{"id":1541,"date":"2011-11-13T08:46:57","date_gmt":"2011-11-13T13:46:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/?p=1541"},"modified":"2011-11-14T22:47:40","modified_gmt":"2011-11-15T03:47:40","slug":"how-the-internet-destroys-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/how-the-internet-destroys-faith\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Internet Destroys Faith"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Christian apologist Josh McDowell is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianpost.com\/news\/internet-the-greatest-threat-to-christians-apologist-josh-mcdowell-says-52382\/\">angry about the Internet<\/a>. He claims it destroys faith: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Internet has given atheists, agnostics, skeptics, the people who like to destroy everything that you and I believe, the almost equal access to your kids as your youth pastor and you have&#8230; whether you like it or not.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s absolutely right.<\/p>\n<p>Access to information helps people understand reality. Reality is a bullshit solvent. Accepting too much reality destroys faith.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s why religious organizations, and cults in particular, train their believers to insulate themselves from outside influences (reality). They limit or outright forbid followers from associating with people outside the cult, and train them to avoid movies, books, music, and anything else that might help dislodge the impaction of bullshit lodged between their ears.<\/p>\n<p>Information is the enemy of anyone who wants to enslave people. Information doesn&#8217;t want to be free, *people* want to be free, and when information that can break the shackles is available people will get to it somehow. The easier it is to find, the more people will find it.<\/p>\n<p>When I escaped from my cult I spent an enormous amount of time at the library. I took home stacks of books on every subject that interested me. I spent a year, unemployed and living in a ratty apartment, reading and reading and reading some more. I didn&#8217;t realize it at the time, but I was deprogramming myself.<\/p>\n<p>It took effort, and easy access to the library. But now all it takes is a click. Just one click, and there&#8217;s an idea a kid has seen for the first time. They see a different point of view about something they&#8217;ve been taught, and then another, and another. It&#8217;s simple, fast, and can be done in secret, over and over and over again. Slowly, gradually, doubts (reality) creeps in and a functioning bullshit meter begins to grow.<\/p>\n<p>Angry is the wrong word to describe Mr. McDowell. His apparent anger is just an outward display of his real emotion: fear. He is afraid of the Internet.<\/p>\n<p>And he damn well should be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christian apologist Josh McDowell is angry about the Internet. He claims it destroys faith: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Internet has given atheists, agnostics, skeptics, the people who like to destroy everything that you and I believe, the almost equal access to your kids as your youth pastor and you have&#8230; whether you like it or not.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d He&#8217;s absolutely [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1541"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1543,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541\/revisions\/1543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}