Sign Checklist #2: Lee Strobel, Anne Graham Lotz and The Efficacy of Prayer

The next website on my list is www.leestrobel.com. Lee Strobel is a popular apollogist that claims to be an ex-atheist.* His website offers YouTube-like videos on a variety of subjects. However, the most obvious goal of his website is to sell books and cds. His free videos are just snippets. The longest I've seen are about 10 minutes long. In many cases you have to buy the CD to see the entire movie.

I rather like Lee Strobel. No where have I heard him openly ridicule the atheist position. (Other apollogists often do.) Maybe, being an ex-atheist, he realizes that you can't reach people by telling them that they're stupid. However, his arguments are still the same ol', same ol' thats been refuted millions of times.

In the following clip At the following URL, Strobel interviews Anne Graham Lotz (Billy Grahams daughter). They tackle the question of why God seems to not answer every prayer.
http://www.leestrobel.com/videoserver/video.php?clip=strobelT1229
(You can embed the videos, but they start when my blog loads, so I posted the url instead.)

Seems that Strobel and Lotz have never heard of Occam's Razor. They say that God doesn't always answer prayer and that there are bad things happening in the world, so that means that God must have a higher plan and understanding than us. It's a non-answer. It just a way for them to justify confirmation bias. That's the real reason people supposedly have a prayer answered. The simplest explaination, in my opinion, is that God has no power to stop evil or to answer prayer and when we hear about a prayer being answered it was us counting the hits and not the misses.

Many people have a superstitious attitude toward prayer. They often think that you have to have some magical quality called "enough faith", or that you must word the prayer in a certain flattering way so that it grabs Jesus' attention. When such prayers go "unanswered" the person who prayed often blames himself/herself.

* I have no reason to doubt that Lee Strobel was once an atheist. I have meantioned many times that people change as they go through life. I myself have jumped the fence a couple times. I've gone from believer to agnostic, back to believer, and finally back to the atheist I am today. Who knows? Maybe, Strobel will be an atheist again in ten years. Probably not, because he makes too much money on the claim of being an ex-atheist. Compare this to the reaction I get when I tell fundies that I'm an ex-christian. I'm either called a liar or I'm accused of not being a "real christian" in the first place, or that I'm too stupid to know what being a christian is all about.

To my christian readers: What if Strobel is still an atheist? The bible says that atheists are evil and wicked and they can not do anything that is good (Psalms 53:1). What if Lee is pretending to be a christian so that he can make a bunch of money off of book and CD sales? According to the bible, isn't that kind of dishonesty something you should expect from an atheist? How can you trust someone who was corrupt and has done abominable iniquity? How can you trust him to be honest with you now?

Sign Checklist #1: RaptureReady gives the worst advice possible.

In the last article, I posted a picture of a sign that lists four websites to visit and one bible verse to read. The sign was posted by a local church group. I promised to visit each website on the list to find a topic to write about.

The first website is RaptureReady. On RaptureReady, I found an article about suicide.

This is a touchy subject for me. I suffered with clinical depression most of my adult life. My depression was most likely caused by a chemical imbalance. During most of my depression, I was a christian. I sought help from christian counselors. One pastor even advised me to throw my medication away. That was, of course, the exact opposite of what he should have told me.

Here's what RaptureReady has to say.

Please, if you are struggling with thoughts of suicide, seek the help of a pastor or Christian counselor. Do not try to carry this battle on your own. The devil is fighting hard for you; don’t give in to his lies. Find a good Christian counselor who can determine whether you may have a medical issue that is causing depression. Realize that whatever you are facing will pass. If you allow God to help you through it, you will be taking victory over Satan’s grasp on you. Don’t let him steal one more moment of the joy that God has set before you! (emphasis mine)

Don't get me wrong. Seeking counsel is the best thing you can do. There are some very good christian couselors. But, there are also some very bad ones as well. The problem I have with this article is that most church leaders that I know are not qualified to diagnose medical conditions. The article is advising the reader to seek spiritual counsel first to determine if he/she should see a doctor. This, in my opinion, is the worst advise in the case of suicidal thoughts. A doctor is the first person you should see.

Also, in the case of clinical depression, the symptoms of depression often do not pass. They may just keep getting worse until the victim gives up completely and commits suicide. Keep in mind that I am talking about clinical depression which is a medical condition. You don't become clincally depressed because your girlfriend dumped you. It is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain.

Here's my advice. If you are having thoughts of suicide or are experiencing severe depression, find a good doctor (perferably a pychologist) who can determine whether you may have a medical condition that is causing depression.

More Crazy Signage

Remember that infamous picture I took last summer? Well, someone is now nailing up nicer printed and laminated signs to the telephone poles at the same intersection.

I have to say that the signs are now much nicer then the usual signs. Still, they need some work, but the signs are much nicer than their content.

I am somewhat familiar with the first website in the list. Visit it if you dare. On RaptureReady I found this little gem of an article.

What Atheism REALLY Is

We need to understand that Atheism is a religion in and of itself. Though Atheists may disagree, their beliefs are just one more lane in the Wide Gate and Broad Way that leads to Destruction (Matthew 7.13). In essence, Atheism is really Satanism in disguise. Anything that the Devil can use to lead people away from Jesus Christ and from Eternal Salvation, he will (and does) use. Atheism, in its rabid opposition to Christianity yet eerie silence towards Islam, New Age, and other world religions, is showing its true colors that it is nothing more than Satanism in better looking terminology. The Bible makes it clear that anything that denies Jesus Christ his rightful place as God is of the devil. This, sadly enough, includes Atheism.

In one glorious paragraph Lovelace accuses atheism of being a religion, of being Satanism no less, and of being exclusively anti-christian. It's really hard to read such drivel.

Just for the record, here's two links to anti-islam atheistic writings.
What We're Up Against
Pat Condell's Godless Comedy

I also critize Mormonism, Sikhism, and Seventh Day Adventism (among a few others).

I plan to visit each of the websites and to write about the juicy articles I find, over the next few weeks.

P.S. I haven't forgotten about the bible verse. I think it'll make a nice future Jesus Said It article.