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.

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.

Faith Infiltration: World View Community Church

Today Flimsy and I went to World View Community Church, a foursquare church that is part of the charismatic movement. Look forward to our write-up of it tomorrow. I think we will probably have three posts on it!

Churches we Recommend: possibly changing

If you've ever taken a look at the sidebar of my blog, you'll notice that there is a list under the heading, "WE HEATHEN ATHEISTS RECOMMEND THESE CHURCHES, OMG" where we actually recommend several churches. Why would some atheists recommend churches, you ask? These churches are on this list because we found their teachings to be outstandingly moral* and ethical. These are all churches that we "faith infiltrated" and were pleasantly surprised to see that they advocated ideas such as tolerance of other faiths, helping people without proselytizing, the importance of church/state separation, the messages that nonbelievers are not destroying the world, etc. We've visited 32 churches since we began our Faith Infiltration project one year ago.

We recommend churches because we think that some people need religion – they need the community, the spirituality, the little bit of supernaturalism in their lives – and that if they need to belong to a religious community, there are some out there who are a candle in the dark and a force of good in a world that is increasingly polemic.

One of our favorite churches was Copper Creek Christian Church. Most of our reasons for recommending this church were that we found the philosophy of the pastor, Keith, to be very ethical and moral. Case in point: he showed up at one of our local St. Louis Atheist meetups and we became fast friends with him.
We learned recently that the board members at Copper Creek voted to "let go" of Keith due to "leadership differences". To put it bluntly: he was fired from his position as pastor at the church. Keith explained simply that some of the reasons we liked his church and chose to recommend it are ultimately the reason that he is now unemployed.

Churches have every right to fire pastors if the pastor is not in line with their philosophies, so I am not suggesting that Copper Creek acted in an illegal or discriminatory manner. However we must say that we are disappointed with this. Keith was really doing something different with his church.

We intend to infiltrate Copper Creek again. We'd like to hear what the new leaders have to say, and see if their philosophy has changed. Sometimes, one person can make all the difference. Check back with us – we also intend to interview Keith to get more details, and we've contacted the leadership at the church as well.

*If you want more details about why the churches we recommended are moral and ethical, check out our Faith Infiltration of those churches here:

Copper Creek
Divine Science
Unitarian Universalist

Faith Infiltration: Creation Museum Pt.10

Here's another poster at the Creation Museum:

The text reads: Do different starting points matter in our personal lives? Why am I here? Am I alone? Why do I suffer? Is there any hope? Why do I have to die?

I have an answer for all of these, based on my starting point. Here is my starting point: things that exist have an effect on the universe. We can test that effect. We test that effect by observing it, experimenting, experimenting again, and make conclusions which are always open for revision. As a starting point, it affirms that these tools can lead us to provisional conclusions.

The starting point of "The Bible" means that one has preconceived conclusions in mind: you work to make the evidence fit those conclusions. From the perspective of a skeptic who concludes based on what is examined, this is akin to jamming a square peg in a round hole.

Why am I here?

The universe does not have a reason for "why" people are here. You just are. But that does not mean you're not here for a reason. You can give yourself a reason. Everyone has a story worth telling. So you tell me: why are you here?

Am I alone?

No. Sometimes, it might feel like you are alone, even when you are surrounded by other people. You are not alone even when you feel as though everyone has abandoned you. You are not alone even when you feel that you are the only person in the world who feels the way you do, or has experienced what you have experienced. Everyone at times feels alone, or abandoned, or shut out, or shut in. Even if you feel as though all of humanity has abandoned you, you're still not really alone – the countless bacteria helping keep you alive may not care about you, but they sure are with you. It is possible for you to be completely abandoned by everyone you love? Yes. It is. It's a risk we take by deciding to remain alive that is worth taking.

Why do I suffer?

Everything suffers. Anything capable of suffering suffers. At times, suffering will make you a strong and better person. At times, suffering will break you down, or possibly even kill you. There is no overarching "reason" or "purpose" for this. It's just there. It just is. Can you find meaning in your suffering? Yes.

Is there any hope?

Hope for what? Why do we have to invent The Ultimate in order to have hope?

Why do I have to die?

Because living things die. People don't want to die, but pretending there is a "reason" (like sin, or the will of god, etc) or that you can escape death isn't really an answer, any more than "they go back into the leprechaun's magic bag" is a satisfactory answer for why rainbows are so temporary.

It must be nice to feel like you have all of the answers to these questions. People often say that religion offers answers, but I would rather be truthful and say, "It's complicated" rather than, "I know". I would also rather have no answers then have an answer that comforts me, but is incorrect.

There's also something else: it's obvious that "different starting points" matter in our personal lives. Christians will obviously argue (and I would disagree) that with the starting point of the Bible, you can have a better personal life. Even if that were true, that says nothing about the truthfulness of the starting points.

Faith Infiltration: Creation Museum Pt.9

For those of you just joining us, Flimsy and I made a trip out to the Creation Museum awhile back to document some of the interesting things they are teaching people. The people of the Creation Museum use a series of posters to explain that respective "starting points" (Human reason or the Bible) matter in our personal lives, and we should start with the Bible because it's true. Here, posters show that "According to human reason, present processes operating over 14 billion years explain the world we see today. Humans are only the latest ripple in the endless stream of evolution".

Actually, that's not really true. This may be a minor point, but characterizing us as the latest ripple ignores the countless populations of organisms that have adapted and changed (evolved…) since the beginning of written history.

I also take issue with classifying the change of galaxies, solar systems, earth, continents, etc as "evolution". If this is evolution, then any time any system undergoes any type of change at all, one can classify it as evolution. The nuclear reaction occurring on the sun as a result of the fusion of hydrogen and helium - that's evolution. The wearing down of rocks due to wind erosion – that's also evolution. The gravitational pull of planetary bodies – that's also evolution. Continental drift – that's evolution too. What AiG is doing here is taking the respective scientific fields of astrology, cosmology, geology, paleontology, physics, biology and nearly any other –ology (well, except for a tiny portion of theology) and lumping it all together under the heading "evolution" which, according to them, is a giant steaming pile of arbitrary guesses. Ignore them all. All of those –ologies are examples of people rejecting god and the reason we're not all hanging out in Eden with the dinosaurs and the happy fishies.

Snark aside, here is what the second poster says:

Gods perfect creation: in six, 24-hour days, god made a perfect creation. (Genesis 1:1).

The first man, Adam, disobeyed the creator, bringing death and corruption into the creation (Romans 5:12).

Adam's race became so wicked that god sent a catastrophic, global flood (Genesis 6:17).

When mankind refused to spread out over the earth, god confused their language (Genesis 11:9).

The creator became a man, Jesus Christ, who obeyed god in everything, unlike Adam. (Galatians 4:4).

Jesus Christ died on a cross to pay the penalty for mankind's disobedience (1 Peter 3:18).

One day the creator will remake creation, cast out the disobedient, and dwell with believers. (Revelation 20:34-21:1).

At the bottom, the poster reads, "Creation – 4004 BC: In six days the lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, including the earth, plants, the sun, the moon, trilobites, dinosaurs and humans." And "Global flood – 2348 BC: Most rocks and fossils are the result of the global flood and its aftermath. Humans left the ark, spread out, and filled the earth, bringing culture with them." The very bottom reads, "God's word reveals that, from the beginning, god created man and woman to dwell with him. God's intervention at key periods of history explains most of the world we see today.

I guess quoting Bible verses is their version of "evidence". You know, we also use "human reason" to conclude that the universe was not created 200 years ago. It's a good thing the Bible does not claim that, because we can't prove the universe wasn't created 200 years ago when a creator who can do whatever he wants is running the show.

I don't think it is possible to exemplify the "goddidit" mentality more so than with these posters.

Faith Infiltration: Jefferson Hills Church

For those of you just joining us, Flimsy and I regularly "infiltrate" local churches and post our thoughts on the services from an atheist perspective. This is our 31^st infiltration. To see other Faith Infiltrations, click the "Faith Infiltration" label at the bottom of this post.

Recently, we've been on a billboard kick – we've been going to churches in the St. Louis area that are advertising themselves via billboards. The Jefferson Hills Church is one such church. For some reason, when churches in St. Louis decided to erect billboards, they erect the raciest billboards possible. This church has several interesting ones:

 

(P.S. According to their website, the one unforgivable sin is refusing to walk with Jesus... whoops.**)

Jefferson Hills Church holds services in the auditorium of Windsor High School. In the lobby, we picked up the church bulletin, entered into the auditorium and sat down in the center near the front. On stage sat a set of drums (sans the typical churchy drum shield), a bass and electric guitar, a keyboard, a rear projection screen with the words "tattooed" written on it in a hip script font, and a snaking tangle of wires leading to and from sound equipment.

Upon opening the bulletin, we discovered this:

Obviously, this church goes out of its way to appeal to a younger crowd, as evidenced by their bulletin. Not only do they have a "hard rock" section, but they listed off the addresses where one can find them on Facebook and Twitter. A paragraph in the bulletin proclaimed, "Our adult venue (meaning the service) is PG 13 which is geared for Teens and Adults Only". On the back of the bulletin, they boldly listed the average weekly church attendance and amount they receive for weekly offerings. The auditorium and stage were devoid of Christian symbols. Several people walked around wearing shirts that said, "Tattooed" on them, in the same design as above. The congregation consisted of mostly families with middle-school or high-school children.

As services began, a man (who I believe was the lead pastor) came on stage along with the Church's worship team/band and told the congregation that the mission of the church was to, "Love god with all our heart's". He then told his congregation that the offering would take place during the announcements. He said this in a rather dismissive sort of way, which is something I have come to appreciate. We've been to many churches that make a huge deal out of the offering, from playing special offering songs to practically building the entire church service around it.

The individual making announcements explained several things to his congregation: The reason people were wearing "tattooed" t-shirts was that those particular people were part of the church administrative team. This is part II of the "tattooed" series, and we could go online to view the first part. "Tattooed" really isn't about getting ink injected just underneath your skin in pretty designs; it's about "being marked by Jesus in a dark and depraved world".

The band played three opening songs: One about god being all one needs, one about being the salt and light (lyrics here), and a third about being redeemed and free (lyrics here). The band sort of reminded me of an alt-rock garage band, except that the musicians were well-groomed and dressed wholesomely. I could almost imagine them practicing at the auditorium in the evenings during the week (Here's the band's myspace page so you can listen for yourself if you like).

While the band played, several groups of people really got into it, pumping their fists as though they were at a rock concert – except that they would intersperse fist pumping with raising their hands up in worship. Other people nodded in time with the music, while a few teens sat there silently, looking as though they didn't exactly want to be there.

When the band finished, the teaching pastor (Ben) stepped onstage and began a very animated, charged sermon.

Ben's basic message (and this is distilled from 6 pages of notes I took in my 7"X5" notebook) is that all people who have accepted Jesus are special and beautiful because they have been marked by the "blood of the lamb". He told his congregation that the people of Jesus are "set apart and distinct" from this depraved culture. Because of this, they really need to wake up and learn to "be holy". People who have accepted Jesus cannot be holy because they have made the choice to be Christian, but have to be holy because by accepting Jesus, they have no choice - because the Christian god is holy. He explained to his congregation that god says he is "looking for people to be me in this world" and that god is not asking what the culture thinks.

Ben asked his congregation: where are the people of god preaching that one has to listen to Jesus in order to become blameless and pure? I found this kind of odd, as it seems to me that most churches and "people of god" are preaching this. They are everywhere. He went on to say that we're living in a crooked and depraved generation in which the culture does not actively praise and seek out people who shine for Jesus.

Flimsy and I have encountered this at churches before – there is this feeling that people there think they are in the minority – that they are one of the few who have the way and the truth in a world of corruption and hostility. But given that 75% of the US is Christian, those who teach that one has to listen to Jesus in order to be blameless and pure seem to fall squarely into the majority.

Ben went on to explain that "shining" does not mean being a Bible-thumper and telling everyone else they are going to hell. It means "holding out the world of life", making the word of god become essential in one's life, and being imitators of god so that when people see you, they see god. However, he also reiterated that one is a shining light not because of what one does for god, but what god has done by marking our hearts with the blood of Jesus.

He spoke of the contrast to light – darkness, and explained to his church that everyone is in darkness until they accept Jesus and that they are dead in their sin until Jesus makes them alive. He told his congregation that they should have nothing to do with those people out there living in darkness (meaning non-Christians like Flimsy and I…) except to "show them the light". As an example of being the light around dark dead people, he mentioned those skimming off their hours at work or those asking teenagers why they aren't dating yet. By being sexually pure and morally honest, one can be the light for the people in the dark. He said that this was not an option, no matter what excuse people had. Even if they don't want to "be a dork", and even if they want to "understand the culture", culture can grab you and find its way into you. Since you can't play in both camps, and don't have a choice but to be the light for God, obviously one has to wake up and admit that they owe it to their savior.

Ben went on to aim his (figurative) guns at some of the things in the culture he felt were corrupting and destroying Christians: being on drugs, having inappropriate pictures up on facebook, using Myspace to "hook up with a girl", etc. It was fairly obvious that his intention was to make people feel as though they needed to repent for their sins and excuses. .

At this, the band returned to the stage and began to play slow, sorrowful music. While they did this, Ben offered up a very personal prayer of repentance for himself, saying that even as a preacher he is not worthy and needs to repent. Obviously, he wanted the congregation to know that this was the appropriate thing to do.

Communion at this church is more of a private than an openly public affair, with a communion station somewhere in the back of the church, out of sight. People were invited to partake of they chose. The band played two more songs: one about giving one's life to Jesus (lyrics here), and another about finding love beyond all reason in Jesus (lyrics here).

It was a little difficult for me to ascertain what sorts of ethical and moral principles (beyond the obviously Christian) this church considered important, but I got the sense that the church was trying to present a sort of "classic" Christian message in a package that appealed to young people so that they would feel Christianity was relevant and perhaps even a little counterculture. A teen in the throes of constructing their own identity might find the "black sheep" undertones appealing.

**Flimsy and I refuse to walk Jesus all the time. Well, that's not entirely true. We "refuse to walk with Jesus" in the same way that Christians "refuse to walk with Thor". I guess we're screwed.  It's unforgivable, after all.

Faith Infiltration: Creation Museum Pt.8

This next picture of the posters at AiG continues the trend of attempting to show that "human reason" and "god's word" cause people to come to different conclusions about fossils.

Once again, the important stuff is at the bottom:

Here, we have "human reason" showing us that over a long period of time, fossils developed over a very slow period to create coal and many rock layers. On the "god's word" side, we have a "floating forest" breaking up during the great flood and coal and fossil layers being created rapidly during a worldwide flood 4,300 years ago.

The idea that this could even occur is laughable. Let me refer you to a quick explanation as to why from the Answers in Creation website, which is a Christian website. Obviously, not all Christians believe the same thing, but it is nice to see Christians debunking this nonsense.

Their best quote is this one:

If you wanted the coal beds to form over the continents, here is what must happen.  God would have to sink a forest with the turbulent water, then calm the water and make it still for a day, so the sediment would sink to the bottom, then re-start the current to bring in the next forest to sink, sink it, stop the current, etc., etc.  Sure, God could have done it, but there's no logical reason to.

I guess if you have magic on your side, you can explain away anything.

Faith Infiltration: Cross Pointe Church

After spotting this racy billboard on the side of Highway 55 North in St. Louis, Flimsy and I decided that we had to infiltrate the Cross Pointe Church. For those of you just joining us, Flimsy and I regularly "infiltrate" local churches and post our thoughts and feelings on the services from the perspective of atheists. To see other Faith Infiltrations, click the "Faith Infiltration" label at the bottom of this post

Cross Pointe is a little hole in the wall non-denominational church situated on a strip mall between a produce store and a coffee shop. It is such a hole in the wall that when we tried to visit it the first time, we were unable to locate it – after driving up and down the street, we finally found it about 10 minutes after the service began by parking somewhere and looking on foot. Armed with this information, we found it easily the week after. It is not the typical church that you see rising from the homes and business as you drive toward it.

Once inside, it is pretty clear that this church is a former business – it used to be a moving and storage place. This church is not about fanfare, comfy seats or state-of-the-art décor. The ceiling features the original white painted embossed tin tiles, and the floors are a mixture of bare concrete and original hardwood. The flooring is dulled and deeply marred by countless foot traffic and age – some places where the floor needed repairs were taped over to avoid creating a trip hazard.

There is a welcome area where people sat in comfy chairs and sipped coffee, and a simple sanctuary entirely devoid of religious iconography (and windows). In place of stained glass depictions of Jesus and cross centerpieces is a wall lined with flags of every country and a large mural at the front of the St. Louis cityscape, with the arch as a prominent feature.

Inside the sanctuary, the lights were dimmed candles are lit. This place is edgy: at the front a young worship team led the congregation in songs with drums that lack the characteristic churchy clear drum shield, a guitar and a keyboard. Lit candles perched atop waist-high wrought iron candle holders, which were draped loosely with stainless steel chains. Bits of office cubicle sections walled off the exposed furnace. Little baskets at the end of each row of chairs housed Bibles. The chairs are the kind you might find at a city restaurant. It is a church stripped of anything save the bare essentials.

When we first entered the church, we were greeted by a gentleman who asked us what had brought us to their church. We told them that the billboard had sparked our interest, and the gentlemen responded, saying something to the effect of, "Yes, that's a pretty racy billboard. I wonder what kind of message it sends across – either we're really bold or someone hates us." We entered the sanctuary to find it filled with about 50 people or so, with an average age of mid to late twenties.

The worship team played four songs while displaying the lyrics on a rear-projection screen at the front of the sanctuary:

1. A very uplifting song, the primary message of which was "the earth is filled with the glory of the lord".
   
2. An uplifting song, the primary message of which was "the lord is good to me".
   
3. A slow, soulful song, the primary message of which was, "The lord is a fire of love for us".
   
4. A slow, melodic song called "Sweetly Broken", the lyrics of which can be found here.
   

There were some very interesting lyrics I took note of:

To the cross I look

To the cross I cling

Of its suffering I do drink

Of its work I do sing

I have heard of people saying things like this before: "I do the work of the cross". I must admit, my literal mind has a hard time making sense of this. The cross in an inanimate object said to have been used to crucify Jesus. A cross cannot suffer. Is "cross" generally analogous to Jesus taking on the sin of the world? What does "doing the work of the cross" mean? Perhaps a commenter out there can explain to this heathen how a cross can suffer and how one can do the work of the cross.

Other interesting lyrics from the same song:

At the cross You

You beckon me

Draw me gently

To my knees and I am

Lost for words so

Lost in love

I am sweetly broken, Holy surrender

These lyrics reminded Flimsy of how a submissive sometimes feels in a dom/sub relationship during a BDSM* scene.

After the opening song, the congregation watched a video about the upcoming college Christian conference in St. Louis, Urbana '09. After the video, a young woman stood at the front and asked if anyone would be willing to volunteer to fill communion cups for the thousands of people who would be taking communion on New Year's Eve during the conference.

The woman left, and I turned my attention to a stool in the center of the front of the church, upon which sat a bottle of yellow Gatorade. I thought, "Yellow. Gatorade. I guess the speaker needs more than just water up there." The campus pastor appeared from stage left, and almost immediately explained the purpose of the Gatorade: it was not simply there for him to drink, it was a tool for his message.

The campus pastor (Kurt) was a young guy sporting a long ponytail, a black beard, and dressed simply in a pair of worn jeans and a t-shirt. As he paced the stage, the floorboards beneath him creaked, but not so much that it was a distraction. He explained that in sports, in order to be a professional, you must have (among other things) proper nutrition, proper training, rest and hydration. The slogan of Gatorade is "is it in you?" and the line can apply not just to the capacity of an individual to be a professional sports player, but also the capacity of an individual to be a good Christian. It is important, he said, to put the right things into one's life while keeping the wrong things out of one's life.

Kurt referenced Mark 7-14 (apparently Mark 7 had been used in last week's sermon, and this week's sermon was intended to finish up the story of Mark 7-14). Mark 7 is an allegory for people setting aside god's commandments by inventing their own traditions and not realizing that what a man "does" (evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly) is what makes him unclean, rather than his lack of religious tradition.

In Mark 7, Jesus' disciples do not quite understand his message, and he explains it again. Kurt said that this was meant to show the reader that even though it may be tough to ask a seemingly dumb question, it would be worth it in the end to not be afraid to ask anyway. A question on his mind is, "Why does religion even appeal to people if there are so many rules?" The answer is that these rules are there not because people are supposed to necessarily follow all of them, but they are there to show people that the law cannot actually be kept. The standard is so high that even ultra-faithful individuals (such as the Pharisees) fall cripplingly short of following it. Furthermore, we should absolutely not judge other people by their shortcomings, because doing so only serves to make ourselves feel better about ourselves by pointing out the flaws in others.

At this, Kurt's voice cracked, and I could hear the intense emotions he felt in his voice as he explained that in the past he had cheapened Jesus' death by minimizing his own sins and wrongly seeing himself as better than other people. It was fairly clear that he considered himself to be a wretched person without Jesus.

Kurt brought the congregation full circle, back to his Gatorade. He said that even though people put the proper things into themselves, they – like those who never become pro athletes – will never be good enough. He can't meet the high standard of becoming a pro athlete and so too, people "cannot just have a little Jesus" or "a little religion" and expect to be saved. None of us are good enough based solely on the things we put into us – we can only be good enough because of Jesus' sacrifice to humanity.

Like every Faith Infiltration, this review is not meant to be extensive or complete – one visit to a church is really only enough to get a general impression of things. I have heard speakers say that Christians should not be judgmental before, but this way of presenting this concept seemed to be especially powerful. I also found the concept of "god's law" being given to show we cannot keep it an interesting one. I wish other churches could understand this – specifically, understand this to the extent that they do not try to use political power or legislation to oppress the rights of individuals to break "god's law".

I don't, however, think the idea that one is a worthless miserable human being simply for being alive is a healthy idea. To me, if you behave unethically, then you are a miserable human being. If you behave more or less ethically, then you are a more or less worthwhile human being. If you behave ethically nearly all of the time, then you're a pretty worthwhile human being. If you are always at the peak of ethical behavior, then you are a rare gem indeed. This standard is based on something meaningful – I am not comparing the largeness of numbers by comparing them to infinity – I am comparing them by comparing them to other numbers. If I judge the ability of five-year-olds to paint by comparing painting abilities to other five-year-olds, I can say something much more meaningful about their abilities than if I compare them to Alyssa Monks (whose paintings look so real they are often mistaken for digital photographs). If we only compare ourselves to perfection, then we can only be seen as worthless. I don't think it would be helpful to tell five-year-olds that they are expected to be Alyssa Monks. But the point is not to improve their painting skill – the point is to make them surrender to their own shortcomings.

At the very least, I was pleased that I did not hear yet another sermon condemning atheists and secular humanists for ruining the world. There was a distinct lack of "us vs. them" mentality so common to other churches.

After the service ended, we spoke to a few people at the church, let them know who we are and gave them business card. They invited us to come back to LifeGroup – which is a weekly small group meeting and bible study. We're considering it, but we don't want to fly in and hijack someone's small group, so we're a little hesitant. They seem like nice people.

*I am not mocking this song. I have great respect for BDSM and the people who can practice it safely, sanely and consensually.

Faith Infiltration: Creation Museum Pt.6

For those of you who don't visit here every day, Flimsy and I (along with a few of our friends) visited the Creation Museum a few weeks ago. This is a series of blog posts outlining some of the interesting things I found there.

A poster near the beginning of the Creation Museum sets up the museum's version of how all of this complexity in living systems came to be. The people of Answers in Genesis actually believe in evolution in a way, while insisting through and through that they don't. A good example of this is the poster below, which shows the difference in "human reason" vs "God's Word" in explaining the complexity we see:

The important part of this poster is at the bottom:

Here, the poster makes the claim that human reason has produced this idea of the tree of life – with all of life arising from simpler and simpler organisms, something they characterize as "molecules-to-man evolution". The God version looks more like an orchard than a tree, with god creating ill-defined "kinds" and then populations of those "kinds" evolve into various species. AiG claims that it is not possible for one population of "kind" to evolve into another "kind", but fails to explain why, aside from resorting to their god.

The problem is this: what if we DID observe a "kind" evolving into another "kind"? Let's pretend for a moment that somehow, a population of dogs is documented to evolve into cats over a period of 60 years. I am confident that creationists would not abandon their position. Rather, they would claim that this instance of "kinds" evolving into other "kinds" is a miracle – not evidence of evolution. I would agree – evolution does not work like this, and so if in a period of 60 years, we documented a population of dogs changing into cats, I would seriously have to rethink my own position on evolution.

If a population of dogs evolved into some animal that is not so drastic as dogs-evolving-into-cats, the creationist could simply claim that the animal has changed a lot, but has not changed "kinds".

Creationists also like to claim that evolution is unscientific because we cannot "go back into the past" and directly observe "molecules to man" evolution. We also cannot "go back into the past" to observe creation. If you think this is adequate criteria for discounting evolution, then you must apply the same standards to your alternate idea.

No matter what we observe or what evidence we gather, the people at the creation museum will have an excuse or a goalpost to move. They have already moved the goalpost in the creation evolution debate. In the past, creationists simply asserted that speciation could not happen because it was not observed. Once we provided examples of speciation, the goalpost was moved to "kinds". Now, AiG clearly has a model in which evolution occurs – within the mechanismless ceiling of "kinds". If we directly observed that this ceiling did not exist, it would be a miracle, or a fraud, or not proof that god did not create "original" kinds, or god working in some other way. As such, it is unfalsifiable. AiG already claims that the evolution we see today is "not proof" of evolution before recorded history, but if we were able to observe "molecules-to-man" evolution over a short period of time, a creationist could still claim that this is "not proof" that "molecules-to-man" evolution is what actually happened. Really, observation does not matter, an excuse can always be made. This makes it nonscientific. In science, one must have a hypothesis, and that hypothesis must be falsifiable.

Faith Infiltration: Creation Museum Pt. 5

I've been very photographic lately on this blog after a long lull of texty blog posts. This is part 5 of a series of blog posts documenting my visit to the Creation Museum. You can find previous posts by clicking the "intelligent Design" label at the bottom of this post.


Here is another example of the "human reason" and "God's word" dichotomy that permeates the museum:

The text is a little hard to read from the picture, so here is what it says:

Starting with Human Reason	Starting with God's word
The Utahraptor lived in the Early Cretacus world about 125 million years ago – evolved through millions of years of change	The Utahraptor lived in the pre-Flood world about 4,300 years ago – God made the beasts of earth (Genesis 1:25)
Caught in a flooding river – died in the normal course of events	Caught in the Great Flood – And the Lord said, "I will destroy… man and beast…, for I repent that I have made them." (Genesis 6:7)
Dried out on a river bank – dried out in the sun	Floated on Flood waters – And all the flesh died that moved upon the earth (Genesis 7:21)
Slowly buried by river sediments – slowly buried and gradually fossilized	Suddenly buried in the Global Flood – The world that was then, being overflowed with water, perished (2 Peter 3:6)
Exposed in the present – revealed by millions of years of erosion	Exposed in the present – Speak to the earth and it shall teach you. (Job 12:8)

So, "human reason" seems to clearly be starting from the null hypothesis and moving toward a tentative conclusion based on the evidence we find. "God's word" is a starting point of the Bible, retrofitting evidence so that said evidence does not contradict what the Bible says.


Most people reading this blog will understand how ridiculous this is. In the event that I am not preaching to the choir, let me illustrate why this is an inappropriate way to approach evidence with an analogy.

Starting with Human Reason	Starting with the Lisu Holy Book
The Utahraptor lived in the Early Cretacus world about 125 million years ago – evolved through millions of years of change	The Utahraptor lived in a reef in the pre-Flood world – dinosaurs lived in reefs.
Caught in a flooding river – died in the normal course of events	Killed by an orphaned brother and sister with a golden hammer and silver tongs – given to them by a golden bird
Dried out on a river bank – dried out in the sun	Thrown onto a river bank by the children – along with fish
Slowly buried by river sediments – slowly buried and gradually fossilized	Buried quickly - by one of the 8 suns and 6 moons shot down by the children.
Exposed in the present – revealed by millions of years of erosion	Exposed in the present – by ancestors of the children

You could pretty much take any creation myth and, starting from that myth, force fossil evidence to fit it. The Lisu creation story might sound like a tale used by another culture to explain origins, but objectively it is equally fanciful as the Biblical creation myth. This is why we need to begin with the scientific method ("human reason") and then look at the evidence as objectively as possible. What the creation museum does is essentially pit the scientific method against the Bible, insisting that the scientific method is something akin to an "arbitrary guess". To a believer, "God's word" is infinitely better than some "arbitrary guess". Evidence does not matter, because it can simply be redefined, ignored or marginalized in favor of an "innerant" holy book. A believer in Lisu mythology could similarly ignore or redefine evidence in favor of their mythology. In this way, the faith of an individual or organization can become historical "fact".


To put it yet another way – a forensic investigator and his assistant are at the scene of a murder. Who is more likely to arrive at the truth: the forensic investigator, who makes no assumptions about the nature of the crime, or the assistant who "knows" before he enters the crime scene that his neighbor perpetuated the murder, and his only evidence is that his pastor told him his neighbor was an atheist sinner with no morals? The assistant can look at the crime scene and say, "it does not matter that the murder weapon was a gun and my neighbor does not own a gun. He borrowed it. It does not matter that my neighbor has an alibi because he was at a local atheist meeting – he just committed the crime before the meeting. The investigator using evidence to date the time of death is wrong, because that dating method makes too many assumptions.

We can't find his fingerprints or DNA evidence anywhere at the scene, but that's no matter because he could have worn a full body suit, the clever fox. Your standards of evidence are based on human reason, but my evidence is based on the word of my pastor and the word of God, who says nonbelievers are evil. Your human reason will lead you in the wrong direction because it's just an arbitrary guess".

Faith billboard

A few days ago as I was driving home from my internship on highway 55 north, I spotted this:

At first, I wondered what exactly the billboard was trying to convey. It occurred to me that someone might be angry at Bevo church (Bevo is a St. Louis city neighborhood) and had decided to post this billboard in order to shame or boycott them, except that calling a church "liars" or "drunkards" is a clear case of libel (um, unless they are drunkards and liars, I guess). I suppose "enemies of god" could not be classified as libel – you'd have to prove god existed before you could prove someone was his enemy. Nonetheless, a boycott billboard is not out of the question, given that we have a local laborers union who boycotts a paving company who will not unionize with billboards commanding readers not to use the paving company.

On my way home, I came to the conclusion that the billboard was more than likely a publicity ploy by the Bevo church itself, though I was not sure exactly what it meant. Perhaps I would understand better if I were a Christian?

No matter, everything was cleared up once I went to the aforementioned website. On the website is a picture of the same billboard, but the word "drunkards" is crossed out in red and replaced with "lives of freedom" written in cursive. "Enemies" is crossed out and replaced with "sons & daughters". "Liars" is crossed out and replaced with "speakers of truth". Written above the "Church at be*vo" is the word "REDEFINED" as if stamped in place.

I think ones of the reasons I had so much trouble understanding this billboard is that I see a "church" as an organization of people who come together for community and religious services. I wonder if Christians think of "church" more directly as the people who are members of the church, in the same way I might think of a "class" at a university. Obviously, the point is that people come to Bevo with all of these sins that define them, and they are supposed to be redefined in terms of their relationship to their god.

Flimsy and I clearly need to infiltrate this church.

Creation Museum Pt.4

This is part 4 of my series of blog posts on the creation museum. You can find previous posts by clicking the "Intelligent Design" link at the bottom of the page.

As I mentioned earlier, the Creation Museum early on sets up a dichotomy between "human reason" and "god's word" and continues with this theme throughout the museum, claiming that "human reason" leads to errors because it is "arbitrary" and the literal Biblical interpretation of "god's word" leads to truth just because it's "god's word".

I'll be honest with you – it's really hard for me not to just dismiss this poster as pure ignorance and blind faith. Here, a poster with the title "Same Universe" depicts the differences between the "human reason" conception of how the universe came to be, claiming that "human reason" leads us to believe that through a timespan of billions of years, the planets, galaxies, solar system, earth, moon and continents "evolved". This is contrasted with "god's word" which says on day 1 god made light, on day 2 god made the "firmament", on day 3 god made dry land, and on day 4 god made the sun and moon.

 Essentially everything we know about cosmology, astronomy, and geology shows that this is not the way in which the world came to be. Some young universe creationists have gone so far as to reconcile this apparent discrepancy between what the Bible says and what we observe and measure by insisting that their god created the universe to appear very old, when in fact it is not. This really is no different than if I were to claim that god created the creation museum (CM) 5 minutes ago, with the appearance that it looks like it was actually a project that took several years to fund, design and build. Then, I can claim that the AiG people are all sinners for claiming that they are taking credit for god's work. How dare they claim to do god's work! They are all using their "human reason" to determine that they actually donated money to the CM, helped build the building, and laid the tile. They are using "human reason" to observe that people erected walls, designed posters, hired consultants, painted stripes in the parking lot, etc. They are using "human reason" to determine that people lovingly sculpted and clothed the robots and wax figures. Human reason is arbitrary and they need to listen to god's word – god built the museum.

What, you mean you observed all of those things happen? Your observations do not count because you're presupposing that people build museums.

When people claim that the universe is only thousands of years old, they are ignoring facts, plain and simple. But if a big part of faith involves believing despite evidence to the contrary, then the folks who believe in what the CM peddles are actually doing it right according to some religious folks. It does not matter that we observe a universe which is billions of years old, which was formed by natural processes. All of these facts can be ignored with a simple wave of the hand – god deceives some people into thinking the universe is billions of years old by making it appear to all observations and measurement as if it is billions of years old.

Faith Infiltration: Creationist Museum Pt 1

A few weekends ago, Flimsy and I, along with some of our friends, drove all the way from St. Louis to Kentucky to tour the Creation Museum

The Creation Museum is a project of Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis. I took a bunch of pictures of the displays there, so I will spend a few posts going over some of the interesting things I found there.

I know that the Creation Museum has somewhat been toured to death, but I don't feel bad adding my particular voice to the cacophony of voices describing, cataloguing, and disseminating information about it.

When we first arrived at the museum, we were greeted by a security guard outside the door who asked to thoroughly search my backpack. He wanted to peer into every zippered area and had me remove my camera so that he could make sure no knives or prohibited items went in to the museum. I am told by several people that this is a common procedure. While he was searching, he remarked that he was just looking for knives or glass. I joked with him, exclaiming, "What? I can't bring my scary weapons in? This totally ruins my day" and pretending to turn around. He replied sorrowfully, "I know… I really hate to ruin your day," with a smile.

The museum itself is quite nicely constructed, so I completely agree with other accounts that there was really quite a bit of thought put in to making the museum look beautiful. Once we purchased our tickets, we headed to the lobby, where a large replica mastodon skeleton dominated the brightly-lit space. A plaque at the mastodon read:

"The Burning Tree Mastadon: December 12, 1989, Newark, Ohio – While digging to create a new water hazard on the Burning Tree golf course, the dragline's shovel hit the skull of this buried mastodon. Excavation of the pond halted while a scientific team unearthed the fossil, which turned out to be one of the largest and most complete mastodon skeletons ever found. Mastodons and mammoths are related to modern elephants, and all of them appear to be descendants of the original elephant "kind" that God created around six thousand years ago. This mastodon lived during the ice age, which took place a few centuries after the Genesis Flood."

"More than just bones: a mass of intestinal material was found within the ribcage of the Burning Tree Mastodon. Investigation of the mass revealed the giant's latest meal as well as bacteria thought to be thousands of years old. This mastodon had feasted on swamp grasses, mosses, water lilies, seeds and leaves, as opposed to what scientists believe mastodons primarily ate – twigs and cones from evergreen trees. The bacteria that were taken from the gut were largely enterobacter cloacae, which is common in intestines of other animals. At the time of their discovery, the bacteria were the oldest living microbes ever found, and Discover magazine recognized as one of the top 50 stories of 1991."

There are several interesting claims here which highlight themes that will be repeated throughout the museum. The first I'd like to address is this nebulous term, "kind". When biblical literalists speak of "kind" and then say that "one kind cannot evolve into another kind" they rarely give a precise definition for what a "kind" is. Mastodons and mammoths are related to modern elephants, but what is an elephant "kind" exactly? In the classification of living things, animals and plants are classified using a universal system and language. The classification follows in this order: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. Since elephants and mammoths are classified by scientists in the family elephantidae, and mastodons are classified in the family mammutidae , grouping elephants and mastodons together as descendants of the same "kind" means that the approximate equivalent of "kind" to the classification system is close to "order". This is important, because throughout the museum, plaques and videos insist that evolution is unscientific because we have "never observed one kind changing into another kind". What they are claiming is something similar to, "evolution does not happen because we have not seen one order change into another order". The museum claims repeatedly that any differentiation of living things below "kind/order" does occur and did occur after the flood.

The plaque also reads that mastodons lived after the flood and that the ice age occurred after the flood. I wonder how long they believe the ice age lasted? One does not have to look far to find AiG's revisionist history:

"An ice age is defined as a time of extensive glacial activity in which substantially more of the land is covered by ice. During the Ice Age that ended several thousand years ago, 30 percent of the land surface of the earth was covered by ice (Figures 1 and 2). In North America an ice sheet covered almost all of Canada and the northern United States."

How odd that no one mentioned this ice age in writings from "several thousand years ago"…

The other interesting claim is that of the contents of the stomach contents of the mastodon. While the information appears factual, the purpose of the information being given seems to be to show that scientists were wrong about what mastodons ate. This is another recurring theme of the museum, where early on a dichotomy is set up between "gods word" and "human reason". This plaque is just the beginning.

We're going to the Creation Museum!

This weekend, Flimsy, Saint Gasoline, myself, and some other friends from St. Louis Atheists and the St. Louis Skeptical Society are going to infiltrate Ken Ham's Creation Museum.

Yes, I will ride the dinosaur. I look about 12, right?

Be sure to check back for pictures and a good story.

Faith Infiltration: St. Louis Cathedral Basilica

This week Flimsy and I visited the beautiful Cathedral Basilica, hailed as one of the most glorious Cathedrals in the US.

The Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis is one that must be seen personally. It is impressive and overdone: if Vegas is entertainment on steroids, Cathedral Basilica is Catholicism on steroids. The entire ceiling is covered with gold-flecked murals, marble statues abound, and they have tours after every mass (which is 4 times a day on Sundays and several times during the week). There is probably close to an acre of pews inside the sanctuary, and don’t know if this is an exaggeration.

Because of its size, services seemed very impersonal. Instead of a close-knit community, it felt more like we were at a baseball game, where participants were only united by their common belief but not necessarily a “community” in the sense that most congregants knew each other. In this way, the visit was more of a spectacle (and I do not mean that pejoratively) than anything else. No one so much as looked in our direction.

What is it with sermons at Catholic churches being so short? Granted, we only have a sample size of 2 (having only visited 2 Catholic churches) but both times, the sermon or message was very short. The sermon was delivered by a bishop who climbed a small spiral staircase to an ornate and impressive podium made of carved marble and fine wood – obviously, any podium one must climb a staircase to stand on is impressive.  The general message of the sermon was that we must give Jesus access to our hearts, especially those parts of our hearts that are dark. The bishop gave a very long list of “dark parts” we should let Jesus see, encouraging people to ask Jesus to help with the tough questions and church teachings people refused to follow. Some of the questions included:

Which church teachings to I refuse to follow? Who do I refuse to meet or be nice to? When did I last go to confession? At whom am I angry – god, the church, people who have died? Why do I blame god for not answering my prayers?

If we give Jesus and god access to our hearts and weaknesses, the Bishop said, we will not be afraid of answers to these questions. Instead, asking these tough questions will give people the opportunity to grow with god.

The bishop did not give answers to these questions, but given my limited understanding of Catholicism, I can only assume that the answers to these questions are that the parishioners are guilty and selfish sinners who are putting themselves above god, but I don’t know that for sure.

After the sermon, most of the parishioners took communion, but I was surprised to see that we were not the only ones who abstained: of the several hundred people present, I would say about 20 people did not take communion.

Following this, several prayers were offered, the most interesting being a prayer that the new year of school education and academics work to educate people that life “is sacred and begins at conception”.

As we left, I observed a family with a young daughter who was maybe eight years old exiting the pews. As the mother and father exited, they bowed to the front of the sanctuary and crossed themselves. Their daughter made a move to leave, and her father grabbed her arm: she bowed and crossed herself, facing backward. Looking stern, the father spun her around so she could do it facing the correct direction.

We did not go on the tour because we were starving!