Rick Beckman

Author: Rick Beckman

  • Biblically Accurate Angels and the Memes That Define Them

    Biblically Accurate Angels and the Memes That Define Them

    In my home­town, there are a cou­ple Mex­i­can food restau­rants to choose from — all of them pret­ty good — but at least in my house­hold, if you say “let’s eat at Mex­i­can,” we’re refer­ring to one spe­cif­ic restau­rant: El Cabal­lo Blan­co (trans­la­tion: The White Horse). Not only do they have the best chick­en dish­es […]

  • Keeping It Simple: Whatever Happened to the Churches?

    Keeping It Simple: Whatever Happened to the Churches?

    The earliest Christians met in beautiful simplicity, filled with love and charity. What happened?

  • The James Webb Space Telescope Images and the Mocking of Christians by Atheists

    The James Webb Space Telescope Images and the Mocking of Christians by Atheists

    The James Webb Space Telescope's first images were certainly awe-inspiring, but some people have taken them as an opportunity to mock those with a different worldview from them. Let's put a stop to that behavior.

  • What I Used to Be, or a Look at Labels Long Left Behind

    What I Used to Be, or a Look at Labels Long Left Behind

    There was a time I cared more about the labels ascribed to myself than I did treating those around me with dignity and love. What were those labels? And was it worth it?

  • Do You Need God to Be Good?

    Do You Need God to Be Good?

    Without God, people are free to rape, murder, steal, and cause all the destruction that they want... right? That is what some apologists believe, that without God, there is no goodness. But what is the good? And can it be attained without God's help?

  • Challenge Your Eyes with the Eyeballing Game

    I have always fan­cied myself a pret­ty good eye­baller, and now there’s a test to prove it one way or anoth­er: the eye­balling game. I amazed myself at how good I did on some of the tests, and utter­ly dis­ap­point­ed myself on oth­ers. Either way, I was ahead of the curve. Where do you fall? Error […]

  • A Finely Tuned Universe? Not From Our Perspective

    In part 1 of my response to Zac Sech­ler’s 36 Ques­tions for Athe­ists, we looked at the very basic, most fun­da­men­tal ques­tion of why there is some­thing rather than noth­ing and how that relates to whether the uni­verse is eter­nal or if a cre­ator deity is respon­si­ble for its existence.  I had no prob­lem admit­ting […]

  • Jesus, E.T., and a Book of Many Interpretations

    I am not always the biggest fan of my mind. I try to be ratio­nal­ly mind­ed, or at least I think I do. Look­ing back at all the wild ideas I’ve held since, I don’t know, mid­dle school, though? It’d be real­ly easy to come to the con­clu­sion that my mind is a house built […]

  • The End Is the Beginning?

    There is no shame in being an athe­ist, a sec­u­lar­ist, a mate­ri­al­ist, a ratio­nal­ist, or what­ev­er else and still hop­ing that there is some­thing beyond death. You don’t have to believe in a god to hope that what­ev­er our selves are per­sists after death. The idea of ceas­ing to exist is ter­ri­fy­ing, at least to […]

  • Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?

    What feels like a life­time ago, I was intro­duced to the con­cept of lengthy lists of ques­tions intend­ed to catch mem­bers of an oppos­ing view­point or world­view off guard or get them think­ing about what they believe in per­haps a dif­fer­ent man­ner. The ear­li­est list I can recall was Hard Nuts for Catholic Apol­o­gists, a […]

Rick Beckman