Daughter of Matt Slick (CARM) speaks out against him

[Nine_Two]

The fact that she didn’t hang in there long enough to investigate* says to me that at a fundamental level she was looking for a way out. Her parents had given her an unappealing experience of religion and family life to the point that she refused to bring this question to her father before abandoning everything she knew.

*The answer to her question is that some things are inherently moral or immoral (Such as murder or almsdeeds) but others are morally neutral. Many things which are morally neutral were forbidden by the Mosaic Covenant for disciplinary reasons, and those disciplines were relaxed after we were delivered from the law.

She also came from a Calvinist background though, and they tend to have a more black and white view of things. I’m not sure your answer (which I agree with) would make sense in that light.

 

[CalCatholic]

I am curious, how old is the girl? Does anyone one know?

It says in the beginning of her story that she was born in 1992, so approx. 21.

 

[drac16]

Ooooorrr maybe because she had a controlling religious fanatic for a father.

I didn’t rule out that possibility.

 

[JustaServant]

Anyone find it interesting that Catholic, Lutheran, LDS, Orthodox, Muslim, and Pagan are all in agreement on this thread?

Not sure what part of fundamentalism Slick is from. But her story is very common among fundie KJV only types.

 

[Brandall]

Anyone find it interesting that Catholic, Lutheran, LDS, Orthodox, Muslim, and Pagan are all in agreement on this thread?

Not sure what part of fundamentalism Slick is from. But her story is very common among fundie KJV only types.

I certainly walked from my faith at her age and didn’t return for a long time. However, I went out of my way to avoid embarrassing my parents. Not every one strives for that.

 

[JustaServant]

I certainly walked from my faith at her age and didn’t return for a long time. However, I went out of my way to avoid embarrassing my parents. Not every one strives for that.

Every child will rebel to some extent, that is the way of things. The extent of that rebellion is, in many ways, a peek into what that child was exposed to and the kind of parenting they recieved.
If you want to read the experiences of ex-fundies, here is a good site:
stufffundieslike.com/forum/index.php

I was never involved with the Jack Hyles KJV-only types, mine were the more mild Jerry Falwell variety. But I did encounter them. The kind of extreme cultic experience of these groups does lead people to reject God completely.

In fact, I would say fundamentalism creates more atheists than any famous atheist you can name.

 

[benjohnson]

Every child will rebel to some extent.

My trick is to plant a few seed in my child’s head that “Daddy will be really angry if I become Orthodox.”

Child: Daddy, I HATE YOU, I’m going to the Orthodox church!!!

Me: “OH NO! Not that! Nooooooooooo!”

 

[Della]

My trick is to plant a few seed in my child’s head that “Daddy will be really angry if I become Orthodox.”

Child: Daddy, I HATE YOU, I’m going to the Orthodox church!!!

Me: “OH NO! Not that! Nooooooooooo!”

As one who had direct experience with Fundamentalists and their mind set I can see why this poor gal threw up her hands with what she thinks is Christianity. I too saw people leave this kind of Christianity behind when it couldn’t answer their legitimate questions. This is the problem with messing around with essential doctrines about the human person. It creates monsters–in the strictly philosophical meaning of the word–ones who become unnatural in their world view. It strips the human person of his proper dignity and makes God seem like a cruel tyrant. I feel so badly for her–mostly because it will probably takes years for her to recover and sort things out, and she may never come to understand the truth about her own nature and that of God and may indeed be lost because of it. And all because faulty theology was forced on her from childhood. She will be in my prayers.

 

[JustaServant]

My trick is to plant a few seed in my child’s head that “Daddy will be really angry if I become Orthodox.”

Child: Daddy, I HATE YOU, I’m going to the Orthodox church!!!

Me: “OH NO! Not that! Nooooooooooo!”

If you REALLY wanna get them, try this.

Child: Daddy, I HATE YOU, I’m going to the local fundamentalist church!!!

You: “Mmm…that’s nice.” Said with a totally disinterested voice, your eyes never leaving the newspaper (or computer as the case may be)

 

[Cavaradossi]

My trick is to plant a few seed in my child’s head that “Daddy will be really angry if I become Orthodox.”

Child: Daddy, I HATE YOU, I’m going to the Orthodox church!!!

Me: “OH NO! Not that! Nooooooooooo!”

Reverse psychology. Gets 'em every time.

 

[boomerang]

Oh, did you not read her essay? Her father isn’t the reason why she stopped believing a God exists.
She says it was because she began asking questions about biblical discrepancies once she got out of the house…and she experienced a turning point moment when the religion of Christianity didn’t make sense to her anymore.

.

That is what unfortunately happens when you place all your faith on the Bible to the point of idolatry, and have absolutely no tradition to back it up.

 

[Randy_Carson]

The moment of crisis for her came here:

If God was absolutely moral, because morality was absolute, and if the nature of “right” and “wrong” surpassed space, time, and existence, and if it was as much a fundamental property of reality as math, then why were some things a sin in the Old Testament but not a sin in the New Testament?

Alex had no answer — and I realized I didn’t either. Everyone had always explained this problem away using the principle that Jesus’ sacrifice meant we wouldn’t have to follow those ancient laws. 
But that wasn’t an answer. In fact, by the very nature of the problem, there was no possible answer that would align with Christianity.

I still remember sitting there in my dorm room bunk bed, staring at the cheap plywood desk, and feeling something horrible shift inside me, a vast chasm opening up beneath my identity, and I could only sit there and watch it fall away into darkness. The Bible is not infallible, logic whispered from the depths, and I had no defense against it. If it’s not infallible, you’ve been basing your life’s beliefs on the oral traditions of a Middle Eastern tribe. The Bible lied to you.

Everything I was, everything I knew, the structure of my reality, my society, and my sense of self suddenly crumbled away, and I was left naked.

I was no longer a Christian.

Perhaps the answer is here:

catholic.com/magazine/articles/why-we-are-not-bound-by-everything-in-the-old-law

And Matt Slick may have said something similar here:

carm.org/leviticus-homosexuality-old-testament-law

 

[Estevao]

Yep, another atheist who gives into lust but points to intellectual reasons as a cover for their apostasy. It’s pretty funny too because the “arguments” she gives are just pathetic Philosophy 101 “What caused God?” level arguments. “I believe in science, not religion. I think rationally” blah blah blah, nothing but rhetoric from a bunch of faux-oppressed bourgeois kids with an internet connection who think that Richard Dawkins is a great thinker. I got a big laugh when her Philosophy 101 “professor” tried to actively make her an atheist. This is what you pay money for parents, for a bunch of marxist atheists to brainwash your kids and call it “free thinking” and for your kids to go off and be hedonists for 4 years.

Yep, I did a word search for “Aquinas”, nothing comes up. A bunch of internet angsty internet rebels who think that Matt Slick is the be all and end all of Christianity. What a joke. I’m so glad I left atheist it’s such an intellectual graveyard.

 

[Theo520]

Oh, did you not read her essay? Her father isn’t the reason why she stopped believing a God exists.
She says it was because she began asking questions about biblical discrepancies once she got out of the house…and she experienced a turning point moment when the religion of Christianity didn’t make sense to her anymore.

.

Her response is a very typical path for stages of spiritual development. I urge people to read up on James Fowler if they are dealing with this in their life.
psychologycharts.com/james-fowler-stages-of-faith.html

 

[awsiukiewicz]

how sad…how misguided…

 

[Faithdancer]

Daddy,

I disagree with you and point this out. This will be my one and only post. I am Catholic because of the witness of my Father. He took me to mass, served in the Holy Name Society, was bright, educatated, charitable and I rarely heard him speak negatively of what other’s believed although he could explain it.

Matt Slick as a Father was an example of what he believed, thought and taught and some of these memories may have been less than positive.

I spent too many hours with too many Protestants and if my only exposure to Christian thought was with Calvinists, Arminians, Baptists, Fundamentalists and Evangeligcals or Protestant of whatever stripe then I too would have questions about the Christianity that they know. I, fortunately had something to compare these thoughts to and fortunately found the mire of disagreement and confusion, confusing.

She did not leave Christianity, she was exposed to Calvinism, and sadly based on this blog has nothing to compare it to. I met too many Fundamentalists that became Athiests, because when they discovered that Fundamentalism had too many loopholes and things that could not be proven having been taught that everyone else is wrong all they could do is bceome Athiest.

And when confronted with “The Bible is True” and this is your only authority then…

Sola Scriptura fails…

then of course as stated earlier…

She left Calvinism and hopefully she will pursue an intellectual pursuit of all that she missed and all that you and others have been exposed to on this forum and hopefully will understand that there is more to Christianity than Calvinism.

I’m sure she would still be devout in her faith if she had been brought up to believe, not that “the Bible is true” but rather that “the pope is infallible.”

 

[Estevao]

Her response is a very typical path for stages of spiritual development. I urge people to read up on James Fowler if they are dealing with this in their life.
psychologycharts.com/james-fowler-stages-of-faith.html

No her response is typical of college students who get involved in sin, and uncritically accept the talking points of leftist academics who actively try to disabuse students of their faith as an intellectual cover for their apostasy. Did you not read the article? She fornicated. She talked about her philosophy 101 professor actively tried to disabuse her of her faith with silly talking points. She then accepted the kind of pseudo-bible scholarship that litters atheist blogs as something legitimate instead of the product of a culture that is laughably ignorant of history, literature or logic.

Getting to your post, I was unaware that some psychologist was an authority on what “faith” means. There also appear to be typical atheist talking points in this “study”, like that logic is opposed to faith and that if you rationally question your faith you will inevitably lose it, and that apostasizing is actually “advancing” in the spiritual life.

Also for a guide on the spiritual life, there is no mention of “sin” or “repentance” in this article. So it appears that what we have is just a bunch of psycho-bable of what real, adult faith is, that is something that just makes you feel good, and makes you do social justice activities like charity. But this is just the leftist secularist paradigm passing itself off as psychology.

This gets back to what I said above: parents pay to send their kids to college to go and be hedonists and to get brainwashed by a bunch of marxist atheists who attack their faith with fallacious reasoning. This psychologist is just another example of the kind of atheist academics who make a living preaching atheism and naturalism.

 

[Theo520]

No her response is typical of college students who get involved in sin, and uncritically accept the talking points of leftist academics who actively try to disabuse students of their faith as an intellectual cover for their apostasy. Did you not read the article? She fornicated. She talked about her philosophy 101 professor actively tried to disabuse her of her faith with silly talking points. She then accepted the kind of pseudo-bible scholarship that litters atheist blogs as something legitimate instead of the product of a culture that is laughably ignorant of history, literature or logic.

While her studies and university lifestyle did lead her away, that doesn’t disprove the theory on stages of faith. She moved from a ‘fundamentalist’ view which tends to be very formal and literal, to that of a skeptic who questions their prior understanding.

Getting to your post, I was unaware that some psychologist was an authority on what “faith” means. There also appear to be typical atheist talking points in this “study”, like that logic is opposed to faith and that if you rationally question your faith you will inevitably lose it, and that apostasizing is actually “advancing” in the spiritual life.

The theory is more complex than can be presented in a simple table. But do you deny the premise, that a multitude of members become skeptical and question THEIR PRIOR UNDERSTANDING of their faith? By better understanding what is going on, it’s easier to keep healthy questions from turning to full apostasy. Faith is a very personal journey, and we shouldn’t be offended because others question their faith.

Also for a guide on the spiritual life, there is no mention of “sin” or “repentance” in this article. So it appears that what we have is just a bunch of psycho-bable of what real, adult faith is, that is something that just makes you feel good, and makes you do social justice activities like charity. But this is just the leftist secularist paradigm passing itself off as psychology.

Are you projecting here? I’m not certain if you think my article should have mentioned sin or if the CARM girl should have. What I posted is not a ‘guide book’ but it can help explain why some people leave, and open a door for their return, as it did with me.

This gets back to what I said above: parents pay to send their kids to college to go and be hedonists and to get brainwashed by a bunch of marxist atheists who attack their faith with fallacious reasoning. This psychologist is just another example of the kind of atheist academics who make a living preaching atheism and naturalism.

While you have a valid rant on colleges, Fowler is a Methodist minister and professor of Theology. He is not advocating non-religion.

 

[Estevao]

While her studies and university lifestyle did lead her away, that doesn’t disprove the theory on stages of faith. She moved from a ‘fundamentalist’ view which tends to be very formal and literal, to that of a skeptic who questions their prior understanding.

The theory is more complex than can be presented in a simple table. But do you deny the premise, that a multitude of members become skeptical and question THEIR PRIOR UNDERSTANDING of their faith? By better understanding what is going on, it’s easier to keep healthy questions from turning to full apostasy. Faith is a very personal journey, and we shouldn’t be offended because others question their faith.

Are you projecting here? I’m not certain if you think my article should have mentioned sin or if the CARM girl should have. What I posted is not a ‘guide book’ but it can help explain why some people leave, and open a door for their return, as it did with me.

While you have a valid rant on colleges, Fowler is a Methodist minister and professor of Theology. He is not advocating non-religion.

The idea that adults come to a different, fuller understanding of the faith is fine, that’s obvious, they have to make the faith their own, so that they can hand it to their own kids. But the understanding of this study or whatever seems to be that a “literal” understanding of the faith is incompatible with mature adult reasoning but the modern skeptical zeitgeist is compatible. It seems to me that someone like G.K. Chesterton or C.S. Lewis would be considered to be a fundamentalist, or childish, or just “stuck in a theological box” in this study.

 

[Porknpie]

I’m sure she would still be devout in her faith if she had been brought up to believe, not that “the Bible is true” but rather that “the pope is infallible.”

Faithdancer -

How do you know that the bible is the inerrant and inspired written Word of God?

PnP