WasChristian | Daily secular magazine

Fine-Tuning: Where Do the Probabilities Come From?

A narrow life-permitting range is not yet a probability. Fine-tuning arguments need a defensible space of possibilities, a weighting rule, and clearly specified rival explanations.

6 min read 42

Would Knowing God Exists Destroy Free Will?

If God made divine existence unmistakable, belief would no longer be optional. That would settle one question, but it would not automatically force trust, love, obedience, or worship.

5 min read 41

Was the Bible Always Supposed to Be Inerrant? A History of Christian Certainty

Christians defended scripture's truthfulness long before modern fundamentalism, but they disagreed about what its words were meant to assert. From Origen and Augustine to Princeton and the Chicago Statement, the history is more complicated than either side usually admits.

28 min read 40

How Christians Defended and Challenged Slavery

American Christians used the same Bible to defend slavery, demand abolition, and resist the religious system surrounding human ownership. The conflict exposed deeper questions about scripture and moral authority.

7 min read 39

What Do You Do With Sunday After Leaving Church?

Leaving church can open a Sunday morning while also removing its rhythm, people, and purpose. Rebuilding the day starts by deciding which of those things you actually miss.

4 min read 38

Why Does Worship Music Still Feel Powerful After You Stop Believing?

A worship song can still bring tears, chills, or a sense of presence after its theology stops feeling true. Music binds reward, memory, attention, and identity more tightly than belief alone.

4 min read 37

Does the Bible Set Faith Against Evidence?

The New Testament praises belief without seeing, but it also appeals to signs, witnesses, promises, and examination. Faith and evidence are not presented as simple opposites.

5 min read 36

The Kalam Argument: Where Does a Personal God Enter?

The Kalam argument concludes that the universe has a cause. Reaching a timeless, personal creator requires several additional steps, each with its own assumptions.

7 min read 35

Does Morality Need to Be Objective to Matter?

If moral values are shaped by human minds, cultures, and evolution, does that make cruelty merely a preference? The answer depends on what objective means and what we expect morality to do.

6 min read 34

How Do You Recognize an Explanation That Cannot Fail?

An explanation that can absorb every success and every failure may feel resilient. The real question is whether any outcome could make it less credible.

5 min read 33

Thomas Paine’s Challenge to Revelation

The Age of Reason did not argue for atheism. It asked what happens when claimed revelation is treated as testimony, evidence, and moral argument.

7 min read 32

Do Near-Death Experiences Prove an Afterlife?

Near-death experiences can be vivid, patterned, and life-changing. The strongest controlled studies show unexpected awareness during resuscitation, but not proof that consciousness survives irreversible death.

6 min read 31

What Happens to Judas in Matthew and Acts?

Matthew says Judas returned the money and hanged himself. Acts says he acquired a field, fell headlong, and burst open. The differences extend beyond the cause of death.

4 min read 30

Christian Nationalism: What the Label Includes

Christian nationalism can mean cultural influence, government preference, or a religious test for national belonging. The differences matter more than the slogan.

8 min read 29

Is Belief a Choice?

You can choose what to read, whom to trust, and which questions to pursue. But can you decide to believe Christianity, or anything else, simply by willing it?

7 min read 28

Can a Silent Retreat Be Secular?

Silence has deep religious associations, but a retreat does not require belief in revelation or the supernatural. The harder questions concern what practices are being borrowed, what they can offer, and when intensive silence may be unwise.

4 min read 27

Would the Disciples Die for a Lie?

Some early Christian leaders accepted serious danger while proclaiming the resurrection. That supports their sincerity, but the familiar martyrdom argument often claims more than the evidence shows.

6 min read 26

Why Can Hell Still Feel Real After You Stop Believing?

A person can stop accepting the doctrine of hell and still feel its warning in the body. That mismatch is unsettling, but fear is not the same thing as evidence.

4 min read 25

Does Going to Church Improve Mental Health?

Church attendance is often associated with better mental health, but association is not the same as a treatment effect. New longitudinal research complicates the claim that returning to worship will make people healthier.

6 min read 24

Paul’s Resurrection List and the Four Gospel Endings

The earliest surviving written resurrection summary and the four Gospel endings overlap, but they do not tell the same story. A careful comparison shows what each source says, leaves out, and asks readers to infer.

7 min read 23

Did the Council of Nicaea Choose the Books of the Bible?

The bishops at Nicaea argued over the nature of Christ, drafted a creed, addressed Easter, and issued church rules. The surviving record contains no vote choosing the books of the Bible.

5 min read 22

What Does “Spiritual but Not Religious” Actually Mean?

Leaving Christianity does not always produce atheism. Millions of Americans still use spiritual language after stepping away from organized religion, but that label can hide several very different worldviews.

3 min read 21

Can Psychedelics Create Mystical Experiences Without God?

Psychedelic research can produce experiences people describe as sacred, timeless, unified, and deeply meaningful. That makes the experience real. It does not automatically settle what caused it.

4 min read 20

What Does Deconstructing Christianity Mean? A 2026 Study of Former Evangelicals

A new sociology study follows former evangelicals through reflection, deconstruction, and reconstruction. It helps separate a messy human process from the online stereotype of simply deciding to stop believing.

5 min read 19

Can AI Replace a Pastor as a Spiritual Authority?

Christians are already asking AI about scripture, prayer, meaning, and spiritual growth. The harder question is what happens when a tool that sounds certain begins to occupy the role once held by clergy, scripture, or community.

4 min read 18

Are Young Adults Really Returning to Church?

Recent headlines point to young adults, especially young men, returning to church. Survey reports show some respondents attending more often, but the national picture is more complicated than a revival headline.

3 min read 17

Does the Bible Teach Eternal Torment?

The Bible contains some of Christianity’s strongest language about everlasting punishment, but it also speaks of death, destruction, and the salvation of all. What follows depends on how those texts are read together.

5 min read 16

Ten Common Objections in Brief

Ten recurring challenges to atheism, including morality, meaning, scientific limits, and the claim that unbelief requires its own act of faith.

6 min read 15

Enough Reason Not to Believe

Questions about suffering, revelation, morality, and explanation accumulate. Deciding what to believe requires weighing that evidence together.

7 min read 14

Living Without God

Leaving religious belief changes familiar sources of community and direction. Ethical responsibility and a meaningful life remain open possibilities.

10 min read 13

Mind, Consciousness, and the Soul

Conscious experience remains difficult to explain. The relationship between mind and brain puts claims about an independent soul to the test.

7 min read 12

Meaning, Mortality, and the Value of a Finite Life

Love, responsibility, and meaningful work take place within finite lives. Their value need not depend on a promise that those lives will never end.

8 min read 11

Religious Experience, Revelation, and Prayer

An experience can feel certain to the person having it. Revelation and prayer raise harder questions when that certainty is offered as public evidence.

8 min read 10