as God Most High to restore the paradise of Eden

Different centuries. Different cultures. Different literary styles. Same storyline, start to finish, weaved through every…single…book.

Coherence like that doesn’t happen by accident when so many hands are involved over such an astounding length of time.

On top of that, divergence in interpretations has centered on the nature of God and the church’s role in the eternal story of salvation, but what remained accepted since before and after the inception of Christianity is the story of salvation itself.

One day God Most High would rescue this fallen world via his Messiah, and did so through the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus. No church denies that! (Except so-called “progressive Christians,” who are really atheists that co-opted the Christian name in order to form a community and have a “sense of belonging” without surrender and adherence to the Christ of the Bible.)

Disagreement takes place over the little things…

Debating all the Little Things

Anyone who reads the whole Bible sees that overarching story of salvation. Interpretations that skip past it, dilute the message, or argue it away (mainly from atheists, not Christians) misread the text, often intentionally, so as to distort and/or distract from the meaning of God’s Word.

It’s good to be cautious because humans carry our own perspectives into every text we open, sacred or not. But because of that, multiple interpretations are an asset, not a hindrance.

Working through different readings sharpens your understanding of what God revealed. Testing one interpretation against another, alongside the inherited text itself, is how anyone deepens their understanding of any complex body of writing.

That’s how people read Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, the Church Fathers, Shakespeare, and so on and so forth.

Weed out readings that damage the central message. Keep the ones that clarify, enhance, brighten, and bring the picture to life.

This is how truth gets refined.

And here’s where the atheist on X walked straight into the trap he built for me…

Everyone Interprets, Even Scientists

As I point out in The Atheist Conversion Manual, without a standard above humanity, atheism is left with nothing but human consensus, and consensus isn’t truth. Claiming the majority view as truth has been a logical fallacy forever. Known as ad populum, or the “bandwagon fallacy.” Following the crowd.

“Would you follow your friends if they walked over a cliff?” No doubt your parents issued that question in some form when you were younger.

Because they wanted you to see that following your peers without second thought is dangerous.

Crowds have been catastrophically wrong throughout history because comfort feels better than accuracy. We tend to lead with emotion. If morality and truth is reduced to whatever the current majority prefers, nothing is ever right or wrong. Just popular. And popular views flip-flop in split seconds.

Take this argument one step further, and science gets gobbled up too.

A scientist runs an experiment, generates results, makes observations, and then has to interpret what the observations from the results mean. INTERPRETATION NEVER GOES AWAY!

“What best explains what we find?”

Scientists disagree with each other constantly. Consensus forms sometimes, but even then, dissenters push back with other explanations. The history of science reads like one long parade of accepted interpretations getting overturned with better data or better analysis, yet none of that zigzagging ever meant the original observations were fake or that reality itself is unknowable.

Just like with interpreting the Bible, each and every explanation for available evidence gathered via scientific experimentation, basic observation, historical documentation, etc. has to be evaluated using logic and reason, tools which belonged first and foremost to (and still belong to) the realms of philosophy and theology.

Also, if we apply the atheist’s own standard against biblical interpretation (the idea that multiple interpretations hinder truth) consistently, the entire exploration for human knowledge becomes reduced to absurdity because humans never agree. On anything. Ever.

Reduced to rubble all because people read the same evidence or sources differently.

Unless there’s a standard beyond humanity to determine and define truth and morality, reality itself becomes incoherent and absurd beyond recognition.

Reject Absurdity

No one can escape being a theologian. Everyone has a worldview, everyone evaluates reality through their worldview and via logic and reason, everyone develops rites and practices based on their worldview, so everyone is religious. Even atheists.

To be religious is to think thoroughly about reality, find a master, and follow that master, even if it’s yourself.

Only one Master makes sense, though. God Most High. Christ Jesus. Because a perfect Being that transcends this reality and originated it is necessary for any level of coherence.

Atheists demand you embrace the absurdity of a world without God while at the same time saying you can’t have an opinion because differing opinions amount to falsity…even though that very demand is an opinion and, therefore, self-defeating (gotta love the law of non-contradiction).

They would rather destroy the whole enterprise of intellectual exploration than acknowledge the existence of the One who makes it possible. Let that sink in.

Interpretation was never the enemy of truth. Disagreement is the bedrock of truthful inquiry, the search for knowledge and meaning, and that search has revealed ultimate truth is a Person.

500 witnesses saw the Risen Savior and shared what they saw, in their own words, from their own angles, with as many people as they could, and their story revolutionized the face of this Earth for the better. Brought dead men to life.

I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist.

Neither should you.

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“The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise” by Benjamin West, 1791

Original sin is foundational to the Bible and the Christian faith. Humans were made for good but fell in the Garden of Eden after choosing evil, then became corrupted by sin and death unto the depths of their bodies and souls.

Even a cursory reading of Scripture illustrates that. As does a rudimentary knowledge of human history.

Left to their own devices to do what is right in their own eyes, humans have a propensity toward evil. From birth.

Yet there are some who find original sin to be a hindrance. An absurdity, even.

One atheist reached out to me on Substack a couple days ago with this quote from Ayn Rand:

“Your code begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice. It demands, as his first proof of virtue, that he accept his own depravity without proof. It demands that he start, not with a standard of value, but with a standard of evil, which is himself, by means of which he is then to define the good: the good is that which he is not. It does not matter who then becomes the profiteer on his renounced glory and tormented soul, a mystic God with some incomprehensible design or any passer-by whose rotting sores are held as some inexplicable claim upon him—it does not matter, the good is not for him to understand, his duty is to crawl through years of penance, atoning for the guilt of his existence to any stray collector of unintelligible debts, his only concept of a value is a zero: the good is that which is non-man. The name of this monstrous absurdity is Original Sin.”

He finds original sin ridiculous. Although, ironically, via his comment Ken exposed the real absurdity: The inability of an atheistic-naturalistic universe to define right from wrong, good from evil.

I discuss the moral problems with atheism in my Atheist Conversion Manual, but today, I going to go through this quote from Rand and explain why it proves the opposite of what Ken thinks it does. That it proves the necessity of God for good. Then I’m going to counter with an idea from Dostoevsky which proves Jesus, his sacrifice and resurrection, is the only way out of the grave.

Depravity Without Proof

Your code begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice. It demands, as his first proof of virtue, that he accept his own depravity without proof.

Rand picks the wrong starting point.

The Bible doesn’t begin with original sin. It begins with a perfect Creator making a very good creation, including Adam and Eve, who have been given the opportunity to choose the good (we’ll get into this deeper below).

Therefore, depravity isn’t man’s “first proof of virtue.”

Depravity is, however, man’s first proof that on his own without some sort of help or intervention, without some higher guidance, he’s guaranteed to devolve into an evil monster. And that guarantee is backed up by history.

Every ancient culture, even ones held dear like the Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans, was leaned toward immense savagery and brutality. Civilizations are celebrated only because outliers who resisted the trend of savagery came along, said enough is enough to most savagery, and fought to build just societies.

In the ancient world one tribe attacked another to prove dominance, which would include raping and pillaging of the loser. Power and control reigned supreme.

Men were weighed by functionality and usefulness, not by any sort of inherent value.

Children in particular suffered the most. They would be sacrificed on altars, left unwanted in the elements to die, and/or the ones who were kept alive, they would, in many cultures, be treated like chattel or sold into slavery to pay back debts for struggling families. Many times to viscious slave masters who would beat and torture them.

Despite how much they are romanticized these days, Native American tribes were the worst. Always in endless wars that would end not only with the losing tribe raped and pillaged but men and women would be scalped, their hair and headdresses claimed as gory trophies. There are stories of Native American victors even tying boy infants from the losing tribes to horses and having them dragged across the land until they were unrecognizable pulps of still, bloodied flesh.

Evil strikes through every human heart, as Alexandr Solzeneitzen said, and history makes that fact plain as day.

Rand herself isn’t a paragon of perfection. She was a racist, eugenicist, and avid advocate of murdering unwanted children in the womb. The only reason she is idolized is because she was a prolific and creative writer, mainly for the feminist cause, which earned her an automatic place in boss lady hall of fame.

We humans are depraved beyond measure. So where is the good? Atheism has no adequate answer.

Define Good from Evil

It demands that he start, not with a standard of value, but with a standard of evil, which is himself, by means of which he is then to define the good: the good is that which he is not.

Rand thinks man is left to define good from evil. But in an atheistic world, there is no good or evil.

I explain in The Atheist Conversion Manual that evil is the absence of good. You can have good without evil, but evil isn’t a thing and therefore cannot exist unless there is an original, higher goodness that exists and continues to exist.

I cited Frank Turek’s analogy of the rusty car. You can have the car without the rust, but not the rust without the car.

Evil is the erosion of good.

Therefore, it cannot be the definition of good. No one thinks that. People can mistake evil for good, but no one thinks good comes from evil.

So Rand’s assertion is attacking a straw man.

The real question is why is there good at all in such an evil world? And the only valid answer is this world was made for good by a perfect Designer, then later corrupted by the curse of sin and death.

The Good is Non-Man

It does not matter who then becomes the profiteer on his renounced glory and tormented soul, a mystic God with some incomprehensible design or any passer-by whose rotting sores are held as some inexplicable claim upon him—it does not matter, the good is not for him to understand, his duty is to crawl through years of penance, atoning for the guilt of his existence to any stray collector of unintelligible debts, his only concept of a value is a zero: the good is that which is non-man. The name of this monstrous absurdity is Original Sin.

She says this quote as if it’s a problem but never establishes why. Why does the good have to be man? Why can’t it be non-man?

Furthermore, how can man be the good? What is good? What is bad?

Rand presumes God is made up even though her own position is vacuous. Unable to ground truth and morality without the Creator.

What Rand is really mad about is that humanity was given a choice between good and evil and then chose against God, unleashing sin and death into this world. She and all atheists hate God for that because they don’t understand free will. They would rather God have treated all his creation, including humans, like robots. Cattle.

Atheists don’t realize, though, that should that desire be enacted, they would be rendered incapable of…anything.

Dostoevsky wrestled with the same question of free will and artfully explained why free will is necessary despite the evil Adam and Eve brought down upon creation...

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Life has no meaning. At least, that’s what atheists want you to believe.

From their worldview meaninglessness is inevitable.

They pretend it isn’t. “We’re not nihilists!”

Every time I bring up how without God there’s no meaning or purpose, they screech and gnash their teeth.

Now and then, though, that one stray atheist doesn’t get the memo and let’s the cat outta the bag.

One yesterday posts this quote from professor Brian Cox:

“There’s no evidence that the universe has purpose or intent, and it doesn’t care about us at all.

The laws of physics will continue to operate whether we exist or not.

I don’t find that depressing - I find it liberating, because it means meaning isn’t imposed from outside.

It’s something we create for ourselves, and with that comes complete responsibility for what we do.”

Uh-oh. Not supposed to say that Coxypoo. Don’t you know atheists have a reputation to uphold? Did you miss Skeptic Con this year?

Surely you can see why his Cox-splaining is utmost ridiculous. No?

Well, fortunately for you, we’re going to go through each of his statements together and expose why they fail, so you can see why nihilism is evil, wrong, repugnant, deadly, and only avoidable for the child of God.

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First, a Detour

Before we go on, it’s important to define “nihilism.” What is it?

In my book, The Atheist Conversion Manual, I define it like this:

(1) “The outright rejection of purpose, moral value, truth, and/or knowledge”

(2) “The belief that nothing matters and when we die that’s it. Poof. Gone.”

Nihilism inevitably arises from the belief that the material universe is all that exists because in such a worldview higher truth and morality cannot exist. In fact, as I argue later in the book, abstractions like love, perfection, good, bad, right, wrong, purpose, meaning, are all fictions in the naturalist/materialist world.

On this point, Cox is 100% correct, which makes him incorrect because there’s no such thing as correct. (Are you starting to see the problem?)

That’s not the only absurdity proposed by his naturalism. As we go through each of his statements, you’ll find so many.

“Theres’s no evidence that the universe has purpose or intent, and it doesn’t care about us at all”

The universe is inanimate matter incapable of feeling, so of course it can’t care. If it’s all there is, we’re outta luck.

Can’t argue with you there, Cox Meister.

But what evidence is there that the universe is all that exists? What’s the evidence your statement is even true? Can you prove that abstract thought in your mind is even real?

You see, the conundrum which immediately surfaces in Cox’s first claim is he’s accepting both the existence of the universe and the “fact” that there’s no evidence for the universe “caring,” as if those are intelligible avenues of exploration.

And he provides no justification for that assumption whatsoever.

We also run into the problem C. S. Lewis so artfully articulated. If the material universe is all that exists, then Cox’s own thoughts are just atoms and neurons bumping around or randomly coalescing without any rhyme or reason. Therefore, anything he says is automatically unreasonable.

Right out the gate, Cox fails miserably, and the pickle only gets bigger from there.

“The laws of physics will continue to operate whether we exist or not”

If I had Cox face to face, I would immediately ask him, “How do you know that?”

He’d probably come back with, “Because many humans have already died and the universe keeps going.”

But that describes a trend, not an absolute rule. We know for a fact based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics that the universe will eventually run out of energy and burn out, so whether one accepts a materialist universe or Godly universe, the evidence suggests the laws of physics will not continue operating forever.

In fact, the cited law from thermodynamics also indicates the universe had a beginning at which point the laws of physics didn’t exist.

Prior to the Planck era of the Big Bang, there was no space, time, or matter, and therefore, no “laws.” If only a material cosmos exists, then there was once nothing that somehow became something, so where did the “laws” come from? And how can they go on forever if they haven’t existed forever to begin with?

Furthermore, there’s the problem of calling them “laws.”

Atheists refuse to bend on that term. All scientists of all walks of life continue to consider the principles of physics “laws” because they work consistently with only rare deviation (like laws), and without them in place, the whole universe would collapse. But (1) they too are abstractions, which can’t exist in purely material universe (as already established), and (2) laws only come from lawgivers.

So who put the laws of physics out there? Certainly not humans. We only discovered them functioning within our cosmos. Therefore, there must be another Intelligence who put them in place.

That logical step can’t be escaped.

And since an Intelligence must have established these intelligible laws, there must also be ultimate meaning and purpose to existence.

Why then doesn’t Cox want meaning or purpose? Fortunately, he doesn’t hide his true motives…

“I don’t find that depressing - I find it liberating, because it means meaning isn’t impose from the outside. It’s something we create for ourselves, and with that comes complete responsibility for what we do”

Charming sentiment. I’ll give him that. After all, who doesn’t want to be in control?

However, “making meaning,” which is impossible from the start because in a material cosmos there’s no such thing as meaning (what does he mean by “it means meaning” if meaning is just made up?), has and always will lead to utter annihilation.

As I warn in The Atheist Conversion Manual, “Nihilism has eroded and destroyed more lives than any other belief on Earth because it is amoral. If nihilism is true, then anything goes. It’s an every-man-for-himself world.”

Only hopeless, pitiful indifference (Dawkins). And indifference justifies nothing, while permitting everything.

The responsibility Cox mentions is mere illusion, if anything at all. Responsible to whom? Ourselves?

Let’s see what humans being “responsible to ourselves” got us:

In the name of indifference, communists killed 10,000,000+ people in the 20th century, and abortionists slaughtered 300,000,000,000+ human babies since the 1970s. Systematic extermination. The former received outrage, the latter remains celebrated as a “human right,” but in a naturalistic world, neither can be justifiably condemned since people are just making and living out their own meaning. “Rights” are fiction.

Cox wants there to be a meaningless world because then he gets to play God. Do whatever he wants. What is right in his own eyes. For everyone to do what is right in their own eyes until the cosmos is one gigantic never-ending hellscape like in the Book of Judges.

Any atheists who cite his nihilism want exactly the same. They would prefer you see them as the good guys, the liberators, even though they’re just going to enslave you to your passions and make you see anyone and anything else as expendable in the pursuit of said passions.

What are you to do?

What is one to do?

Reject atheism. Reject nihilism. Toss them onto the trash heap and never look back.

Plain and simple.

You know full well the atheist position is untenable, so why even bother with it anymore?

It’s neither true nor good. It can’t even explain what “true” and “good” mean. THERE IS NO MEANING if atheism is true, and that’s terrifying, not comforting.

Truth, morality, purpose, and meaning require a cosmos made by a Master Maker, otherwise you’re a mere hopeless accident doomed to nothingness, shackled to whims and fancies with no reason to consider others. You’re duping yourself, most to be pitied.

God is necessary.

Without God, there’s no obligation, no responsibility, no higher standard…and no way out of hell.

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On Saturday, 8/1/2026, I argued the Bible is the authoritative Word of God.

We discussed how the Bible, focusing on the 66-book canon which is agreed to be divinely inspired by Catholics, Orthodox, Ethiopians, and Protestants alike, is a compilation of documents spanning possibly as old as their source material (c. 3000 BC).

We talked about how those documents came to be compiled during the Exile in Babylon and Persia, not written, because we have the Dead Sea Scrolls which have a full copy of Isaiah that dates to at least 700 BC, possibly earlier. That scroll then references books in the Old Testament that would’ve had to exist for Isaiah to reference them, suggesting early composition for all 39 books of the OT.

I also laid out a brief case for the accuracy and authenticity of the New Testament.

You can read that article for yourselves to get the full details and also to learn about how the Bible was translated and why translations are reliable, but for this article I’m going to focus on which modern English translations are the best for you to use…and which ones should you should avoid.

You and I will walk through the popular translations, the ones that everybody is familiar with. A full breakdown of their history and which ones I think are best.

This is not to say I have a preference of one over the other. I actually use many of them together when researching because comparing them and contrasting them reveals the nuances in the first manuscripts without you having to know the original languages.

Sure, it’s always best to know the originals, and if you should desire to do that, learn the Hebrew, Greek, and even Latin, I highly encourage it because the original languages open up the Bible in ways that just reading English or reading in your own personal language, your vernacular, does not.

But using multiple modern translations is a close second, so it’s important to know which ones are best.

Without any further ado, let’s go ahead and examine each of the popular translations so you can know which ones are valuable for learning and which ones are deceptive.

(P.S. Due to there being many translations, this article will be longer than our usual articles and our examination of their history, despite me only choosing the most common versions.)

Valuable Modern Translations of the Bible

The most valuable modern translations available are the NIV, the ESV, the CSB, the RSV, and the NASB. You can also use the King James Version or the New King James Version, but those are ones that should be used with caution, and I’ll explain why in a bit.

Let’s start with the NIV.

NIV

The New International Version was the vision of a guy named Howard Long.

A devout Christian, he lived in Seattle and was an engineer. Loved the King James Version but found the 17th-century language to be unuseful for trying to reach people with the Gospel of Christ.

People couldn’t understand Victorian English anymore. There was the need for something fresh.

In the 1950s, he decided to make a new version. Advocated for it and got his denomination, the Christian Reformed Church, to pair up with the National Association of Evangelicals and a group of evangelical scholars in 1965 near Chicago.

Together, they formed the Committee on Bible Translation (CBT), 15 scholars who oversaw the work of more than 100 translators from various evangelical traditions. This group began a completely new translation from scratch that went back to the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek text of the Bible.

The translators slapped the different renderings together and reviewed them with the scholars to determine which version(s) best matched the original languages.

Accuracy the end goal.

The New Testament version of the NIV was published in 1973, and then the full Bible in 1978. A revision appeared in 1984.

This Bible is a very good Bible because it attempts a word-for-word match of the original languages. The translators intended to keep the integrity of the Word of God instead of trying to inject their own personal biases and ideas into the text.

A 2005 update called Today’s NIV (TNIV) attempted to incorporate gender-inclusive language at the expense of accuracy and was discontinued after severe backlash. Then, in 2011, the version now available anywhere, which maintains accuracy while mixing in “inclusive language,” replaced the 1984 revision.

Our present NIV remains a valuable translation despite politically correct updates. Although, it’s not near as good as the next translation.

ESV

The English Standard Version is a personal favorite. I like to go to this one all the time, and I know so many other people find it very popular.

I won’t say it’s my only favorite version. My other favorite version is the New American Standard Bible (more on it below).

Both of these ones established from the beginning that their missions would be word-for-word matches of the original languages. I don’t know if it was explicitly stated the NIV would be a word-for-word match, though that’s what Howard Long intended.

For the ESV, however, there’s no mystery.

The ESV comes from, or is in the tradition of, the Tyndale-King James, and its immediate predecessor was the 1971 Revised Standard Version (more on this one also below).

In the ‘90s, evangelical leaders, which included Crossway’s Lane Dennis and also the renowned John Piper, all came together because they noticed a need for a highly accurate and readable translation that preserved the literary quality of earlier classic versions of the Bible (while at the same time updating language that may have become outdated). Same drive as Long.

After getting permission from the National Council of Churches to use the 1971 RSV as a starting point, translation work began in 1998 under the oversight of a translation committee, the general editor of which was the renowned J. I. Packer.

Denis and Piper enlisted involvement from over 100 scholars and reviewers, and the team worked on revisions from the best available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. They focused on making revisions for accuracy and clarity, and rendered a contemporary English translation that retained traditional theological terminology.

The first edition was published by Crossway in 2001, and then there were other updates that appeared in 2007, 2011, and 2016.

To this day, Reformed and evangelical pastors, seminaries, and those who prefer formal equivalents for studying and preaching tend to prefer the English Standard Version because it’s a word-for-word model. They find it refreshing, and honestly, so do I, because there are so many other translations out there that are paraphrases or disrespectful to the ancient manuscripts.

KJV/NKJV

In my last article, I didn’t exactly give a glowing review of the King James Version, so before we get started, I just want to correct any misconceptions you may have that I don’t like it.

I do like the King James Version. Love it. I think the Victorian English it contains is quite beautiful, and I highly recommend it, especially for children who are learning to read, because then they get to experience not just an accurate reading of the Bible, but a poetic one as well.

The Victorian English of the King James Version contains is quite beautiful. A lost art of English we sorely need back in our lives. Just as we need Shakespeare, we need the King James Bible because of how splendid it is to read.

However, much to the chagrin of the KJV obsessors out there, the King James Version is not the perfect translation. It’s just not.

It has variations just like all other common translations because capturing all the nuance of the original languages is difficult to do when moving them to vernaculars.

Also, King James VI Scotland/James I of England put qualifiers in there to elevate himself and ensure the Bible did not contradict his authority. These were stipulations he would not bend on when creating the King James Version for the Anglicans and Puritans of his day.

That being said, the King James Version and its successor, the NKJV (the New King James Version), are still extremely valuable.

The KJV came about because in 1604 there was conflict going on between the Anglicans and the New Puritan Movement. The Puritans wanted to return to biblical roots. They wanted to exact biblical purity based on the law, the prophets, the principles of Jesus, everything in society. Wanted it all upheld to the highest degree.

So they petitioned King James to render a new translation for them, one that also went back to the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts, the best that was available in their time.

James authorized the revision as long as it followed the Bishops’ Bible as the base text with as little alteration as possible and included the stipulations mentioned above, which would elevate himself and not counter his authority. He also required they did not follow the popular Geneva Bible, which had controversial marginal notes.

At his request, 47-54 scholars organized into six companies that worked at Westminster, Oxford, and Cambridge. While they focused on the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, they also used a Latin translation as inspiration and drew heavily from William Tyndale’s English Bible, which got him burned at the stake.

Robert Barker, the King’s printer, released the official version of the King James in 1611, and the earliest printings had minor variations, just like the ESV and the NIV. To this day, it still has only minor variations, although some variations affect the meaning in places. But not so much that it ruins or completely alters the overall message of the Bible.

In the mid-1970s, as newer modern language translations gained popularity, Thomas Nelson sought to update the KJV’s archaic vocabulary and grammar while preserving its style, its accuracy, and its foundation. They began in 1975, under Arthur L. Farstad, with a team of about 130 scholars, church leaders, and lay people from various backgrounds to create the new King James Version.

Again, they went back to the Hebrew and Greek texts, using the same tradition as the original KJV, and aimed for a complete equivalent to the KJV, but with language everyone could understand.

The New King James was fully published in 1982, and it and the King James Version remain popular to this day. Rightly so, because again, they are very good translations.

CSB

The Christian Standard Bible is another one of my favorites, at least the version that we have now. The one redone in 2017.

The original version came about honorably, created by Arthur Farstad, from the NKJV project, and Edwin Blum, both of whom were sponsored by Holman Bible Publishers. Hence the original title Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB).

It was crafted in the 1980s and 1990s by a team of more than 100 conservative scholars from 17 denominations who worked from the Hebrew and the Greek. They used an optimal equivalence approach, which means they sought to optimize the English so it matched as closely as it could with the Greek and Hebrew without sacrificing clarity.

Balanced readability and accuracy.

The first full Bible for the HCSB appeared in 2004, and then a second edition in 2010. The most recent edition, the Christian Standard Bible, appeared in 2017.

In my opinion, it’s more accurate than the first editions because it follows scholarly advances, improves clarity and consistency, and makes the overall feeling of the text when reading so much better. Flows.

Even though it’s not as popular as the English Standard Version or the New American Standard, it’s still growing in popularity, especially in the United States.

RSV

Some of my Protestant friends don’t really like the Revised Standard Version, but I enjoy it. The only reason they don’t is because those who translated the RSV also translated Apocryphal and Deuterocanonical books to produce Catholic and Orthodox translations of the Bible as well.

That’s Protestant nitpicking that goes way too far because the Revised Standard Version is a very admirable and accurate translation.

Furthermore, the Apocryphal and Deuterocanonical texts from the Second Temple Period are fascinating and filled with truth. As noted in my last article, they’re debated today only as to whether they are divinely inspired, which is a separate question from truth.

Like the NASB, which we’re going to discuss next, the Revised Standard Version used its immediate predecessor, the American Standard Version of 1901. A translation based on the British Revised Version from 1881-1885.

In 1928, the International Council of Religious Education acquired the ASV copyright, and after study, it authorized a thorough revision in 1937.

A committee of 32 scholars, including one Jewish scholar, got together and, under the guidance of Luther A. Weigle, Dean of Yale Divinity School, produced the RSV. They used the best available critical texts of the time, including the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament, and for the Old Testament, incorporated some early findings from the Dead Sea Scrolls, notably the Isaiah Scroll.

The New Testament was published in 1946, and the complete Bible with Old and New Testaments appeared in 1952. The Apocrypha and Deuterocanonical books followed in 1957, and then a second edition of the New Testament released in 1971, the committed produced Catholic versions.

Like the ESV and NASB, the RSV follows the Tyndale-King James tradition of translation. Prioritizes word-for-word and thematic honesty.

When going through the text, the committee modernized the Victorian English, much like the NKJV did, by removing archaic language. Even though they retained the “thou” for address to God in earliest printings.

Their aim was to make a translation that would be accessible for private reading, public worship, and academic study and accomplished their goal so well that the panel of scholars and church leaders who made the English Standard Version used the RSV as a role model.

I consider the RSV an honorable translation and highly recommend, though not as much as the next translation on our list.

NASB

Perhaps the most important Bible you can ever have is the New American Standard Bible. I say that because, as far as word-for-word matches go, this Bible aimed from the start to be as literal as possible when translating the Hebrew and Greek into English.

It comes from the American Standard Version of 1901, counterpart to the English Revised Version of 1885.

In 1959, the Lockman Foundation wanted to launch a project because they wanted to update the ASV’s language while keeping its high degree of literal accuracy. They also wanted to incorporate new manuscript discoveries, because, as you know from my last article, manuscripts for the Bible were not discovered all at once but gradually over time.

The biggest discovery, the Dead Sea Scrolls, absolutely revolutionized everything skeptical scholars believed about the Bible. Supported and proved the Bible to be authentic and true from beginning to end and to be earlier than once suspected.

Again, a team of scholars for the New American Standard Bible got together, not just a single scholar. It wasn’t like Jerome translating the Latin Vulgate for the church, but a team, comparing and contrasting, working side by side to make sure they got as accurate a translation as possible from one language to another. Worked over a decade to get the New American Standard Bible complete.

It was officially published in 1971 and gained a rapid reputation as one of the most literal English translations available. There were only a few revisions:

• 1977, minor

• 1995, to update readability while retaining the formal equivalents that the NASB contains

• 2020, which further modernized the English but kept the word-for-word philosophy

If your goal when reading the Bible is to be as precise as possible, which it should be, then the NASB is for you because it prioritizes precision above all else.

These are all the translations I highly recommend because they are absolutely fabulous, honest, and true to the original languages. Spectacular. You’re never going to find a better source of truth than these.

However, there are some translations you should avoid at all costs…

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Whenever you say the Bible is true online, you always get that one liberal who thinks he’s clever:

“Which Bible?”

“Which translation?”

“Which language?”

One recently spouted those at a post I made, right after saying there’s no way to prove the Bible is true without belief.

I thought about responding, but to answer those questions takes a lot longer than a comment under a post. So, I thought it would make a good article. Allegiant Faith subscribers agreed.

Here you go.

It just so happens I already dealt with the issue of the Bible’s reliability in my new book, The Atheist Conversion Manual. And I can tell you whenever an atheist, liberal or otherwise (though 98% of the time anyone who poses those questions to tear down trust in the Bible is liberal), they haven’t considered in depth conservative Christian defenses of the Bible’s authenticity and reliability.

I’m going to answer each of Mr. Paul’s questions in kind, starting with what we consider to be the Bible, so you can see God’s Holy Word is authentic, reliable, and true.

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What is the Bible?

For the sake of this article, I’m only going to focus on the 66-book canon because it contains the books that are accepted by Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox, and Ethiopian alike, providing a solid, united ground to work from.

Before we go on, it should be noted that the books not included in the 66-book canon are not left out because they’re inauthentic or untrue. They’re actively debated to this day as to whether they are divinely inspired. A different question entirely because even uninspired texts can contain truth.

The 66-book canon is divided between the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) and New Testament (Greek Bible), and the former also includes some sections of Aramaic because the Israelites lived near Aram, were eventually exiled into Babylon with the Arameans, and later had to learn how to cohabit the land of Israel with Arameans when they returned from exile, per release by King Cyrus and then the defeat of Persia by Alexander the Great.

Liberal scholars love to argue that the Hebrew Bible was written during the Exile, and for a time, they got away with that faulty view…until the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.

• Prior to the Dead Sea Scrolls, all we had was the Masoretic Hebrew Old Testament from c. 1000 AD and the Septuagint or LXX (the Koine Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible).

• After, a wealth of fragments from the copies of the original Hebrew Old Testmanent were discovered, most of which pre-date the Exile. The BIGGEST find was an entire copy of Isaiah, which has been estimated to have originated in 700 BC.

Huge problem for skeptics with that Isaiah Scroll is that Isaiah references other parts of the Old Testament and names specific kings found in the Books of Kings and Books of Chronicles. That gives us multiple attestation and indicates the other books of the Old Testament, or at least the ones referenced, existed in or prior to 700 BC.

If that is the case, as it most assuredly is, then the Law (which the Israelites used to refer to the whole Pentateuch or “five books of Moses” - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) and the prophets existed before or around 700 BC, along with other books mentioned in Kings and Chronicles that kept records of the history of Israelite kingdom since the time of Samuel and Saul.

As far as we can tell, the whole Hebrew canon was written and compiled from around 1400 BC-400 BC, give or take. Meaning it wasn’t written during the Exile, but put together into its final form, which was then translated into the Greek Septuagint sometime after Alexander’s defeat of Persia.

The Pentateuch (first 5 books of the Bible) includes poems and prayers that date even earlier than 1400 BC, suggesting the source material stretches far earlier, possibly to 3000 BC or before.

New Testament books were all written during the early Roman Empire and are dated to within or just shy of the first century AD, within living memory of Jesus. 5800 manuscript fragment from copies of the original documents or quotations have been found (more than any other documents in history, and that’s not including fragments from translations into other languages) which text critics have been able to use to piece together to within 98% accuracy what the original New Testament Gospels and letters said.

So, when talking about the 66-book canon, this is what everyone means (or should mean, otherwise any talk about the Bible is skewed from the start because it’s not actually talking about the Bible).

What About Translation?

The argument that multiple translations are a problem for the truth of the Bible only became popular because of scholar Bart Ehrman, who is staunchly anti-God and, like other liberal scholars, saw any variations in texts as confusing the message of Scripture.

Ehrman also popularized the theory of late dating for the New Testament documents, which is by no means accepted by all scholars.

The idea they (Ehrman and other scholars like him) most adore is the claim that memory of Jesus was passed on in oral form (by verbal transmission) a long time before being written down.

A game of phone tag became their most popular analogy. One kid passes a message on to another in a long line, and as the message goes on it gets filtered through what each person thinks they heard with small changes over time until the message is completely warped from what the original message said. Applied to the the New Testament, if true, it would mean that the final form of the New Testament is not what the early church read and not what was written in the original documents.

In my book, The Atheist Conversion Manual, I address the above objections in detail.

(1) Late dating for the original manuscripts is not the only option. Early dating remains viable, and strong cases have been made for it. There’s not enough space here to make a detailed argument, although I do so in my book.

Furthermore, (2) whether you pick early dating for the New Testament or late dating, you still end up with documents that were written within living memory of the witnesses to Christ and his life. That fact alone destroys the phone tag argument.

Note that in the analogy, the first kid to speak the message is around the entire time. He doesn’t drop the line and then vanish. He sticks around to play the game and watch how the message transforms, and when he sees it change, he is there to make corrections.

Same for the New Testament.

The original manuscripts were written while witnesses to Jesus were still alive and could correct any alterations in the message that may have ruined it. The earliest churches could consult said witnesses to make sure what they’d been told was accurate, and they did.

Such was the case for the first century of Christianity, and the only language used was the Greek for the original documents. (There is rumor of a Hebrew version of Matthew, but it hasn’t been found by historians in any of the manuscript fragments.)

It wasn’t until the second century that the need for a Latin translation arose because Christianity spread deeper into Northwest Africa and Europe, where the dominant language was Latin. And Jerome, who translated the Old and New Testaments into the Latin Vulgate, took tremendous care because he saw his mission as a sacred one. He wanted to preserve the whole of Scripture in a word-for-word match. The translation he produced had such accuracy.

But even if it didn’t, the Hebrew and Greek testaments were maintained in Israel and across the Eastern Roman Empire, which would later become the Byzantine Empire (stretching from the Mediterranean coast up into Russia, eastward into Asia, and southward into Saudia Arabia and Africa, namely Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia).

The Orthodox did a splendid job of keeping the Bible and Apocryphal texts from disappearing from existence, as scrupulous as the Ancient Hebrew scribes who copied and preserved the Law and Prophets.

Everyone who translated the Bible was meticulous.

What About Vernacular Translations?

Vernacular means “common” or “main” language. Whatever is spoken the majority of people in a specific nation or region.

For a time, since everyone spoke Latin and that was the main language of the Western church, no one worried about translating into other languages. Same in the East with Greek.

Plus, the Catholic Church adopted the top-down hierarchical model it still employs today, where bishops from the Pope downward served as the readers and interpreters of Scripture for the people. The only other readers of Scripture were monks in monasteries, who coincidentally read everything, not just the Bible. They preserved via painstaking copy many ancient texts that we would not have today. (Think Plato, Aristotle, Homer, and much more.)

Around the 1300s, citizens all across Europe began to realize entrusting full interpretive rights of the Bible to church leadership alone left them not knowing what the Bible actually said. They just took bishops’ word for it, which wasn’t problematic when bishops could be trusted.

But toward the 15th century, the turn of the Renaissance, the Catholic Church became corrupted by a love of money like no other, and political actors from the outside crept in using bribes and power plays until the Church was ruled for a time by secular humanists pretending to be Christians. Usury became a chief complaint from many Catholics and then Protestants, from Luther and beyond.

The populace of Europe realized that the laity needed to be able to read Scripture. Not just to check the interpretations of church leadership, but also to experience the full beauty and wonder of the Word of God for themselves.

William Tyndale, who is most famous for being burned at the stake for making the first English translation, stated that he would make “the boy that driveth the plough” know more of Scripture than many learned clergy. Thereby displaying the motive.

And like those before him who translated the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek and the full Hebrew and Greek testaments into Latin, he took the job seriously, worked on a word-for-word match between the original languages and vernacular. A translation that cost him everything.

As the Protestant Reformation got well underway in the 16th century and beyond, other translators all over the West eventually took up the task of making other vernacular translations at risk of their own lives and also saw the task as sacred. Again and again, the emphasis on translation as a holy vocation resurfaced.

The only translation that was deliberately requested by a king to be written to give him ultimate authority over everyone (even above God in some senses) was that attributed to James I of England.

While the King James Version is adored by many, and is a beautiful translation (I don’t care what anyone says, Victorian English is spectacular), it has errors in it that go beyond mere spelling errors or grammatical issues. It has errors that alter the meaning of the text in spots because of the fact that its translators were enlisted by James I to tickle his fancy, not to administer an accurate word-for-word translation into English.

While they relied on Tyndale’s prior translation for much of the work, 80-90%, they didn’t use the same fastidious care applied by prior translators who transitioned the Bible into vernacular forms out of overwhelming divine calling.

What About Modern Translations?

The Renaissance and Reformation both sparked a desire for academic study unseen in the Middle Ages.

That’s not to say the Middle Ages were dark. They most certainly were not. Many a great philosophy and thought came out of the Middle Ages, despite “Enlightenment” fanatics trying to paint it as a time of vast ignorance.

But with the hunger for translation came the hunger for learning, which spread far and wide, and concern for accuracy increased.

Text criticism became a field of study to ensure that any and all texts from history are translated and matched their original languages and original documents, to the best of our ability. We’re talking years and years of lovers of history who spent centuries in ancient texts, especially the Bible, many of whom had/have the whole Bible memorized in the Hebrew and Greek, translating and retranslating the original languages to get as accurate as possible vernaculars.

The result is a wide array of translations, yes. But that’s not a bad thing.

A vast collection of translations exposes the nuances in the original documents of the Bible and forces us to study God’s Word closely. Ensures anyone and everyone can get a clear understanding of the Bible if they spend time in and cherish it, let it speak for itself, by comparing and contrasting and asking questions.

So, to the questions of “What Bible? What translation? What language?” I say don’t read just one. Read many, and study, don’t just read.

Also, make sure they are word-for-word translations and not paraphrases. Paraphrases are Bibles mixed with personal commentary.

Wednesday in our weekly paid article I will provide multiple translations I use that I think are best because of their integrity, and also tell you of some you should avoid.

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Marcel Roux (1878-1922)

Atheists think themselves superior to those who believe in God. But are they really?

Fyodor Dostoevsky dealt with the same question toward the end of his life. Russia became more industrialized, and with industrialization came anti-religious “enlightenment” ideals. Darwinism spread fast. More and more people fled the Orthodox Church for naturalism.

He came to the conclusion that atheism cannot survive.

In his final novel, the Karamazov brothers and their conflict with each other and their father illustrate the human struggle with the brand new atheism. Which seemed unbeatable and would soon devolve into the communist Soviet Union.

At the beginning of Part II, just after watching his brother and father fight over a woman, which ended with his father’s face bloodied and brutalized, Alyosha Karamazov is about to return to his kin from the nearby monastery where he serves when he’s stopped by Father Paissy, who gives him a profound and prophetic warning:

“Remember, young man, unceasingly…that the science of this world, having united itself into a great force, has, especially in the past century, examined everything heavenly that has been bequeathed to us in sacred books, and, after hard analysis, the learned ones of this world have absolutely nothing left of what was once holy. But they have examined parts and missed the whole, and their blindness is even worthy of wonder. Meanwhile the whole stands before their eyes as immovably as ever, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Did it not live for nineteen centuries, does it not live even now in the movements of individual souls and in the movements of the popular masses? Even in the movements of the souls of those same all-destroying atheists, it lives, as before, immovably! For those who renounce Christianity and rebel against it are in their essence of the same image of the same Christ, and such they remain, for until now neither their wisdom nor the ardor of their hearts has been able to create another, higher image of man and his dignity than the image shown of old by Christ. And whatever their attempts, the results have been only monstrosities. Remember this especially, young man, since you are being resigned to the world by your departing elder. Perhaps, remembering this great day, you will not forget my words either, given as cordial words of parting for you, because you are young and the temptations of the world are heavy and your strength will not endure them.”

Through four crucial claims, the Father tears apart any notion that atheism can survive for long, but in its time, it will be a dangerous, deadly enemy to humanity. We’re going to explore those claims one by one and discover how they relate to our world today…

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Blindness of the Learned Ones

“Remember, young man, unceasingly…that the science of this world, having united itself into a great force, has, especially in the past century, examined everything heavenly that has been bequeathed to us in sacred books, and, after hard analysis, the learned ones of this world have absolutely nothing left of what was once holy. But they have examined parts and missed the whole, and their blindness is even worthy of wonder.”

Paissy takes a passing reference to 1 Corinthians 13:12 and modernizes it for Alyosha.

Modern science thinks itself clever. But it lacks full power and potential because it disregards what is heavenly and holy.

One can’t help but picture “learned ones” in air quotes. Paissy no doubt dubs them with that label based on their own considerations of themselves. They go about with lofty haughtiness, picturing themselves as the best of the best of the best, all the while being deceived.

Because they limit themselves to the study of the material and mundane and can’t go beyond that domain. Their hubris and atheism won’t allow it.

Therefore, considering them “learned” can be nothing less than pure theater.

Stuck in physics, they cannot grasp metaphysics, and they are indeed blind...and weak. The “learned ones” can’t stand against the Higher Power of the kingdom of God.

The Immovable Whole

“Meanwhile the whole stands before their eyes as immovably as ever, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Did it not live for nineteen centuries, does it not live even now in the movements of individual souls and in the movements of the popular masses? Even in the movements of the souls of those same all-destroying atheists, it lives, as before, immovably!”

Paissy combines the Imago Dei with the historical resilience of Christianity.

Since Dostoevsky lived and died in the 19th century, his count of Christianity’s years stops there, but Christianity continues to be resilient even now, no matter what it faces. Nothing has destroyed it.

G. K. Chesterton, born seven years before Dostoevsky’s death, noted that Christianity’s survival has been akin to ongoing resurrections, mirroring the Savior’s own destruction of and escape from the grave. Every time the enemies of Christ think they have beaten him, he blasts aside the stone anew.

No other faith system has lasted as long. None. And yet Christianity has done so and also spread worldwide despite relentless persecution.

Paissy rightly sees that fact combined with the evident inherent value inside all humans as God’s little images to be irrefutable. Even atheists cannot escape the latter, for any attempts at escape result in abominations.

Manufactured Monsters

“For those who renounce Christianity and rebel against it are in their essence of the same image of the same Christ, and such they remain, for until now neither their wisdom nor the ardor of their hearts has been able to create another, higher image of man and his dignity than the image shown of old by Christ. And whatever their attempts, the results have been only monstrosities.”

Christ is the ultimate image of humankind. He lived to the fullest what we were designed to be and then gave his life to overcome sin and death and make the holy image of God permanent in this world and beyond.

Before and after his sacrifice, humans tried and still try to perfect humanity. Create utopias and always fail.

Paissy calls our attempts “monstrosities.” Little did Dostoevsky know just how monstrous the attempts would become. Over 10 million dead at the hands of the “utopia”-makers in a single century, something he would thankfully never live to see.

Although, it seems he suspected that outcome with Paissy’s prophetic words.

You will be ruled by kings or by the King, and only the latter leads to salvation.

Strong Spirit, Weak Flesh

“Remember this especially, young man, since you are being resigned to the world by your departing elder. Perhaps, remembering this great day, you will not forget my words either, given as cordial words of parting for you, because you are young and the temptations of the world are heavy and your strength will not endure them.”

Alyosha Karamazov, while the specific addressee, represents all youth who reach adulthood and are sent out into our dead world.

Though he’s tasted the whole from having spent time around the wise fathers in the monastery and learned of Christ, unless he carries Christ with him, lives out the perfected image, he’s sure to be devoured. For his strength alone is insufficient.

Devils lurk around every corner with weapons beyond brute strength and mental fortitude. Their tactics of seduction...overwhelming.

Paissy says with confidence that Alyosha’s (anyone who thinks he can face the world alone) “strength will not endure.” Not “might not,” not “maybe could”...WILL not. Because sin crouches at the door waiting to twist, pervert, infect, and kill.

You cannot face the mundane without the holy, or you will become a monster yourself.

The Utter Futility of Atheism

Atheism, therefore, is futile because it has deliberately shoved aside the holy and made itself the soulless, monstrous option. Though promising the illusion of freedom, its only end is lust. Obsession. Seduction into evil via the promise of unattainable power.

Because it is void of the divine. Void of real life.

Prior to the warning, Alyosha already had a taste of what lust would bring. His father’s and brother’s (both atheists) obsession with Grushenka led to relational collapse and almost left his father dead.

Alyosha was about to step back into that horrid context. Not knowing what to expect.

Same for you each day when you walk out the door. Evil waits for any opportunity you give it to invade and twist your mind, unless you remain forever vigilant, walking in the footsteps of Christ.

Life resides in the Source, the perfect Imager. All else is folly.

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That should bother you.

Because as Christians we have been given the truth that outweighs all else. Christ the King, who bled and died the most horrible of deaths and then rose from the grave to conquer sin and death.

The eternal God became flesh and dwelt among us to save the world through his everlasting sacrifice and grace.

We should have courageous passion for spreading the good news of God in Christ, overflowing with abundant wisdom, but we still tend to separate truth from faith. Do exactly as the atheists want.

Why?

You’re not going to like the answer. But you need it.

You Don’t Want to Be Free

You may think you want freedom, but you don’t understand what freedom is. Independence is what you mistake for freedom.

And it’s not entirely your fault.

You live in a culture that has pushed independence in all ways (“breaking the shackles of oppression”). Online it’s known as the oppressor vs oppressed narrative. In reality, it’s Marxism. Communism lite. Satanic to the core. Literally.

You probably don’t realize this (most people don’t), but Karl Marx was a Satanist. His daughter once caught him worshipping at a secret occult shrine in his office, and in his early poetry he talks about how God is real, he hates him, and he wants to see him usurped from his holy throne.

To write his manifesto, Marx tapped into ancient Gnosticism. The cult of secret knowledge that pits all who are “awake” to hidden reality against flesh and the evil Demiurge. The oppressor God.

Don’t get me wrong. We should definitely fight for the most innocent, and there are cases of real oppression.

But the ideology of Gnostic Marxism creates an us-them dynamic which only tears down and erodes everything it touches.

And you don’t have to take my word for it. The complete and utter failure of communism everywhere it has gone since its inception is proof enough.

All because they wanted power and control. Autonomous. “Independent.” To break the chains allegedly slapped upon them by God, the church, the state, and society.

The socialist brand of freedom turns out to be nothing but replacing old chains with new ones. They look nice and shiny. The way they sparkle…magnificent. But they’re still chains. Bred from power, void of truth.

You don’t want to be that kind of “free.”

You want to be free to choose the good.

Free to Choose the Good

Scripture is clear on every page that humans are slaves to sin. Broken since the fall. And when we aren’t following one god, we will always choose another…whether we know it or not.

G. K. Chesterton once rightly said, “For when we cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing, we worship anything.”

Idols creep into your life without your noticing. Unless you recognize and accept the reality of idols and are on the lookout, keeping watch by night, you are easy to entice and deceive. To fall prey to your faulty passions and be led into sin, as James said in his epistle.

To choose the good…that’s the only alternative. But you can’t do it on your own. No one can.

Sure, humans can do good things occasionally (God wrote morality into the cosmos, after all), but no one lives out pure goodness on their own. Eventually, selfishness kicks in or that one Gollum-like “precious” calls out “Did God really say…?” and you’re sucked into a black abyss of sin and torment from which there is no escape. Worse. You drag others down with you, ruining or near ruining their lives.

As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn puts it, “evil strikes through every human heart.” You’re already a slave.

The only way to become actually free is to choose the correct Master.

To Live is Christ, to Die is Gain

Twice, in Romans and Philippians, Paul refers to himself as “slave to Christ,” and that’s the key you’re looking for.

In Philippians, he then goes on to say this:

“Yes, and I will rejoice, 19 for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance, 20 as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. 21 For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. 22 If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. 23 I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. 24 But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. 25 Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith, 26 so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again. 27 Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, 28 and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation, and that from God. 29 For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake, 30 engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I still have” (Phil 1:18-30).

I highlighted the four main points, but let me list them:

• “To live is Christ, and to die is gain”

• “Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ”

• “Not frightened in anything by your opponents”

• “For the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake”

Suffering for the sake of Christ is access to the good and holy, and therefore, true freedom. If you aren’t suffering for him in some way, then the chances are you are in love with the world and not taking Christ seriously.

All he did was go around speaking and writing about the truth of Christ, and the world locked him up in chains. Yet he rejoiced. Because he had freedom no one could touch.

When you go all-in and become allegiant to the King of kings, Jesus replaces all else, magnifying the good and purging the evil. You owe it to yourself to read and learn everything you can about him, the history around him, his church, and prepare yourself for battle.

Because in the case of truth, there is one Savior and many devils, and you’re already in the war.

I wrote something to help you fight.

Get the manual that walks you through the truth of Christianity, my new book

The Atheist Conversion Manual

I explain the big deception in our world and take you step by step through why you can know God exists and that he is Jesus Christ, our Lord.

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The Atheist Conversion Manual

Today’s the big day! I just released my first book, The Atheist Conversion Manual. The Kindle edition is available, paperback and hardcover release 7/20. I’ve been talking about it all week on X and Substack, but I never told you the story behind it.

I wrote it for a son I almost lost.

Some of you have already heard this story because I shared it in an email a while ago. I decided it needs to be an article to help you understand that anything I write for you, from books, to articles, to emails, to notes, is personal at the deepest level.

Allegiant Faith Network emerged from the intense pressures of a trying test no one prepared me for. One that almost shattered me…

My wife became pregnant with our son in September of 2023. We tried to make a big deal by keeping it a secret to surprise my family at Christmas.

But because of fibroids in her womb, she started to show right away. It was still a great celebration, just not a surprise.

The only reason that December in 2023 is worth mentioning is because it was the last happy time before everything went cratering downhill.

Her pregnancy was difficult. The usual sleepless nights and cravings were exacerbated by rashes, horrid hot flashes, a cage-fight with natal diabetes (this one was the worst because my wife HATES needles and had to take insulin), and constant worry her fibroids took up too much room for our son to develop.

Turns out…our worries were justified.

8 weeks before he was due, she started having contractions. We thought they were Braxton-Hicks. Those intrepid pranksters that make you think the baby’s on the way. After all, her due date wasn’t until late June.

Then, she lost her mucus plug.

She panicked because she wasn’t sure what was happening. And since we both didn’t know, we bet on a basic trip to the doctor.

I comforted and reassured her that everything would be fine. My reassurance ended up being like Mr. Incredible in The Incredibles saying, “We’re superheroes. What could happen?”

Everything turned out fine…but we would walk through the fire first.

Her mom took her to the hospital while I stayed behind since one of our dogs had a vet appointment, and what we thought would be a simple checkup turned into the longest weekend of our lives…

When I finally made it to the hospital and got everything arranged with family to keep the dogs taken care of, the house in order, and whatever else was necessary, they had my wife and mother-in-law set up in a room, gave her a magnesium bolus shot, and set her up on a magnesium drip with a liquid diet.

They also gave her steroids to help the baby’s lungs develop.

Labor had started. WAY too early.

The doctors and nurses told us they would do everything they could to reduce contractions. And it worked…for a time.

But after midnight April 15, 2024, they picked up again. Febrile monsters on a rampage. And that’s when I panicked (hey, nobody’s perfect), called her mom to get back to the hospital, and let my family know their grandson was probably on the way.

The deal sealed when the doctor came in later that morning and tried to do a uterine exam. See what was going on. And her water broke like flood torrents from a shattered dam.

My baby boy was coming whether the world was ready or not.

His arm in the canal. Emergency C-section. NICU.

Nothing makes you ready for the unthinkable…

Everything from that moment flew past as if we were in a hundred-meter sprint.

Operating room. Bright white lights. Slice. Little bit of a fight (he didn’t want to come out that way, apparently). Shrill cries. Couple pictures.

He was alive, but his right arm was swollen like a purple balloon from trying to enter reality wrong.

32 weeks, jaundiced, lungs underdeveloped, and only 3 pounds. They wouldn’t let us hold him except for the brief photos we took because he had to be rushed down to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).

Where he would spend the next 8 weeks.

By the time he was secured in his new temporary living space, surrounded by great nurses we would come to know as friends, I was an emotional wreck.

Exhausted. Confused. Worried. Thirsty.

Every inch of me covered in a thorough blanket of sweat.

Eventually, someone collected me and guided my frail soul up to where my wife was recovering from surgery (“I thought you said she almost died”?” Just wait), and just seeing her face and knowing it was over made me slump into the chair beside her bed, a jittery mess.

It took three days for her to heal and re-cooperate. During that time, we learned she had almost bled out on the table.

The two smallest fibroids in her womb were right over where our son was positioned, so they had to be removed. Her surgeons used up 5 units of blood to keep her alive. It was a literal brush with death.

I almost went home a widower.

Many today would use this opportunity to tell you, “Don’t have kids.” And they’re absolute idiots.

Because I wouldn’t trade anything I went through for the world. Here’s why…

What would’ve still been one of the happiest days of my life became so much more because of the trial I faced. And whenever I look at my son, instead of remorse, I’m overwhelmed by joy and reminded of the immeasurable grace God shows us in this fallen world.

You see, even though I believed in and followed Jesus, it was merely through obligation. I wrote because the Bible called me to. I obeyed because that’s what we’re supposed to do.

But there was little investment. Little order. Little focus.

On 4/15/2024, I went from carefree, careless child of God to a man with purpose. From timid Chris to Courageous Chris.

A spark ignited me into high gear and inspired the ministry you see before you today. This little spark:

We’ve gotten too used to comfort in this world. It’s made us weak. Because diamonds are forged through intense pressure.

If you never go through battles, you’ll never gain the resolve of a soldier.

People want to balk at God, spit in his face, crucify him because he lets evil “run amok.” But where does that get us?

God hates evil as much as you do. He despises it. Never wanted this reality for us. But he didn’t let sin and death into the world. We did. To eradicate it would be to eradicate us. To bring good from it…THAT restores greatness and glory in ways we can’t even imagine!

And you don’t realize it until you feel the pain.

So, a word of advice: Embrace the storm.

You may cry, you may get confused, you may collapse in a chair by a bedside a total wreck, wondering what the heck is going on…but if you’re available to be forged in fire by God Most High, nothing can stop you.

I love you, friends.

Get a copy of my new book, The Atheist Conversion Manual, and help support Allegiant Faith Network here:

The Atheist Conversion Manual

It’s not like most books that defend the Christian faith. I take you through my story from darkness to light and use that story as the frame to explore evidence for the existence of God and his identity as Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Here’s what early readers are saying:

• “This is one of those books you pick up to flip through just to see what it's all about and end up reading it for an hour straight. It's a well-thought-out, well-researched manual packed with relevant, easy-to-follow information.”

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• “Chris Wright wrote the book I wish I'd read years ago when I was an atheist.”

Because I’ve been through the fire. I know what’s at stake. And I want you to know too, so you can become a fearless soldier Christ your King and build his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

(P.S. Allegiant Faith paid subscribers will receive their own personal copy later today, 7/18.)

Our mission is to engage and thoroughly challenge culture with the Gospel of Christ Jesus, evidencing and explicating the Truth of all reality for the entire world to see. Via contributions from faithful minds from all walks of life.

Through countless hours of resources on apologetics (defending the faith), biblical theology, history, philosophy, and more, we’re forming a network of warriors for Christ who understand God’s Word, God’s creation, the evil times we face, and will take to the frontlines of the ongoing war against Satan and his minions for ages to come.

Together, we seek to live out the two greatest commandments to love God with all that we are and to love our neighbor as ourselves, as Christ Jesus prescribed. And we hold fast to the words of the Apostle Paul in Galatians 5:16-23:

“16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. 19 Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21 envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”

But we also are not afraid to flip tables where necessary, as Christ himself did in the Temple. Christianity was born to shine the Light that defeats darkness on earth (as it is in heaven), not to be a sideline, you-do-you, love-you-guys-no-matter-what, you-can-do-no-wrong cheer club.

We, therefore, refuse to affirm or appease sin or abominations in this or any era and instead shut down evil ideas with brutal honesty…all while maintaining the humble knowledge that we too are broken sinners who are nothing without the Savior.

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Dream of Solomon, Luca Giordano (c. 1694-95)

Much to the chagrin of all the God-haters out there, fascination with the divine is on an upward trend. So many people everywhere are curious about whether or not God exists and what he’s like.

They want to study him, get to know him, emulate him. Questions that revolve around God are taking precedence over the mundane, the natural, in this present world.

There’s a significant reason for that: God is abundantly more fascinating. He’s beyond everything this world has to offer.

Atheists don’t think so. Some on X recently said that God offers no explanatory power for anything, but that’s not what you find throughout history. Whenever the idea of God or even the very presence of God shows up, people are astounded, filled with wonder, overcome by awe, and physically, mentally, and spiritually changed in unprecedented ways. So much so that even in a cynical world like our own, the eternal and mysterious are etched into the forefront of our minds.

God is more fascinating.

Why?

We find two powerful answers for why God continues to be fascinating for us as human beings from G. K. Chesterton and Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Riddles of God

Chesterton celebrates what he calls the riddles of God. And he says that they are so much more powerful and bountiful than the solutions of man.

Identifying God as a riddler tells us so much about who he is. It tells us that he has deliberately made himself cryptic to us and enjoys testing humanity. God reveals just enough of himself to be touchable but not fully comprehensible.

For atheists, that’s a problem, but for the Christian, it’s not because we understand God has made himself mysterious because he wants us to explore him. He wants us to seek him out.

A Being like that is hard for us to fathom because of our brokenness ever since the fall of Adam and Eve in the garden. The sin and death unleashed on us made us finite and forced the mysteries of the heavens to be shoved far from us. God moved them out of reach for our protection.

That doesn’t mean God doesn’t want us to know him or them. In fact, he encourages us to adventure. As Proverbs 25:2 says, “It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings to seek things out.” We are made to explore. Made to adventure. Made to study not just the mysteries of this world, but the mysteries beyond it as well. It’s ingrained in the very code of our DNA to puzzle over God, to explore his mysteries.

Chesterton was clever by calling the cosmic mysteries “riddles” because riddles are problems to be solved, but they’re not problems that are detrimental to survival. They’re puzzles that enlighten and stimulate the mind, that grow the character and form it into what it was made to be. Mind stimulation and formation are why we enjoy doing puzzles like Sudoku and/or just plain puzzles, putting them together piece by piece to see the image it forms. Since we are made in God’s image from the beginning, inherently we seek to understand our purpose and our design. The higher things.

What gets in the way of that journey is our infatuation with ourselves and our infatuation with this world.

Unfortunately, there’s the tendency for us to idolize the creation and knowledge itself over the Creator, as Adam and Eve did. Hence the reason for God’s protection, his making the eternal mysteries harder to work for. Scripture warns about our idolatrous potentiality all the time and tells us to steer away from it with every fiber of our being, because it doesn’t just corrode the soul, it corrodes the mind and body as well. It strips away your capacity to appreciate the mysteries of God.

If all we have is this physical world, the creation, then the very pursuit of knowledge itself has no standing. It’s not really mysterious per se. Just unknown.

But when God is in the picture, there really is a universal riddle with a glorious prize at the end. The puzzle doesn’t just stop in this world. It’s not a problem here to solve. We’re not mere survivors. We’re thrivers, and we’re meant to comprehend a kingdom greater than our wildest imaginations.

Sin and death and depravity don’t want that for us, for us to thrive, because Satan is trying to usurp the throne of the kingdom. God’s kingdom. The devil knows at this point, because of the cross, that he’s lost the battle ultimately, but if he can chip away at the kingdom piece by piece and lower its numbers, he thinks he can still prevent it from becoming everything the Creator wants it to be: an eternal kingdom filled with the goodness, justice, grace, love, power, and enlightenment of Christ.

You have the opportunity to prove him wrong.

But not just anyone can grasp the mysteries of God and stand up to the devil. Dostoevsky tells us the one person who is most capable of grasping the mysteries of the Divine, and you’ll never guess who it is…

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