The Atheist’s Way: makes kids burn churches?

Sorry for the paucity of blog posts!

The other day I read on The Friendly Atheist and the news that there has been a recent rash of 11 church fires caused by arsonists.

This is, of course, very unfortunate. What I think is also unfortunate is the way some specific pieces of literature found in the home of the girlfriend of one of the arsonists has been handled.

Apparently much evidence was seized from the homes of the arsonists as well as the homes of anyone linked to the arsonists. One of the things seized was The Atheist's Way: Living Well Without Gods by Eric Maisel. This less than 200 page book has been the subject of news headlines everywhere: "Suspect in Texas Church Fires Reportedly Had Books on Atheism", Atheism books found in home of church fire suspect, "Atheist books indicated in charges of Arson."

Of course, my guess is that the main reason a headline might be written in this way is that it preys upon people's prejudices. Those prejudices being: Christians are good moral people and atheists are immoral, bad people. Christians (by the prejudicial definition) would never burn down a church, but atheists might. If you already think atheists are immoral, then headlines like these will only serve to reinforce your hatred and bigotry. Clearly, mentioning that an atheist book was found at the home of an arsonist is meant to lead the reader to believe that the books are linked to the aforementioned acts of arson. This is why we don't see headlines like, "Book on Cats found in home of church fire suspect" or, "Suspect in Texas church Fires Reportedly Had Bags of Ruffles."

What these headlines and most of the news stories associated with the arson do not mention is that 3 other books were also seized from linked homes.

If I were an investigator and I wanted to link a certain book to violence, I might read said books and see if any of the books advocate or promote violence.

I have a copy of The Atheist's Way, and can promise you that it does not advocate violence, arson, or anything other than upholding cherished values, and making your own ethics rather than parroting the ethics of someone else. The core of the book's moral philosophy is "expressing humanist values such as justice and fairness in a context of competing rights and interests, conflicting points of view, and complex circumstances." It advocates teaching moral philosophy to children by giving them the rare opportunity to think about ethics. I've also read about 20 books on atheism, and none of them advocate violence, arson, or the destruction of property. Ever. The only reason one might suspect that a book on atheism is linked to acts of arson can only be a matter of prejudice.

The other books, on the other hand, actually do advocate such violence. In these book, the main character – who is portrayed as someone readers should be as much like as possible, burns cities to the ground. He burns people to death. He explicitly commands that people be burned to death. The book also advocates praying that your enemies will burn to death.

If I were an investigator, I'd link the book that actually advocated setting buildings and people on fire to the arsonists rather than the book that advocates teaching children moral philosophy. 

So which book did these arsonists have three copies of? The Bible. In the bible, God burns cities, burns people, commands his followers to burn people, and advocates praying that your enemies be burned. This kind of thing just doesn't occur in an atheist book.

It makes me sad. Atheists are not bad people. They are not more likely to burn down a church than a theist. These headlines only serve to reinforce hatred towards people who are just people.

What if atheists left America?

This video is an interesting premise - what if all atheists left America, like some Christians want?

Faith Infiltration: World View Community Church, Pt 3

We're continuing our Faith Infiltration of World View Community Church, in which Flimsy and I watched a video on Sunday at a church called the 7 Mountain Mandate, led by Lance Wallnau. This is part 3 of our infiltration. Previous parts can be found here and here. You can also find more Faith Infiltrations by clicking the Faith Infiltration tab at the bottom of the page.

Today's post is particularly timely in light of the Prop 8 trials.

One of the causes that Wallnau was called by his god and in which his god "showed up" to fight is the passage of Prop 8 (the removal of laws preventing homosexual couples from having the same civil rights to marriage as heterosexual couples) in Rhode Island.

"The warfare issue is particularly important right now because there are strongholds that are not going to come down through five-fold ministry gifts, they're going to come down through the saints. And the reason is because where god is inviting us to go is someplace we've never gone –it's to the strategic recapturing of culture by the anointing of the people of god for the spheres they're assigned to have authority in, that leadership in the church for the most part does not have authority to go into. I can go speak before legislatures as I've had to do on same-sex marriage. I can sway a vote. But you know how I had to do it? I had to drop my "Pastor" title.

He goes on to say that he was called to Rhode Island to speak on the issue of gay marriage by a friend of his. He described the event as an orchestrated media event, complete with the ACLU, lawyers, protesters, a budget, a war chest, a "gay lobbyist initiative who wants to make Rhode Island the first same-sex state" with "only a handful of believers showing up". Wallnau describes his initial reaction:

"Aww man… God didn't call me to have to take on the homosexual issue. Besides, I'm not angry at anyone, I like everybody, I love 'em, I want more of 'em in my programs – my secular programs by being a Christian in a different form than they're used to anyway."

But his friend said, "Lance, it isn't like that. If you don't show up… there are Christian legislators that are saying if they don't see and hear any people with another viewpoint they have no choice". Wallnau shuffles his feet, not really wanting to be there and hoping that by the time he gets there that the room will be full. Apparently he tells himself that if his god really wants him to be there, then his god will open doors for him. He has no idea what to say, so he goes to Google and finds James Dobson's 8 points against gay marriage (Dobson has expanded this to 11 points. Guess what we're going to blog about soon!). He goes to the courthouse with his "Google talking points" and finds that the meeting room is full and the people who were not able to get into the main meeting room at the courthouse are all sitting in an adjacent room, watching the events unfold via video feed.

But wait! He has another friend at the courthouse who sneaks him into the courtroom and finds a seat for him -the seat of a guy who happened to get up to speak, leaving a chair empty. Wallnau is shoved into the empty seat. He describes how he sat there and watched as the other guy finished speaking, went to sit, and couldn't find his seat - because Wallnau took it. His friend then manages to get his name put on the list of people signed in.

Wallnau goes onto to explain what he observed while sitting in his stolen seat. He says that Christians do not understand how power works and that no one was listening to the Christians or reverends – even the Unitarian reverends who are endorsing gay marriage. He describes the senators as "checking out" whenever a Christian got up to speak. Huh? I thought his friend described the scene as having so few believers that legislators would have no choice but to support civil rights for same-sex couples. Instead, the legislators are apparently just ignoring all the believers. Interesting…

"In the social capital of influence, that means every sphere has a currency and you gotta know the currency of that sphere – you can't just go in with your currency… In the political sphere they like professors, they like any businessperson who looks like a big donor. They like people with a constituency that can influence their election. So I did a quick makeover. Because I noticed that they were knocking off those Christians fast. One woman in particular, her response to the legislatures was almost like cross-prosecuting. So I listened to all of her arguments because I was going last, so I prepared well… I readjusted my 'Google points' to go on the assault against her."

"This is what the lord told me to do. He said, 'Don't tell 'em you're a pastor. Practice social capital. Go in and out of their world where they are.'"

"Now it just so happens that our church had the largest daycare in the state of Rhode Island, of which I am – by virtue of my role as a pastor – the uh, official president of the daycare. I also know I figured calculating-wise that we had at least, oh, a number of graduates that come through our daycare– a hundred a year, two hundred and we've been doing it for ten years – I figured I represented 10,000 radiuses of people that had family members in our little Rhode Island area because we had the largest daycare, so I sat down and said:

"'thank you very much. I realize it's very late and I appreciate your patience. I think I'm the last person so I'll make this really quick. First of all, as you look at me I want you to realize that I represent 10,000 people who vote for you. I am the president of a large daycare in the state of Rhode Island.'

"All of 'em leaned in like 'okay we got somebody now where's he going' and I proceeded to do the talking points. I had no idea how inflammatory the rhetoric of some of these talking points is. As I hit the fact that there is no statistical evidence to support the fact that same-sex marriage is going to be helpful but I have evidence from the Danish experiment which says that divorce has gone up 65%... Are we a culture that can endure reducing the status of our children to lab-rats in a vast sociologic untried experiment? At which point lesbians in the back shrieked in manifestations. I'm serious. They were screaming… they were freaking out that I was referring to kids that they wanted to adopt as lab-rats. I had no idea the words would have that kind of power.

"I saw smiles on the faces of all the legislatures that looked at me and said, 'that was sufficient'… you should know that it is 65%. Though you should know that at least 62% of most statistics quoted in public are spontaneous… 65 sounded good to me.. As I'm walking out the corridor…a legislature was saying 'put that in the [news] paper'. I gave them the talking points to go in and vote it down by a margin of 2 votes… I didn't even know what I was talking about. But I had Google and a cause. That was all I needed.

Wallnau's ultimate point is this:

I made the adjustment… If believers would think in terms of social capital, If we would start to raise up the next generation to link anointing, revival, the supernatural and the prophetic with the invasion of culture in spheres they have a passion for through the acquisition of social capital, we could take a nation within a generation. It will not come by the methodologies that we have assumed would work in the past. I am a little freaked out that there is no consensus on this within the body of Christ, that there will even be a debate over it. But this is the way power works and we are naive if we do not understand it.

Be wise as a serpent! Did he say serpent? Well I am glad Jesus said it because I wouldn't want to put it that way. Be shrewd as the devil and as innocent in motive as a lamb. Be wise in the adaptation of means to ends.

I chair the Fringe Science Committee of the Skeptical Society of St. Louis and am assistant organizer of the St. Louis Atheists – these groups have about 500 members between them. I have had over one hundred thousand unique visitors to my blog since it started. Wallnau claiming that he represents ten thousand voters is equivalent to me saying that I, Ziztur, am vice-president of a large nonprofit science organization and represent half a million voters. The population of the city in which his church is located is only 79 thousand! 

I don't represent half a million voters. I'm not vice-president of a large nonprofit science organization. To say as much would be a lie. Yet here we have someone basically bragging (it might be a touch difficult to read "bragging" into this without the audio) that he loves gays, so he snuck in to a courtroom with statistics pulled off the ever-accurate Google, lied about who he represented, gave statistics that by his own admission he had not verified as accurate because of the hasty way in which he had found them, and made a really ridiculous argument all in the name of preventing the homosexuals he loves so much from having equal civil rights. He did this, and then takes credit for swinging a vote in favor of his position. He tells his nodding audience that they should invade culture. Not because they have the facts on their side, but because their god has anointed them.

The "lesbian screaming" comment I find quite hateful. How did he know they were lesbians? He doesn't. He uses the term in order to be derogatory and to dismiss people for having a legitimate emotional expression to what is probably the most inane argument against civil rights I have ever heard.

Saying that if we do social change X, we are treating children like lab-rats is not an argument against social change X, because it can be used as an argument against any social change. What, abolish slavery? Well then we'd be treating our kids like lab rats! Desegregate schools? Why would we treat our kids like lab rats? De-institutionalize kids with disabilities and integrate them into the classroom? Our kids would be lab-rats! Stop performing female circumcision on young girls? We don't know the consequences of that vast sociologic untried experiment!

What if we lived in a society in which people were not allowed to marry or adopt children if the couple had different religious beliefs? Would Christians shriek and scream if someone argued that we should deny them the right to adopt because if we did, we'd be treating children like lab rats? The people in the audience shrieked and screamed because Wallnau's lab-rat comment was hateful, bigoted and discriminatory. He is saying that we should deny people civil rights because we don't fully know the consequences of granting them. We've never fully known the consequences of granting people civil rights until we've already done it. This is coming from the same guy who claims that all legitimate liberation of people and nations is due to prayer – yet he is actively fighting to withhold liberation and making an argument that could be made by anyone who intends to deny rights to people.

Believing that you've been anointed by god to take nations is an echo of the crusades and every single act of religious warfare throughout history. If you're anointed, then there is no argument – no room for rational discussion, no room for evidence, no room for critical thinking, no room to question that you might be wrong. You've effectively shut down and dehumanized your opponents. Believing you are anointed gives you the ability to rationalize away oppression, tyranny, or taking people's lives and freedoms.

This is why atheists and nonbelievers stand up to religion. This is why we care about your belief in god. We have seen people's lives and freedoms stamped out in the name of religion long enough.

I can't find this Danish study that supposedly shows the divorce rate has gone up 65%. I can, however, actually fact-check rather than just saying, "hey, this sounds good for my position, so who cares if it is true!". Divorce rates are higher in states that ban gay marriage. Marriage has increased while divorce has decreased in Scandinavia. Wallnau's agenda and belief system is more important than actual facts.

The last point that Wallnau makes is that he has not actually given people the complete key to seeing "obscene amounts of wealth". In order to see this wealth we have to understand that

"God wants to give Jesus his inheritance. Because Jesus died for more than souls. He died for nations. The actual assignment is to go make disciples of nations… Jesus is going to have nations given to him and god the father is going to bankroll the enterprises of people who give his son what he wants him to get. God is going to bankroll enterprises for those who are engaged in giving Jesus his inheritance. God is going to bankroll the enterprises of those people and organizations who make it their mission to give god what he wants – and he wants his son to have his inheritance!"

As Flimsy and I are sitting her watching this presentation, I wrote, "War Room" in my notebook and showed it to Flimsy. He nodded. I felt like a spy. We're the other side. We're the culture that this man is advocating invading and taking with lies and deception. I cannot say for sure what exactly the congregants at this church thought of this presentation, but I can only assume – given that no objections were raised – that they largely agree. There was some talk afterward about social capital and how to get people on the "outside" to listen, and taking on only one wrong in the world at a time instead of all of them. Taking on one problem instead of many is great advice. Utilizing social capital is also good advice. Using lies and deception is not. good. advice.

I can tell you now that using lies and deception, coupled with a fervent insistence that you've been anointed to invade and destroy the culture so that you can be rewarded with "obscene wealth" by god himself when you give Jesus his "inheritance" isn't going to work. When people lie, we do not trust those people. When people advocate infringing on the rights of others while simultaneously undermining fact and science, we will call those people out.

I can understand wanting to change the world. The world is a screwed up place, and it needs to be changed. I also agree that one needs to understand how to speak the language of the opposing side. But "speaking the language" does not mean failing to check your facts or being deceptive. If you need to resort to actively ignoring facts, perhaps you're fighting for the wrong side. Can you imagine what it would be like if we held private atheist meetings in which we advocated telling legislators that married Christian couples were 79% more likely to shoot their children than atheists or homosexual couples? What if we advocated toying with facts to promote our agenda? We'd be rightfully called evil and immoral. I've always said that people can believe whatever they want so long as they are not infringing on the rights of others or undermining science. Wallnau is doing both.

Even though I absolutely do not agree with the material presented on the DVD, I still have to thank the folks at World View Community Church for being nice and allowing a couple of atheists to spend a few hours as spies in their war room. I have to wonder what they thought of us being there. Usually I like to believe that Christians and atheists in a way want the same things out of life, but I am not sure if that is true in this case. Regardless, we appreciate the chance to engage in dialogue.

Faith Infiltration: World View Community church Pt.2

This is part 2 of our Faith Infiltration of World View Community Church. Pt. 1 can be found here, and you can access all other Faith Infiltrations by clicking the "Faith Infiltration" label at the bottom of this page.

Nearly every weekend, Flimsy and I visit a church. We find a (typically St. Louis local) church in our area, drag ourselves out of bed in the morning, and do what we call "Faith Infiltration". Then, we blog about our experiences, describing what the church is like from the perspective of nonbelievers. We make no apologies: we do not mock what we see or sugarcoat our experiences, but we also don't pretend that one can truly understand what the church is like from a single visit. To date, we've been to 35 religious events, ranging from tiny Christian denominations with only 9 people in the whole building during a service, churches with a thousand people, the Church of Scientology, a Franklin Graham concert tour, and everything in-between.

After the worship service at World View Community Church, we asked to be directed to the multi-purpose room to view the video that was going to be shown.

The multi-purpose room of this church was sort of like a mini-sanctuary. My guess is that it was 20 feet wide by 30 feet long, outfitted with comfy chairs and rows of tables. Congregants milled about in this room, chatting with one-another or laying out notebooks and bibles so that they could take notes. It felt rather cavernous, given the tall, steeply sloped ceiling and comparably small floor space. At the front of the room was a projector and a clear plexiglass lectern. After a quick introduction, someone dimmed the lights and the DVD began.

We found ourselves watching section 6 (entitled: Social Capital) of "Dr." Lance Wallnau's 7 Mountain Mandate.

Allow me to first explain why I put the "Dr." part of Wallnau's name in quotes. This is not like when some people do things like put a bishops title "Bishop" in quotes because said bishop is openly gay and the individual writing about the bishop wants to show that he believes gay bishops somehow don't count. If you put "Dr." in front of your name, unless it is clearly satire then people will rightly assume that you have earned a doctoral degree from a university. To put "Dr." in front of your name when you have not earned a doctoral degree from a university is giving yourself an unearned title. As an individual who actually has earned a doctoral degree from a university, I find this as repellent as an individual using the term "officer" in front of his name to gain access to spaces in which he otherwise would not be allowed. If you're pro-life, imaging a person performing abortions as a "doctor" while never earning a medical degree.

I scoured the internet for information as to where Lance Wallnau earned his doctoral degree. I wanted to know if it was in business, politics, theology, etc. I could find no information about the university he graduated from or the degrees he had been conferred. I tried googling generally, and then tried these specific phrases in quotes: "Lance Wallnau graduated", "Lance Wallnau earned", "Lance Wallnau holds" etc, to see if I could find a byline indicated where he had graduated from. I checked his website. I can find no evidence that Wallnau has earned a doctoral degree from a university. This does not mean that he does not have one, only that I cannot find any information at all on the subject. I will offer no speculation as to why this is – you can form your own opinion.

To be fair, we did not get to see all of the segments of the DVD that were shown – the congregation was on section 6, so we missed the first parts. I also won't pretend that the information in the DVD reflects the opinions of the congregants. The 7-mountain Mandate DVD is very obviously a recording of a live conference Wallnau gave at some point. He is situated on a stage, with a wireless microphone before an audience of nodding and notewriting individuals in business casual dress in what looks to be a conference center. Luckily for me, the visuals of the conference were not particularly necessary, and all of the audio from this is available for download, so I went ahead and downloaded Section 6: Social Capital to have as a reference while I wrote this, lest I forget anything that was said or report something inaccurately.

Wallnau opened section 6 by talking about the book Church Shift, and says:

"It's unfortunate – in a way – that Christians don't have a view of history that shows the interaction of intercession and prayer with the unfolding of world events. And Because we don't have an oracle or a viewpoint or any reliable source, we tend to keep on disassociating from the world and just go into 'panic praying' – something bad happens, we all intercede. We don't realize the Berlin wall came down because of intercession, the Soviet empire came down because of intercession, and that every piece of legitimate liberation of people and nations is a result of prayer. It's never the result of the benevolence of the devil at work. So at some level, the Kingdom has been advancing and advancing and advancing."

Well, I have yet to see any evidence for "the devil" and so I will agree with Wallnau that "the devil's" benevolence is not the cause of the liberation of people and nations. I have also yet to see any evidence that intercessory prayer does anything at all to accomplish the liberation of people and nations. I could just as easily say, "I don't have a reliable source, but people need to realize that every piece of legitimate liberation of people and nations is a result of the wonderful philosophy of secular humanism". If one wants to make a claim of this magnitude, one needs to have substantial, falsifiable evidence to back it up. This statement made by Wallnau is also a false dichotomy: He sets up his point like this:

P: Either nations are liberated by prayer, or they are liberated by the devil's benevolence

P: The devil is never benevolent

C: Therefore, nations are liberated by prayer.

I could write a whole blog post on this, and I might, but let's move on. The point of course is that all good stuff comes from Christianity, and that Wallnau's god is working his magic everywhere, starting from a little church somewhere in the desert and growing from the few to the billion. But there is a problem: Christianity is at war.

Wallnau went on ask what the impact of 1.3 billion Christians would be on the world if they ever unified on shared principals. He said that Christianity would be the "largest, most dangerous bound together movement in the earth. When you consider the fact that in the United States – in spite of the exaggerated anxieties of Christians – the homosexual core is not larger than 5 to 6 percent of the adult male population or the adult population in the United States. You'd think it's 15 or 20 percent and that's just because they occupy high places of influence because Satan is strategic on where he puts influence. The Church is not."

Wow. That's pretty bigoted. Imagine if Wallnau had said blacks were occupying high places of influence because Satan is strategic in where he puts influence during the time before the abolition of slavery, when pastors and church leaders argued that slavery was ordained by their god. I don't really see a difference. People who are gay want the same civil rights as everyone else, so instead of dismissing their cry for equal rights by claiming that their influence is Satanic, how about examining their "influence" on its merits without resorting to ad hominem? Moving on, Wallnau continues:

"There are spheres of influence that god has ordained for his glory that Satan has occupied, that god is about to retake. How many of you have been hearing about a transfer of wealth? … I think I know the reason. I have the key. If you want wealth – obscene, gobs of wealth, then what you do is you give god what he wants. … Henry Blackaby talks to 150 CEO's on a Friday …and wrote the book Experiencing God… teaches is central to the transfer of wealth… I do training with 1500 CEO's and I go to Blackaby... Here's what Blackaby says: you want to experience god? You wanna have that glory, that breakout break through dimension on a sustained and progressive level? God is always at work…"

He goes on to say (in a rather disjointed way that does not lend well to quoting directly) that god is at work and that one should have a loving relationship with god so that god may reveal to him what god is up to. God is at work in your neighborhood and everywhere else and so your job is to show up wherever god is at while simultaneously being intimate in worship with god, because it is through this intimacy that god gives people an "invitation" to join him in his work. This, he says, is how we can be confident that if we enter into "warfare" we will surely win. Another way to have success at "warfare" is to not fight every cause, but focus on the causes you feel god has showed you. If you have an intimate enough relationship with Wallnau's god, then his god will show up and help you get into the "strongholds" of Satan.

Okay, this post has gotten long enough. Tomorrow, I am going to blog about a particularly timely "stronghold" that Wallnau says god called him to get into. What I have here is more than enough for lengthy discussions.

Er, I am no good

Hi!

My journal article came back from the editors and needs to be edited like right this second. Therefore, I have to work on it, but I promise I will get that second half of our Faith Infiltration soon - probably tomorrow! In the meantime, here's a special investigation by Nonstampcollector:

Faith Infiltration: World View Community Church pt1

Nearly every weekend, Flimsy and I visit a church. We find a (typically St. Louis local) church in our area, drag ourselves out of bed in the morning, and do what we call "Faith Infiltration". Then, we blog about our experiences, describing what the church is like from the perspective of nonbelievers. We make no apologies: we do not mock what we see or sugarcoat our experiences, but we also don't pretend that one can truly understand what the church is like from a single visit. To date, we've been to 35 religious events, ranging from tiny Christian denominations with only 9 people in the whole building during a service, churches with a thousand people, the church of scientology, a Franklin Graham concert tour, and everything in-between. To see our other Faith Infiltrations, click the "Faith infiltration" label at the bottom of this post.

This week, Flimsy and I visited the World View Community Church, which is part of the foursquare/charismatic movement.

This church is one of those with a small enough congregation that when we pulled into the parking lot (which was the correct address but said, "Gateway Christian Church" on the building), that we were not sure if we had gotten the address or service time correct. Nonetheless, we strolled into the building anyway.

It took a few moments before a man and woman approached and greeted us. We told when where we had intended to go, and they told us that we were in the right place. They invited us to have coffee before the service, and told us to check out the cool artwork. They explained that they didn't actually have their own building, but rather met wherever someone allowed them to meet – other churches, in school gyms, etc.

Along the walls in the lobby area hung a bunch of fascinating artwork by one of the members of the church. I don't have any pictures, but they were mostly interpretive paintings related to Christianity or spirituality, and they were actually pretty cool.

Inside the sanctuary was something unusual – in addition to rows of plush blue chairs, there were chairs with tables and desk lamps along the walls. The children of the congregation tended to flock here, where they colored, looked at laptop screens, sang along in worship or milled back and forth chatting with each other in a way that was rather dynamic and obviously the norm. A small area at the back was clearly reserved for very young congregants, as it was outfitted with a little tykes table and a tarp – presumably to keep the kiddos from spilling finger-paint on someone else's carpeting.

At the front of the sanctuary, a worship team of about 9 people led the congregation in song. When we first arrived, a woman told us that the church was "all about the music" and this fact was quite evident, given the sophisticated music and audio equipment they had set up. I was amused by the fact that the percussionist and his drum set were inside what can best be described as a giant drumming phone booth – closed in on all sides and accessible via a door. It looked like this:

My guess is that there were about 30 people in the entire building, so I am certain we seriously stuck out as the newbies, which got me thinking: I've been going to random churches and religious services for so long that I no longer feel the slightest bit self-conscious when it is obvious that we are newcomers who don't quite belong. I wonder if members of the congregation feel a little self-conscious having outcasts in their midst. It's obvious that we don't participate in the worship service, and usually someone has been informed as to the nature of our visit before the service begins. Even so, during the worship service people in the congregation and leading worship openly and unashamedly spoke on tongues.

You'll note that usually when Flimsy and I infiltrate a church, I write down some of the lyrics to the songs so that I can look them up later. This church seems to write some of their own music, as I could not find the lyrics to a lot of the songs. The first song had these lyrics:

…Though I'm dark/You say I'm beautiful…

I find lyrics like these to be interesting because it highlights the belief of some Christians that humans are completely worthless in the eyes of their god and only have any worth because Jesus gives their lives worth. Another song they played was Beautiful One by Jeremy Camp.

During each of these songs, the worship team would play exceptionally long outros, ones that were at times possibly longer than the song itself. These long outros were very hypnotic and floaty. Admittedly, I don't know enough about rhythmic induction of trance states to say anything particularly meaningful about using music during a worship service to induce a trance state, but it seemed fairly clear that this is what was occurring – I even got this odd sense of flying in an airplane across beautiful rugged landscapes while listening. One woman provided all of the main vocals for the songs. She sat on stage, singing and playing the keyboard, mixing English vocals in with tongues, at times barely looking at her music sheet in a state of blissful worship. I got this feeling that I was peeking into not a group of people worshiping together, but a group of people each engaged in their own private worship. After each song ended, people could be heard praying in tongues all around us.

Eventually, the music stopped and a woman sitting in the front row stood up behind a lectern and addressed the congregation. She asked that the congregation worship the lord in sound – any kind of sound – and then held her hands in the air, speaking prayer in an increasingly loud tone of voice as a cacophony of prayers and speaking on tongues rose from the congregation. This lasted perhaps a minute, as members raised their faces to the sky. Then, she thanked everyone and told the congregation to meet in the multi-purpose room to view the 5^th or 6^th part of a video series called the 7-Mountain Mandate. We decided that we'd like to watch this video too, so got someone to show us in.

I'm going to save our experience in the Multi-purpose room for tomorrow's post, but I think that I can best describe it by saying:

We felt more like we were infiltrating a Christian War Room than a multipurpose room.

In which the irony burns my eyes

Did you know there is such an organization as the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission?

On January 4^th, the CADC released a list of "top ten incidents of anti-Christian defamation, bigotry and discrimination in the US from last year". Over at the Ethical Hedonist, this list was quickly researched and exposed for all it was worth in such a way as to actually bring a literal tear to my eye. If these are the top ten worst examples of bigotry, defamation, and discrimination, they need to honestly get out into the world of non-Christianity, where most of us face real bigotry, discrimination and defamation.

Real quick, here are some definitions:

Defamation: the communication of a statement that makes a claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an individual, business, product, group, government or nation a negative image.

Bigotry: Being irrationally, obstinately intolerantly devoted to one's own opinions and prejudices.

Discrimination: Negative treatment, exclusion, or rejection toward or against a person or group based on class or category.

Here's the list:

10. Pro-life Pastor Reverend Walter Hoye of Oakland, CA was jailed for exercising peaceful, pro-life speech.

As the Ethical Hedonist pointed out, Hoye was jailed for violating an ordinance that barred protesters from coming within 8 feet of anyone entering into an abortion clinic. He was not jailed for pro-life speech. Jailing someone for breaking the law is not an example of defamation, bigotry, or discrimination.Unless one wants to claim that the law is discriminatory.

9. Rev. Fred Winters was murdered while preaching in his pulpit in Maryville, Illinois.

Winters (who Flimsy and I both knew personally) was murdered, and the man responsible was mentally ill. His motivations have not been established, but we do know that he walked into a church and killed someone. This was a terrible crime, but because we do not know his motivations, it is wrong to jump to conclusions about said motivation.

Also note that the death of Pastor Fred is a mere #9 on the list. Pay close attention to the incidents that follow, remembering that these incidents are considered by the readers of the CADC to be worse than a man being killed while preaching. I wonder if the CADC would consider the murder of an atheist by his Christian roommate because he was an atheist an example of bigotry. I hope so, because the evidence of bigotry is very clear on that case.

8. HBO's program "Curb Your Enthusiasm" aired an episode where the main actor urinates on painting of Jesus. When confronted HBO would not apologize.

The main actor did not urinate on a picture of Jesus. The main actor pretended to urinate in a toilet, and a painting was pretend splashed with a (presumably pretend) drop of urine. The next few scenes played off the fact that something "terrible" happened to a depiction of a holy figure. This is hardly an example of defamation, bigotry or discrimination. Also, this is supposed to be worse than a man, a real man with a family and children, being shot and killed? Imagine for a moment that Pastor Fred is your son, your dad, your husband, your pastor, or your friend. Now imagine that a religious group thinks that a comedy sketch in which an actor pretends to get a pretend drop of urine on a picture of their holy figure is worse than the senseless death of a living, breathing human being. If anything, this is an example of CADC being bigots. This is a perfect example of one being irrationally, obstinately intolerantly devoted to one's own opinions and prejudices.

7. The overt homosexual participation in Obama's presidential inaugural events by "Bishop" Vickie Eugene Robinson, the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington D. C., and a homosexual marching band.

The irony is burning my eyes. Gene Robinson is a bishop. CADC is so bigoted toward any religious views other than their own that they think it is an attack on them when a Christian bishop who happens to be gay is INCLUDED IN AN INAUGURAL EVENT alongside other Christians like Rick Warren. Read: any example of not being exclusive to their specific type of Christianity is bigoted, defamatory and discriminatory towards Christians. CADC is so bigoted and discriminatory that they have the audacity to put Bishop in quotes, as if to say he isn't a real bishop. Also: being inclusive and having homosexuals involved in inaugural events is more discriminatory, bigoted and defamatory than a pastor being shot and killed?

6. Police called to East Jessamine Middle School in Lexington, Kentucky to stop 8th graders from praying during their lunch break for a student whose mother was tragically killed.

This is one that the Ethical Hedonist couldn't verify as true.

5. Pro-life activist Jim Pullion was murdered in front of his granddaughter's high school for showing the truth about abortion.

This is the same sort of situation as above: he was murdered by a mentally unstable individual. The individual murdered him not for being Christian, but for displaying pictures of aborted fetuses. So was he killed for being a Christian, or for displaying gory pictures to schoolchildren? Would the killer have left him alone if he was a pro-life atheist, showing pictures of aborted fetuses? I think this has much less to do with Christianity and more to do with a mentally unstable man offended by gory pictures being shown to children. I mean, could we show schoolchildren pictures of the "truth about circumcision" or "the truth about genital warts" or "the truth about Muslims killing nonbelievers" and then claim we're being discriminated against when people make us take the pictures down by lethal force?

4. An activist judge ordered a home school mom in New Hampshire to stop home schooling her daughter because the little girl "reflected too strongly" her mother's Christian faith.
When people get divorced, they often write up a legal document, underlining the contractual obligations of the divorce. In this case, as part of the custody agreement, the mother agreed to not homeschool her child, because the mother and the father disagreed over whether or not the child should be homeschooled. The mother homeschooled her child anyway, violating the custody agreement. I bet if the situation were reversed: if the mother agreed to homeschool her child per the father's wishes and then turned around and sent the kid to a public school, the CADC outcry would be identical. This is not an example of bigotry, discrimination or defamation – it is a legal battle between parents who have opposing wishes as to how their child should be cared for after divorce, with one parent going against the custody agreement who just happened to be Christian. I wonder what they would say if it were the case that dad wanted his kid to go to church every Sunday and mom decided not to take her.

…and this is worse than a pastor being killed?

3. The Federal Department of Homeland Security issued a report entitled "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate" that labeled conservative Christians extremists and potential terrorists.

Not really. I'm just going to quote Ethical Hedonist on this one:

Oh Jesus Tapdancing Christ, not this again. The document is talking about groups like Stormfront and other white supremacist groups.  In fact, in a quick search of the document, all I found was the following sentence:

"These teachings also have been linked with the radicalization of domestic extremist individuals and groups in the past, such as violent Christian Identity organizations and extremist members of the militia movement."

Christian Identity, for those not in the know, is a loosely affiliated group of white supremacist and white nationalist organizations and has nothing to do with anything most people would consider Christian.

…and this is worse than a pastor being killed?

2. President Obama's appointment of radical anti-Christians like homosexual activist Kevin Jennings as the "safe school czar;" pro-abortion advocate Kathleen Seblius made Secretary of Human and Health Services, and Chai Feldblum, pro-homosexual and anti-religious liberty judge nominated for Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Yup. Inclusion of anyone with an opinion other than the opinion held by the CADC is apparently discrimination, bigotry and defamation of Christianity. I guess we should exclude all of these people from holding positions in the government because they have an opinion or a stance that differs, lest we defame the Christians. If you're not specifically aligned with their opinions, you're bigoted. Oh, you're gay and Christian? Well fuck you, say the CADC readers.

Sorry, but believing that the appointing of people who happen to disagree with your specific version of reality is an attack on you is textbook bigot. It's also textbook discrimination. Oh, and it's pretty defamatory to claim that someone is a bigot when they aren't.

…and this is worse than a pastor being killed?

1. The Federal Hate Crimes Bill that attack religious liberty and freedom of speech. For the first time in our history ministers are vulnerable to investigation and prosecution for telling the truth about homosexuality.

No, they're "vulnerable to investigation and prosecution" if they actually commit acts of violence toward people. You do not have the religious liberty to commit violent crimes against people!

The CADC readers have gone so far as to say the number one incident of "anti-Christian defamation, bigotry and discrimination" is that people who commit hate crimes are criminally liable for hate crimes, and that in addition to crimes against Christians because they are Christians falling under the definition of "hate crime", crimes against homosexuals because they are homosexuals also fall under that definition. Here is the actual text of the document that they find so discriminatory, bigoted and defamatory:


OFFENSES INVOLVING ACTUAL OR PERCEIVED RACE, COLOR, RELIGION, OR NATIONAL ORIGIN.— Whoever, whether or not acting under color of law, willfully causes bodily injury to any person or, through the use of fire, a firearm, a dangerous weapon, or an explosive or incendiary device, attempts to cause bodily injury to any person, because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, or national origin of any person—

(1) IN GENERAL.— Nothing in this division shall be construed to allow a court, in any criminal trial for an offense described under this division or an amendment made by this division, in the absence of a stipulation by the parties, to admit evidence of speech, beliefs, association, group membership, or expressive conduct unless that evidence is relevant and admissible under the Federal Rules of Evidence. Nothing in this division is intended to affect the existing rules of evidence.

(2) VIOLENT ACTS.— This division applies to violent acts motivated by actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of a victim.

(3) CONSTRUCTION AND APPLICATION.— Nothing in this division, or an amendment made by this division, shall be construed or applied in a manner that infringes any rights under the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Nor shall anything in this division, or an amendment made by this division, be construed or applied in a manner that substantially burdens a person's exercise of religion (regardless of whether compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief), speech, expression, or association, unless the Government demonstrates that application of the burden to the person is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest and is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest, if such exercise of religion, speech, expression, or association was not intended to— (A) plan or prepare for an act of physical violence; or (B) incite an imminent act of physical violence against another.


Really. Their number one concern about the past year is that violent crimes specifically perpetuated due to hatred toward the victim's actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability carry a stronger penalty than violent crimes not perpetuated due to these factors. This is coming, let me remind you, from a group of people who claim to have the moral high ground. If they could prove that the two murders above were due to hatred toward Christians, than those people would be prosecuted for hate crimes.

The CADC of course asks: "If these are not bona fide examples of persecution, than I wonder what more it might take?"

They aren't. They are bona fide examples of Christian bigotry.

Guess who!

Do not look this up. That's cheating. I've changed the phrasing just enough to retain the original meaning, but make it hard to look up.

Who is the author of this?

“Without personally affirming any particular Confession, we have rebuilt faith to its pre-requisites because we were certain that the people need and require it. We have thus engaged in the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with trifling theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.”

Interviewing Jeff Schweitzer soon!

I feel sort of bad, because it took me about 4 months to read Jeff Schweitzer's awesome book, Beyond Cosmic Dice: Moral Life in a Random World. During that time, he actually took time out of his busy life to email me and ask if I had finished it – and I had to tell him that my internship was taking up all of my free reading time.

However, I have officially, finally, finished Mr. Schweitzer's book, and so you will find, in the coming weeks, an e-terview between he and I.

Beyond Cosmic Dice is perhaps not the book you would expect from the title. To me, the title suggests that the book is primarily about morality and ethics in a world in which there is no ultimate purpose or absolute morality. In a very real way, this is what this book is about, but not in the way you'd think.

Chapter 1 is an extremely compelling description of the difficulties in defining life. Schweitzer explains quite convincingly that life is not an either-or proposition. Rather, the difference between life and non-life is a gradation. Instead of life being white and nonlife being black, life is closer to blue and nonlife is closer to green, with gradual shades in between. One can look at a dog and say, "this dog is definitely alive" and one can look at a rock and say, "this is definitely not alive", but not all things are so easily classified. As he puts it, "Nobody would deny the existence of green or blue, yet nobody can define when one color becomes the other. That inability to draw a clear line between them does not diminish the reality of the two colors" (pp 46). This is important to understand because when people ask, "how did life arise out of nonlife" they imagine life and nonlife as binary constructs, when in fact they are constructs on a spectrum. "Life" is nothing more than "an arbitrary label we apply to distinguish extremes of complexity along a continuum" (pp 47).

After explaining that life is an arbitrary label, Schweitzer goes on to briefly explain evolution. What I find most spectacular about this chapter is that while I am a seasoned reader of explanations and treatises on evolution, he offered a very unique perspective. He explains that evolution has no direction, purpose or drive toward complexity. Humans, in all of their complexity, are not abnormal in the grand scheme of evolution. In the grand scheme of evolution, simple, single-celled organisms are much more favored by natural selection than complex beings such as us. As Schweitzer puts it, "bacteria can easily live without us, but we would die quickly without them" (pp 65). Bacteria and other simple organisms outnumber us by both sheer numbers and mass – we are the latecomers, a "biological aberration", and when humanity is gone, the bacteria will go on living, having for all intents and purposes not noticed our coming and going at all. If there is a god and he designed the earth for any type of organism, it is not for complex humans but for the single-celled. The earth is far more suited to their kind, and they can survive where we absolutely cannot.

Chapter 3 deals specifically with humans, and the fact that most of the cells in our bodies are not ours (they are the cells of microorganisms using our body as a convenient apartment complex) and most of our DNA is not human either. We are they, and they are us. The other characteristics that we believe make us unique and special (intelligence, tool use, self-consciousness, self-awareness, etc) are not uniquely human. They are present in other species as well, to different degrees. A cheetah could just as easily point out that they are the pinnacle of evolution because they are the fastest land animal, making our claims to superiority quite arbitrary. The only thing that really separates us from everything else is our capacity to choose to be moral.

I found the first three chapters to be the most enlightening aspects of the book. These chapters make up part I. Part II of the book (the next 3 chapters) deals briefly with how religion arose and the shortcomings of religious morality. Part III deals with cultivating a natural ethic based on part I. Schweitzer defines a natural ethic as, "based on the principal that with the ability to choose to be good comes the obligation to make that choice; Choosing to be moral is what makes us special. The act of choosing to live a good life is the foundation for all pleasure, peace and happiness" (pp 176).

All organisms exploit their environment to the maximum extent possible, and humans are the only organism capable of recognizing this and then rising above this exploitative relationship. We should do so because we can.

Schweitzer then lays out moral foundation that he feels arise out of this natural ethic, but he stresses that these are personal guidelines and not universal ones. While I absolutely understand this tack, I feel as though the loose link between the strong and insightful first half of the book and the guidelines for ethical behavior in the second half of the book leave something to be desired. I wanted the book to end as strongly as it started. It didn't, but in a way I think that reflects the reality of morality. I have yet to find a system of morality that operates prescriptively that is also based on solid foundations, and instead I am left with shades of gray and bell curves of behavior. Perhaps that means it is time for me to abandon my childish notion that moral questions can be examined in the same way that we examine other empirical facts about the universe.

Beyond Cosmic Dice is written in an accessible, almost conversational style and is an excellent read for non-theists and theists alike. It may even be a good starting point for a theist with a desire to better understand the naturalistic worldview.

Offensive!

This morning, I leave you with this, out of laziness.

P.S. I know the video cuts into my sidebar a little. Whatcha gonna do...

Interview with Ray Comfort: Discussion

After several days off for the holidays, we're back to discuss some of Ray Comfort's ideas that we saw in his e-interview that he was kind enough to provide for us.

The first question observed that many Christians don't recognize Ray Comfort's name, and asked if he was possibly more famous among atheists.  His reply:

Not every Christian watches TV or reads books. However, it seems that most atheists (thanks the Richard Dawkins and others) are pretty familiar with the brainless idiot known as "banana-man."

It's not just Comfort, though; if you name Lee Strobel, Josh McDowell, William Lane Craig, etc., I wouldn't be at all surprised to find a higher proportion of atheists recognizing these names than Christians.  I can't cite hard data here, so this is just speculation rather than observation, but bear with me.

Two possible perspectives on this possibility.  From my perspective as an atheist, it seems to be the case that self-described "atheists" as a group are self-selecting for people who seek out other perspectives and willingly challenge even widely-held opinions.  In a culture like America, so saturated with religious and spiritual belief, people who reject religious and spiritual claims are clearly far less likely to simply "go with the flow" and accept the perspective of their culture.  This is not to say that all atheists are shining beacons of rationality, incapable of error - far from it (there are certain conspiracy theorist nutjobs I could mention, and there's always Ayn Rand . . .).  Even these individuals, though, are still more likely, as a rule, to actively familiarize themselves with differing perspectives.

Of course, the common theist has a simple response; we atheists (or any other culturally non-conformist label) are clearly quite convinced that we're wrong on some level, and we are "seeking answers" not because we want to be certain that we're not mistaken, but because we actually believe that we are mistaken.  When Ziztur and I visit different churches, on occasion we will politely inform church-goers who ask about us that we're atheists.  Far and away, the most common response we hear is that we've found ourselves in the pew because we are being "called" or "led" to search for God.  To this, all I can say is that in my own limited experience, such church services or apologetic books are no more convincing to we atheists than the "new atheist" books are to your average theist.  After many churches and many books, our atheism is, if anything, is less dispute than it ever was.

The next question was, seemingly, an extremely simple theological question; it asked Comfort to define "the Gospel."

In a nutshell--that Christ died for our sins and rose again on the third day. The word "gospel" means good news, and the gospel doesn't make sense until we see why we need it, in the same way the good news of a cure makes no sense until we understand that we have a disease. The terminal disease is sin. If it's allowed to take its course, it will not only kill us, it will justly take us to a terrible place of punishment called "Hell"--because each of us has violated God's Law (the Ten Commandments). He sees lust as adultery and hatred as murder. He is morally perfect, and that leaves us all in big trouble. The good news is that God is rich in mercy, became a human being, and took our punishment upon Himself. That means, because Jesus paid our fine and rose again from the dead, God can legally let us walk out of the courtroom. He can forgive us and let us live. Our case can be dismissed upon repentance and trust in the Savior. The good news is that any of us can have everlasting life. Read the Gospel of John for details.

Interestingly, this "Gospel story" is possibly the single largest barrier to my ever becoming a Christian (and that's saying something, considering all the other reasons I could name).  To put it simply, if I tell you that this season's particular strain of the flu could be very nasty, and that you should get vaccinated ASAP, I can explain why.  If you ask, in all innocence, "So this flu thing . . . is that bad?  Why?"  I can explain that the flu could give you headaches, muscle aches, a cough, and just generally make you feel like crap, and that a few people who are particularly susceptible can even die from it if they catch it from you.  Now, here's the important part - if you ask, "Why does the flu do that?" I could answer that it's simply a result of how the flu virus reproduces with the living cells in your body.  I could say that the flu doesn't have a mind, and that if it did, it would be wrong for the flu virus to hurt and kill people like it does.  Thus, it's easy to understand why you should get vaccinated (in theory, anyway . . .).

I should mention, first of all, that not all Christians believe in a literal hell, to their immense credit.  With or without this traditionalist theology, though, the Gospel story raises more questions than it answers.  Why does God feel the need to punish us with eternal torture simply for disbelieving in him?  Why is there such a harsh penalty for having lustful thoughts, especially when every single human being has lustful thoughts, without exception?  Even without a literal hell, are "anger" and "lustful thoughts" still sins?  Who should rationally be held responsible for lustful thoughts or anger being universal amongst human beings, us or the being(s) who created us?

Additionally, how does the death of Jesus Christ absolve us of our crimes?  I've noticed that whenever Comfort discusses our "criminal actions" as sinners, he almost always uses the analogy of a legal fine being paid for us so that our case can be thrown out of court.  I would have thought that it's obvious why this analogy isn't convincing to non-believers:  If a crime of any significant severity is committed, the court doesn't just administer a simple fine - the offender goes to prison.  If hell is an appropriate punishment for sin, then the analogy of a legal fine is grossly inaccurate (in fact, there really is no good comparison at all, because in America we don't even punish our very worst criminals by torturing them to death, which is still far more humane than the traditional concept of hell).  Perhaps the closest we can come is the death sentence, or in societies that don't even permit the death sentence on ethical grounds, perhaps life imprisonment without any possibility of parole.  Why doesn't Comfort use these punishments as an illustration of the punishment we deserve for our sin?  Why does he use the very lightest punishment that our system has for any crime, a mere fine?  It's possible for a person to pay a fine for someone else, simply because there's no good way to make sure that the guilty person pays it themselves.  A prison sentence, to say nothing of a death sentence, on the other hand, obviously must always be paid by the person who committed the crime. 

So, there's one of the single, largest questions I have about Christianity.  It seems to me that the very first principle of anything resembling justice is that you punish the person who actually committed the immoral act, and do not punish someone else in their place.  Imagine a society built around the principle that a person who commits a wrongful act cannot atone for their own wrongdoing, and the only way for justice to be served is for an innocent person to be punished ( and that the more innocent the punished person is, the more righteous and just the punishment will be).  If this society does every single other thing with their courts, prison system, and police force correctly, they are still doing nothing correctly.  They could get justice right in every single other way, and would still basically have a completely unjust society.  This Christian, Gospel idea of wrongdoers being incapable of atoning for their immoral actions and instead being redeemed by the punishment of a completely innocent person is not simply incorrect justice, it is not merely mistaken justice, it is the polar goddamned opposite of justice.

More about Ray Comfort coming soon.  Obviously, I would love for Ray to hang out here and reply to our perspective, but I totally understand that he's very, very busy, so I won't see his absence as proof that he can't answer our questions.  Of course, our standard modus operandi is to welcome any dissenting opinion, so I look forward to anyone who can shed some light on this seeming contradiction.  That last question, in particular, about Gospel justice has vexed me all my life.

I’m interviewing Ray Comfort

Ray Comfort, the person who wrote You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But you Can't Make Him Think and who recently published a 150^th anniversary edition of Origin of Species with a special 50 page introduction, has agreed to do an email interview with me on this blog.

You might remember that we analyzed all (and I mean all) of Ray Comfort's You Can Lead… and so getting to correspond with Comfort after all of that blog fodder is an interesting prospect. Obviously, Comfort and I disagree on a great many things, but we can certainly still have a civil conversation with each other.

Comfort actually answers a lot of questions in interviews that are challenging to his viewpoint, but I'd like to ask some out of the box questions – something he might not hear everyday. Here are some I am thinking of asking:

A very odd thing happens when I try to talk to Christians about this apologist named Ray Comfort – none of them seem to know who you are! Do you think you're more well-known to atheists or to Christians, and why?

If you take a gander at statistics, you'll see that the rate of crime has fallen since 1990. There are lots of different theories floating around as to why this is. What's your take?

You're voting in a local election, and you have a choice of voting for two candidates: one candidate advocates all of the policies you advocate for, and seems rather intelligent, qualified and is an atheist. The other candidate stands against all of the policies you stand for, does not seem qualified, seems a little dim and is a Christian. Who do you vote for and why?

Have you ever been really stumped by a question someone asked you on the blog or on the street? If so, what question stumped you?

What do you think of all of the atheist billboards that are going up across the USA?

Do you think that atheists and theists should try to coexist? Why or why not? How?

Obviously, I have read your entire book (You Can Lead an Atheist To Evidence, but You Can't Make Him Think), given that on my blog I responded to something on almost every page. What books by modern biologists or atheists have you read? Have you read any to the same depth?

Do you guys have anything you're just dying to ask him?

D.J. Grothe becomes president of the JREF!

The James Randi Educational Foundation has announced that my good friend D.J. Grothe has become the new president of the foundation!

In a press release, the JREF announced today that current president Phil Plait will be leaving to pursue an opportunity in television, and so the JREF has elected D.J. based on his fantastic career promoting skepticism and scientific understanding. I am confident that D.J. will build upon the greatness of the JREF to make it ever more amazing.

Don't worry St. Louis skeptics - D.J. is not leaving us behind. You can have him Mr. Randi, but you're going to have to share.

3H1P: ‘sup w/ evolution and Jesus?

 3H1P is a blogging project wherein three heathens (Ziztur, Flimsy and Petter) and one pastor (Keith) answer questions posed by readers of the blog and discuss various issues related to religion, philosophy, science, etc. If you have a question that you'd like to see answered by 3H1P, ask it in the comment box. We promise we'll probably get to it.

I know this question was meant for Pastor Keith, but I decided to go ahead and answer it, too.

Reader Mitch asks:

I've read that most Christians are ok with evolution. But the truth of evolution shows that the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden is a myth, hence there was no "Fall", no "Original Sin". Without "Original Sin" there is no need for "Salvation". Jesus is pointless. So, how can a Christian accept evolution?

I would like to question the initial premise of this question that most Christians are okay with evolution. I'm glad that you prefaced this factoid with "I've read" rather than simply proclaiming it as a fact – it shows that you're likely to know the difference between what people claim and what is actually true.

According to every reputable public opinion polling establishment out there, most American Christians are not okay with evolution. According to the Pew forum, only 6% of evangelical Christians, 31% of mainline Christians, and 25% of Catholics in he US believe that "humans and other living things evolved over time through natural selection" (in 2006). According to the Gallup poll, 24% of people who attend church weekly or more accept evolution – though it does not say that they accept evolution in its entirety. People who are both Christian and accept evolution fall squarely in the minority, and I can imagine that an even tinier portion of Christians both fully accept evolution and fully believe in a literal interpretation of the Garden.Of course, as fellow blogger Marc_Newcomb points out, this says nothing about Christians outside the US. Do most Christians believe in evolution? I'm not entirely sure.

Regardless, the meat of your question is still important. How can a Christian accept evolution? I'm not a Christian, but in my experience most Christians who accept evolution accept a blend of both Christianity and evolution in such a way that the level of cognitive dissonance is not so much that they are winning the Dissonance Olympics with their impressive brain gymnastics.

I would imagine that one can accept in evolution on a continuum from total confidence in evolution to total rejection, with many varieties of partial acceptance in between. We can even plot this on a totally unscientific but still useful graph:

There are a lot of people out there who consider evolution to be true, but that it was guided by the hand of their god. These people are more likely to believe that the Garden story is mythical, but can still believe that we are all sinners by nature and need salvation. They could believe "Adam and Eve" are allegories for the human race, or any number of different things. So I don't think that evolution and Christianity are necessarily in conflict with each other, depending on what parts of which you accept. Obviously, a literalist interpretation of the Bible is in conflict. If you believe that the world was created in 6 literal days, then to accept evolution in addition to the literal creation story is to accept that Billy is both sixty years old and two days old.

Skepticon and loyalty

Sorry that my posts died out for a few days – the truth is that I have been busy both working my a$$ off at my internship (in five weeks I will finish, and then I will be Doctor Ziztur). In addition to working my a$$ off, Flimsy and I have been scouring the St. Louis area for a house to buy, which will hopefully be large enough that we can use it as some kind of bizarre commune.

This weekend Saint Gasoline, The Alien, Flimsy and I went to Skepticon II, a skeptic/atheist conference held in Springfield, Mo. We had an absolute blast hanging out with Richard Carrier, PZ Myers, Rebecca Watson, D.J. Grothe, Dan Barker, and a bunch of other skeptics (including all the other St. Louis bloggers).

The four of us ended up partying late into the night with PZ, D.J., Richard, Rebecca, and a bunch of other awesome folks. In a semi-intoxicated (by skepticism, the late hours and some rum) state, I managed to snap some portraits in the dimly-lit motel room. As far as portraits go, they aren't amazing – but I think they are pretty good given the poor lighting.

I think my friend The Alien did the coolest thing of all – she used to think atheists were evil jackasses who did nothing more than undermine and condemn everyone around them. She was kind of afraid of atheists because once upon a time, someone who could best be described as an "atheist communist conspiracy theorist" was the only atheist she knew, and he treated her as though she were somehow less than human… for years. So what does she do? She goes to a conference where everyone is an atheist and ends up in a hotel room with famous authors and public figures of the movement – and she loved it! I don't know many people who are willing to open themselves up like that. People should be more like her.

About 2 years ago, Alien and I lived together, and we lived with someone who can best be described as a "communist conspiracy theorist atheist who was hell bent on destroying any and all belief, even to the detriment of other people." The Alien was mentally tortured by this individual, who would frequently direct words like, "stupid", "wrong", and "inhuman" at her. She and the communist conspiracy theorist atheist (CCTA) both paid rent to the owner of the house. The torment got so bad that CCTA and his girlfriend violated her personal property, going into her room to steal and throw away object if spiritual importance to her. CCTA may have been an atheist but he certainly was no skeptic. He was more of a contrarian or a denialist – 9/11 was an inside job, there was no lone gunman, the Masons are out to get us, the Jews are out to get us, the election was rigged, aluminum will kill you, vaccines cause autism, Big Pharma wants to keep you sick, GE crops are evil, etc.

Despite all of the seething hatred directed at her The Alien tried desperately to understand CCTA: "I made many, many attempts to understand his points of view. He made no attempt, and instead riled against any thoughts I had of my own." After finally finding the means to move out, she "wanted nothing to do with atheists." CCTA was the only atheist she knew, and he had tainted her perspective on atheists and atheism: "If he was what atheism was, I wanted no part of that. In fact, anyone who would dare question my beliefs who claimed to be an atheist, would have gotten screamed out of my subdivision. "

When I came out as an atheist, The Alien was heartbroken: "I was more than appalled. I felt betrayed by the person who knew me the most. She, becoming atheist, was like her telling me she was going to become exactly like [CCTA]. It put the largest wedge in our friendship than has ever been there before. I wasn't sure I could stand to be around her, as if she had been contaminated with this disease that turned people into...well, [CCTA].

She and I had a tough relationship for the next year or so. I tried to explain that not all atheists were like CCTA, but he had so contaminated her view of atheism that it was hard for her to believe. Her reaction was very much like people who have been told by the church that atheists are evil and immoral – when you meet a moral one, you believe that the immorality is hiding just underneath a thin veneer. But then things changed when The Alien invited me along to help her with a house painting job:

"I needed someone to work with me on a house and [Ziztur] was available to help. Somewhere during the first few days, she said she had something interesting to have me listen to. Okay, no problem - this happens quite frequently. I like interesting stuff and she knows what I would find interesting. Somewhere in those next few days… she had me listen to this podcast. It was Point of Inquiry. I had no idea what Point of Inquiry was, but the podcast was definitely interesting."

We ended up listening to POI for 6 hours a day, 5 days a week for several weeks. Later on, I introduced her to Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. At some point, I let the Alien know that POI and the other podcasts were all produced by atheists. She decided that though she had no desire to meet any of the people in the podcasts, they were cool and interesting.

Slowly, I began to introduce her to other people in my circle of godless friends. First, it was some people I was dating:

"I've never been so scared to enter a house, ever… I was adamant on not getting too deep in conversation with them lest they start questioning my beliefs and attacking them upon finding out I wasn't an atheist like them. While I ended up conversing with them, it did not go too deeply… At least they didn't mentally torture me with their conversation. Okay, some atheists are okay."

Skip ahead to a few months ago. The Alien uses me as her personal lending library, and at one point I convinced her to read a skeptical book. We started with Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer, and she eventually moved on to read books by Richard Dawkins, Mary Roach, Darrel Ray, and others. She worked up the nerve to attend atheist book clubs with me. She took my mp3 player (loaded with POI, SGU, and Quackcast) to Europe to feed her ears during long train rides.

"By this time, I'm starting to figure out that the intellectual conversation may just overpower my now deep fear of atheists. I took some tentative steps, checking out - gasp- other blogs than [Ziztur's] and the POI website."

Surprisingly, The Alien was off work last weekend. She had heard about Skepticon II from Skepchick.org, and dropped me a line, asking if she could come along. A few hours later, she was sitting in the car with me, Flimsy, and Saint Gasoline. She describes how she felt on the way to the con:

"Imagine a deep nervousness that keeps on being pushed down by the want for intellectual conversations sure to happen. Imagine being nervous at meeting people you've been listening to not long, but just long enough to feel like you're meeting someone famous. Imagine still being deeply nervous and still quite a bit fearful of the people who were SURE to ask you about your religious beliefs and question you when you still haven't worked out your stand on everything-in-the-known-world-much-less-yourself (see future posts on this) completely yet. You've probably gotten the picture."

"Imagine then fitting in better at this convention than fitting in ANYWHERE else ever in your life, even with groups of friends known for years. "

The Alien has a message:

"I must say it clearly to CCTA and the other demeaning atheists out there who use mental torture to wear down others. You, sir, do/did NOT help your cause in the slightest. Your strategy did NOT work and scared away someone who COULD have been someone on your side. Now before you think "wait, but it did", technically.... you're still wrong. It would have probably always come to [skepticism] (just by nature of my friend deciding for herself), and what you did was stop someone from becoming [a skeptic] for years longer than they probably would have. You did a disservice to your cause and I do not believe anyone should respect what you say given the way you go about proving your points…YOU are a DISGRACE TO ATHEISTS and ATHEISM and THEY DO NOT NEED YOU as an advocate."

The Alien is also one of those few skeptics out there who is not exactly an atheist – but she is a skeptic, a freethinker, a best friend, and she is beyond loyal, even going so far as to get in the car and go somewhere where she is in enemy territory – and instead of finding hostility, she found friends.

Ask an Atheist; Two questions for Flimsyman

Long-time readers might remember the imminently frustrating Dr. Brad Harrub (warning, that link to our reviews of his seminar is pretty epic - we got, like, 30 blog posts out of that insanity), a professional Creationist seminar speaker.

He had an interesting request - two questions that he'd like us to answer.  Two questions - either of which I could rant about almost indefinitely.  I'll try to be brief:

1. Can you summarize why you became an atheist?

Short answer:  I found the Bible to be ethically and morally horrifying.  Some details:  Started actually reading the Bible when I was 11, read it cover to cover, and read it more as a teenager.  To put it simply, it offended every single notion of justice, morality, and compassion that I had.  Having sat in church services my whole childhood, my expectation of Jesus was that he would be the most intelligent, wise, ethical teacher that mankind had ever known.  I read the Bible, and Jesus actually sounded insane.  So having not actually given up my belief, I went through spells of depression as a teenager, believing that there was a God, who would reward his followers for obedience and punish those who disobeyed, . . . yet who was obviously psychotic, and that "punishing those who disobeyed" would, in effect, be the eternal, unending torture of the vast overwhelming majority of people who have ever lived.

You know that old atheist line - the same way that you confidently reject all other religions, that's how and why I reject yours?  Having heard my whole life that all other religions are completely wrong, it wasn't at all difficult to see how Islam, Buddhism, Wicca, etc. are factually incorrect.  It was years later that I decided that the Biblical God was highly, highly unlikely to exist, and even more so when I educated myself a bit about the scientific method.

Now, to summarize the absolute, basic foundation of why I am an atheist - the idea of God contradicts known facts about the universe.  There are MANY examples of this I could give.  Here's a few:  God violates the second law of thermodynamics (extremely ironic, given that Creationists claim that evolution violates this law of nature, when it does not).  We observe, 100% of the time, that a "mind," possessing intelligence and emotion, only exists as (and as a result of) an organism with a physical body and brain.  The concept of God actually violates *all* known facts about how reality works, because God can supposedly do anything.  I don't believe that Santa Claus exists because it's physically impossible for one, single man to visit every human dwelling on this planet (or even just the houses in America) in an evening, to even ignore the question of what aerodynamic properties are possessed by which species of reindeer.  God is claimed to violate the laws of reality in many more ways than Santa Claus.

A god who grants us an afterlife is sure to be a highly desirable belief to many people, and this is exactly why we should be skeptical of it; the more likely we would *want* a false claim to be true, the more easily we will be convinced of it, and so we should be that much more certain that it is true.

All of the evidence and arguments for the existence of God that I've ever heard are truly terrible arguments.

There are clear, rational evolutionary mechanisms by which we would come to have a belief in a god-like being that does not actually exist.

Etc., etc., etc., ad nauseam.

2. What are your feelings toward death? (In other words what happens when you die?)

I've touched on this briefly above; that we would naturally want, very badly, for there to be an eternal afterlife.  Because we would want this to be true so badly, we should be extra skeptical of such claims.  Bluntly, I see no satisfactory reason to believe in an afterlife, either in logical arguments or in evidence.  In addition, the concept of an afterlife contradicts known facts of reality - we can change the function of a person's "mind," a person's consciousness, very drastically with physical alterations of their material brain.  I think that this shows, pretty conclusively, that our "mind," or "soul" only exists as a function of our physical body.  Given this, how would you even attempt to give a rational explanation for our . . . well, for our brain surviving the death of our brain?

As for "what I feel" about death in a broader sense . . .  It is exactly because there is no deity or afterlife to redress the injustice that sometimes occurs in this material world that we need to take control of producing a just, fair, and safe world ourselves, instead of relying on a mythical father figure or looking ahead to a fictional afterlife.  It is exactly because we will not literally live forever that we should claim the one measure by which we will continue to "live" in any sense after we die - by making the world a better place for all persons while we are here.

Ask an Atheist: What happens when you die?

Here's the second question that Dr. Brad Harrub asked me the other day:

"What are your feelings toward death) in other words, what happens when you die?"

To humans, we see a huge distinction between "life" and "death". We see a living person - their heart is beating, they are breathing, their brain is functional, the metabolize energy to keep these systems running - that person is alive. When we see a "dead" person, we see a body that no longer functions or operates in the same way it once did. A dead person does not breath, their heart does not beat, and their brain is nonfunctional. A dead person cannot metabolize energy and thus their body suffers from entropy - it breaks down. These are objective facts about dead individuals.

But really, the distinction between life and death in a broader sense is not so clear cut, just like the distinction between life and nonlife. Our bodies are teeming with countless life whether we consider ourselves alive or dead in the form of bacteria and viruses. The vast majority of the cells in our body are not human cells, but over 1000 species of microorganisms. In fact, it is estimated that the microorganisms in the average healthy human body outnumber human cells by a factor of 10:1, and we absolutely cannot survive without them, though they can certainly survive without us. If the human species is ever annihilated, the bacteria will go on living, having barely been dented by our presence.

I can imagine though that this is an unsatisfying answer, as you're probably wondering what an atheist thinks about what happens "after death" and whether or not I think our consciousness survives death. There is no evidence and no plausible mechanism by which out consciousness can survive brain death. It's sad to think that the buildings in my city will outlive me, that I will get to miss so many happenings in the world, and that my great great great great grandchildren will probably never know me personally. But no matter how much we want it and how much emotional attachment we have to the idea of our consciousness surviving death, we cannot change the evidence through sheer force of will. Going back to the clover idea in my previous email; no matter how much I desire for clover to cure heart disease, no amount of want can make it so.

I understand that believing there is "life after death" comforts people. It's not a pleasant thought that we have to lose everything we worked for, have all of the knowledge we have gained disappear in mere moments, and have some lives tragically stripped away by accident and disease. Our biological urges to stay alive are incredibly strong and that obviously enables us to survive as a species. We can't even fathom what it would be like to be "not alive". But if our consciousness doesn't survive death, it's not as if I'll be aware of the fact that I am dead, so as far as I'm aware, I am always alive.

I also think that it is worth it to be a good person and have a positive impact on the world, even if our life is only temporary. Is it worthless to spend hours building a beautiful sandcastle for everyone on the beach to see only because the tide will wash it away as soon as you've finished? All of those sandcastle builders would testify that it is - that the process of working hard and making something beautiful and amazing that will make the people around you feel a little bit of joy is worth it despite the fact that this beautiful amazing thing will disappear and be left only in the memories of those who got the chance to see it. So, in a way life is like a sandcastle.

I think a lot of the time atheists are accused of having this selfish mentality - Theists believe that if an atheist thinks there s no life after death, that they must believe they can be selfish and seek to derive as much pleasure out of their life as possible. I know a lot of atheists, and none of them think this way - they think the same way theists think - that they want to help people. Christians and atheists both want to have a positive impact on the world, and they want to sacrifice big parts of their lives for the sake of the lives of other people. I think the biggest differences is that Christians see themselves as serving god, and atheists/secular humanists see themselves as serving the world (and "the world" is not just limited to other humans. A lot of atheists are really concerned about the environment and the welfare of other living things just as much as the welfare of other humans). We don' expect an all-powerful being to swoop down like the ultimate deus ex machina to fix everything and restore order at some point in time. We have to restore order and seek justice ourselves.

3H1P: Why did you become an atheist?

I'm starting a new series of blog posts in which commenters or emailers can ask an atheist (and maybe a pastor) questions, and we'll answer them on the blog.

The first question comes from none other than Dr. Brag Harrub, subject of this stupidly long series of blog posts in which we attended his Truth About Origins Seminar. I think Dr. Harrub intends to use my (and Flimsy's) answers in future presentations. Dr. Harrub asks:

"Why did you become an atheist?"

I actually answered this question in a series of 5 blog posts many moons ago (about 8 moons actually), But Dr. Harrub asked me to summarize it. If you've read this blog for more than five minutes you'll notice I suck abysmally at summarizing anything. This was my summary:

My parents raised me in a secular household. We did not attend church, pray, or talk much about religion at all. When I started to think more deeply about things in grade school and middle school, I wanted to believe in a higher power. For many years I believed that there was an infinite transcendent power out there and called that power god. I believed that god was so unfathomably powerful and infinite that any attempt to define god would be to put god in a box. So, when people told me they knew god felt a certain way or did a certain thing, they were putting god in a finite box and diminishing his infinitude. If god is infinite, anything you can say about him becomes unintelligible. It would be like thinking you know what the whole of civilization is like by observing one person's fingernail clipping.

When I was in graduate school (Earning my doctorate of occupational therapy. I'll be "Doctor" in 6 weeks!), I decided to look for the actual evidence for god. In the world of science-based medicine, if there is no evidence that a particular therapy has an effect on people beyond placebo or nonspecific effects, then that therapy is discarded in favor of therapies that do have a measurable effect. If god is real, and has an effect on the world, then that effect should be objectively measurable.  So I looked at all of the effects god is supposed to have on the world and formulated hypothesis about those effects and then measured them or looked at ways other people have measured them. I concluded that there is no evidence to support the existence of a personal god, and that some of the other definitions of god were unfalsifiable such that they were meaningless from an objective standpoint of making a hypothesis based on them. Atheism is
a conclusion I have come to based on lack of evidence.

Here is an analogy I like to use: let's pretend that I am a scientist, and I am convinced that clover cures heart disease. If I want to prove that clover cures heart disease, there is a process by which I need to do that. Anecdotal evidence of people claiming that clover cured them aren't enough. Testimonials aren't enough. We have to apply the scientific method to our hypothesis that "clover cures heart disease". So, let's say we run some experiments. We do double-blind, placebo controlled experiments in which clover is given to a group of people who have heart disease, and a placebo is given to another group of people with heart disease, and the people with heart disease and the scientists doing the outcome measures don't know who got what. After we experiment, we conclude that there is no difference.

But wait! We test again: we use different formulations of clover. We try having them drink it. Eat it. Distill it. Smoke it. use it as a suppository. Massage their feet with it. sit in the same room with it as it grows. extract it and concentrate it and try different variations of how much clover people are exposed to. Nothing works. The outcomes are the same - no one is cured of heart disease. No one gets better. People die at the same rate.

After all of this, is it right to think clover cures heart disease? Is there still the possibility that clover cures heart disease? Yes. There is still a remote possibility. But I am an acloverist. I don't believe clover cures heart disease. What I think abot god is the same as what you think about the clover.