{"id":1935,"date":"2012-12-28T19:08:22","date_gmt":"2012-12-28T19:08:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/justinvacula\/?p=1935"},"modified":"2012-12-28T19:08:22","modified_gmt":"2012-12-28T19:08:22","slug":"pastor-dan-nichols-offers-his-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/justinvacula\/2012\/12\/28\/pastor-dan-nichols-offers-his-thoughts\/","title":{"rendered":"Pastor Dan Nichols offers his thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, in a post titled, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/justinvacula\/2012\/12\/22\/lunch-with-pastor-dan-nichols-and-reflections\/\">Lunch with Pastor Dan Nichols and reflections<\/a>,&#8221; I shared my thoughts concerning a recent lunch I had with a pastor who wanted to apologize on behalf of the Christian community following the <a href=\"http:\/\/wnep.com\/2012\/12\/20\/man-cuts-down-banner-protesting-religious-decorations\/\">vandalism of the Freedom From Religion Foundation&#8217;s &#8220;let reason prevail&#8221; holiday freethought banner<\/a> which was placed on Public Square in Wilkes-Barre with city approval.<\/p>\n<p>Today, Pastor Dan authored a Facebook note titled &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/notes\/dan-nichols\/a-pastor-and-two-atheists-walk-into-a-bar-and-grill\/10151403470613573\">A Pastor and Two Atheists Walk into a Bar&#8230;and Grill<\/a>.&#8221; Within the note, he says he learned three things &#8212; atheists have great questions, atheists need to vent, and that atheists are moral people &#8212; Christians should consider.<\/p>\n<p>Pastor Dan would like to continue to chat (and I have invited him to be on an episode of the <a href=\"www.nepafreethought.org\/podcast\">NEPA Freethought Society Podcast<\/a>). He writes, &#8220;I plan to continue building a friendship with Rodney and Justin. They are two guys who are willing to come to the table and have a good conversation.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Ending his note, Pastor Dan writes,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>We obviously do not share the same presuppositions; our faiths are different. Their faith (or trust) lies in their own reasoning, and as I told them at lunch: I don&#8217;t believe that I can trust my own reasoning as much as they do. I&#8217;m sold on the person and work of Jesus Christ, and I trust him more than I trust myself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I hope there will be an interesting discussion about epistemology in the future!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, in a post titled, &#8220;Lunch with Pastor Dan Nichols and reflections,&#8221; I shared my thoughts concerning a recent lunch I had with a pastor who wanted to apologize on behalf of the Christian community following the vandalism of the Freedom From Religion Foundation&#8217;s &#8220;let reason prevail&#8221; holiday freethought banner which was placed on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,22,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ffrf-banner","category-local","category-respect"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/justinvacula\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/justinvacula\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/justinvacula\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/justinvacula\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/justinvacula\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/justinvacula\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1935\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/justinvacula\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/justinvacula\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/justinvacula\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}