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!

Faith Infiltration: Vedanta Society (Hindu)

For this week’s Faith Infiltration, Flimsy and I visited a Hindu temple, the Vedanta Society of Saint Louis. The temple was modest: it was more or less a large house that had been turned into a worship center. When we arrived, various people milled about, most of them white and middle-aged, even though Hindu is typically thought of as an Indian religion. We were definitely the youngest people there that I saw of a small group of about 30 worshipers.

The most intriguing aspect of the church was the large lending library of books, which contained a jumble of books on various religions including Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, etc. Of course, there were no books on religious skepticism, but there were a few applied science books. After we introduced ourselves as visitors, we were told that the monks were on summer vacation, and so thus the service would be in the form of a message given by another monk that had been recorded on videotape.

Hinduism is sort of like an eastern version of Unitarian Universalism in that there is no particular dogma or creed. It does have a common thread of philosophical concepts, practices and cultural traditions, though.

Basically, Hinduism is the practice of obtaining a better present and future life through one’s moral actions. People who follow Hinduism believe in karma, that good and bad actions return to you in a balance. They also believe in reincarnation and living in coexistence with other religions.

People often misunderstand the Hindu worship of many gods as polytheism, but Hinduism actually teaches that all of these individual gods are part of a single god. From this website on teaching children about Hinduism:

“Hinduism is a religion of freedom. In the recommendations for Hindu way of living, there is absolute freedom for understanding the nature of God, forms of god and worship and the goal of life. Those who accept the teachings of the Vedas as the basis of dharma, follow the rule of conduct as instructed therein, believe in one Supreme God Brahma, consider life to be sacred, practice non-violence (Ahimsa), and believe in the rebirth of a soul (reincarnation), are Hindus.

“Also, those who see godliness in mother, father,teacher, and all guests and believe in the holiness of the river Ganges which is considered to be Lord Brahma's blessing to the world, are Hindus. Those who believe in the holiness of cows which are considered as Lord Krishna's loving companions and the providers of mother-like nourishing milk for infants, are Hindus. And those who believe in the Bhagavad-Gita, and the Gayatri Mantra, the supreme and powerfully divine chant, are Hindus.

“Besides visiting deities in temples, a Hindu maintains a shrine in the home for regular worship. Home worship is common on a social basis and also when family and friends worship together. Hindus also respect all elders and believe in giving to charities. Above all, Hindus love all religions of the world. Living as a member of the "world family" and praying for the welfare of the entire human race are the ways of Hindu life.

During the video we watched, the speaker talked about how the existence of god cannot be proved or disproved, and urged those listening to him not to try to find the truth of god in the words of other people or in other holy books, but from within the self. He said that one should pick and choose what sounds right to them, but not do this in a way that undermines science or physical reality.

He stressed the importance of understanding religious stories in the context of reality, and as an example he mentioned the story of Jesus using one fish to feed a whole village, and said that maybe it is not that Jesus made more fish, but that people forgot their hunger in his presence. In this way, he was seeking a somewhat non-miraculous explanation for miracles and finding spirituality in science, which is obviously something I can agree with.

Even though the speaker told his audience not to seek god in the words of other people, he also said that when one reads, one should take the words of a holy person more seriously than a scholar or someone who has written a modern paperback. I don’t know how one would know that a modern paperback writer is not a holy person though. Who decides who is a holy person and who is not?

Interestingly, the speaker had several somewhat negative things to say about Christianity. First, he told a story of a man who was at a train station, trying to find the correct train to get on. In attempting to find the correct train, he was entering every train he could find, asking people there if this was the correct train. Finally, someone pointed to a train and told him that it was the proper train for him. Upon boarding the train, he sat next to a pastor who attempted to convert him to Christianity. The man decided that this was the wrong train as well, and left. His point seemed to be that people can’t tell you which the correct religion is for you. He also told his audience that heaven and hell were mere abstractions of our consciousness.

The speaker also talked to his audience about doing good deeds while here on earth so that those good deeds will accompany you into the next life. Even though I don’t believe in god, I feel that this is a perfectly ethical religious teaching. Your good deeds should matter far more than how much faith you have in a god or creed.

Faith Infiltration: Rock The River Tour

For this week’s Faith Infiltration, Flimsy and I attended the Rock the River Tour, a Billy Graham/Franklin Graham sponsored tour of Christian rock bands. I’ve wanted to review a Billy Graham event since we started infiltrating religious services and events.

The Rock the River tour was held at the grounds underneath the St. Louis Arch. St. Louis holds several festivals here each year, the biggest of which is probably Fair St. Louis, so I expected the layout to be similar.

When we arrived, it became clear that the individuals who set up this festival expected the turnout to be smaller. The area under the arch was fenced off for security purposes, and this fenced off area was filled with people standing, sitting in lawn chairs, on blankets, or milling around. Outside the fenced off area, lawn chairs and blankets jammed any space in which the screens or stage should be seen, encroaching on pedestrian walkways and sidewalks and covering any grassy areas. The single vendor area – located on a blocked off four-lane roadway and with about 30 vendors peddling Christian T-shirts, food and water was packed so tightly with people that it took us about 45 minutes to walk out of once we became trapped inside.

This festival was also different from the St. Louis fair in a number of other ways: there were no security checks outside of the fenced, in area, but security was fairly tight to get into the fenced in area in the early part of the day. Bags and people were searched thoroughly, but at some point in the early evening the security personnel stopped searching entirely. I did not see a single individual drink a single sip of beer or alcohol. Hardly anyone lit up cigarettes. Lots of people wore Christian T-shirts.

The demographics were largely young adults or youth, the type you’d expect to find at a typical rock concert on the levee. This is to be expected, as young adults were the target audience. I also got the feeling that there were fewer minorities here than I expected, given that Fair St. Louis usually draws a fairly diverse crowd.

We shifted slowly through the crowd of people, jostled by sweaty teenagers making people trains through the crowds by holding on to each other’s shirts. Off in the distance, Franklin Graham stood on stage. He told his audience to raise their hands if they had decided to give their lives to Jesus so that counselors could find them and hand out reading material. After checking out the booths of t-shirts (one said, “Narrow Minded” and had Bible verses on the back) we settled into the grass on the outside of the fencing, far enough away that the stage was a mere postage stamp in the distance.

Here, we chatted about Flimsy’s experiences at other Christian rock concerts, wondered about the religious belief demographics of attendees, and made other random observations and discussed them while people-watching. Eventually, we packed up and moved into the fence, sitting right next to a block of grass roped off for “counselor’s area”.

Here, we witnessed counselors doing their thing – some people approached with tears in their eyes, some people approached smiling, others were more reserved – and a counselor similar in age and of the same sex would sit in the grass next to them for prayers. Overall though, the number of people being counseled was a tiny minority. Most people simply sat around, oblivious to the fact that to some individuals, this night might change their lives.

Flimsy and I were primarily interested in hearing Flyleaf, but he was also familiar with Skillet. We didn’t pay much attention to the groups who played beforehand, only moving into the fenced in area when we knew the bands we came to see were up next.

Skillet played first, and I have to say that, among other things, their violinist is a complete badass. They had a very edgy pop metal style mixed with classical instrumentation and lyrics vague enough to be accessible to more secular individuals. They had a great stage presence which included two hydraulic stages that would raise and lower, lots of lights, and dramatic bursts of pressurized gas. Overall, Skillet was quite enjoyable live. (Here’s a music video.)

After skillet played, a video appeared on the screen. It was a ten minute monologue by the former lead singer of Korn, who had apparently become a born again Christian sometime in the past few years, shirking his life as a drugged out rock star to come clean and take care of his daughter. He appeared in the video alone, sitting on a white couch, looking like he always does – rough, vacant-eyed, and clearly the product of his lifestyle.

After this, Franklin Graham came on stage and delivered a sermon that was essentially a plea to realize that god loves you and will forgive you for your sins. I was wholly underwhelmed by Grahams abilities as a preacher – pastors like our friend Keith are much more effective at reaching an audience and making them think, while Graham came off somewhat like a grandmother grabbing your arm in a supermarket, proclaiming that god loves you so much, giving you a hug, and then pressing a gospel tract into your palm.

After Graham gave his sermon, he asked audience members to hold up their hand if they had decided to give their life to Jesus, so a counselor could find them and give them literature to read. He told them to fill out the card on the back and then go find a good local church to go to. A scant few people raised their hands. For the next thirty minutes, he would survey the audience, ask if everyone had gotten to see a counselor who wanted to see one, ask if anyone else wanted to give their lives to Jesus, and tell the audience to raise their hands if they did – repeatedly.

Honestly, most people seemed to ignore him. 

I had seen Flyleaf perform a few years ago, and their performance this time was very similar. Flyleaf is another pop metal band, though they don’t consider themselves a “gospel” band. Their style is less refined than Skillet. Whereas Skillet’s style sets them apart from other groups, Flyleaf’s core is the group’s lead vocalist, Lacey. (Here’s a music video.)

After Flyleaf’s set, Lacy took the microphone and explained to her audience that she knows what it is like to be depressed. She explained that she had nearly committed suicide when she was younger, that she had experienced lots of difficulties in her life, but her faith in Jesus gave her something to live for. Lacey obviously understands what it is like to be young (she’s my age) and as such spoke in a frank and way that I felt was much more persuasive and honest than Graham. Apparently, she used to be an atheist and this was a source of depression for her as she viewed life as a series of bad experiences and failures culminating in death.

After Lacey spoke, Graham returned to the stage with Lacey and expressed that, “Lacey and I are both so very concerned for you and we want you to know that GOD LOVES YOU. HE REALLY LOVES YOU!” in his supermarket grandmother way, while Lacey stood beside him with a concerned and poignant look on her face. It was pretty clear that Lacey wanted people experiencing negative things in their life to have something to turn to, because she had experienced the pain of depression and helplessness herself, in a very direct way. Graham, on the other hand, seemed out of touch - a man safely tucked away in his own righteousness.

Twittering Rock the River

Today we're going to be attending the Billy Graham/Franklin Graham Rock the River tour. It's a free concert series at the St. Louis archgrounds featuring a bunch of contemporary rock and rap Christian bands and messages of salvation.

We will be Twittering our thoughts regarding what we see and hear live, so follow me on Twitter here. The concert starts around 2pm central time.

Faith Infiltration: Trinity Assembly of God Church

 Well folks, this is the 27th church or religious event we’ve infiltrated. For those of you who don’t know, Flimsy and I regularly visit different churches or religious events and report on our experiences.  We look at the general atmosphere of the church or event we’re attending, and then listen to the speakers or congregants to see what kinds of things are important to them. Here, we comment on what we see. This is something like credopology. You can find all of our other Faith Infiltrations here.  We’ve also taken to Twittering our church experiences live, so you should follow us on Twitter here.

Today we visited the Trinity Assembly of God Church, which is part of the charismatic movement. 

We entered the church, and already people were singing an uplifting hymn, the central theme of which was glorifying Jesus. The church sanctuary was small and filled to capacity with about 150 chairs. There were perhaps 75 people in the congregation. They were all white and mostly middle aged, with a scant few older folks and fewer young people or children. It was brightly lit and had an informal feel to it, though most people were well-dressed.

On the ceiling, several flags ran down the center aisle. About 15 identically constructed and golden-colored wall-hangings read, “Jehovah”, but the crowning glory of décor in the sanctuary was an American flag with the Ten Commandments in place of the fifty stars.

As the congregation sang another song, the theme of which was “brokenness is what you want from me”, the pastor walked to the front of the stage, asking his congregation if they were “glad to be holy because Jesus is holy”. He asked them to all raise their hands to acknowledge Jesus’ holiness. His congregation obeyed, raising their hands.

In front of us, an old woman stood. Seated next to her was her husband. They held hands lovingly, gently caressing each other’s paper-thin skin. The pastor began whistling the tune of the song, now a slower one proclaiming love for Jesus. As the song ended, a woman near the back began speaking in tongues rather loudly. She spoke in tongues for a few seconds while everyone remained silent, and then a man seated near the front spoke as if translating her tongue – it was a blessing from Jesus, he said.  Flimsy and I exchanged an incredulous look.
  
As the song ended, the pastor told his congregation to whistle as the song played again. He proclaimed that this would be a sacrifice to Jesus, and Jesus and the angels would not care how they sounded, but they should praise god by whistling. The congregants whistled the tune of the song, and the pastor proclaimed that the all angels up in heaven must have stopped and taken notice, wondering why this church was whistling.

During the greeting time, a woman shook our hands and asked us if we were new. We told her we were new, and let her know we go to different churches every week and then report our experiences. She was interested in this and told us that she was new to the neighborhood and wanted to know more about churches in the area, so she asked for our web address. We gave her a business card, telling her we report from a different perspective than she might expect, given that we are atheists.

Interestingly, she did not seem taken aback or surprised. She proclaimed that god might perhaps touch us, and asked if we had been to a Pentecostal church before. We had. She told us openly and happily that we should convert, because “there are a lot of atheists in this area” and if we converted, we could be a good resource for the church to reach out to other atheists. It always amazes me when people hear that we’ve gone to 20-something churches and still think we might convert somehow, or think their god is calling to us or trying to touch us. We’ve found a lot of nice, caring people within the walls of these churches, but thus far we’ve seen nothing supernatural. I also don’t think we’ll ever be used as tools to convert other atheists.

Greeting time ended, and the pastor informed visitors that this church does not pass an offering plate around. Rather, they have offering plates sitting near the front of the church. I’ve come to appreciate churches that downplay offerings.

Before the sermon (by a guest speaker) began, the pastor told his congregation that his god does not care how much faith we have in him, we will be healed simply by being in his presence. Yay! I didn’t know it worked like that.

After this, the pastor told his congregation that even though we like singing hymns we are accustomed to, his god does not want us to worship in comfort – he wants us to worship with our whole being, which sometimes means being uncomfortable.

“Being uncomfortable” in this case meant singing along to a video of a black preacher singing R&B style hymn.

On to the sermon!

The guest pastor was apparently an individual who had lived in New York and Alaska. He had the personality of the most stereotypical New York pro baseball player turned middle-aged pastor, which is exactly who he was - handlebar mustache, big hands, gruff voice and all. His sermon was a rambling hodgepodge of loosely strung together stories, ideas and pithy-sounding but ultimately useless soundbytes and phrases. He said a lot of things like (in this order):

“There’s nothing you can do to make god stop loving you. You can even go to hell and he’ll still love you.”

“These are crucial times where we can draw parallels between the spiritual realm and the natural realm.”

“I don’t want to get political on you guys but god is not against the government. We need more government, but a government of god.”

“If a country loses the influence of god, it suffers. Lack of god equals poverty. In godly countries, people prosper.”

“God only shows up in countries where he is celebrated, not just tolerated”

“The medical definition of anything that doesn’t change is death.”

“The good old days were good because they weren’t old.”

“You once were a sinner, now you’re a winner.”

“If you lose, you choose to lose.”

“I’m not here to beat you down, I’m here to beat you u.p”

“If you do the right things and think the right things, you’ll see god.”

“An accident can change your life forever but so can a miracle.”

“I liked it when men were men and women were women and I could tell the difference.”

He told his congregation several stories about how he had influenced people to change their lives. One story was about a guy he knew in college who never showered. One day the guy asked the speaker to introduce him to a pretty girl, and he told him no – because you stink! The guy apparently had a “vision” (realizing he smelled bad) and so cleaned himself up and ended up marrying the girl.

In another story, he talked about how he was the first person in his family to be saved, and he went on to help the rest of his 90+ relatives be saved as well. He used these two stories as examples of how “if you don’t have a vision, you’re life stinks” and “once one person in a family is saved, it’s destiny for the whole family to be saved”.

Moving on haphazardly, he spoke of how we’re supposed to be a Christian nation, but we’re not. He recalled that 50 years ago when he was a teen, divorce rates were extremely low because we were all more Christian back then, even though there were a lot of miserable marriages. There were no television shows with people sleeping in the same bed, but now he’s happy when it’s a “same sex couple” in the bed. Clearly, he thought it was better to stay in a miserable marriage than get a divorce, because getting a divorce means backing down on your sacred covenant with god to remain faithful no matter how bad your partnership becomes. Obviously, he also has a problem with same-sex relationships.

Moving back to stories of himself, he talked about how he was looking for a job, had prayed for god to create a job for him, and then had gotten a job somewhere because the hiring manager knew he was a member of the church. He told a story about how he converted the entire company to Christianity.

In yet another story, he spoke of how he forced a foul-mouthed contractor to agree to listen to him preach for five minutes before handing over his paycheck. He preached to this contractor for years, and then finally left the company. Five years later he called the foul-mouthed contractor to give him a job, only to find he had converted to Christianity after nearly leaving his wife, he and his wife had adopted children from Russia, and were now moving back to Russia to start an orphanage.

His whole sermon seemed to lack a particular point or focus, so it’s hard to really comment on anything specific as there were so many stories and random proclamations. Finally, after a whirlwind of stream of consciousness preaching, he ended by saying “there is no party like a holy ghost party” and told everyone that if they needed help to influence the world outside, they should come up and pray.” At this many members of the congregation came to the front of the sanctuary, and a cacophony of voices, saying “hallelujah” or speaking on tongues rose above a gentle guitar serenade.

A sign above the door on our way out read, “Now entering the missionary field”.

Faith Infiltration: Copper Creek Christian Church

The other day, a pastor from a local church asked if he could come to at St. Louis Atheist Meetup. Being the friendly bunch of heathens we are, we told him he was absolutely encouraged to come and see what we were all about.

Pastor Keith hung back for the most part during our meetup, eventually getting wind of the Faith Infiltration project. He told us he would love it if we infiltrated his church – coming in to do our thing, and writing up an un-sugarcoated review.

As it turns out, Keith is pastor at Copper Creek Christian Church, located in Maryville, IL – Flimsy’s old stomping grounds.

Flimsy and I are avid GPS users, so when we’re planning an outing to a church, we tend to simply plug the address into the GPS and let it lead us. As we got closer to the church, Flimsy noted that it was in the same area as the church building he had attended at a child. Then, he realized it was on the same road as said church. Then, he realized that it WAS the same church building, now owned by a different congregation.  This was a fascinating coincidence, as this church building is the subject of many rather entertaining stories.

Upon entering the building we were greeted by several friendly people. The previous service had not ended yet, but when it did, people poured out of the sanctuary. We spotted Keith and approached to say hello.

We introduced ourselves to some congregants, letting them know that we were atheists who went to different churches each week. A curious thing happened – the congregants reacted with a sort of familiar surprise, the way someone might react when you introduce them to someone whom they have not met, but whom you have been telling stories about. Said congregants told us that they knew the pastor blogged with atheists. They mentioned things like wanting to find common ground between believers and non-believers, or wanting to figure out how to not be afraid to approach religion with non-believers at work. I couldn’t help but think that a few sessions with us might help people get over their anxiety toward talking to non-believers about Christianity. I like to think that we’re stubborn but approachable atheists.

The sanctuary of this church was contemporary, having an auditorium-like feel to it. There were cushy chairs instead of pews, and a long row of stained glass windows near the front at the top. In the center of this row was a stained glass depiction of Jesus, very reminiscent of a third grade color-by-numbers coloring book.

(sort of like this, only Jesus:)

Grossly oversized and clearly hand-constructed art supplies decorated the stage. These were apparently from an art camp being held at the church. An understated band (or worship leader group) assembled on stage with a keyboardist, percussionist, guitarist, and several female singers. They sung an uplifting song about how their god saves.

Above the stage, a video began playing over a large projection screen. It was a remarkably sugarcoated film about honoring fathers during fathers day, forgiving fathers who are absent or have failed at appropriately raising their children, and honoring people who act as father-figures. It even included a scene where a father and son are eating breakfast, the son accidentally spills his milk. Rather than get angry, the father simply smiles, shrugs, and intentionally tips over his milk too. At the end of the video, a worship leader told his congregation that his god the father knows you and so on fathers day, one should also honor their god. Following this, there was another uplifting song about how god knows everyone such that he hears everyone and knows every thought.

The song ended, and the sermon began. The pastor explained that in Christianity, there are ‘tutors’ – people who ramp up guilt and repentance in order to convert someone to Christianity as soon as possible. These individuals are essentially in the business of saving as many souls as quickly as possible.

He compared these ‘tutors’ to ‘fathers’, and said that ‘fathers’, especially those he is in contact with, do not want to convert their children as quickly as possible into Christianity. Instead they want their children to wait until they are old enough and possess the mental capacities to really accept Christianity not blindly or out of fear, but out of genuine conviction. As he spoke, it was clear that ‘fathering’ was ultimately superior to ‘tutoring’ as ‘fathering’ would me more likely to lead to lifelong Christians, rather than to individuals abandoning their faith as they age due to being indoctrinated and frightened into belief.

I find this way of thinking to be highly ethical, especially coming from a pastor. I have heard other pastors actually lift up indoctrination of children in sermons a la Francis Xavier, “Give me the children until they are seven and anyone may have them afterwards”. Like many other atheists/secularists, think it is immoral to indoctrinate children into a faith or a belief system they do not understand. We would consider it wrong to refer to a child as a “communist child” or a “Marxist child” because we are applying systems of belief to children who cannot understand this belief. It is much better to teach children skills – critical thinking, the ability to reason and problem-solve, rather than to teach them facts. I do not know if Keith meant anything like this, so I’d really like to explore that with him.

The pastor went on to say that Paul is a ‘father’, not a ‘tutor’, and referenced 1 Corinthians 4:6-16, which I shall reprint here from the ESV.

6I have applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another. 7For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?

 8Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! Without us you have become kings! And would that you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you! 9For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. 10 We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. 11To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, 12and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; 13when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.

 14I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. 15For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. 16I urge you, then, be imitators of me. 17That is why I sent you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church. 18Some are arrogant, as though I were not coming to you. 19But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people but their power. 20For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power. 21What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod, or with love in a spirit of gentleness?

Keith told a story about how the congregants of the Church of Corinth were being spiritually immature, causing a lack of unity among the congregation by doing things such as suing each other over personal disagreements or taking arguments from within the church outside the church. Paul came to the church of Corinth and told the congregants to stop being petty and instead do as he does.

Christians, Keith said, should behave as Paul behaves – Christians will be slandered, their beliefs will be misrepresented, they will feel attacked and persecuted – and they should not react by attempting to take away the rights of others.

I should repeat this, because this is one of the best things I have heard a pastor say to his congregation: If you feel misrepresented, slandered, persecuted or attacked, you should not react by attempting to take away the rights of others.

Keith went on to tell his congregation, literally, that “Christians should stop whining about being mistreated and instead find common ground”. This, he said is the difference between tutors and fathers. As you can imagine, I absolutely agree.

One of the things that Christians try to do is own permission. That is, they try to prevent individuals from doing supposedly immoral behavior X. The pastor told his congregation that Jesus set people free, so that in effect they could do whatever they want. I think what he means by this is that under the Old Covenant (in the Old Testament) there were 600+ rules given to the people by god that one had to follow; otherwise they would face their god’s terrible wrath. Jesus moseyed on down to earth and set humanity free from these rules. Yet, all that is allowed is not necessarily beneficial – your god might allow you to cheat on your wife, but cheating on your wife might not be beneficial.

Keith stopped here and said something along the lines of, “But wait! People say, ‘if you say you can do whatever you want, people will go and do whatever they want’. This is not true. People don’t work this way, and this is obvious, because not everything is beneficial”.

Holy Father of Science, dude.  One of the biggest arguments against atheism made by theists is that atheism opens the doors to bad behavior – if there is no god watching you over your shoulder, inside your head listening to your every thought – then you can do whatever you want and not be held accountable for your actions. I’ve blogged about this so many times that I could probably link to each word in this paragraph with a separate blog post on the subject. He was effectively saying that this argument against atheism is crap.

Alas, I have to wonder. How do we know what is beneficial? The answer to this is unclear. For example, I think it is perfectly permissible and beneficial to engage in safe, sane and consensual sex outside of marriage or partnership. I have no problem at all with non-monogamy so long as all parties included are open and honest with each other, topped off with an intense commitment to never violate the trust of your partner. Keith may very well disagree with me; I on the grounds of secular humanist ethics, he on biblical ethics.  We may disagree on gay marriage, stem cell research, or any number of things. But, he is saying we should not take these disagreements to the political level by actively attempting to infringe on the rights of others by taking away their right to engage in a permissible but nonbeneficial behavior.

Keith also told his congregation that they have the right to be as expressive as possible regarding their own beliefs, but not to such an extent that is distracts their neighbors – meaning, I assume, that one should not infringe upon the rights of others while expressing their religious views.

Changing subjects, Pastor Keith moved on to talk about some changes to healthcare funding being made in Illinois on July 1st. Apparently on July 1st, funding for health-related services to serve people who are victims of abuse, with mental illnesses and/or other disabilities are being cut to the extent that many people will lose housing, food, health, and other essential services. He urged his congregation to respond to this at the government level, asking to increase local taxes by a marginal amount so that these services would not need to be cut. He also urged them to help out at a local outreach center, so that his congregation could continue to use their resources for good and transparency.

This pastor is not admonishing his congregants to write to their government officials concerning the Ten Commandments being taken down from the front of a government building. He is not telling them to vote against civil rights for homosexuals. He is not telling people to work at the local outreach center in order to prosthelytize as a primary goal, and feed the hungry as a secondary goal. This church seems to really be concerned for things that really matter, like a society’s ability to care for its less fortunate members.

Here is a pastor that understands and actively engages the “other side”, and seeks to break down the “us” and “them” mentality – absolutely rejecting attempts to vilify people who are not Christian. His top priority seems to be seeking to make the world a better place in the here and now, rather than winning souls for the hereafter (though I am sure this is a goal as well). As it turns out, this Faith Infiltration needs no sugarcoating.

Faith Infiltration requests

The other day, a pastor showed up at one of our local St. Louis atheist meetups. He didn't come to convert, he came to listen in and try to better understand where atheists are coming from when they decry religion. He was a very, very nice, open guy.

Of course, Flimsy and I told him that we go to a different church every week and then blog about our experiences. He thought this was a great idea and asked us to infiltrate his church. He asked us just to come in and do what we do and then blog about it without sugarcoating.

So, now someone has requested that we infiltrate their church. I think this is pretty cool. He asked us lots of questions like:

What have you heard at churches that you liked?
What should pastors NOT say if they are trying to interact with non-theists?
What really turns you off or raises your hackles at a church?

The pastor plans on continuing to attend our meetings to get to know us. He is interested in bridging gaps between believers and non-believers by finding common ground. I absolutely must applaud him for this - it's the kind of thing we've been saying needs to be done all along.

We'll see how it goes: stay tuned.

Faith Infiltration: Twittering Live!

You might want to follow me on Twitter, because starting this Sunday (that's tomorrow!) I will be Twittering LIVE from the church Flimsy and I have chosen to infiltrate. This is assuming my Blackberry can get a signal inside the sanctuary. You'll get updates on music, interesting quotes from the sermon, or anything else that catches my fancy - it will be almost like taking notes in real-time.

To keep from intruding on the service, I'll be turning the berry to silent. Usually I take notes in one of several little notebooks.

Faith Infiltration: Bethel Baptist

For this week’s Faith Infiltration, we visited Bethel Baptist Church, located in Troy, Il.

The sanctuary of this church had a low ceiling and comfy chairs instead of pews. A live band played a very uplifting song about having hope in Jesus. The musicians and singers were actually quite good, so I found myself enjoying the music. They played a second uplifting song about wanting and needing Jesus. When it ended, they made the typical announcements. I was happy to hear that one of the things they are involved in is the “Barnabas Project” which is apparently a housebuilding project, wherein members of the church build houses to help those in need of housing. I am always happy to hear when a church is involved in doing something practical like building houses, rather than something useless like sending Bibles overseas, or downright evil, like telling people in Africa that condom use is a sin.

The worship leaders played another uplifting song about Jesus being all they want and all they need, and then got down to business with the sermon.

The pastor opened the sermon by telling his congregation that Christians often think the “dark pagan world” is the place where repentance needs to occur first, but they are wrong –repentance starts with Christians. He used the story of Jonah (the guy who got swallowed by a whale as punishment for disobeying Yahweh) along with the hands of the congregants to illustrate his god’s character and might, with each of his god’s five characteristics being marked off on a finger.

1. His god’s passion

His god is really passionate about everyone. Some Christians think that their god only loves other Christians, but this pastor says that his god loves everyone. Thinking his god does not love everyone is an idea straight from the pit of hell. I find this particular point to be one of conflict between different Christians. People like Ray Comfort will tell others that anyone who is not a Christian is not his god’s child and god does not love them. Who is correct?

2. His god’s penalty

There is a penalty if we rebel against god. In fact, the pastor was sure that some people in the room were rebelling against god right now. As an example of people rebelling against god, he used Jews. He told his congregation that Jews think they have the high ground because they have the Torah and think they are god’s chosen people. Lots of people think they have the high ground because they have the Bible and are Christian, but this pastor told his congregation that they should not be so arrogant. I found this to be sort of liberal thinking in a way – he was telling his flock that they should not make assumptions that they are doing the correct thing just because they have the Bible and are a Christian – they should really listen and just obey their god. Of course, I don’t know how they would know if they are obeying their god or not without either seeking an external source (like the Bible, or a pastor) or an internal source (using their reason, intellect and feelings).

3. His god’s patience

Apparently his god has patience because we can continually rebel and his god will try to correct us in our life and will only judge us on judgment day (which could come at any time).

4. His god’s power

As a testament to his god’s awesome power, he used the example of Jonah going to Ninevah and getting all of the terrible barbarians who conquered other nations to repent and accept Jesus because they worshiped pagan gods. Sweet – now Yahweh can help them be good Christian barbarians, conquering nations!

5. His god’s problem – YOU.

So his god has a passion, a penalty, patience and power, but his problem is YOU, you worthless sinner. Now feel bad. Cue sad solemn song about really needing god. Wash, rinse, repeat.

For those of you who haven’t noticed, I have started reporting on the music played during worship services. It follows a pretty predictable pattern:

1.    Song about hope and faith – feel good for attending church
2.    song about loving Jesus – feel love for Jesus
3.    sermon – feel bad, sinner.
4.    song about repenting, or really needing god – feel guilty. Repent.
5.    song about your sins being washed away, or being born anew – feel good! Jesus is awesome!

Repeat weekly.



Also, what is it with churches getting plexiglass podiums podia for their pastors? Is this supposed to create a feeling of open transparency between the congregation and the pastor, as he isn't hiding behind a wooden podium?

*Flimsy*  Ah, Jonah.  Now, I won't bother to dissect the ways in which it is impossible for a man to live in the stomach of a large fish for three days, and then be puked back out onto land.  When I first read the Bible, I was well versed in Christian folklore, and had heard this story many times before (it does, after all, lend itself to a children's story very easily).  When I actually read the text that we get this story from, the idea of a man living in a whale's stomach for three days didn't faze me at all.  What I questioned was this part of the tale; Jonah, Chapter 1.  In a nutshell, God tells Jonah to preach at a town that God wants to destroy.  Jonah refuses, and instead buys passage on a boat travelling away from the town.  Naturally, God sends an incredibly violent storm to threaten Jonah, and the rest of the passengers along with him.  They all cast lots to somehow tell them who is responsible for this disaster, and it falls on Jonah, who admits that he is indeed to blame.  He tells them that they should cast him overboard, to his death, and that this human sacrifice will appease God and cause the storm to abate.  They refuse, and try to row to land anyway.  Eventually, though, the storm gets so bad that the other passengers and sailors agree, and throw him overboard.

Now, the pastor draws the same conclusion that every other Christian (except for me?) does, here.  When they read this passage, the blunt, simple statement is that God is punishing his servant for disobeying him.  I came to a very different conclusion, having read this when I was young.  To me, it sounds like the strongest guy gave someone an order, and that person simply refused to obey.  So, the strong guy threatened him and a bunch of other people, who seemingly just happened to be in the wrong place in the wrong time, with a violent death.  The original victim admitted that all the trouble was on his account, and offered to sacrifice himself to save everyone else.  They refused, nobly insisting that they save everyone on the ship, Strong Guy be damned.  Does Strong Guy let up?  Of course not!  Keep up the violent storm, and force them to kill an innocent man.

The sermon itself was pretty boring.  The same old lessons that everyone says about Jonah and the Whale.  Well, there's a new lesson for you.  Read your Bible.  Not through your Jesus/family/culture lens filters, but with reason and moral integrity.  In Jonah 1, Yahweh gives the men on this boat a choice:  Either kill an innocent man, or sacrifice the lives of everyone on the boat trying to save him from his pathetically vindictive God.  They defied Yahweh.  They actually tried to save everyone.  In no uncertain terms, these men were heroes.  The Christian god is the villian.

Faith Infiltration; Global Day of Prayer

For this week's Faith Infiltration, Flimsy and I attended the Global Day of Prayer-St. Louis event at a local university arena, after hearing about it from one of the churches we visited.

The Global Day of Prayer is described on their website as:

Our purpose is to please God and begin to transform our region by encouraging His whole family to meet together in unity offering prayers and praise in the name of Jesus Christ on Pentecost Sunday and follow that by blessing our region with acts of service for others.

St Louis will join hundreds of millions of Christians who will meet all over the world in stadiums, auditoriums and churches to pray to God the Father in the name of His Son Jesus for personal repentance, healing, and transformation of their communities.

The event was billed as a huge St. Louis event, so I arrived with my camera in tow. That means this infiltration will be presented with text and pictures!

I got told at the door that I could not take video, which was fine, because my dSLR does not do video. When we arrived (late), we discovered that the arena was only sparsely filled, like this (click for bigger pics):

We expected the turnout to be something like 6,000 (the estimates from last year) but when we got there we did a quick estimate and determined that there were closer to like 1500 people.

A Christian Rock band was on stage playing a nice uplifting song, so people sung along. Some were more into it than others, raising their hands to the sky as if to recieve the awesome love of their god from the heavens:

Obviously, since this was the Global Day of Prayer, the primary focus of the service was obviously prayer. Essentially, they had a group of people sitting onstage who would come to the microphones and give a prayer - people from different Christian sects or backgrounds, people from Cuba, etc.

They prayed for things ranging from an end to abortion, selfishness, immorality, sexual sin, and demonic possession, but were generally a bit vague - which is understandable due to the multi-denominational aspect of the event. Large groups of people occationally would break into what I thought to be unscripted unison - at one point after the end of a rendition of the song "Amazing Grace", the entire stadium continued singing "Praise god, praise god" to the tune well after the song had ended. It was admittedly kind of neat.

When one speaker asked the audience to pray for "the tearing down of ideologies" my ears perked up, until he finished the sentence, "that prevent the spread of Christianity." Oh. Of course!

While people prayed, cameramen recording the event focused on the more outwardly praying people - the few individuals who would stand up during prayer with their hands in the air, or rocks back and forth in their seats.

At one point, a child rose to give a prayer - he prayed for all young people to open their eyes and hearts to Jesus. I could practically see the hairs raise on the back of Flimsy's neck as he watched this kid stand up and read his prayer. When the kid was finished, he was greeted with thunderous applause from the audience - obviously, if you want a kid to continue to believe in the ideology you've indoctrinated him, giving him thunderous applause is a great way to do it.

They did happen to have an offering for this event, but - surprise! - 100% of the proceeds from the offering was to go to Habitat for Humanity and the St. Paul of St. Louis charity to help the homeless. We thought this was pretty cool.

After the offering, the speakers prayed once again - this time they prayed for the president to think about his decisions, for the schools experiencing weapons, violence, and sexual freedoms (the speaker mentioned students dating teachers, why didn't anyone mention clergy molesting children? That actually happens more often...) and for Christian teachers and government officials to properly represent Christians instead of being silent.

If this sounds vague, it's because the prayers were this vague, but again, this makes sense.

After this, the people at the event were instructed to gather in small group prayer. They were even told not to leave out their neighbors. We wondered if someone would ask us to join in prayer but no one asked. Instead, we watched for about ten minutes as people prayed or just chatted.

After the prayers, people were invited to reaffirm their belief in god. I think this was an invitation to come down to the cross, because one woman did - but no one else came down. I think this was due to the invitation being worded a little poorly.

The closing ceremony began with a speaker talking about how everyone here was in the army for Jesus. Lots of people came out waving around JESUS posters. I snapped a few more pics and we decided to sneak out a little early to beat the cars leaving the parking garage. On the way out, a middle aged man wearing a shirt that read "Jesus!" started chanting, "Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!" much like one might do if they were chanting for their favorite football team. More people joined in, and as we left through the doors, we could hear their voices rising.

I am certain that this event was uplifting for many, and I appriciated that their offering was meant to help the homeless. To me, it was kind of medeocre.

*Flimsy*: It was interesting; we hung out with Augustine79, a Catholic Christian friend of ours, Saturday, the night before. He was very concerned that we just wanted to make fun of "stupid people" who believed in God and prayer, even if we did so in somewhat intellectual language.

We explained that we thought it was interesting to hear what kind of prayers people said when they thought that they were talking to the creator of the universe. I told him that we probably wouldn't even discuss whether prayer works, since there was unlikely to be any arguments given for the practice of prayer (or the existence of God). I assured him that we absolutely did not intend to simply make fun of them.

Well, I'm sorry, Augustine79. I lied.

I really don't want to make fun of these people. But it has to be said, if an atheist, rationalist, secular humanist, etc. group acted like this, I would absolutely make fun of them too.

The child who read the prayer obviously was too young to understand any of the theological ideas that he was talking about. That child is too young to make a fully informed decision about what religion, if any, to follow. I would be just as disgusted if a child stood in front of an atheist gathering, and read a statement saying, "I hope nobody ever prays, because it doesn't work. I hope no young people claim to 'love Jesus,' because he isn't God. We know this because God doesn't exist. I hope all young people give up irrational faith. And we should tax churches. Thank you."

I would love to talk to the parents of such a child: "Why do you feel the need to state your own convictions to your child so forcefully? Do you not trust him to come to a reasonable conclusion on his own? Are your beliefs that incapable of standing up on their own merits? Do you hope that people will think highly of you for brainwashing your child to have identical opinions to yourself? Is that why you parade your child in front of strangers like this? Haven't you ever thought that your child might resent you if he finds, when he's older, that he disagrees with you? Do you really think that your child will be better-adjusted as an adult because he was taught to uncritically accept everything that you told him about your religious beliefs?" All of these things I would love to ask of the parents in question, regardless of what belief system that child was being indoctrinated into.

Similarly, I stood dumbfounded at the huge parade of people, every one of them holding a big, green JESUS sign, and I struggled to contain crippling laughter at the man, wearing a simple shirt reading "JESUS" front and back, red-faced and bellowing, "Je-SUS! Je-SUS! Je-SUS!" To be blunt, yes. Yes, I laughed at that man. I think he made a fool of himself. I think the same about men (and women!) who yell "Card-INALS! Card-INALS! Card-INALS!" I would think the exact same about a man chanting "No God."

On the other hand, they did talk briefly, as Ziztur mentioned, about how donations from the event would go to help the local homeless. Of course, they were religious organizations, but they are still doing good, so they're not the completely useless "brainwashed idiots" that they could have been, at least! (That's sarcasm, folks. Relax.)

Faith Infiltration: St. Louis Dream Center Pt. 2

Hey; it's Flimsy here to wrap up our thoughts on the St. Louis Dream Center, part of Joyce Meyers' ministry.

During the service, any new visitors to the church were asked to raise their hands, where we were handed Visitor Registration cards to fill out, and we were asked to bring them by a little area on the side of the sanctuary, enclosed by standing screens, called the Welcome Area. So after the service we went by this area, where we were met by three ladies and warmly welcomed. They were very nice, and obviously excited about us potentially coming back again. We didn't want to deceive them, so we went ahead and told them that we were atheists who visited a different church every week. Mostly, the ladies took this news pretty well, but one lady physically flinched in shock. Ziztur and I were entertained by the idea of her being so horrified at our confession (our eventual goal is to get a Christian to faint in dismay), but really, I think she just never expected two atheists to visit her church to talk to some God-fearing Christians. Not exactly an unreasonable assumption on her part.

Our little discussion wasn't exactly a deep exchange of esoteric philosophical concepts. Mostly, they just preached at us. Now, I don't have anything against someone who preaches at me to try and convert me, unless they do it over and over again after I've explicitly asked them for more substantive dialogue, and they've ignored me. I didn't do that with these ladies, since I will likely never see or speak with them again, so I just let them preach for a while, and I have nothing against it. It would be nice though . . . We had already told them that we've been to over twenty different churches, and we're obviously still completely hedonistic materialists. Do they really think that out of all the voluminous preaching that we've heard, their heartfelt assertions about Jesus' boundless love will suddenly make us drop to our knees and start praying? Christian literature is full of stories of aimless unbelievers being bowled over by the sheer emotional conviction of a random Christian on the street and accepting Jesus on the spot. Folks, this does not happen in real life. In America, everyone is familiar with Christianity. The vast, overwhelming majority of people who are likely to accept the Christian God have already done so, long ago, in childhood. You're going to need a substantially better method to reach an adult nonbeliever; we've heard it all, countless times already.

One of the ladies insisted on giving me a hug, and another lady followed suit; just a touching gesture to show us that they cared. Of course, they asked why we don't believe in God, and we said that we don't see any reason to do so; no evidence to accept the existence of any such thing. One lady offered that she doesn't see how we could wake up each morning without the power of God, and that this was all the proof she needed. I was tempted to say that an organism that was incapable of waking up from sleep would obviously not survive or reproduce, and so any genetic cause for this inability would immediately destroy itself via natural selection, but this seemed to be a little snarky, so I refrained.

One lady, the second who hugged me, prayed while we embraced. Of course she asked God and Jesus to reveal their love to us, etc., etc., etc., but she also asked God to show me how he could heal me of whatever terrible wound I had suffered to make me lose my faith. When she was done praying, I tried to gently explain to her that people often wonder if I suffered some terrible tragedy that destroyed my belief, but that actually, I've had a pretty spoiled existence. Sure, I've had my bumps in the road of life, but compared to the horrifying atrocities that some people have suffered through? I really just don't have anything to bitch about. It's as simple as that.

Of course, it's possible that Christians assume this because of one or two nonbelievers that they've heard who did lose their faith as a result of some tragedy. These few cases could simply stick in their minds as an explanation of why they don't believe. I suspect another process, however; it must be a terrible blow to their worldview to know that someone, with no terrible emotional tragedy, can still give up belief in their god, simply as a result of objectively looking at the evidence.

There's one other thing they said; something that Ziztur and I have heard many, many times: We must be going to all these churches because God is leading us to search for him.

This is very, very interesting. This is a fundamental difference between the intellectual processes of a Christian and an atheist. It seems like almost all Christians assume that nonbelievers who visit their church do so because they really do believe in Jesus, deep down, and they come to church because they're "searching." At just about every single church that we've visited and confessed our godless, unrepentantly sinful ways, we're told this. "You're being led to search for God." "Something in your heart is telling you to search." Etc. Now, for all our heathen, godless readers, imagine that you're at a meeting of atheists/secular humanists/rationalists/the monthly meeting of the St. Louis Blasphemy and You Group, whatever. Imagine a fundamentalist Christian comes to the meeting, on purpose, to talk with you. Do you assume that this person came to the meeting because they know, in their very deepest brain functions, that there is no God, and they've come because they're "searching" for instruction on how to live without God? I'm going to say that you probably wouldn't think this. Ziztur and I reason that if we encountered such a situation, we would probably assume that they've come to challenge our way of thinking with their own perspective and worldview. It doesn't paint a very flattering picture of Christianity, but this is very, very consistent.

After hearing this so many times, this time I decided to set them straight. I told them that we hear that all the time, but that we really do just visit churches to try and figure out why other people believe. I told them that we've been to many, many churches and read lots of books about God, and we're no closer to believing in him than we were when we started this little investigation (rather, quite the opposite). I tried to reassure them that, no really, we are perfectly happy people living without your god.

The church ladies didn't have much to say to that.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 4.Flim.2

Nearing the end of our material from Dr. Brad Harrub's Truth About Origins seminar; soon we'll be back to polishing up the good old Ray a Days! I know you all miss them . . . Ziztur and I are talking about dissecting various Christian publications, continuously, picking up new ones every so often. We'll need something new after we finish with Dr. Harrub's seminar and then finish with Ray Comfort's newest book. I think I'm going to tackle Jack Chick gospel tracts every so often, but we want something more regular. We've gotten suggestions ranging from modern ones like Letters from a Skeptic and Lee Strobel's Case for series, to classics like St. Augustine's Summa Theologica and C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity. So, readers, any suggestions?

Anyway, Dr. Harrub has quite an impressive list of Scientific Things that the Bible Says (TM). Here's some more of the list:

-Exodus 15:26 and Deuteronomy 7:15 state that those who keep God's commandments will not get sick, and that other, heathen nations will be aflicted with terrible diseases. Dr. Harrub then quotes Numbers 19:16-18, Leviticus 17:15, Leviticus 11:7, and Deuteronomy 23:12-14. He claims that if these verses were followed, many epidemics of disease and plague that have occurred throughout history could have been prevented. He claims that since we now know to take roughly similar hygenic precautions, the Bible must have been inspired by God, with incredible scientific knowledge!

Um, no. Firstly, simple hygenic precautions such as these were already known at the time. It doesn't take much trial and error by even a very primitive society to figure out that people are often healthier if everyone buries their shit. Secondly, Dr. Harrub conveniently ignores other, less impressive ceremonial instructions, like that in Numbers 18:7, saying that anyone who approaches the temple (unless they are one of God's "special priest men") must be put to death. Or Leviticus 12:1-5, where God tells us how long a woman is "unclean" after giving birth - for twice as long after giving birth to a female baby! What about Leviticus 5:2-3, where God makes it clear that those who disobey these commandments about cleanliness are guilty, and they are punished! Most of the rest of Leviticus, Chapter 5 specifies that this person who is "unclean" is not to wash him or herself or take any kind of medical precaution, they are to offer a ritual sacrifice to satisfy God's wrath. Any objective reading of these Old Testament commandments about cleanliness makes it clear that this was an ancient, extremely primitive culture that had managed to figure out a very few basic notions of something vaguely resembling hygene. Really, this is supposed to be proof that God had given the ancient Isreaelites medical science better than humanity has ever figured out on it's own?

Let's see; next up, we have a really bizarre example of biblical "science," in the form of Acts 17:25, which says that Harrub says that "God creates life, not mankind." Here's what this passage actually says: "And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else." Um, what? It looks like this verse simply states that God gives mankind life. It says nothing about original creation, and it certainly doesn't say anything about mankind's ability to create life. He uses this verse to discuss the famous Miller-Urey experiments, which he insists, of course, did not create "life" in any way. Now, I've heard similar such criticisms of these experiments before, and I really have to question the capacity for critical thought in the people who make these claims. Here are Dr. Harrub's criticisms of these experiments:

-Oxygen was present in extremely large volumes in the ancient-Earth atmosphere. This oxygen would ruin the Miller-Urey experiments, so they suspiciously "left it out" of the variables that they considered.

-When this was pointed out, they re-did the experiments including high volumes of oxygen, but these second (accurate) experiments failed to produce the same results.

Concerning the second assertion, I've never heard this one before, and I can't seem to find any information on this supposed second set of experiments. I don't know what on earth Dr. Harrub is talking about here, but if anyone does, I'm all ears.

It's irrelevant though, because there obviously was virtually no free oxygen in a pre-life earth environment. How do we get oxygen in the environment? Plants and other forms of life produce it in massive quanities. In the absence of plant life, or any other mechanism for the production of massive quanities of free oxygen, the free oxygen will rapidly react with other elements. Or doesn't Dr. Harrub recall from basic high school chemistry that oxygen is one of the most reactive elements in existence? Virtually everything in the entire universe either rusts or burns. Oxygen simply cannot exist in any even remotely significant volume without a continuous source of huge volumes of free oxygen. On Earth, this source is various forms of simple life. It is thus impossible for there to be any significant volumes of oxygen on the earth before life occurred!

One more interesting bit of biblical science knowledge from Dr. Harrub: The Bible says that animals produce after their own "kind," but evolution says that (I swear, I am not making this shit up) if you take a corn seed and leave it on a shelf for 75 years, it will turn into a fern.

. . .

Sorry, this mocks itself harder than I ever could. Stay tuned, folks.

Faith Infiltration: St. Louis Dream Center

This Sunday Flimsy and I attended the St. Louis Dream Center, a "prosperity gospel" church which is part of the Joyce Myer network of churches.

The Dream Center is located in the urban inner city of St. Louis, in an almost entirely African-American neighborhood north of highway 40. The church building is beautiful old architecture. As we entered, I noted that there were quite a few Caucasian people in the congregation and on stage, even though we saw none on the streets prior to entering.

On stage, a woman with insane amounts of hair led the congregation in two uplifting songs proclaiming that we're all god's wonderful children. Live guitar, drums and piano accompanied her. Everyone stood and danced, obviously feeling happy that they were here to worship.

The songs ended, and the woman spoke about how hard it is sometimes to believe when so many people around don't believe,and then two more songs followed - one about always worshiping god, and a slower, more meditatively uplifting song about being safe with Jesus. After the songs ended, she told the congregation that music is a weapon in the army of god.

She left the stage, and a man came on stage to deliver what became later known as the tithing message. His message was that the congregants are stewards of the things they have - they do not own their house, our cars, our children, our money, whatever - god owns those things. As stewards, he said, one must be faithful in his god in order to be rewarded because his god wants people to prosper. One must also tithe and seek god, so that one will be "given the things that the wicked want".

The man continued, saying that his god gives his best, and so believers in said god should do the same and be generous. He asked everyone to hold up their gift to his god (I.E. their tithe) so that their "acts of faith and obedience" could be prayed over. When he said this, congregants held aloft little tithing envelopes, which they dropped in white plastic buckets a few minutes later.

After the tithing was given, announcements were made - which was notable due to the fact that it was announced that the Left Behind movie would be shown - the congregation was told that the end times would be upon us very very soon, so it was important to watch Left Behind to know that the rapture is real and not just a fairy tale.

The sermon was equally focused on money and tithing. In fact, the title of the sermon was, "Mo Money: the high cost of low living". The pastor went on and on about how everyone he knows living in poverty is being "ripped off" by things like late fees, penalties for overdrafts, car repairs, emergency room costs, cell phone bills, high costs of utilities for living in a poorly insulated building, and so forth. According to the pastor, this is not how Christians are supposed to live, because Jesus died so people could have more than they need. Rather than having more than they need, people in poverty (which, given that this is an inner city church, probably included most or all of the congregants) are being "ripped off" while simultaneously attempting to "look prosperous" rather than "be prosperous".

The pastor went on to proclaim more, but the message became sort of convoluted and jumped from topic to topic, so I'll provide them in a list rather than a paragraph:

1. More money will not fix all of the problems in life as the world tries to tell us, one must understand how god deals with finances.
2. Money is not a source of happiness.
3. doctors don't heal people - doctors help god heal people
4. If you want to reap goodness, you have to sow goodness - that means you have to give in order to receive.
5. tithing is really important, even Malachai (3:10) says so.
6. tithing is a spiritual exercise.
7. god is a god of common sense, and tithing keeps god on the throne of one's heart, rather than letting money dethrone god.
8. money is a tool used by god.
9. if the eyes see the paycheck bow to god, common sense will not allow us to go to money to solve our problems.
10. the world says you deserve things now, but god says he will bring you stuff (like a car, house or spouse) when you're ready.
11. god says to invest in the church and then wait for him to provide.
12. The world says tolerance is the way to happiness, but god says no to tolerance. Do not be tolerant of gay marriage or abortion. Tolerance is not the path to peace.
13. we need to practice "radical obedience" to god. The government is like the devil, because both of them try to put themselves before god. Therefore, tithe on the money you earn before taxes, that way you're putting god first. If your paycheck is for $400, and the government takes $300 for taxes, you're supposed to give 10% of $400.

There are a lot of things I could say about the messages contained in the sermon, but I really think they pretty much speak for themselves. I obviously don't believe in any god, so any attempt by others to tell me that giving money to a nonexistent entity will cause said nonexistent entity to give you the things you need in order to prosper is idiotic. You really would be better off buying a lottery ticket, or participating in a pyramid scheme. If one wants to preach giving for the sake of being selfless and helping others, I can totally get behind that - it's good to give for the sake of helping someone else. But "proving" to a god that you are worthy of prosperity by giving your earnings to a church just doesn't make any sense to me - financial stability comes from appropriate financial planning, not from giving a seed gift to the church.

The overt and repeated appeals to give money to the church during this sermon left a bad taste in my mouth, as did the proclamation that doctors don't heal people - they only help, god does the healing.

We have long lives these days due to the advances of medicine, not the advances of godliness. A look at the history of medicine shows this - 150 years ago, the average human lifespan was about 45 years. Is god getting better at healing, are we getting more faithful, or is medicine advancing? When someone builds a house, why thank god and say the housebuilder only helped build the house?

For those of you secularists who don't believe that churches preach intolerance, or for those of you theists who insist Christianity and Christians are tolerant people, please listen to what is actually being preached in the churches. This: "The world says tolerance is the way to happiness, but god says no to tolerance. Do not be tolerant of gay marriage or abortion. Tolerance is not the path to peace." is an actual quote from today's sermon. This church is literally preaching intolerance without bothering to shroud it in careful language.

I also thought that the pastor had an interesting, but incorrect view of what the quote "you reap what you sow" means. Sowing is the process of planting seeds, and reaping is the process of harvesting grain crops. "You reap what you sow" is a simple statement of cause and effect - the things you do now will have an effect on the future.  Giving is not a seed or receiving, and I don't really think people should give in the hopes that they will get a greater return - this is ultimately selfish and self-centered. One should give because they want to help people or feel good about giving, not because they expect reciprocal giving.

Stay tuned, next you'll hear about what happened when Flimsy and I told the women at the "welcome center" that we were atheists!

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 4.2

Onward!

During Dr. Harrub's B.s. (That's short for Bible study), after he talked about how the Bible had "scientific foreknowledge" and thus the only "logical" conclusion one could come to was that the Bible was inspired, he moved on to oceanography.

He cited ecclesiastes 1:7 (All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.)  and 11:3 (If the clouds be full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth: and if the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be.) and Amos 9:6 (is he that buildeth his stories in the heaven, and hath founded his troop in the earth; he that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The LORD is his name.) as examples of the amazing knowledge of the water cycle found in the Bible. Harrub went as far as to say that we did not have a complete understanding of the water cycle until the 17th century.

For one, this is not a complete understanding of the water cycle. The Bible pretty clearly reflects the understanding of the water cycle at the time it was written.

You'll note that the bible also has another most amazing insight - once trees fall, they stay there. Wow! There is no way people could have known that.

Moving on, Dr. Harrub talked about all of the amazing scientific foreknowledge of medicine in the Bible. As an example he cited Genesis 17:12 (And every male among you who is eight days old shall be circumcised throughout your generations). Apparently, amazingly, the 8th day is the absolute best day to cut off bits of your baby son's penis. From Apologetics press:

In Genesis 17:12, God specifically directed Abraham to circumcise newborn males on the eighth day. Why the eighth day? In 1935, professor H. Dam proposed the name “vitamin K” for the factor in foods that helped prevent hemorrhaging in baby chicks. We now know vitamin K is responsible for the production (by the liver) of the element known as prothrombin. If vitamin K is deficient, there will be a prothrombin deficiency and hemorrhaging may occur. Oddly, it is only on the fifth through the seventh days of the newborn male’s life that vitamin K (produced by bacteria in the intestinal tract) is present in adequate quantities. Vitamin K, coupled with prothrombin, causes blood coagulation, which is important in any surgical procedure. Holt and McIntosh, in their classic work, Holt Pediatrics, observed that a newborn infant has “peculiar susceptibility to bleeding between the second and fifth days of life.... Hemorrhages at this time, though often inconsequential, are sometimes extensive; they may produce serious damage to internal organs, especially to the brain, and cause death from shock and exsanguination” (1953, pp. 125-126). Obviously, then, if vitamin K is not produced in sufficient quantities until days five through seven, it would be wise to postpone any surgery until some time after that. But why did God specify day eight?

On the eighth day, the amount of prothrombin present actually is elevated above one-hundred percent of normal—and is the only day in the male’s life in which this will be the case under normal conditions. If surgery is to be performed, day eight is the perfect day to do it. Vitamin K and prothrombin levels are at their peak. The chart below, patterned after one published by S.I. McMillen, M.D., in his book, None of These Diseases, portrays this in graphic form.

  It seems to me that the very simple act of observing that babies have the best recovery after they've had bits of their genitals cut off on the 8th day rather than some other day would only take the death or sickness of a few babies. In prescientific times, many behaviors or rituals such as this had a health benefit, regardless of whether or not that health benefit was understood. Why didn't God tell everyone that vitamin K was the reason we cut off baby cock bits directly?

How about some of the other great medical foreknowledge in the Bible?

Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick. (James 5:14-15)

As they were going away, a man who could not talk and was demon-possessed was brought to him. After the demon was cast out, the man who had been mute spoke. The crowds were amazed and said, “Never has anything like this been seen in Israel!" (Matthew 9:32-33)

 If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee. (Exodus 15:26)

And Asa in the thirty and ninth year of his reign was diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great: yet in his disease he sought not to the LORD, but to the physicians. (2 Chronicles 16:12)

So according to the Bible, prayer and faith will heal the sick, mental illnesses are caused by demon-posession, and if you see a doctor, if you're sick, it's your own damn fault for not loving god enough, and if you see a doctor instead of god for your diseases, your diseases will never heal.

What amazing knowledge of medicine we find in the Bible! The only logical conclusion we can come to is that god handed this knowledge down on high - or, a bunch of desert-dwellers wrote this book with the limited knowledge of medicine they had at the time.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 4.Flim

So Ziztur has decided that I should tackle at least a portion of the large list that Dr. Harrub offers as proof that the Bible is highly scientific and way ahead of it's time(!). Let's see if I can put my extensive study of the Bible to productive use.

To start off, look at Job Chapter 38. This book is nothing more than a long list of questions that God is asking Job, after Job meekly questions God about the horrifying torment and death that has been sown around him to test his faith. The point of these questions is to show that Job has no right to question God's authority, given God's amazing knowledge of how the world works. Dr. Harrub quotes Job 38:19, and he grandly claims that the writer of this passage somehow knew that light travels along a "path;" very impressive considering that people at that time thought that light simply was everywhere, instantly!

Now, let's look at what Job 38:19 really says: "What is the way to the abode of light? And where does darkness reside?" It might be illustrative to read the next verse as well. Verse 20: "Can you take them to their places? Do you know the paths to their dwellings?"

Huh. The passage says nothing about light itself traveling somewhere; interestingly, any rational, objective reading of the passage makes it obvious that the biblical God believes that light and darkness have dwelling places somewhere! Funny how human beings now know that light is simply a form of electromagnetic radiation, and that darkness is nothing in and of itself, it's just an absence of light. Actually, it kind of seems like your average high school student knows a lot more about light than God does! Furthermore, human science has created light that God has never created anywhere, such as lasers. Lasers simply do not occur in nature, and they are certainly useful for a huge variety of things; have we pitiful humans figured out something about light that God has never even thought of?

Earlier in this chapter, God describes the universe as a whole:

-Verse 4 says that the Earth has "foundations."

-Verse 5 asks, "Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it?"

-Verse 6 claims that the Earth has set "footings" and a "cornerstone."

Obviously, these are the questions of someone with a very primitive knowledge of basic human construction, seeing a building's "design" in his own mind's version of the structure of the Earth. Surprise! None of these features of human-designed buildings are found in the earth (as revealed by that science thing we sometimes talk about). Verse 5 especially entertains me; as Ziztur has remarked before, the earth is not a perfect sphere. Any silly "measuring line" stretched across the planet would give considerably different figures depending on where exactly the measurement was taken. Also entertaining is the fact that God somehow forgets to mention what those dimensions are (which, again, humanity does in fact know now, because of science). Now that would have been an impressive display of scientific knowledge!

Think about it: "Now, Job, I say to you, as an aside, that the Earth is round, like a ball, and it's measure about it's surface is about 40,075.02 KM. Keep in mind that this is at the equator; the Earth isn't perfectly round, after all, and different locations yield different figures. Also, don't worry that you have no clue what an equator or even a kilometer is at this point. You'll figure them out eventually."

Verses 8-11 describe Earth's bodies of water: "Who shut up the sea behind doors . . . when I fixed limits for it . . . when I said, 'This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt'?" Of course, anyone with a modern education could explain to God that the only "fixed limits" of the sea are gravity and Earth's topography. There are no fixed limits; there are no magical God-boundaries where water will somehow stop. Mankind wins again.

Verse 12: "Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place . . ." Oh, wow! So the sun rising in the morning isn't just an obvious effect of Earth's rotation! Silly me, IT'S GOD PUSHING THE SUN ACROSS THE SKY. Maybe with a fucking chariot, man.

Here's my personal favorite; verses 22-23: "Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail, which I reserve for times of trouble, for days of war and battle?

Dr. Harrub. Your book says that there's a huge, invisible man in the sky, and that he watches over massive barns full of snow and hail, which he saves up to drop on our heads when we fight. This chapter of this Bible thing is your proof that it's highly scientifically literate, that it's so far ahead of it's time? If this is the scientific competence of your God, do you realize that you are conclusively demonstrating that his knowledge is far inferior to the science of humanity?

Many Christians do not try to claim that the Bible is a scientifically literate book. Many Christians, more rational than Dr. Harrub, can see that the Bible is clearly metaphor, parable, and poetry. To claim that the book is scientifically literate (or was ever intended to be) is spectacularly simplistic. The way Dr. Harrub uses some passages, such as this one in Job, make me wonder how someone can be so desperate to cling to their narrow view of the world that they would jump through such intellectual and moral hoops.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 3.3

As we continue our endless critique of Dr. Harrub's Truth About Origins seminar, I have to mention once again that as I am writing this portion of the critique, it's been nearly a month since the seminar actually occurred.

Harrub's segment on "Atheism's Attack on America" was actually a sermon, and thus Flimsy and I actually found ourselves attending yet another church service. this time, we were surrounded by members of the St. Louis Atheists Meetup Group.

The members of this church sing acapella, and they began their service with an uplifting song about the glory of god. Since there were about 8 of us, I felt like it was even more obvious that we refrained from singing. Oddly though, the congregation was not led to stand and sit repeatedly, as they are in all of the churches we have attended. After the first song, the congregation sang a song about being united in praise and feeling their god's love. The last song before communion was a slow, sad song about one's love for one's god growing weak.

Before communion, an announcer specifically mentioned that the congregation does not believe that the wine and bread become the actual blood and flesh of Jesus. Rather, they believe it is symbolic.

As the communion crackers and wine were passed down the aisles, all of the folks from my meetup simply passed the wine forward without taking. As I listened to the subtle musical tinker of tiny communion cups being places back into the trays, the usher passing crackers simply passed us up.

After communion, tithing took place unceremoniously and in silence. The ushers surprised us by completely passing us up for the tithe, which is the first time that has happened in a church - I guess they assumed us heathens probably wouldn't be tithing, though one of my friends turned to me and whispered that he was intending on tossing in five bucks.

After tithing, everyone stood up, but my group remained seated. The congregation sang a happy and victorious song proclaiming that god was alive. After this, Dr. Harrub launched into his sermon about our attack on America.

One of the things Harrub mentioned early on as an example of atheism's attack on America was gender-neutral bathrooms.

That's right.

Gender.

Neutral.

Bathrooms.

He told his congregation that in certain states, it is illegal to discriminate against someone regarding their choice of bathroom they use. He said that what this means is that a 30 year old man could walk into a woman's restroom to rape a little girl, and no one could legally stop him. He told his congregation that schools all over the country are letting little girls and little boys use the same restroom, so that their gender is not forced on them at too early an age.

The reason Colorado made it illegal to discriminate against people for entering the perceived "incorrect" gender bathroom was because individuals with unclear genders (butch women, transsexuals, etc) were being harassed, arrested, beaten up, etc for using a restroom someone else felt was "incorrect". If you're harassed for using the men's restroom, and harassed for using the women's restroom, you're being denied basic rights. This does not mean that bathrooms are "gender neutral", it means that you cannot arrest a masculine-looking woman for using the women's restroom.

This may come as a surprise but it is not illegal now for a man to enter a woman's restroom, and vice-versa. Do you think that a 30 year old man intending to rape a little girl is going to go, "Oh, I live in Colorado, where I can legally walk through that unlocked, freely swinging door!" No. Unlocked restroom doors do not protect women from assault.

I have to wonder if these same arguments were made during the desegregation of African-Americans. After all, an African-American woman could assault a white woman in a restroom, or an African-American man could assault a white woman in a restroom.

As to the "little boys and little girls using the restroom at the same time" bit - I looked for evidence online of grade, middle, and high schools adopting this policy and, I found no evidence whatsoever that primary schools have gender neutral bathrooms. I did find colleges which had gender-neutral bathrooms, but they also have gendered bathrooms.

There have always been gender-neutral bathrooms in the united states, such as in small restaurants or gas stations. It's really nothing new or dangerous, so I find Dr H.'s technique of insisting that gender-neutrality will lead to more women being assaulted a blatant fear-mongering scare tactic. He wants his audience to believe that atheists don't mind putting women at risk of harm to promote personal freedom.

Also... I fail to see what this has to do with atheism. This could just as well be described as Buddhism or spiritualism's attack on America.



Moving on Dr. Harrub gave a bunch of examples of Bibles being removed from schools or school libraries, how Christmas carols are being banned, and how schools in America are making kids memorize the Koran - none of which have any validity. The Bible is not banned from school libraries, at least not in the US. I'd also like to point out that Christians have been banning "morally questionable" books for centuries. This is such a silly example of the pot inventing that the kettle is black that it makes me giggle.

I find it especially hilarious that Dr. H pointed to the supposed "memorizing of the Koran" as an "atheist attack on America". What?  For one, as an atheist I would be opposed to memorizing the Koran as well as any other religious book, and for two, there is even a Snopes article on this. Do some better research!

Dr. H lamented that for 150 years, America has been friendly toward Christianity, but not anymore.

You're right. While America has been friendly to Christianity and Christians, it has repeatedly been very hostile toward atheists. If your religion causes you to undermine science, crush rational thinking, and oppress the rights of others, then you can expect hostility when those who oppose you are no longer afraid to speak up.

Bonus link: here, you can listen to an MP3 version of Dr. Harrub's sermon! Just click on the arrow under "audio" beside the title.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 3.2

Yesterday, I launched into one of the examples of "Atheism's Attack on America" without much context. Today, I am going to set up the context of this sermon given by Dr. Harrub to his audience.

Dr. Harrub opened his sermon by saying that he had met some atheists over the weekend (meaning us) who were actually quite nice and caring. As such, he wanted to offer an olive branch to those who do have strong moral and ethical convictions, because he hates it when Christians proclaim that all atheists are bad people. No, he said, he is not talking about atheists who life moral lives, he was only looking at the "new breed" of atheists.

As an example of the "new breed", he mentioned the four horsemen of athest activism - Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris.  (P.S. click on the comic to the right to see what might happen in the atheist apocalypse!)



After this, he launched into a tirade of examples of this "new atheism" attacking America, but before I blog about them, I want to mention something.


The "four horsemen" of atheism, while they may come off as rude or jerks sometimes, actually write volumes in their books of ethics and morality. These terrible new atheists want horrifying things like furthur progression of science to benefit mankind and cure disease or disability, an end to petty and tragic conflicts between groups of people and individuals, evidence-based thinking, critical thinking, empathy, equality, and respect for individual rights. What bastards.


The first example Harrub gave was the "rebuking" of a group of "praying parents" who were accused of violations of separation of church and state for "simply praying for children at a local school".


Sounds bad, right? That's not what happened:

The Praying Parents group meets the first Friday of every month during the school day in the Lakeview cafeteria. Information about the group appears on the school’s Web site, which says, “‘Praying Parents’ is a group of Lakeview parents who meet once a month to pray for our school, faculty, staff, and children. … Praying Parents is not affiliated with any organization, nor do we promote a political agenda. We’re just a group of parents who want to make an investment in our children’s school through prayer.”

According to the lawsuit, a Praying Parent visited James Doe’s classroom and gave cards to the students telling them the parents had prayed for them. Praying Parent flyers were also given to the students to take home to their parents.

The Does also claim two events that took place at the school violate the establishment clause: a “See You at the Pole” prayer on Sept. 5, 2005, and a “National Day of Prayer” event on May 4, 2006. Signs for both events were posted throughout the school, which sponsored a poster design contest for the May event. Lakeview’s principal, defendant Wendell Marlowe, and assistant principal, defendant Yvonne Smith, attended the September event. Both events took place before school; however, the first occurred in front of the building, causing other students and parents to hear prayers, worship and Bible readings.

The lawsuit also alleges that Lakeview’s Christmas program on Dec. 8, 2005, violated the First Amendment. The Does had been told the program would be secular, but it concluded with a role-play of the Nativity scene, and members of the audience were given the words to the songs “Away in a Manger” and “Joy to the World” and asked to sing. No other religious celebrations were mentioned during the program.

The final alleged violation concerns classroom prayer, which the Does claim occurred in their son’s kindergarten class. At the end of the school year, the family was given a DVD that, among other things, showed students dressed as Native Americans. A voice prompts them to start singing, “Thank you God for the world so sweet … .” The DVD also shows defendant Janet Adamson, James Doe’s teacher, leading the students in singing another prayer.

 So here's the deal. these parent's were not handed a lawsuit "simply for praying for kids." The school was handed a lawsuit for violating church/state separation. Imagine, if you will, that a local group of atheist parents were being promoted on a grade school's website, and said group of atheist parents gave kids cards during the school day that said, "There is no god, but we know you'll be okay, because you're a smart kid". What if the students were led into singing, "Imagine" by John Lennon? Harrub presented this as though the "praying parents" group were nothing more than a group of parents meeting in a private prayer meeting at home. The lawsuit did not even ask for monetary damages, it merely asked that the Praying Parents group cease violating the law.

Next, Harrub mentioned that a child who wanted to hand out Valentine's day cards with Christian messages was told she was not allowed to hand out her Valentine cards.

Obviously, the right of a child to the free expression of religion should be protected. What should have happened in this case is that the school district should be sued for violating the child's rights, and a public apology should be issued. Oh hey, that's exactly what happened!

Eight Year Old Allowed to Pass Out Valentines…

Eight year old Morgan Nyman wanted to share something special with her classmates at Cushing Elementary School (Wisconsin) this past Valentine’s Day: the love of Jesus Christ. While her classmates brought store-bought valentines featuring Britney Spears, N’Sync, and Looney Toons characters, Morgan carefully made cards by hand with such sayings as “Jesus Loves You” and “F.R.O.G: Freely Rely on God.” However, when school officials learned about her cards, she was barred from distributing them, because they were “religious” and allowing their distribution would “violate the separation of church and state.” Morgan was crushed.

With the assistance of an ADF-funded attorney, Morgan and her parents filed a lawsuit against the Kettle Moraine School District, charging that the district had violated her free-speech rights as well as her right to exercise her religious beliefs. The result? The school district settled the case and will allow Morgan to share her Valentine’s Day cards in the future! In addition, as part of the settlement, the school district published a public apology to Morgan in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel newspaper. The apology reads:

“This past Valentine’s Day, Morgan Nyman sought to distribute valentines that contained religious themes during a Valentines Day exchange in her second grade classroom at the Cushing Elementary School. The school did not allow Morgan to distribute the valentines in class due to the religious nature of the valentines, but instead, redirected her to distribute them before or after school. To the extent the school’s actions may have infringed upon Morgan’s First Amendment rights to free speech, the School District of Kettle Moraine apologizes.”

So, it is not even that she was not allowed to distribute them at all - she was not allowed to distribute them during school. Clearly, the school (or her teacher) made a mistake, regardless.

Now, if a student got his Satanic Bible taken away during school, do you think he would be issued a public newspaper apology? Probably not. This is not an example of atheists attacking America. This is an example of someone misinterpreting the law. People misinterpret the law every day of the week. Should we hold every misinterpretation of the law a Christian makes - and then apologizes for - as an example of Christians attacking America? No way. We'd go crazy trying to list them all.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar 3.1

The last day of Dr. Harrubs seminar on the Truth about Origins covered "Is the Bible a Good book?" and "Atheism's Attack on America"

At this point, nearly a month after the seminar, my brain is quite fuzzy on the details, so if you discover some nascent errors, I'll not be offended if you point them out.

I'm jumping ahead a little, but today is my birthday and this is the topic from Dr. Harrub's lecture I want to touch upon today, so I will. During his sermon, Dr. Harrub gave a short list of examples of atheists attacking America. One of the items on the list was presented like this:

"In Ohio, a man named James Arnette, who pled guilty to repeatedly raping an eight year old girl, was set free and now walks the streets because during the sentence, one Judge Melba March quoted this Bible verse:

(Matthew 18:5, 6). "And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea."

"all the judge did was merely quote the Bible during the sentencing of a convicted child rapist, and because of this, that rapist is now free to wander the streets"

This might potentially be a compelling story, but it both has absolutely nothing to do with atheism and is not. true.

It is true that the judge quoted the Bible. It is also true that his sentence was dropped. However he was simply sentenced with the same sentence again after a supreme court judge ruled that his sentence was justified.

I repeat. Using big letters, because this is important.

A child rapist is NOT walking the streets because a judge quoted the Bible. He is still in jail. Please get your facts straight. Thank you.

If you don't believe me, you can ask the supreme court. In fact, there is a written statement given by the judge who sentenced this man to prison for the second time, right here.

No. A rapist is not walking free. This is an absolutely terrible thing for Dr. Harrub to claim, because what is the point of this message? The point of this message is that atheists are so depraved and hate the Bible do much that they might send a child rapist free after he pled guilty to ten counts of child abuse.

You know what, to be absolutely clear, I will print the entire letter from the supreme court judge who sent this man to his rightful place in jail:

by Justice Paul E. Pfeifer

Despite whatever image television courtroom dramas have created, trial judges, day after day, watch a parade of the lowest forms of humanity march through their courtrooms. A seemingly endless string of people who don’t understand or just don’t care, that stealing is wrong, that depriving someone else of life or happiness is just not acceptable behavior in a civilized society.

And after the evidence has been presented and the jury has rendered a guilty verdict, it’s up to the judge to decide the final sentence for the person on trial. There are guidelines to follow; sentencing laws that prescribe the length of punishment for each offense. But ultimately the decision rests with the person wearing the robe sitting behind the bench.

Despite the awful stories before them, judges must nonetheless isolate themselves from the proceedings and make their decisions in a fair and impartial manner without personal animus entering into it. But putting on that robe doesn’t make them any less human. And sometimes, in making that final decision, judges seek guidance from other sources.

For Judge Melba Marsh of the Hamilton County Common Pleas Court, the case of James Arnett had her turning to the Bible.

Arnett came before Judge Marsh in 1997 having been indicted on ten counts of rape. Worse yet, the rape victim had been a child, his girlfriend’s daughter. He’d begun raping and molesting the little girl when she was only four years old, and he continued doing it over the next four years.

Arnett’s case didn’t even go to trial. He entered a plea of guilty to all 10 counts. That left only a sentencing hearing and Judge Marsh’s decision.

At the hearing, a psychologist testified that Arnett had been a victim of sexual abuse as a youth. His sister spoke about their disadvantaged background and his attorney emphasized his chemical dependency. On the other side, the assistant prosecuting attorney urged Judge Marsh to keep Arnett "where he belongs for the rest of his days."

Arnett said, "I’m very remorseful, very remorseful for what I did. I definitely am going to seek as much treatment as I can. And I’m never going to do this again ever. It was just a silly thing that started and got totally out of control."

After everyone else had had their say, Judge Marsh spoke. "So, Mr. Arnett, I was struck by the idea of who is James Arnett through this particular case. And I thought about it all last evening as I was trying to determine in my mind what type of sentence you deserved in this particular case."

Judge Marsh spoke of a recent murder case she had tried, where the murderer had received a 20-year sentence. The victim in that case, she said, "at least is gone to their reward, they’re not hurting anymore. But for Rachel, the rest of her life, unless she takes care of herself, she’s hurting.

"And in looking at the final part of my struggle with you, I finally answered my question late at night when I turned to one additional source to help me."

That additional source was the Bible. She quoted Matthew 18:5, 6. "And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea."

With that, Judge Marsh sentenced Arnett to five years on each count of rape, and one year on a pandering obscenity count, running consecutively. He was heading to prison for 51 years.

She concluded by saying, "Mr. Arnett, I hope God has mercy on you and the hell that you have created." And so she had rendered her sentence. But Arnett’s attorney appealed the sentence using her biblical quote as ammunition, arguing that Marsh’s religious beliefs were not a relevant factor for consideration in sentencing Arnett.

In a split decision, the court of appeals agreed, holding that a trial judge’s religious beliefs are not a factor that may be considered under Ohio’s sentencing provisions. The court concluded that Judge Marsh’s reference to the Book of Matthew indicated that her religion had a "heavy influence" in the sentence she imposed.

The court of appeals upheld Arnett’s guilty verdict, but ordered the case sent back to the trial court for resentencing. Having lost at the court of appeals, the state brought the case to us, the Supreme Court of Ohio.

Did Judge Marsh misstep by quoting the Bible in a courtroom during sentencing? The law says that a sentence shall punish the offender and protect the public from future offenses. It also states that a court "shall not base the sentence upon the…religion of the offender." It says nothing about the religion of the judge.

The state contended that the law doesn’t prohibit the judge’s acknowledged reference to the Bible during her deliberations. We agreed. In a 7-to-0 majority opinion, Justice Deborah Cook wrote that Judge Marsh’s reference to the Book of Matthew "acknowledged her consideration, during her deliberations, of the societal interest in protecting children."

We determined that in turning to the biblical passage, Judge Marsh wasn’t using the Bible as the sole source of her reasoning in sentencing Arnett. Rather, it merely reflected what had already been established by our legislature – that crimes against children are especially serious.

Prior appellate court decisions have prohibited a judge’s personal religious principles from being "the basis of a sentencing decision." But in this case, the Bible was only one factor, among many others, that supported Judge Marsh’s decision.

In concluding, Justice Cook emphasized the limits of our decision, warning that judges should not interpret it as a "license for sentencing judges to preach from the bench."

Nevertheless, our decision means that Judge Marsh’s sentence of James Arnett will stand. He is going to prison for a very long time.

Dr. Harrub. I assume that you have the honesty and integrity to correct this portion of your sermon. If not, then shame on you. You claimed in your sermon that atheists were somehow directly or indirectly responsible for allowing a child rapist to walk free. This is factually incorrect. You are wrong. This makes you look dishonest. It is irresponsible of you to preach this to thousands of people all across the country.

If a group of people hated the Bible so much that they would let a convicted child rapist go free rather than have the bible quoted in a courtroom, it would be right for people to be outraged. However this did not happen, so you are inciting outrage at a group of people who are not even remotely responsible for something that didn't happen in the first place. Then, you wonder why some of us get upset. You wonder why we feel persecuted. You'd be upset too if we preached to thousands that you were responsible for something that you could not have been responsible for even if it actually happened. You have a moral responsibility to tell your flock the truth.

You owe 15% of the US population an apology.

Not for anything else - not for undermining science - but for this. I think you owe the congregants you've misled an apology as well. Perhaps it was unintentional and you were merely uninformed. I certainly hope that is the case and that you are not deliberately misleading people. I am very serious about this.

If you'd like to tell Dr. Harrub how you feel, you can reach him at brad@focuspress.org



 Additionally, on the 2nd night of Dr. H's seminar, I convinced him to take a picture with me because I wanted to get a picture with the dude who said in the right circumstances he would stone me to death for blaspheming - I had to promise that I wouldn't give our picture a mean caption. So I won't. I am sure you guys can come up with some amusing ones.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 2.Flim.2

On to the question and answer session of the second day of Dr. Harrub's three day seminar. After the rampaging combat between him and a young atheist/biologist the night before, everyone was limited to only two questions with a somewhat flexible time limit of five minutes or so.

I'll mention my first question, then I'll backtrack a bit to the question that Ziztur asked before me, as my second question is a direct follow-up to one of hers.

Early in the lecture, Dr. Harrub gives a list of six or seven proofs that God exists. Most of these were just restatements of simple tautologies, a la Ray Comfort, e.g., creation requires a creator, design requires a designer, etc. Only one was even slightly interesting, and that's only for a single, simple response that jumped out at me: "Cause and Effect: Every material effect requires an adequate cause." He even goes on to say that some skeptics will then ask, "What caused God?" I was impressed, for all of two seconds, that he addressed a skeptic's rebuttal at all, until he continued and I heard how he dismissed that rebuttal: "Remember folks, God is a spirit. It's material effects that require a cause; God simply does not fall into that category."

As I said during my opportunity to ask a question, I would modify his statement to say that all material effects require an adequate material cause. To put it as bluntly as possible, why do we reason that effects require causes? Because everything we know about how reality works shows us this. Every material effect that we can observe and understand has a cause or causes behind it. The difficulty with Dr. Harrub's assertion is that the cause is always material, too. Is there any evidence that "spirits," or any other supernatural cause, is responsible for material effects? We reason, based on what we know of the universe, that a material effect requires a cause, and Dr. Harrub says that this is the case. Yet he asserts the existence of a different kind of cause, other than material, and claims that this cause/effect does not itself require a cause. Why doesn't Dr. Harrub's "spirit" need a cause, if every single other effect that we can observe does? Why is it completely impossible for this reasoning to apply to any material effect at all, like the universe? This question is kind of important, since if there is no reason, then his entire argument is out the window, yet he doesn't even attempt to answer it.

On to the really important part of the second evening's Q&A session. As I said, before my questions, Ziztur pointed out to Dr. Harrub that Christian morality obviously has changed over time (this in response to his earlier assertion that biblical morality is superior to secular morality because secular morality changes, while biblical morality doesn't). Dr. Harrub questioned the assertion that biblical morality changes, and asked for an example. Slightly paraphrased, here's what Ziztur said; "Well, obviously, the Bible, in several places, commands God's people to stone someone to death if they openly blaspheme. I am clearly blaspheming right now, asserting not only that God does not exist, but that if he did, his morality would be a faulty ethical system. Despite my blasphemy, I can't help but noticing that none of you are stoning me to death, for which I'm profoundly grateful." *Titter of laughter from audience*

Dr. Harrub responds predictably enough, saying that after Jesus' life and death and resurrection, the "Old Law" no longer applies, and we currently live under the "New Covenant." Ziztur pointed out that he actually just agreed with her; that he just stated that Christian morality, according to the will of God, did indeed change drastically. Dr. Harrub replied that God's will is eternal and ultimate, and therefore doesn't change, just that he gives different sets of laws to his people at different times and places. Now, of course, this clearly didn't answer the question, but Ziztur felt that she had hassled him enough for the time being, and turned around to walk back to her seat. As she walked away, Dr. Brad says, "So, I guess it's a good thing we don't live under the Old Covenant, ha ha." *TITTER OF LAUGHTER FROM AUDIENCE*


And that's when the large vein in my head exploded.

So I go up to stand in line for the microphone. After addressing the point about cause and effect that I mentioned above, I said, "I'd really love to be able to say that I hate to put you on the spot, but frankly, that would be a lie. So, speaking with my girlfriend a moment ago, you certainly seemed to be saying that God is morally just when he says that you should not kill her now, but that he was also morally just to declare that she must be put to death for disbelieving in your god under the "Old Covenant." Just so that we're all on the same page here, if we were under the Old Covenant, and she blasphemed, as she is doing now, would you obey the law of your god and violently and painfully stone her to death?

Barely hesitating at all, he looks at me calmly, as if his response is the most logical and reasonable ethical decision in the world, and he says, "Well, . . . yes."

Dr. Harrub. You are not an ethical person. You do not comprehend morality. You do not have a genuine moral system, only a vaguely-defined principle of appeasement, mindlessly and fearfully obeying the dictates of the greatest physical power. There are all kinds of angles I could take to discuss this; to try to convey to you just how horrifying it is that an adult human being can so easily and eagerly dismiss any attempt at rational thought concerning, of all things, morality itself! The single most important question any person must answer, and you have simply defaulted to obedience to the strongest, most frightening being that human culture has imagined.

I could probably fill entire books with the implications and nuances of a comparison of Christian morality with Secular Humanist ethics, but I don't know if I could illustrate the issue any more clearly than you just have. Moreover, Ziztur and I have discussed morality and all manner of related topics many times on this blog, and there is plenty of time to continue to do so. I just might continue a more dignified discussion of this subject in a follow-up post. For now, all I'll say is this:

It is. You're right. It is a good thing that we don't live under the Old Covenant.

Not for Ziztur's sake. For yours.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 2.6

For our 6th installment of our critique of Dr. Harrub's Truth about Origins seminar, we'll look at some evidence for a young earth. I'll run through these all quickly and provide a link to further explanation of each because they all have virtually the same counter-argument.

1. Magnets lose their strength over time so the earth's magnetism proves it can't be more than 10,000 years old.
Counter-claim
2. The Sahara desert is expanding by so many feet a year, so it can only be a few thousand years old and thus the earth can only be a few thousand years old
Counter-claim
3. The oceans cannot be millions of years old because the salt levels in them are inappropriate, thus the earth is young
Counter-claim
4. deposits of sediment by the Mississippi Delta  in the Gulf of Mexico are too little for the earth to be millions of years old. If the earth were millions of years old, there would be no Gulf of Mexico, so the earth must be young.
Counter-claim
5. High pressures of oil wells are proof of a young earth because the pressure would have bled off by now. The earth must be young
Counter-claim
6. There are fossils of aquatic creatures at the tops of mountains, indicating a great flood must have happened, so the earth must be young.
Counter-Claim

Just because the Sahara desert is only X number of years old, just because the Mississippi Delta is only X number of years old does not in any way mean that the whole age of the earth is X number of years old. That is like going into St. Louis, showing that highway 55 is only x number of years old, that the whole city must only be X number of years old. Or, it's like going into a forest, finding the oldest tree, and concluding that the forest can't be much older than the oldest tree. Asking why there are aquatic fossils on top of mountains just makes me laugh. Hasn't Dr. Harrub heard of plate tectonics? He assumes that the mountains could have never been at or below sea level, simply because they aren't at or below sea level right now.

Now, it's time to talk about dinosaurs!

Dr. Harrub opened his bit about dinosaurs by claiming that most kids get their intro to godless atheistic evolution via learning about dinosaurs. Dinosaurs, He says, are a great way to get kids totally "hooked" on The Magic Schoolbus, the idea that earth is old, and (gasp) reading books.Isn't it terrible that we want kids to learn about things that aren't in some desert-dweller's mythological text?

Dr. Harrub told his audience that if he could prove dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time, he will shake the foundations of evolutionary theory. He even had a PowerPoint slide showing a dinosaur and a human together that shook to emphasize his point about shaking evolutionary theory.

Most of his presentation on dinosaurs can be found here, in an article written by Dr. H. So for once, you can verify that this is actually what Dr. H believes.

Basically, Dr. Harrub shows a bunch of slides in which ancient people drew figures that looked like dinosaurs and comes to the conclusion that since they looked like dinosaurs, the people who drew them must have drawn real dinosaurs. Some of the examples he gave were mere squiggles that could have been any animal:

That squiggle could easily be a kangaroo, or an ostrich. I am unimpressed.  The more impressive depictions of dinosaurs made me raise an eyebrow:

 

Alas, the more impressive depictions of supposedly ancient dinosaur art is fraudulent.  This is a perfect example of creationists continuing to use fraudulent evidence after it is determined to be a fake.  For example, there is a clear explanation of the dino figure above (again from Talkorigins):

1. The figurines show every evidence of being recent folk art, fraudulently buried in an archeological excavation. De Peso (1953) made the following observations:
   
   
   
   
   • The surfaces of the figurines were new. They were not marred by a patina or coating of soluble salts characteristic of genuinely old artifacts from the same area. The owner said none of the figures had been washed in acid. Edges of depressions were sharp and new. No dirt was packed into crevices.
     
     
   • Genuine archeological relics of fragile items are almost always found in fragments. Finding more than 30,000 such items in pristine condition is unheard of. The excavators of the artifacts were "neither careful nor experienced" in their field technique, yet no marks of their shovels, mattocks, or picks were noted in any of the 32,000 specimens. Some figurines were broken, but the breaks were unworn and apparently deliberate to suggest age. No parts were missing.
     
     
   • "The author spent two days watching the excavators burrow and dig; during the course of their search they managed to break a number of authentic prehistoric objects. On the second day the two struck a cache and the author examined the material in situ. The cache had been very recently buried by digging a down sloping tunnel into the black fill dirt of the prehistoric room. This fill ran to a depth of approximately 1.30 m. Within the stratum there were authentic Tarascan sherds, obsidian blades, tripod metates, manos, etc., but these objects held no concern for the excavators. In burying the cache of figurines, the natives had unwittingly cut some 15 cms. below the black fill into the sterile red earth floor of the prehistoric room. In back-filling the tunnel they mixed this red sterile earth with black earth; the tracing of their original excavation was, as a result, a simple task" (Di Peso 1953, 388).
     
     
   • Fresh manure was found in the tunnel fill.
     
     
   • Fingerprints were found in freshly packed earth that filled an excavated bowl.
   
   
2. The story of their discovery gives a motive for fraud. Waldemar Julsrud, who hired workers to excavate a Chupicuaro site in 1945, paid workers a peso apiece for intact figurines. It very well may have been more economical for the workers to make figurines than to discover and excavate them. Given the quantity that he received, the contribution to the peasants' economy would have been substantial.
   
   
3. The figurines are not from the Chupicuaro. They came from within a single-component Tarascan ruin. The Tarascan are post-classical and historical, emerging between 900 and 1522 C.E.
   
   
4. If authentic, the figurines imply even more archeological anomalies:
   
   
   • If the figurines really were based on actual dinosaurs, why have no dinosaur fossils been found in the Acambaro region?
   • Why did no other Mexican cultures record any dinosaurs?
   • What caused the dinosaurs to disappear in the last 1,100 years?
   
   
5. There is no credible information to support the claims. The only sources are pseudoscience journalists, creationists, and crackpots, who have obvious ulterior motives for gullibility. Their own dating results are discordant with each other and with the ages of the native cultures, and even attempting to do carbon dating on the inorganic figurines shows their incompetence.

Also, since ancient pictures of dinosaurs prove that dinosaurs existed alongside humans according to Harrub, this must mean that any other picture ancient people drew must prove that those things they drew existed as well - like faeries, fire-breathing dragons, and various other mythological beasts. Oh, it only works for dinosaurs? Well shit.

Dr. H mentioned more stuff about cave art depicting dinosaurs, quickly mentioned the scientists who discovered soft tissues if dinosaurs (apparently believing that this proves dinosaurs existed recently, and here's your counter-claim) and then moved on to the Meister footprint.

The Miester footprint is a supposed sandal supposedly crushing a trilobite. I mention it here specifically because Dr. Harrub has personally seen this fossil, and he asserted that "anyone who poo-poos this fossil has not seen it for themselves" and that apparently people have offered the owner of said fossil 2 million dollars so they can destroy it.

Supposedly 3 universities have looked at this fossil and determined it was legitimate. Really? According to said universities, the trilobite is legit, but the sandal print is not. I'm pretty sure they've seen it.

Finally, to close his seminar, Dr. Harrub told his audience that the only person who can prove that his god dos not exist is his god, that if you accept evolution, absolute truth goes out the window, and that we should confirm whether we're being open minded or drinking the kool-aid.

Fallacy after fallacy, we keep pumping on. 

Tomorrow, you'll hear about the question and answer session that followed this seminar, so stay tuned.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 2.5

Okay!

After Dr. Harrub told his audience that "God is outside of the laws of nature because he is a spirit (hello, question begging)

1. Harrub's god is outside of the laws of nature
2. His god is an unchanging spirit
3. unchanging spirits are outside the laws of nature
4. therefore his god is outside the laws of nature.

Makes perfect sense. It seems like the only recourse Dr. Harrub has in his last-ditch attempt to profe that his god exists is to redefine his god so that it is beyond observation and thus unprovable.

Now we get to move on to geology! After stating that "Geologic column is the evolutionists Bible", Dr Harrub attempts to prove that geologic dating is "circular reasoning" by inventing a circular argument and then showing his audience that it is circular. Observe:

Fossils are used to determine the order and dates of the strata in which they are found. But the fossil order itself is based on the order of strata and the assumption of evolution. Therefore, using fossil progression as evidence for evolution is circular reasoning.

 Dr. Harrub showed a diagram that looked kinda like this:

 

Creating a strawman circular version of geology and then showing that said position is circular does not disprove geology. Once can easily construct fallacious arguments wherein the premise and the conclusion are both true, but the argument one used to obtain that truth is a fallacy. Example:

1. Almost all dogs have four legs.

2. Poseidon has four legs

3. Poseidon is a dog.

The premise and conclusion are both true, but the logic fails. Not only is Dr. H creating a strawman version of geology, he is also employing an argumentum ad logicam - that is, claiming that since his circular argument is fallacious, the conclusion must be false. This is especially funny given that he constructed the fallacious argument to begin with.

Geology uses a number of methods to date fossils. From Talkorigins:

1. Many strata are not dated from fossils. Relative dates of strata (whether layers are older or younger than others) are determined mainly by which strata are above others. Some strata are dated absolutely via radiometric dating. These methods are sufficient to determine a great deal of stratigraphy.
   
   Some fossils are seen to occur only in certain strata. Such fossils can be used as index fossils. When these fossils exist, they can be used to determine the age of the strata, because the fossils show that the strata correspond to strata that have already been dated by other means.
   
   
2. The geological column, including the relative ages of the strata and dominant fossils within various strata, was determined before the theory of evolution. 
   

Moving on, Dr. H showed a bunch of pictures of trees fossilized seemingly though different geological layers, an example of so-called "polystriate" fossils. Apparently since some trees were fossilized through several layers of the geologic column, this disproves that the geologic column is a valid dating method. Dr. Harrub specifically claimed that these types of fossils are intentionally left out of textbooks.

Funny, I remember learning about these in my geology class! But they might be left out of regular textbooks because their explanation is easy, not because there is some atheist conspiracy to stamp out falsifications of geology. You can also find information on them here at wikipedia or of course on TalkOrigins. Maybe Dr. harrub was trying to find a textbook with "polystriate fossils" in the index, but found none because scientists just call them "upright fossils". John William Dawson, who is a creationist, explained these fossils over 150 years ago. I am not a geology expert, so if you've still got questions, take a look at the links.

Speaking of textbooks, Dr. Harrub ranted for a few more minutes about how the 4.5 billion year old age of the universe as a fact is stressed repeatedly in textbooks along with the Big Bang, yet no textbooks describe where the original matter came from.

Well let's see... why do textbooks stress repeatedly as fact that the heart pumps the blood, but no textbooks describe exactly how sodium ion channels in neurons work to tell the heart to keep pumping? I suppose Dr. Harrubs answer is that textbooks don't explain "where the material came from" because there is no answer. Like the example above, just because he cannot find it the textbooks he looks at does not mean there is no answer. We could ask an astronomer:

In the beginning, there was not yet any matter. However, there was a lot of energy in the form of light, which comes in discrete packets called photons. When photons have enough energy, they can spontaneously decay into a particle and an antiparticle. (An antiparticle is the exact opposite of the corresponding particle--for example, a proton has charge +e, so an antiproton has charge -e.) This is easily observed today, as gamma rays have enough energy to create measurable electron-antielectron pairs (the antielectron is usually called a positron). It turns out that the photon is just one of a class of particles, called the bosons, that decay in this manner. Many of the bosons around just after the big bang were so energetic that they could decay into much more massive particles such as protons (remember, E=mc^2, so to make a particle with a large mass m, you need a boson with a high energy E). The mass in the universe came from such decays.
The next question to ask is: where did all the antimatter go? For each particle created in this fashion, there is exactly one antiparticle. In this case, there should have been exactly as much antimatter as there is matter. If that were true, when the universe had cooled somewhat each particle would have found an antiparticle and combined to form a boson (this process is called annihilation of the particles). Actually, this was the fate of most of these pairs--something like 10 billion particles annihilated for every one that survived. The survival of even such a small fraction was enough to form all of the matter in our universe. At some point during this process, something else must have happened to cause the survival of more particles than antiparticles (we call this the particle-antiparticle asymmetry).
There are many theories that try to explain this asymmetry. I will give a very brief description of one of them, called electroweak baryogenesis. (Understanding it requires a lot more background information than I have space for.) Protons and neutrons are particles called baryons, and baryogenesis means the creation of baryons. The current understanding of particle physics, called the standard model, dictates that nowadays the number of baryons is nearly constant, with only a small variation due to quantum mechanical tunneling. In the early universe, however, the temperature was much higher, so that this tunneling was commonplace and a large number of baryons could have been created. Electroweak refers to the time period in question, when the electromagnetic and weak forces were decoupling from a single force into 2 separate forces (between 10^-12 and 10^-6 seconds after the big bang--the asymmetry probably would have formed towards the end). An additional source of baryons is due to the fact that leptons (another type of particle, including electrons) can be converted into baryons at this epoch.

 Obviously, the origins of matter is no simple... um.. matter. Simplifying something so complex down into, "silly science explains nothing, god did it" doesn't really address the problem.

Dr. Harrub goes on to provide more oversimplifications of physics and astronomy:

*Jupiter is too hot
*the structure of the universe violates the conservation of angular momentum
*the big bang relies on the existence of dark matter, which makes up 96% of the universe and we've never seen or measured it.

I'll just sum this up by saying that problems with cosmology and astronomy do not invalidate evolution, which by now we should know is biology. Further, I don't know enough about astronomy to give good answers to these questions, but I know enough to know that any article or website about the big bang is a gross oversimplification. Here is a good index of astrology rebuttals here.

Dr. Harrub moved on to attempt to explain to his audience that one cannot believe in evolution and creation. He cites a bunch of arguments that mix the two theories together willy-nilly like this:

1. If the Christian god caused the Big Bang, how did he get a billion-degree temperature explosion to cool and form a water-covered heavenly body (earth) in one day?
2. If this god's "days" in Genesis were actually "eons", and on day 2 that god created the plants but waited until day 3 to create light, that means the plants would have been hanging out in the dark for 3 million years which isn't possible, because they would have no way to photosynthesize.
3. Since Harrub's god rested on the 7th day and wants his people to rest on the 7th day, his god obviously does not mean that he wants people to work for 6 eons and then rest for an eon. Days in genesis clearly refer to literal days.

Seriously.

I am not even going to touch this insanity. You guys do it.

Faith Infiltration: Twin Oaks Presbeterian

So last week, Ziztur and I went with about a half-dozen other atheists/freethinkers/skeptics to this church for a session of Christian apologetics. The deal was that the church had a course, basically a Sunday School class for adults, in Christian apologetics, and they contacted one of our groups (Rationalist Society/Atheist Meetup/etc.) for us to sit in on their class and give them some real-world practice with their new apologetic skills.

They contacted us through Michael Blanford, vice president of the Rationalist Society and organizer of the Atheist Meetup group in St. Louis, who worked with the church to organize the whole thing. Michael talked to the class for ten or fifteen minutes about what it means to be a skeptic, to give the Christian class a bit of background. Ziztur and I agreed that the session could have had a better format - after Michael spoke, they basically took random questions from Christians in the class, and various skeptics raised their hands to respond.

We only had an hour altogether, so there was distressingly little time to cover much material in any depth. The only two topics that the Christians really raised were the argument from design and that evolution is refuted as being impossible because of the second law of thermodynamics. Yeah, those. *Sigh*

Opening their argument from design, one man even raised the exact "argument" that Ray Comfort parrots; that a building proves a builder, a painting proves a painter, and a creation proves a creator. Ziztur and I have discussed this before, but to briefly recap: The easiest way to refute this is to point out that this argument blatantly begs the question by defining the object/phenomenon in question as a building/painting/creation. To use the Christian's examples of a building or a painting: If you claim that a cave has been built by a person, and I claim that it is a natural phenomenon, without any designing intelligence behind it, have you won the argument simply by saying that the cave is a building, and that a building proves that there is a builder? If we are arguing whether a butterfly's wings were designed by an intelligent person, have you won the argument by simply pointing at the wings in question and saying, "Look at the painting! Obviously, a painting has to have a painter!"

NO. We are debating whether the universe is a creation in the first place. When you simply declare that it is, and say that a creation must have a creator, are you even attempting to make a rational argument? An atheist could just as easily say, "An undesigned universe proves that there is no designer" and accomplish the exact same thing . . . nothing at all. The "argument" doesn't prove anything at all, it's just weaselly semantics.

The larger issue here is whether there is design in the universe, since this is what they're actually trying to say. The point of this argument, of course, is that because the universe is so complex, it must have been designed, rather than occurring due to undirected, natural forces. This is the central question here: which is simpler, God, or the material universe? If God created the entire universe with virtually no effort, then doesn't this say that he is far, far more complex than the material universe? The argument relies entirely on the premise that the more complex something is, the more certain we can be that it requires a designer to exist. If we throw out this premise, the entire argument crumbles. On the one hand, God could be simpler than the universe, meaning that God could be formed by entirely natural, material processes like gravity, erosion, radioactive decay . . . or evolution. I'm not certain how a theist would actually attempt to define how God could be formed through entirely natural processes. Of course, on the other hand, if God is far, far more complex that the material universe, then to whatever extent that we can be sure that the universe must have had a designer, we can be far, far more certain that God himself could only exist as the creation of something/someone else! Literally, the only possible answer is that it's entirely possible for highly complex phenomena to form as a result of completely natural, material processes.

The only other significant topic that we touched on was the old "evolution is forbidden by the second law of thermodynamics" nonsense. This was especially entertaining, because the budding apologist who attempted this "argument" insisted that he "had a background in physics." The second law of thermodynamics goes something like this: "In a system, a process that occurs will tend to increase the total entropy of the universe." As the claim goes, evolution requires that disorder will proceed to order, that simplicity will proceed to complexity, and that this this is forbidden by the law of physics in question. One skeptic tried in vain to convey the abject fucking absurdity of this argument, pointing out that the fact that snowflakes occur conclusively demonstrates that his comprehension of the laws of thermodynamics are fundamentally flawed. A simple and blatantly obvious example that I like to use is a person, being conceived and growing in the womb, being born, and continuing to grow through childhood and adulthood. A fertilized human egg is a very small, simple, unordered structure, compared to an adult human being. Since this is obviously possible (indeed, it's occurring every day, all over the world), there must be another answer. A human being grows by taking in energy from outside his or her body, in the form of oxygen, food, and water. Of course, the evolution of life on earth is possible because of the enormous amount of energy being poured onto the planet from the Sun, as well as the earth's own heat left over from it's formation (when a planet first forms, it has a tremendous amount of heat and energy, which slowly cools over an enormous amount of time), the orbit of the moon causing our tides, etc. The second law of thermodynamics states that the total entropy of the universe will increase; you simply cannot state outright that any given system is a completely closed system, and thus must have increasing entropy - this is completely ridiculous.

We considered going to the church service afterward, but a middle-aged Christian couple stayed to talk to us, so we discussed a huge number of issues with them over the next hour. This little informal chat was far more informative, detailed, and much more satisfying than the actual class (though we discussed far too many different issues to recount and analyze here). The church also invited us to their church lunch, in a dining hall at the church, for a good meal. Ziztur and I were the last skeptics there - everyone else took off before too long. We sat and ate and talked with the Christians at our table well into the afternoon.

There needs to be more events like this. We suggest that next time, the skeptics could get a small handful of Christians (two, three, or four, perhaps) in several small groups. This way, we could hit more specific topics in more depth, and address more Christian's questions as well.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 2.4

To continue Dr. Brad Harrub's proofs for his god's existence, he moved on to this argument which is supposed to prove that his god is beyond the laws of logic and physics:

If something exists today it tells me that something existed forever
if something existed forever, that means that something must be eternal
If something is eternal, it violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics
To avoid violating the 2nd Law, this eternally existing thing must be outside of the laws of natural science.

This is a pretty backward way to try to prove that your god is real. The laws of natural science apply to the universe in it's current state of being - they (the laws) break apart as you get closer and closer to the Big Bang. What Dr. Harrub is doing is using the laws of physics to disprove the laws of physics by saying that his god does not follow the laws of physics. If you want to propose that entities exist which do not follow the laws of physics, you can pretty much propose the existence of any entity. If an argument or a theory can be used to propose the existence of anything at all, then the argument is absolutely useless at establishing any truths about reality at all.

For some reason, Dr. Harrub does not appear to like presenting in a linear fashion. As this lecture moved on, he jumped from topic to topic even more. At this point he asked his audience:

Who is more rational, a person who believes in a god he can't see, or a person who is offended by a god he does not believe in?

 Let's think about this. When other people believe in a god I do not believe in, those believers have an observational effect on the world around me. They undermine science and they infringe on my rights. I am offended when science is undermined, and I am offended when people infringe on my rights.

The god of the Bible, if he were real, would have a measurable, observational effect on the world around us.

He doesn't.

Belief in the Christian god has far, far more observable effects than the actual god Christians believe in.

It is far more rational to be offended by something that has an effect on the universe than to believe in something that does not.

Moving on, Dr. Harrub started talking about the incredible design of the human body, and asked several questions pertaining to design:

1. Which came first, the nerves or the organs? Nerve cells are of no use without a spinal cord and a brain (both of which make up the central nervous system)

Are you kidding? There are organisms that have nerve cells but NO central nervous system. Have you heard of the Hydra genus? They have nerve cells but no CNS. If you could ask a hydra what good nerves are without a CNS, if it could talk, it would tell you that nerve cells without a CNS are awesome. you can find examples of simpler organisms that have varying complexities of cellular life, from single celled organisms to hydras to people.In fact, we have a crapload of sensory neurons right in our own heads that require no spinal cord, because the sensory neurons transmit info straight to the brain - try the olfactory nerves. simple nerves are not useless without organs, and vice-versa.

2. how did brains evolve from rocks?

Evolution does not attempt to answer this question! Let's say we drop grains of sand onto the middle of an abandoned superhighway and continue dropping grains of sand, one by one, until we get a pile, and then a mound, and then a dune, and then a hill, and then a desert. We'll call this process the theory of highway-desertification. If we can't say exactly when the pile became a mound, does this falsify the theory of highway-desertification? If we can't say exactly where we got all of the sand, does that falsify the theory of highway-desertification? If we can't tell you exactly which organisms died so that their bodies became the sand, does that falsify the theory? No, because we still have ample evidence and explanation of the process of forming the desert. Sure, it's hard to imagine a whole desert or even a small hill of sand as having a single grain as a starting point, but just because it is hard to imagine does not mean it did not happen.

Asking evolution to explain how life came from non-life is like asking a proponent of highway-desertification how the sand got made. Life from non-life is abiogenesis. It is not evolution. We don't know exactly how it happened but that's okay. We won't pretend that we do. Dr. Harrub told his audience earlier that is is bad to pretend to have all the answers. Science does not do this. Religions does, and then accuses science of pretending it has all the answers.

3. Oooo, look at the bacterial flagella! It's so irreducibly complex!

Pictures of bacterial flagella are artists depictions, rendered to look prettier and more symmetrical than they actually are. Actual pictures of same flagella are composites - that is, they are a bunch of pictures of flagella stacked on top of each other and averaged to look like something resembling complexity. They aren't that complex in real life.

Dr. H also seemingly randomly talked about mousetraps - how if you remove a bit of a mousetrap, it won't work like a mousetrap anymore. He told a story of how some scientists would come to creationist seminars having removed parts of a mousetrap and then securing the mousetrap to their ties. Dr. Harrub used this as proof of the absurdity of evolution by saying that if you remove bits of a mousetrap, you get a tie clip instead of a mousetrap.

Thank you, for making a strong case for evolution and against the irreducible complexity argument. the mouse trap may not be useful as a mousetrap with bits removed, but it is useful as a tie clip, and that's the point. A less complex heart still works, but it functions differently. A less complex nerve cell still works, but in a simpler way. He missed the point entirely. The point is that less complex versions of things can and do still have functions, they just may not have the same functions as the more complex things.

4. Why would evolution create a stomach lining that is shed 5 times a month when that is not needed?

It makes a lot more sense that the purposeless and blind process of evolution would do this rather than a god. What, indeed, is the purpose of a stomach lining that does this if Harrub's god made it do that? Was his god trying to trick us into thinking that stomach linings could have arisen over billions of years by natural processes? No one said that organisms evolve to be very efficient. They evolve if they are just good enough to pass on their genetic material. You pass English 101 class whether you got a 100% or a 61%. I'm graduating from grad school, and I've only got a 3.2 GPA.

When arguing against creationists, some people like to point out all of the ways in which the body could have a better design, and how the seemingly cruddy "design" points to the fact that the "designer" is natural selection over billions of years. Dr. H. turns this idea on it's head and asks why natural selection would create an "inferior design". Interesting!

5. Which came first, the heart or the lungs?

Same deal. There are plenty of examples of animals with underdeveloped lungs and circulatory systems. Here is a simple explanation.

6. What good is a partially evolved heart?

Ask the billions of animals with less complex circulatory systems than ours!  Sheesh! Some fish have single-chambered hearts that only pump due to the swimming action of the fish - which is why they will die if they stop moving.

7. Evolution is like a blind person trying to solve a Rubik's cube

No, it's not like that at all. Evolution is like a blind person rolling a die 2,000 times and trying to roll all 6's, but someone who can see is standing there allowing the blind person to re-roll whenever he or she doesn't roll a 6.

After all of this design stuff, Dr. Harrub moved back to his god, stating that "logic tells us":

Creation must have a creator
design must have a designer
laws require a lawgiver
code requires a code designer or programmer.
communication requires a communicator

sigh.


No, logic does not tell us this. Calling the universe "creation" or "design" or calling DNA "code" and then proclaiming that creation proves there is a creator, design proves there is a designer, etc, is what is known as Begging the Question.  When one engages in begging the question, one assumes the proposition to be proved either explicitly or implicitly in the premise. By calling the universe "creation", we are assuming before we have even begun arguing that creation has a creator by defining the universe as something which has been created.

It is obvious that every "creation" has to have had a "creator". So if you call the universe "creation" you're essentially saying, "this thing here that was created was created and thus has a creator".

In my backyard, there is a smudge of mud on the sidewalk. If I were to make the same argument about the smudge that Harrub is making about the universe, I would say this: "That smudge of mud is a painting. Obviously, every painting has a painter, so where is the painter of the panting on my sidewalk? I want to tell him I really appreciate his eye for modern art. ... What? Of course it has a painter, it's a painting! Common sense will tell you that."

If you want to prove that the universe was created by a creator, you do not win your argument by redefining the universe as "a thing that was created" and then declare you have proved it has a creator. You haven't proven anything except that you know how to play games with words.

As to the assertion that laws require a lawgiver - well yes. But let's not confuse an "explanation of an unchanging facet of physics that humans have decided to call a law" with "something that had to be created by some god because humans can't make the universe operate in a certain way".

As far as communication requiring a communicator... Well, using that same logic, anyone who claims they have communicated with aliens, dead people, Mohammad, or unicorns must have actually done so, because communication requires a communicator.

Tomorrow I'll have more - same atheist time, same atheist blog!

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 2.3

I hope you guys enjoyed the Guest Ray a Day yesterday, but now we're back to the analysis of the Truth About Origins Seminar!

Dr. Harrub first conquered the cosmological arguments by explaining to his audience that there are three+ explanations for the origins of the universe. The three main explanations are:

1. The universe was eternal and has always existed.
2. The Universe created itself ex-nillio
3. The universe is not eternal and had some beginning

After he said this, he switched inexplicably over to morality (either that, or my notes switched inexplicably over to morality, my memory is starting to get a little fizzy 2-weeks out, but my notes indicate that this is a random switch) and told his audience that morality can come from only two sources:

1. his god
2. man

The problem with morality coming from men, he said, was than men sometimes see two different moral problems and come to different conclusions. As an example he uses the fact that it was at one point perfectly legal according to law during the Nazi Regime to kill Jews, and that lots of people thought it was okay to kill Jews because it wasn't illegal to kill Jews. Therefore, the only conclusion must be that people adapt his god's unchanging morals. That way, we know that whatever his god commands or approves of is good.

Do I have to explain why this is not only hypocritical but makes no sense?

It's already quite obvious that individuals can look at moral problems and come to different conclusions. If the problem with morality is that people can come to different conclusions about morality, simply claiming that this isn't what really happens does nothing to solve the problem.

Using the killing of Jews as an example of "man" getting morality wrong is a silly example, because I can come up with literally hundreds of counter-examples in the Bible itself. It offends my sense of morality and ethics that Dr. Harrub can use Jewish Nazi killings as an example of where humankind has erred in it's moral thinking, but unblinkingly tell me that his god did not err in his moral thinking when his god ordered babies and women to be murdered (among other things).

Further, even a casual glance at the history of religion will show you that religious morality - and specifically his religious morality - does change over time.

I find the anthropological argument (argument from morality) to be both pitiful and somewhat hateful, even if only indirectly hateful. Typically, creationists will make an argument something like this:

Evolution says "survival of the fittest", but being altruistic or sacrificing your good for the good of others contradicts "survival of the fittest", therefore we can't get our morality from evolutionary processes, we must get it from somewhere else.

The thing anti-evolutionists fail to realize is that evolutionary processes are far, far more complex than "survival of the fittest", which is an incomplete and misleading understanding of natural selection.  First, because "survival of the fittest" in an evolutionary sense does not apply to individuals, but to groups of individuals. It seems obvious that groups of individuals will survive much easier and more effectively if they cooperate with one-another.  The fittest individuals are not the only ones who survive and reproduce - less fit individuals reproduce all the time, so evolution would be better characterized by "survival of the fit enough group" or "survival of the better adapted to the environment". Since the environment includes a group of like species, morality can easily be a byproduct of the environment of living in a group. Of course, when you boil down something as complex as natural selection into one four word sound byte, one is bound to misunderstand or oversimplify it.

It should be obvious that things like teamwork contribute to success, but when creationists talk about evolution and boil it down to "survival of the fittest" and then characterize it as pure selfishness, and then decide that belief in evolution will lead people to be selfish, they are creating a concoction of misunderstanding. They ignore the evolutionary benefits of things like kin selection and altruism.

Morality and ethics are central to my worldview and are extremely important to me, and I absolutely have come to the conclusion that I owe my existence to natural causes. I don't need some god to tell me not to kill people or steal things.

Of course, evolution can help explain but cannot prove morality. Justifying my particular moral and ethical values requires critical thinking and intellectual work. It's more difficult to justify my morality and ethics then just saying, "because god knows what's right", but it is certainly worth the effort.

Moving on, Dr. Harrub talked about the teological argument, or the argument for design. He gave his audience the standard line about every building having a builder and every painting having a painter and every designed thing having a designer. He gave a very, very long list of ways in which the universe is "fine tuned" for human life - such as gravity being just so, the oxygen levels being just so, etc. It must have sounded impressive but I am not impressed. I've blogged about this "creation having a creator" business here.

Saying that the universe was fine-tuned for humans is like saying a river was fine tuned for a particular drop of water from a rainstorm to flow through it.  Or, it's like saying my face was fine-tuned for my glasses. In other words, it is not that the universe is fine tuned for humans, it is that humans are fine tuned (by the mechanisms of natural selection) for the universe. We fit into the parameters of the universe, not the other way around. Assuming the universe is fine-tuned for us is putting the cart before the horse. This seems pretty obvious given the amount of time the universe existed before earth and humans existed.  Besides, if the universe is so fine-tuned for humans, why is it that we can only use one immeasurably tiny speck of it?

Dr. Harrub moved on to talk briefly about NASA and it's search for water on other planets, claiming that the purpose of searching for water on other planets is to prove the Bible wrong.

Um.. huh? Dr. H is sounding more and more like a conspiracy theorist. Apparently the presence of water on other planets is sufficient to disprove the Bible, and NASA is spending billions of dollars searching for water with this goal in mind. Are you kidding? I mean... Seriously? I don't even know how to respond to this.

Dr. H switched gears again and talked about how the sun is just perfectly far away and at the perfect temperature to give us seasons and such, so this can't all be a product of evolution, can it?

No. Evolution has nothing to do with cosmology.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar 2.2

Finally! We're on to some actual arguments for the existence of Dr. Harrub's particular brand of God™

Dr. Harrub approached the question of his god's existence by saying, "If I were an atheist, how would you prove to me that God exists?" He then moved on to say that you can't really prove things like the existence of Abe Lincoln or the Great Wall of China.

Yes, yes you can, unless you're a postmodernist. Asking for absolute proof is a fallacy. In the reality-based world, we are comfortable with the idea that things can be reasonably proven but not absolutely proven.

We have proof for Abe and the Great wall because we have objective (that is proof outside of our subjective selves), testable, replicable evidence for those two, or any other material thing. Furthermore, the existence of Abe is not extraordinary, nor is the Great Wall. Our standards for evidence of these things is relaxed when compared to the standards of evidence we would need to - for example - prove that there is a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. Abe and the Great Wall are not extraordinary claims.

We do not, on the other hand, have objective, replicable and testable evidence for Dr. H.'s god.

Objective, evidence based methods for determining the reality of the universe does not "prove" things. Scientific methods either support a hypothesis or falsify it. Some religionists claim that this makes science a weak method for determining reality, but this makes no sense. Religionists are the ones making absolute truth statements when absolute truth statements are not possible. They then go on to claim that science is weak for making no absolute statements, when they have no business making absolute statements.

Dr. Harrub moved on to say that one cannot use science to prove the existence of his god, because his god is not measurable using the scientific method or by scientific instruments. This is because, he told his audience, science says we measure things using our five senses plus experimentation, and you just can't do that with his god.

Though Dr. H. has flashed the cover of God: The Failed Hypothesis by Victor J. Stenger, I have to wonder if he has read it.  Scientific arguments for god have been around since ancient times. Dr. H claims that his god transcends space, matter and time, and yet his god does apparently have an effect on the universe. In fact, Harrub's god supposedly plays a very central role in the lives of humans and in the operation of the universe. Yet according to him, we are unable to measure his god's effect on the universe.

There is no reason why a large number of supernatural or transcendent processes are not testable using the scientific method and in fact many said processes have been tested. If science has repeatedly tested for the effects of Harrub's god and found no effect, it is a safe bet to conclude that the god hypothesis has been falsified.

Here's a clear example. Pretend that I think eating clover will cure cancer. I've got anecdotal evidence that clover caused cancer to go into remission. So, I develop a double-blind longitudinal testing procedure to determine if my hypothesis "consumption of clover causes cancer cells to shrink and disappear completely from the body". I get funding. I test 300 people. I find absolutely no evidence that consuming clover cures cancer. My hypothesis is falsified.

Do you believe consuming clover cures cancer?

I will believe it. So, I get grant funding for another group of scientists to perform the same experiments. They do, using a placebo-controlled double blind study with even more subjects. It fails to cure even one person of cancer. We try it again, varying the amounts of clover people eat. We try injecting clover. We try bathing in clover. We try clover in pill form. We try sleeping in fields of clover.

Should we continue to believe clover cures cancer? No, that would be stupid. Clover has no effect on cancer at all. Perhaps, we argue, the clover cancer cure is transcendent. It works, but it cannot be measured with scientific methods. You have to believe it really works. We've seen it work.

Believe now? I didn't think so. But this is what people do every day when it comes to their god. Their god has no measurable effect on the universe, but they continue to believe it is out there.

Stenger put it fairly succinctly in the preface to his book:

The process I will follow is the scientific method of hypothesis testing. The existence of a God will be taken as a scientific hypothesis and the consequences of that hypothesis searched for in objective observations of the world around us. Various models will be assumed in which God has specific attributes that can be tested empirically. That is, if a God with such attributes exists, certain phenomena should be observable. Any failure to pass a specific test will be regarded as a failure of that particular model. Furthermore, if the actual observations are as expected in the absence of the specified deity, then this can be taken as an additional mark against his existence.

 I think that the reason so many religionists claim that their god is beyond the testing of science due to science not only failing to provide evidence for god, but also actually pointing to the nonexistence of god. There is no real reason why the scientific method cannot be applied to the question of the existence of a god, so this argument fails.

Moving on Dr. H claimed that even though science cannot prove gods existence, one can use logical ways to prove that his god exists (as if science does not also use logic). The three logical ways to prove his god is real are:

1. The cosmological argument
2. The anthropological argument
3. The teleological argument

I am such a tease - we'll conquer the first of these next!

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 2.Flim

Onto the second evening of the seminar! This session took place Saturday evening, April 18. Whereas the first evening was entirely about trying to show that evolution theory is terrible science, this second session was a seemingly random pile of philosophical arguments for the existence of God and assorted narrow, bizarre theological assertions about morality and the meaning of life.

One of his first and most prominent arguments on these subjects is the meaning of life. Now before I copy his argument here, I feel the need to point out that many, many people use fallacious reasoning in their arguments, opinions, and beliefs. Often, these fallacies are far easier to spot if the assertion is laid out in clear logical argument form. However, it is extremely rare for a person to lay out a logical argument, consisting of two premises and a conclusion, where both premises are completely wrong. Note that Dr. Harrub gave no reasoning beyond these simple statements; no explanation of why or how he has come to conclude that these premises are valid or rational.

1. Only lives which have no end can have meaning.

2. If there are no gods, there are no endless lives.
3. Thus, if there is no god, then our lives cannot have meaning.

Firstly, whether our lives has meaning is irrelevant to whether or not evolution or creationism or theism or atheism or any other theory, myth, or -ism is actually true. Even if evolution and/or atheism would forbid our lives from having meaning if true, this does not, in fact, prevent them from being true. If he only wishes to establish that it is desirable for God to exist, because it is desirable that our lives have meaning, then this argument would at least be relevant (if still horrifyingly illogical). However, if the context of this seminar is any indication at all, Dr. Harrub has obviously set up this argument as part of his reasoning that God does, in fact, exist. We can dismiss this entire argument as an appeal to consequences fallacy, but let's take a look at the argument itself anyway, and see if it holds water concerning the desirability of God's existence.

"1" is false. To be frank, I'm having difficulty figuring out how someone could even attempt to assert that lives that end cannot have any meaning in any way, shape or form. Now, one might potentially argue that our lives would have more meaning if we lived forever, but that's neither here nor there - one could similarly argue that our lives would have more meaning if we had the power to move matter and energy with our minds, or fly through the sky by sheer will alone, or live forever without any need for oxygen, food, water, etc, etc, etc. One could argue that our 80-some-odd years with fantastic medical technology, education, entertainment and political equality are more significant than a common housefly's single month of basic of reproductive and survival instincts before death.

All of these fine philosophical matters aside, this is not what Dr. Harrub asserts. He literally asserts that "only lives which have no end can have meaning." A car has only a finite functional existence; furthermore, it never has any life at all! Does this mean that a car has no meaning at all? Of course not; it's existence interacts with other parts of reality, and changes them. We can argue about how much meaning it may have, but it does indeed have meaning. Perhaps a more potent example: If there is no afterlife, and the consciousnesses of us wee human beings are completely finite, then does that mean that the lives of Paine or Jefferson were without any kind of meaning? What about Adolf Hitler? We still change the world around us; we still change reality with our lives, to some extent or another, regardless of how much we change it with whatever time we have.

Premise #2 isn't rational, either. There is simply no reason why there must be a god for our consciousnesses to exist forever. I think that there are other good reasons to disbelieve in the immortality of our minds/souls (if we possess a consciousness seperate and distinct from our physical, material headmeat, why does our behavior radically change with only slight manipulation to the meat in question?), but the existence of a god is completely irrelevant to the question. If there is no god, (but if we will still accept supernatural phenomena for some reason) then our minds could cease to exist after death, or they could linger or be preserved by our "souls" somehow. If there is a god, then he could allow us to live forever, or allow our minds to completely dissappear at death, couldn't he?

What a bizarre assertion. Of course human beings' lives are not meaningless. Every one of us has the power to improve the lives and reality of our fellow men and women, or to destroy them. We all have the power to contribute our own desire to leave the world a better place than we found it, or to leave it with greater suffering. Regardless of how much or how little we can change our reality, we certainly can do so.

Tune in to our rants about the second day of the seminar to read all about classic arguments for God's existence, random questions, creationist dodges, the special horror of Young-Earth Creationism, and Dr. Harrub's sincere attempt to pick a physical fight with me!

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 2.1

Onward!

Now we're finally ready for day 2 of the Truth About Origins Seminar.

For those of you just joining us, Flimsy and I (Ziztur) run this glorious site that specializes in beating dead horses. We're gluttons for punishment, so even though we're hardcore atheists, awhile back we attended the Truth About Origins seminar, a 3-day excursion into young earth creationism happy land.

Day 2 of the Truth About Origins seminar covered proofs for the Christian god. Dr. Brad Harrub opened his seminar by presenting a picture of the cover of the March 2006 Discover Magazine, in which the headline read, "Unintelligent Design". You can find the article here.

The article argues that even though viruses are often thought to be latecomers in the great bingo game of life, there is new evidence that shows they may have been the precursors of all life on earth. The point of the article is that viruses aren't even cells, so they are almost an intermediate between living and non-living organisms.

Dr. Harrub dismissed the role viruses may have played in the origin of life by saying that viruses are dependent on other organisms - whether eukaryote, bacteria, archaea, or more complex life. He said something to this effect, "how can we come from viruses if viruses depend on a life form in order to be alive"?

This simplification of the astounding work that scientists do in the field of biology is just silly. Do you really think that biologists would have just overlooked this, or is Dr. H building up yet another strawman? Even from reading the article in question, one can see that the evolutionary history of viruses is far more complex than Dr. Harrub's gross oversimplification.  The point of the article is that scientists originally thought that bacteria were the precursors to life on earth and that viruses are latecomers, but new evidence is suggesting that both bacteria and viruses were precursors to life on earth.

In the Discover article, the writer uses the term "chemical morons" to describe viruses - basically meaning that they are reproducing, exchanging genes willy-nilly, replicating and so forth without any particular direction other than the path of least resistance. Dr Harrub used this as a springboard for yet another false dichotomy, saying that the origin of life boiled down to two worldviews: "Chemical morons or likeness of God"

Yes, those are two competing worldviews. No, they are not the only two competing worldviews. But moving on...

Dr. Harrub moved on, and told his audience that whether or not his god exists is one of the most important questions one can answer, as it is a question that affects all other questions. He then presented this argument, which he told his audience was an example of undeniable logic:

1. If there is no god, then life does not matter-
2. only lives with no end can have meaning-
3. no lives which are finite have meaning-
4. If there are no gods, then there are no endless lives-
5. If there are no endless lives, then nothing has any meaning

Sigh.. where to begin...

Why does life have to be endless for it to matter and have meaning? I've written about this before, as have many atheists, especially those who come to atheism after believing at one point that their lives were endless. The problem is that meaning in our lives as derived from having infinite ones has no bearing on the reality or truthfulness of endless lives. We may think that a life that ends is meaningless, but that does not mean that hating the finiteness of life means that life somehow isn't finite.

The problem is that the desire to survive is hardwired into our brains by billions of years. As less thoughtful animals, we might not think that it is possible to not be alive. We only know that we are alive, and we only know that we want to stay that way. As human beings capable of thought and consciousness as well as observation and awareness, we look out into the world and we see that things do end. People die, animals die, buildings are erected and then they fall. Nothing is eternal. We hate this. So how do we reconcile this hardwired desire to live with the rationalization that we won't live forever? We pretend that we will.

Not living forever is terrible. It is terrible to lose everything we have worked for, to lose everything we have learned, to have our consciousness snuffed out forever by the mere cessation of a small amount of electrical activity jetting around in the pâté we call brain.

But to deny that this is reality to the point where the mere thought of being a finite consciousness renders our lives completely without meaning is a terrible disservice to the glory of simply being alive.  It is saying in effect, that this universe is not enough.

If this life is just an 80-ish year stepping stone to eternity, and Dr. Harrub's particular version of god is the real deal, then this life is nothing more than a switch: switch up for eternal happiness, switch down for eternal torment and misery. That to me is much less meaningful than this being the only life we've got. So even though meaning does not play a role in the evidence that when we die, we just die, I find that this life is much more meaningful if I do not pretend it's not the only life I have.

Dr. Harrub moved on and told his audience that if there is no god, then the duty of any individual is only to "eat, drink and be merry", whereas if there is a god, then our duty is to fear him.

There might be some people in this world who believe that the purpose of life is to eat, drink and be merry, but I do not, and I don't know anyone else who does. Looking at the evidence one is presented and concluding that there is no god is a conclusion. The "eat drink be merry" worldview is a non-sequitur - it does not follow anymore than an acceptance of germ theory leads us to the conclusion that we should all go out and infect everyone we can with a cold because germs pretty much only live to ultimately make more germs. Once one comes to the conclusion that there is no god, they need to objectively look at the rest of the universe to determine what kind of purpose it has and then formulate their worldview based on that.

Dr. H moved on, tossing up PowerPoint slides of some recent books on atheism such as The God Delusion, God is Not Great, The End of Faith and God: The Failed Hypothesis. Showing these books, Dr. H. Claimed that our culture is being "bombarded" by books proclaiming that there is no god.

I am going to go out on a limb and assume that Dr. H has been to a bookstore and noted that the religion or pro-god section usually takes up several whole aisles, while the atheism section usually is crammed into a corner of the religion section, on one shelf perhaps two feet in length.

Just for fun, I looked up the wikipedia article on the bestselling books of all time. Let's see who's bombarding who. I counted nine religious books including the Bible, Quran, book of Mormon, The Truth that Leads to Eternal Life, In His Steps: What would Jesus Do?, The Purpose Driven Life,The Celestine Prophesy, and the Left Behind book series.

Funny, none of this "atheist" bombardment is evident from this list, unless you want to count His Dark Materials or The Naked Ape. If you want to feel bombarded, go to the local bookstore and pretend that all of the Christian books are atheist books. If people are being bombarded by some atheist books making the bestseller list, then atheists are being nuclear bombed 200 times a day by Christian books.  (also... aren't people bombarding themselves? How did those books get to the top of bestseller lists?)

Just you wait - tomorrow we'll actually start talking about some of Dr. Harrub's "proofs" for his god.

Also, our better third Saint Gasoline has published his critique of day 2 on his blog, so go check it out.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 1.9

This post covers the Q&A session of the WEC Truth About Origins seminar and then launches into day 2 of the seminar.

After my question on the mechanisms, testability and reliability of Dr. Brad Harrub's "creation model" (which really wasn't explained at all other than to say that his god did it) another member of our group stood at the microphone and told Dr. Harrub that we had, in fact, observed speciation. Dr. Harrub asked for an example, and the guy (who is a biology major) explained experimentation that yielded speciation in fruit flies.

Dr. Harrub told his audience that this does not count as "macroevolution" because it's "just a fruit fly turning into a fruit fly".

This is a classic example of a "no true Scotsman fallacy or "moving the goalpost".  Only now it's "no true macroevolution". Rather than acknowledge the evidence for evolution, he just defines macroevolution to mean "evolutionary changes we have yet to observe" and then says we have not observed them and so therefore they have not happened.

Moving on, the biology major explained that we have seen beneficial mutations. Dr. H asked for ten.. yes TEN, examples. He went on to say that evolutionists are always "blowing smoke", because they can't give him an example of ten beneficial mutations we have observed.

Guess what - this is more an example of a creationist "blowing smoke" than an evolutionist "blowing smoke" by being vague in a presentation or by only poking imagined holes in evolution, yet providing no positive evidence whatsoever for creation. Then he expects multitudes of specific evidence from unprepared people in a Q&A session and uses their apparently lack of evidence as evidence that his position is correct.

This is why it is much harder for creationists to argue in an online debate or book format - in a public debate format, they will always ask for reams of evidence from their opponent while providing very little evidence of their own. Perhaps when engaging in debates with creationists, we should fall into the same tactics?

Here are over ten examples of beneficial mutations.

Another Q&Aer stood up to try to explain the evolution of sexes, but his explanation, while very good, fell on mostly deaf ears.  A few members of the church stood up, but I'll be honest and say that I had started talking with the other members of the group and so failed to write down and subsequently forgot what others asked.

After the Q&A session ended, we had several people approach us. One woman thanked me for my apparently awesome question, another woman told us that she was 75 years old and that she had learned to just open her ears instead of just debate. Dr. Harrub himself came over and chatted with us for about 20 minutes. Personally, he is just like anyone else - basically a nice guy. It was interesting though how his demeanor changed once he was speaking to us instead of his awed flock. Instead of speaking as though he were an authority, he spoke more as though he were our equal.

I also have to mention that right before the end of his presentation, he told his audience that dissenters were likely to go online to rage and vent at what he had to say. Have I "raged" or "vented" so far? I don't really think so.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 1.8

If you're just joining us, this is part 8 of our excessively detailed rebuttal to the Truth About Origins seminar we attended Friday, April 17th.

Moving on from vestigial organs, Dr. Harrub made a comment regarding the creation-evolution controversy, stating:

Maybe we should humble ourselves and admit that we do not know everything.

Indeed. What I know is that Dr. H. has failed to provide any proof for his model of creation, and rather has undermined science by poking invisible holes in biology. Cool.

He moved on to talk about mutations and their role regarding bacteria, stating that even if bacteria mutates into another form of bacteria, that they are still just bacteria.

This is a classic example of moving the goalpost that we've mentioned before. The point is that the genetic makeup of bacteria has changed. He quotes someone (who I have written down in my notes as "Professor Witten") as saying evolutionary theory is not testable.

I think this warrants some extra punctuation:

Not... Testable!?!?!? The whole point of evolutionary biology is it's obnoxious testability. We've seen genetic changes in species. We've seen new species arise since the dawn of evolutionary biology when we first began studying speciation in this way. We have innumerable fossils. It is absolutely testable.

Is creationism testable? Hmm...

He goes on to quote several more people as saying evolution is going to collapse, Darwin fails, and mentions the silly peppered moth thing.

Okay. So I will once again quote shamelessly from Talk Origins:

According to the traditional peppered moth story, cryptic coloration confers protection to the moths from predators, and as the habitat changed due to industrial pollution, natural selection caused the frequencies of different color varieties of the moth to change. As the trees became darker, the lighter moths stood out more, so the darker ones became more plentiful, and vice versa as the pollution cleared. That story is no longer supportable because of flaws found in the experiments, such as where the moths rested, and the occurrence of contrary data, such as unaccountable frequencies of uncamouflaged moths in areas

Source:
Wells, Jonathan, 1999. Second thoughts on peppered moths. http://www.arn.org/docs/wells/jw_pepmoth.htm or http://www.trueorigin.org/pepmoth1.asp
Wells, Jonathan, 2000. Icons of Evolution, Washington DC: Regnery Publishing Inc., pp. 137-157.

Response:

   1. Although the experiments were not perfect, they were not fatally flawed. Even though Kettlewell released his moths in daylight when a night release would have been more true to nature, he used the same procedure in areas that differed only in the amount of industrial pollution, showing conclusively that industrial pollution was a factor responsible for the difference in predation between color varieties. Similar arguments can be made for all other experiments. Although no experiment is perfect (nor can be), even imperfect experiments can give supporting or disconfirming evidence. In the case of peppered moths, many experiments have been done, and they all support the traditional story (Grant 1999).

   2. Even without the experiments, the peppered moth story would be well established. Peppered moth melanism has both risen and fallen with pollution levels, and they have done so in many sites on two continents (Cook 2003; Grant 1999).

   3. The peppered moth story is consistent with many other experiments and observations of crypsis and coloration in other species. For example, bird predation maintains the colorations of Heliconius cydno, which has different coloration in different regions, in both regions mimicking a noxious Heliconius species (Kapan 2001). Natural selection acting on the peppered moth would be the parsimonious hypothesis even if there were no evidence to support it.

   4. The peppered moth story is not simple. The full story as it is known today fills thousands of pages of journal articles. Familiarity with the literature and with the moths in the field is needed to evaluate all the articles. But the research and the debates over its implications have all been done in the open. Charges of fraud and misconduct stem from neglect and misrepresentation of the research by the people making the charges (Grant 2000). Of those familiar with the literature, none doubt that bird predation is of primary importance in the changing frequencies of melanism in peppered moths (Majerus 1999).

      In teaching any subject to beginners, simplifying complex topics is proper. The peppered moth story is a valuable tool for helping students understand how nature really works. Teachers would be right to omit the complexities from the story if they judged that their students were not yet ready for that higher level of learning (Rudge 2000).

Dr. H. uses the peppered moths as an example of how the experiments of evolution are not repeatable, meaning that the peppered moth experiment was not repeated. He says (quite correctly) that one of the bastions of good science is having repeatable experiments, I.E. someone else does the same experiment and gets the same results. Another bastion of science is predictability, that is that a hypothesis allows one to make predictions which are then testable. 

Okay, pop quiz. Pretend you're a creationist:

The peppered moth experiment is an example of:
a. "Microevolution"
b. "Macroevolution

If you're a creationist, then the answer is a. "Microevolution", which Dr. H has already admitted several times that there is plenty of evidence - mechanistic, predictable, supported, testable, repeatable evidence - for. So using the peppered moths as an example of how evolution is not repeatable just doesn't make any sense, because he's already said that it's repeatable!

Dr. Harrub concluded with a diagram that looked something like this (my personal depiction):

He told his audience that a theory of origins needs to explain these three "pillars" and that the theory of evolution stands or falls if it can explain: How we got life from non-life, the origins of the universe, and the design found in nature. He told his audience that the "evolution model' cannot explain these things. Right at that moment, the triangle at the top fell away (as in, he used a PowerPoint presentation in his sermon, and it was animated so that the triangle fell away), and instead of saying, "evolution model" it says, "creation model". He told his audience then that even though the evolution model cannot explain these things, the creation model does. I suppose I don't have to mention that evolutionary biology does not concern itself with how life arose from non-life. Evolutionary biology definitely does not concern itself with the origins of the universe, and design is only seen in nature if you beg the question by calling it design.

The diagram doesn't even make sense. It would make more sense if the triangle said, "science model". We already know that evolution is not a theory of everything. It only explains how living organisms became complex and varied. You could put "sociological model" up there and the diagram would be pretty much equivalent. 

I have a better diagram. It's a diagram of the pillars of good science. A good theory only gets to sit on top of the pillars if it actually fits:

Now, does creationism rest nicely on top of these three pillars?

NO.

Not only does it not fit, but I pretty much got Dr. H. to admit during the Q&A that creationism is without mechanism and unscientific. At this point, the seminar was finished, and people brought out microphones so that the audience could ask questions. At first, no one went up there. So I jumped up and said this (which is slightly paraphrased):

Ziztur: "Okay. So you say that for a theory of origins to be a good, solid, scientific theory, then the theory of origins has to have a mechanism, right?"

Dr. H. "Yes."

Ziztur: "Okay. It also has to be testable, right?"

Dr. H. "That's right"

Ziztur: "Cool. It also has to be replicable. (he nodded) You claim - and I disagree with you but for the sake of argument - you claim that evolution fails as a theory of origins because it has no mechanism, is not testable, and is not replicable, right?"

Dr. H. "Yes."

Ziztur: "Okay. So explain to me the mechanism of the creation model, and then explain how it is replicable and testable"

Dr. H. "Well the mechanism, obviously, it was miraculous."

Ziztur: "So your mechanism is supernatural?"

Dr. H. "Yes, that's right."

Ziztur: "Okay. So how is it testable and replicable?"

Dr. H. "Well, since miracles are by definition not replicable and not testable, it is not replicable or testable."

I was nervous, and I should have pushed further. I've given enough lectures in my life but it was me versus almost everyone else in the room. I've never held such a minority opinion in a group before. Plus, my question would obviously make it known my position on the matter. So I left it at that, rather than point out that the creation model fails miserably as anything other than an ancient myth of origins.

Stay tuned. We'll talk about what the other people said during the Q&A tomorrow!

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 1.Flim.2

Ziztur has analyzed the variety of evolutionary hoaxes pointed out by Dr. Harrub, and explained why they have no impact at all in criticizing evolution theory. She also explained how his criticism of Lucy as an evolutionary specimen is completely flawed - all that he addressed were a select few of Lucy's ape-like features. He completely ignored her ability to walk upright, which would obviously be the significant feature of Lucy as a hominid ancestral to modern Homo Sapiens.

He also addresses one other well-known evidence of evolution - the famous Archaeopteryx. This is a common creationist line; Archaeopteryx is simply a bird, not a reptile or a reptile-bird transitional. Dr. Harrub does an even poorer job than many creationists I've seen, too; he simply quotes from a creationist magazine that claims Archaeopteryx was a bird, and dismisses the whole matter on that basis alone! Most creationists can at least find a quote from an actual scientist describing Archaeopteryx as a bird. Interestingly, Dr. Harrub has an article online that addresses Archaeopteryx in much greater detail, here. However, this article argues that Archaeopteryx fossils are not like birds at all, and instead are simply reptiles, with feather impressions being either frauds or misinterpretations! Which is it, Dr. Harrub?

His article mainly consists of large bodies of quoted materials from a certain Alan Feduccia, a paleornithologist. From Wikipedia: "Feduccia is best known for his view that birds have their origin not in the advanced theropods, the most widely-held view, but basally within the archosaurs." What Dr. Harrub declines to mention in his article is that, for one, Feduccia's opinion is well outside of the mainstream scientific opinion on the matter, and for two, that Feduccia's view of the evidence is still an evolutionary model, simply an alternative one. In the article, Dr. Harrub claims to have had personal correspondence with Dr. Feduccia - did he mention that Feduccia's alternate theories are still wildly incompatible with young-earth creationism? Just what is Dr. Harrub's claim, here?

Whether Dr. Harrub claims that Archaeopteryx is an insufficient example of a transitional fossil because it is actually simply a bird (as in the seminar), or simply a reptile (as in his article online), he still completely misses the point. Based on our human conception of biological classification, we have to put an organism somewhere, so simple classification will end up putting Archaeopteryx into either the "bird" or "reptile" categories. However, this certainly doesn't mean that this creature doesn't have numerous features of birds and/or reptiles; on the contrary, Archaeopteryx has numerous reptilian and avian features. Most tellingly, Archaeopteryx has numerous avian and reptilian features that are distinguishing features of modern birds or reptiles, respectively. Talkorigins.org has an excellent breakdown on these features here.

One other interesting point made by Dr. Harrub is worth mentioning. I have to at least give him credit for discussing such a wide variety of topics in such a short amount of time, even if the brevity with which he discusses most topics prevents him from a very meaningful discussion. For example, take the common argument for evolution of the fact of vestigial structures in organisms. How does he answer this clearly-successful prediction of evolution theory? Literally, he simply quotes another mysteriously agreeable creationist resource, claiming that a feature does not classify as being vestigial if it has any function at all, no matter how limited. He then claims that every single feature of any organism that has ever existed does indeed have a function, even if we can't figure out what it is! Even if the evidence screams that a feature is vestigial, his answer is to simply say that it isn't, and that we may or may not one day figure out what function is performed by the feature in question!

Firstly, of course, we can discard his assertion, as it is what we fancy-pants like to call an unfalsifiable hypothesis (by his reasoning, we can literally never determine if a feature is, in fact, vestigial - making his theory immune to disproof, but also making it completely useless).

Secondly, his fellow creationist's definition of "vestigial" is a fabrication. While there is a legitimate distinction to make between vestigial features and exaptation, there is a small degree of overlap between the two concepts. Biologically, vestigial features are features that once had a certain function, but now serve no function, or considerably reduced function, or serve a different function to a small degree. Exaptation is specifically a feature being adapted to perform a different, very significant function. The difference is the degree of usefullness of the feature in it's new, adapted function.

Here's an extremely simple example of exaptation, from the Wikipedia entry: "A multi-stage example involves human hands, which evolved to facilitate tool use and which are an exaptation of primate hands that were used for grasping tree branches. Those primate hands, in turn, were an exaptation of front legs that were used for locomotion on the ground, and those legs were an exaptation of the fins of fish, which were used for locomotion in the water." The important distinction here is that each new function serves a vital purpose.

For those creationists still not understanding the concept of vestigial features, personally, my favorite example is the reflex of goose-bumps. They cause your body hair to stand up, right? Well, think about it - what good does this do for you? What purpose does it serve? You don't have body hair! Now imagine, what purpose does it serve in our ape cousins? That's right; if you do have thick body hair like our close evolutionary cousins, getting goose-bumps when frightened makes you look bigger and more threatening to a predator. Getting goose-bumps when cold insulates you with another layer of air. Without thick body hair, goose-bumps are a vestigial feature.

This makes up a good volume of Dr. Harrub's material, it seems; strawman distortion, quote another creationist to supposedly support the strawman, then make bald assertions if even the strawman isn't sufficient to establish your case (maybe a moved goalpost thrown in occasionally for good measure). Stay tuned, folks.

Hm. During the question and answer session of these seminars, Ziztur and I stood up and asked several questions. It was quite apparent that we were atheists. We said as much to Dr. Harrub and members of the church, etc. Does this mean that the seminar weekend was not so much a "faith infiltration" as a "faithless invasion?"

Defending the faith from the faithless

this morning I am attending a meeting at a church which is a joint effort by my friend Michael Blanford at the Skeptical Society of St. Louis and the Twin Oaks Presbyterian church. Apparently the church is ending a course on apologetics and wants to learn about atheism and have their students strut their stuff for some hardcore disbelievers. Here's what Michael had to say about it:

I have been invited to speak about skepticism and atheism to the "Defending the Faith" adult Sunday School program at Twin Oaks Presbyterian Church in Ballwin. The Reverend Bill Meyers has asked me and anyone else I would like to bring to come into the class to engage in a "dialog" about what we believe or don't believe about God and why? It seems this is the culmination of a Christian apologetics course and he would like his students to test out what they have learned by engaging with some people who have world views that compete with Christianity. I will be giving a short talk to the class and then hope that some of them members of our group will participate in a broader discussion. Please come even if you have no interest in participating in the dialog. I think we can all learn a lot from this type of discourse.

 It should be fun! I will let you know how it goes.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 1.3

Continuing on in our series of blog posts concerning a creation seminar we attended a few days ago, this is part 3 of day 1 of the Truth About Origins Seminar that Flimsy and I attended on Friday, April 17th, 2009.

Moving on, Dr. Harrub explained that Darwin believed behavior modifications during the lifetime of an individual animal caused the genetic offspring of that animal to be altered. As an example, he showed a picture of a giraffe and explained that Darwin thought that since giraffes reached up into trees to get their food and stretched their muscles, this stretch would be passed down to the next generation. Obviously though, alterations of body structure of a given organism do not pass down to offspring - a person who is paralyzed does not birth paralyzed children.

He is explaining, of course Lamarkian Evolution, which was an idea that existed far before Darwin was born (Lamarck lived 1744–1829, Darwin 1809-1882) Natural selection is accepted as scientific, while Lamarkian evolution was abandoned over 150 years ago. Dr. Harrub tried to explain that Darwin was wrong when he thought that species change was driven by those characteristics acquired during the organism's lifetime. It was not Darwin who was wrong on this, but Lamark. He refers to this idea of acquired change as "True Darwinism" when it is actually not "Darwinism" at all - it's Lamarkian Evolution

Dr. Harrub goes on to conclude that "adaptation is not a mechanism for change". He is of course referring to individual adaptation, hence the references to Lamarkiansm. It is true that individual adaptation is not a mechanism for change. Evolutionary theory, however, shows that adaptation of populations is a mechanism for change. This is, essentially, a misdirection, and a mischaracterized strawman version of evolution. It sounds false because it is false. The difference between population adaptation and individual adaptation is an extremely important distinction to make here.

He went on to say that "True Darwinism" has been set aside for Neo-Darwinism, and explained that these are the elements that are important to Ne-Darwinianiam:

1. Time
2. Mutations
3. Natural Selection
4. Chance

First, I'd like to say that evolutionary biologists do not follow Neo-Darwinism as the good Dr. described here, but rather they follow Modern Evolutionary Synthesis - which is a revision of Neo-Darwinism. These two lines of thinking are distinct. To borrow from the Wikipedia entry on the subject:

The modern synthesis bridged the gap between experimental geneticists and naturalists; and between both and palaeontologists, stating that:

1. All evolutionary phenomena can be explained in a way consistent with known genetic mechanisms and the observational evidence of naturalists.
2. Evolution is gradual: small genetic changes, recombination ordered by natural selection. Discontinuities amongst species (or other taxa) are explained as originating gradually through geographical separation and extinction (not saltation).
3. Selection is overwhelmingly the main mechanism of change; even slight advantages are important when continued. The object of selection is the phenotype in its surrounding environment. The role of genetic drift is equivocal; though strongly supported initially by Dobzhansky, it was downgraded later as results from ecological genetics were obtained.
4. The primacy of population thinking: the genetic diversity carried in natural populations is a key factor in evolution. The strength of natural selection in the wild was greater than expected; the effect of ecological factors such as niche occupation and the significance of barriers to gene flow are all important.
5. In palaeontology, the ability to explain historical observations by extrapolation from micro to macro-evolution is proposed. Historical contingency means explanations at different levels may exist. Gradualism does not mean constant rate of change.

The idea that speciation occurs after populations are reproductively isolated has been much debated. In plants, polyploidy must be included in any view of speciation. Formulations such as 'evolution consists primarily of changes in the frequencies of alleles between one generation and another' were proposed rather later. The traditional view is that developmental biology ('evo-devo') played little part in the synthesis, but an account of Gavin de Beer's work by Gould suggests he may be an exception.

Almost all aspects of the synthesis have been challenged at times, with varying degrees of success. There is no doubt, however, that the synthesis was a great landmark in evolutionary biology. It cleared up many confusions, and was directly responsible for stimulating a great deal of research in the post-World War-II era.

So, Dr. Harrub is essentially talking about an oversimplified yet blindingly incomplete version of Biological evolution. Amusingly, even the CreationWiki article on the subject makes the distinction. To quote: "biological evolution theory has therefore become an integration of Charles Darwin's theory of the evolution of species by natural selection, Gregor Mendel's theory of genetics as the basis for biological inheritance, random genetic mutation as the source of variation, and mathematical population genetics. This composite of mechanism is known as the modern evolutionary synthesis.

Either Dr. Harrub has not studied enough biology (Modern Evolutionary Synthesis has been around since before he was born) or he is doing something akin (I am exaggerating here) to showing how modern medicine is foolish and false because doctors still believe that diseases are spontaneously generated

Regardless of this mischaracterization of modern Evolutionary Biology, I am still going to critique this portion of his presentation, because I'm obnoxious like that. I could dismiss this whole section out of hand.

Dr Harrub started out by dismissing the role of "chance" in Evolution by talking about dice. His simple dismissal went something like this:

If you roll two dice, there is a chance that you might roll two 6's. There is also a chance that you might roll two 1's, or a 3 and a 4, et cetra.  But does chance ever change these dice?

 ... WHAT? I expected him to say something like, "If you roll two dice, you'd expect to get 6's sometimes, and 4's some times. But you would not expect to roll the same two dice and roll 6's a million times" but no... I fail to see how this has anything at all to do with evolution. I really don't know what the hell his point is, seriously.

Okay that's a lie. His point is that dice don't change and so that somehow is supposed to mean that organisms don't change either even if you.. um.. roll them a bunch of times? Evolution does not say, "if you roll a rat a bunch of times, it will eventually change into a hamster".  In all seriousness, I suppose he is saying that you can... no, you know what, I give up. I have no idea what his point was.

Here is a better analogy for evolution. If you've got a dice-making machine that has a dice mold, and said mold is made out of lead or some other soft metal, over time the metal will change shape due to use and produce dice that are not exactly the same shape and quality as the original dice. The mold is our genetics, the pressures on the mold that cause it to change shape over time are the environment, and the dice produced are the population.  In his "analogy" the "dice" are the environment, genetics and the organism. Once again, it sounds absurd because he has created an absurd strawman version of evolution, only to knock it down.

P.S. I mentioned in an earlier post that we were with several other people, including our friend Saint Gasoline. You can find part 1 of his analysis of the seminar right here. 

Faith Infiltration: Faith Church St. Louis

Each week, Flimsy and I (along with some other local friends, like Alien) and I visit a church. This week marks our 21st church. We chronicle the general atmosphere of the churches we visit, talk about notable things we hear in sermons, and give our overall impression of the places we've been.

Occasionally, we skip out due to laziness or other plans, but we've been pretty regular in attendance, which is probably more than a lot of church goers can say! We've collected lots of experiences, some random trinkets like mugs and stuff, and we've even been counter-infiltrated by pastors of the churches we've been to.

This week, we went to the Easter Sunday service at Faith Church St. Louis, a non-denominational church who prides themselves in their message of their god's love, rather than their god's wrath.

We found Faith Church while driving over to St. Charles one day - they have two locations, and we passed one on the highway and gawked at how huge and impressive it was - I think they leased a former country dancing club. Our friend Alien wanted to join us, so we decided to go to the one closer to her.

We entered the church sanctuary and noticed huge LCD screens at either side, crosses at the front, and plush chairs instead of pews. A screen saver counted down the time until the service was to begin, which was only a few seconds. We sat, noting that the sanctuary had pretty much become standing-room only.

I overheard a lady talking, and she said something to this effect, "Wow, look at how full we are this week. Everyone is here. It's amazing how so many people only show up on Christmas and Easter". I suppose I wasn't surprised to hear something so stereotypical come out of someone's mouth, so I guess what they say is true - some people are only Christian on Christmas and Easter. The lights dimmed slowly, leaving the sanctuary almost in complete darkness.

We were sitting in the back, just a few seats to the left of center, and we saw a man roll in what looked like an upside-down white trash can on wheels with a green light inside and some water on top, as if it had been out in the rain. The band began to play uplifting, energetic contemporary Christian rock music. The upside-down can was a drum, and while the man drummed it, water jumped in the air. This reminded me of Blue Man Group, and was actually a pretty cool effect, except that the congregants closest to the drum got splattered with water droplets.

Obviously, the music was meant to evoke feelings of being uplifted, of being exited. The first song ended with a burst of musical energy, and then the LCD screens lit up and showed - surprisingly - scenes from The Passion of the Christ. They chose to use the scene where Jesus is on the cross, and a drop of water falls to the ground, causing the earth to shake, and all sorts of crazy stuff to happen. Sanctuary-shaking bass rumbled through the air. I felt like we were at the movies and really - well - we were.

The Passion faded away, replaced by an uplifting but softer solo, where a heavily tattooed woman danced around in a white dress with white streamers. After this, an energetic solo by a male vocalist ended with a bunch of children on stage jumping around in a massive cloud of bubbles, while older children and young adults waved streamers. The children and soloist left, and another song began. This time, during the song, people came out and pinned roughly-torn sheets of paper directly to the cross situated at the center. On the sheets of paper words were typed, words like: divorce, fear, pride, hopelessness, unforgiveness, alcohol, low self-esteem, lust, gossip, depression, shame, loneliness, lack, pressure, offense, greed, mental torment, sin, disease, poverty, pornography, stress, etc. The metaphor being, of course, that all of these things are being washed away by the blood of Jesus. The music faded and the pastor arrived.

The pastor, I swear, looks and sounds like Billy Ray Cyrus. He led the congregants in a quick prayer, saying, "all eyes closed all heads bowed". He then told his congregation that he doesn't like being a televangelist, so hey, go ahead and tithe during the announcements if you want.

All of the announcements were played over the LCD screens and were well-produced and extraordinarily hip. Apparently this church has a hip youth group, a contest for kids to win a dune buggy (yes, a real dune buggy - they had it on display outside the church), a really hip children's event during which, among other things, they will be giving away an X-Box 360, a group for young adults that is just freakishly cool, and a group for girls that is all about "Setting the world on fire!"

If you go check out their website, you'll see exactly what I mean - the stylishness of their website oozes over into the church itself.  Obviously, they are trying to appeal to contemporary secular culture - the whole thing was very urban.

The fact that tithing was done during the announcements is an interesting contrast to the churches we have been to that make a big deal out of tithing, giving it five minutes of prayer and a special song. Instead of using guilt and peer-pressure to make you tithe, they went with the, "holy crap, this church is doing all of this cool stuff, you know you wanna support our awesomeness so we can keep being awesome" tactic. I guess it works, because this church obviously has tons of support.

 So, right as everyone is supposed to feel good about tithing and good about how urban, hip and contemporary this church is, Pastor Dave launches into his sermon. He talks about how when he was a little boy, his parents didn't have a lot of money. Near Easter, his was at Wal-Mart with his mom, and his mom couldn't afford to buy him a chocolate bunny. But, he saw a bunny with a broken ear and a 50% off sticker on it. He ran to tell his mom and begged her for the cheap, broken bunny. She agreed, and they went back to find the bunny, but someone had taken it.

I'll assume that in Fenton, MO, where this church is located, a lot of people can relate to this. Hell, I can relate to this. While I was growing up, nearly all of my possessions came from yard sales, my mom coupon-clipped until she had blisters on her hands, and we would get slightly damaged or old Easter candy too. Anyway, Pastor Dave tells his congregation that his mom was "trained in sin", and so she gave him a look and told him, "well... you could break another ear..." and so, of course, Pastor Dave, being a little boy, broke a whole row of bunny ears, and the next day they came back and he got his broken bunny.

The point: without Jesus, your life is broken just like the bunny ears. When you're "trained in sin", you need Jesus to help you pay the price for wholeness.

He goes on to talk about how the wages of sin are death - but in a slightly less literal sense. He spoke not of actual mortal death but of death of family, marriage, happiness, etc. Of course Jesus never sinned but became sin itself so that we (never being righteous) could become righteous. I know these are the basic tenants of Christianity and even though they were presented in a more palpable way than I have heard before, they still don't make any sense. Once again: the Christian god supposedly creates all of us in sin. Then, he is thinking about how all of those people created in his image are imperfect sinners, and decides we all deserve eternal torment in life and in death for being so imperfect. but, he realizes this is not fair, and so he sends himself down to earth to sacrifice himself to himself so that he doesn't have to torment us in life and in death, but with one stipulation - we have to believe that he sent himself down to save us from himself and we have to repent our sins in order to be saved, because otherwise we're getting a free ride, and that doesn't make sense. But the whole thing doesn't make sense! Anyway, moving on...

Right as his congregation is supposed to be nodding their heads in understanding of how exactly to be saved, he tells a story of a kid whose funeral he had recently been to. This kid apparently was into drugs and suffering from depression, but some members of his congregation had been bringing him to church. The pastor told of how the kid had accepted Jesus and become a Christian. A few weeks later, he killed himself. The pastor talked about how this kid had been declared righteous in the eyes of his god and so thus was in heaven now. The point: be compelled to find troubled people in your life and bring them to church so they can be saved.

Pastor Dave then tells another story about a different pastor doing an internship at a mental institution. In the institution was a lady who was totally crazy and had to be constantly retrained in order to keep her from hurting people. Apparently the pastor went in, sat down, and sang "yes, Jesus loves me" for three months. After this, eventually the woman started signing with him, she became totally healed and went on to live a normal life.

Really.

I hate to be cynical but.. really? If this woman was in a mental hospital, she had to have been given care other than this. The nurses did nothing? Her psychologist did nothing? This was her only treatment, some guy coming in and singing a song to her over and over again? Evidence please. Case study, please. I found a similar story about a guy named Robert Cornwall here, near the bottom of the page. It's so funny how stories morph and change when passed along orally.

A few more things:

* The devil is the one who has all those tapes of your life to be played on judgment day.
*Faith and belief erases those tapes of your sin
*Other preachers like to preach that "god is mad" at you, but Pastor Dave wants you to know that his god isn't mad at you.

The point: even though you do bad things and sin, the Christian god is not mad at you for it, and your belief in Jesus will erase all of your sins so that god doesn't see them when reviewing the events of your life. This sounds like the same stuff Ray Comfort says, only Pastor Dave phrases it in a way that is much more palpable. But, the problem still remains. Why be good, if you know your belief will acquit you from wrongdoing? How is this way of thinking a superior reason to be moral, rather than humanist morality? It seems to me that this sermon was designed to rid people of their guilt and fear for sinning, by letting them know that their god will not see their sins as long as they believe. But when you do bad things, you should feel guilty - an appropriate sense of guilt is a powerful tool, and many a sociopath feels no guilt. I am not at all saying that this way of thinking necessarily leads to sociopathy, but it surely does not seem superior to humanist morality as far as giving people reasons to act in a moral and ethical way.

The service ended with uplifting music in which the themes were winning wars and conquering enemies. So, the congregation is supposed to feel uplifted, as though they've won the battle against sin... for now.

Faith Infiltration: Origins Seminar

I thought I would remind my dear readers that today at 7:00PM is the first of three seminars on creationism I will be attending that are being hosted by a local church. I mentioned it a few weeks ago.

The seminar runs for three days: Friday, Saturday and Sunday and will include these topics:

Topics Include

• Was Darwin Wrong?
• Evolutionary Hoaxes
• Intelligent Design or Ape-Like Creature
• Atheism’s Attack on America
• Is the Bible Just a Good Book?
  

There is a question and answer session after the Friday/Saturday seminars, which cover the first three topics. Sunday's seminar is during church time so I assume it is not a seminar but a sermon on how evil we atheists are. Funny, because they will probably have more atheists in their church than ever before. I would love to point out that since 15% of the population are nontheist, and a decent chunk of those people specifically define themselves as atheist, they probably know an atheist even if they don't realize it. Their brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, parents, collegues at work, etc could all be atheists - and all of the things they are going to say about atheists they will be saying about those people they know.  I hate to have expectations but when you call your sermon "Atheism's Attack on America", one has tgo expect bigotry and atheophobia.

Leading the seminars/sermon will be Dr. Brad Harrub, who says he will, "Expose the errors, inconsistencies, and hoaxes of Evolution during the three-day seminar, Truth About Origins"

There was a slight hubbub over where these seminars would take place. Originally it was to take place at Lindenwood University, but according to the Origins website, Lindenwood canceled their reservation. 

The guys at Lindenwood tell a slightly different story:

Lindenwood Provost Jann Weitzel sent me the following  clarification from President Jim Evans (4-13-09) and requested  that I notify you: "The President of Lindenwood did not cancel  the event.  It had not been officially scheduled.  Rather, the  application to use Lindenwood’s facilities was declined because (a) the event was not being sponsored by Lindenwood for its students, and (b) the requester did not follow established procedures for obtaining approval of an outside organization’s event on the Lindenwood campus."

I'm waiting for Dr. Harrub to cry "Expelled!" but we shall see.

Faith Infiltration: Pastor Moody Infiltrates back

The other day I received a comment from Pastor Moody, the pastor at Holy Cross Deaf Lutheran Church. We infiltrated this church several months ago, and our encounter can be found here. 

So apparently we've been counter-infiltrated - a pastor from a church we infiltrated has infiltrated back! We're having quite an interesting conversation there in the comments of the original faith infiltration now. We think this is pretty cool. Pastor Moody's comment was:

I want to thank you again for visiting Holy Cross Deaf. I encourage you to keep on visiting Christian Churches because I believe that gives the power of God's Word more opportunities to bring His grace and forgiveness into your hearts.

Like I said in my sermon on Easter Sunday, using the three of you as examples of all of us in our dead (without faith in Christ) condition, that God greatly loved us all and sent His Son to save us all. In Baptism God crucified us with Christ, we died with Him; we were buried with Him and He rose us with Him so we can live His life now and forever. We can, as the Bible says, be the walking dead (whitewashed tombs)or have Christ's empty tomb as ours.

I mentioned you in the Sermon since one post mentioned that I could not pray for something (President Obama to understand that life begins at conception) unless it was mentioned other places in the Service. I pray for a lot of things without mentioning them other places including prayers now for you three by name. I have encouraged our members to do that also and will be contacting other Church that you have infiltrated to ask them to also pray for you.

An aside about the "simple" language used in our services... Deaf people have no Passive Voice in their language or thinking process. So we speak/sign everything is in the Active Voice. It makes the English sound simpler but it is just clearer and more easily understood by all.

God does love you. There are no atheists after death. I just hope you realize His love for you before that day comes. That is my prayer for you.

If you ever want to talk about anything, let me know.

Pastor Moody

 I responded that Flimsy didn't really mean that Pastor Moody couldn't pray for something he hadn't already mentioned in the service - Flimsy just thought it was a little unexpected, and I think the language he used might have led to a slight misunderstanding.

The "no atheists after death' comment is interesting. By this I take that to mean that there are no atheists after death because P. Moody believes we'll all stand in front of the Christian god on judgment day.  I suppose that since I see no evidence that our consciousness continues after death, I can conclude we're all atheists after death - none of us are theists after death, after all - as there is no neuronal activity in which to give us any thoughts. But, that's just an aside.

It's interesting that we've been used in sermon(s?), and I am not entirely sure how I feel about that. I am inclined to say since I visit churches and write about my experiences on a blog that can be viewed by the entire world, its only fair that said churches be able to speak or write about their experiences with me.

Faith Infiltration: St. Louis Friends (Quakers)

For those of you just joining us, you'll be amused to know that Flimsy and I attend church every week. But, it's not what you think - we don't bring any flammable substances with us. Each week, he and I (along with the occasional friend) attend a different church. So far, we've been to twenty.

This week, we headed over to a St. Louis Friends Meeting, which is the weekly worship of Quakers.

Quakerism is quite interesting - it is a Christian religious denomination formed in England in the 17th century by people who were dissatisfied with the creeds and hierarchical structures of typical churches. There are two types of church services: "Programmed" and "unprogrammed' worship. Programmed worship is close to a typical protestant services, with a sermon, hymns and prayers. We went to an unprogrammed type worship.

We entered the small church building and were met with the greeter, who asked if we were familiar with the unprogrammed Quaker worship style. We were, but only because we had looked it up prior to coming.

Inside the sanctuary, pews are arranged in a loose circle.

 

Worship service begins when someone - anyone - enters the sanctuary and sits in a pew. Others follow or mill about silently. There is no leader.

Quakers who practice unprogrammed services believe that messages come to any member from God. When a member feels that he or she is being called to give a message, he or she stands, gives the message, and sits back down. Silence follows in order to meditate on the messages. Sometimes, and entire service occurs in silence. 

We sat for about 20 minutes, watching people enter. Some people entered and sat, a few people fiddled with their cell phones for a few minutes, and eyes slowly closed. At this point, a woman stood up and said somthing about letting Jesus into our hearts. 

Another 15 minutes went by, and a man stood up and told a story, which went something like this:

A man is walking up a mountain, searching for enlightenment. As he walks up the mountain, he sees an old man carrying a backpack making his way down the mountain. The man stops the old man and asks, "How do you find enlightenment?". The old man looks at him, and puts down his backpack. The man says, "I see. How do you know when you have found it?" The man picks up his backpack and continues down the mountain.

 Ten minutes pass, and an older lady stood and recounted the story of her week and how her husband was out of town. She intentionally stayed alone and did not listen to the radio or watch TV - she just wanted to enjoy being alone with her inner thoughts. She said that this caused her inner self to come to the front of her mind.

More minutes pass, and a young woman (who was totally beautiful!) stood to talk about how interesting it is that all of today's messages are about inner journeys. While she is doing this, a pile of young children file in holding Easter baskets. They sit as silently as possible, though after ten minutes or so they are fiddling with their baskets, putting them on top of they heads.

Worship service ends when an "elder" shakes the hand of his neighbor. After this, everyone else shakes hands. Announcements were made and then everyone went in a circle, stood up and intruduced themselves. We said that we were visitors and that we visited a different church every week. I told them this was our twentieth church, and everyone laughed.

Quakerism seems fairly liberal to me theologically, at least that is the impression I get from attending service and reading about them on the wide, wide internet. They seem to be of the mindset that you don't need to believe in any specific creed or dogma to be a member.

*Flimsyman* - Not bad.  I can't really say that I have any particular problem with these folks.  I was occasionally distracted by a vision of someone standing and saying, "Well, I just feel led by God to say that yes, he wants us all to know that he does indeed really, really, hate faggots."  This was entertaining to me specifically because it would have been so out of place.  They weren't at all put off by the fact that we had been to so many churches, or at the implication that we wouldn't be back to theirs.  They were friendly, yet they definitely did not venture into creepy Oh-Happy-God-Jebus-Day-PEOPLE!-Hello-HowAreYou- YOU SHOULD COME BACK HERE ALL THE TIME land.  How amazing - they were friendly while not doing their best pushy salesman impression.  Good folks, even if we disagree on a great many things.  They even mentioned during the anouncments that the Missouri State Budget for this year cuts funding for certain services for children and disabled persons, and how unhappy they all are with this.  Good folks, indeed.

And the young woman who stood and noted that all the day's messages were about our inner journeys was a young black woman with dreads down to her butt.  Ziztur and I agree that she was extremely hot.

Faith Infiltration: Circle of Light Spiritualist Church

This week, Flimsy, Alien (who wrote about her experiences on her blog) and I infiltrated the Circle of Light Independent Spiritualist Church, which is a church located within the Pathways Metaphysical Store. (Or "resource center" as it's called).

Flimsy and I have been to a spiritualist church before, which we blogged about here.

Spiritualism, in a small nutshell, is the belief and practice that living humans have the ability to contact dead humans via Mediumship.  These contacted "spirits" can then pass messages from the afterlife to the living earth world. Spirits come in all sorts of forms, ranging from spirit guides to angels to dead loved ones. They also believe in a god, though this god can range from monotheistic to pantheist. Basically, what separates spiritualism from everything else is the belief in the ability to communicate with the dead.

We arrived about 45 minutes before the service, and I noticed that the store had some of my favorite incense, so I grabbed a few packets and paid for them. There was an open (ish) area near the front of the store where people set up folding chairs and placed rainbow colored cushions on them. There were about 15 people in attendance and five or so mediums, who wore purple silk scarves.

Before the church service began, the announcements were read, and then a disclaimer - the services are part of Pathways and thus no part of the service may be recorded or copied, as they are fully copyrighted.

....

???

...

I've never heard of a church having a disclaimer like this, so I am not sure what to think. Alas, I am fairly sure I am not violating any copyright by writing about my experiences at a church.

Like the other spiritualist church we visited, it had a reiki/prana/energy healing service at the beginning, where people could sit in chairs at the front and have energy worked on. I watched as the Alien sat while a healer waved her arms around and chopped off some bad energy.  We were also told to write our names on slips of paper and put them into a basket, so we could receive a message from the "other side".

The announcements were pretty much what I expected, except that the owner of the store mentioned that she would be having a class with "Dr. white, doctor of philosophy". I didn't think much of this and just assumed that this was a living person with a doctoral degree in philosophy, until Alien leaned over and said knowingly, "That's her spirit guide".

During the service, we passed around a miniature etched glass globe to pray and send good energy to the world, and a notebook filled with requests and people's writings to pray and send good energy to the people in the notebook. The sermon was about how spring was coming and that just like when planting seeds for a garden, we have to plant new ideas and new projects and tend to them appropriately - not too much and not too little. 

After the message, it was time for the spirit mediums to communicate messages from their guides for us, by "standing between two worlds". My spirit medium told me (after reaching into the basket to pull out my name) that he was seeing pages and pages of the Koran - the first and greatest Arabic work - and seeing the distance of time and space revealing a greatness in a work. He told me more practically to look at my older works to find greatness.

Okay?

After the spirit guides gave messages to every person who had placed paper in the basket, they gave messages to themselves. Then, it was time to meditate. The meditation consisted of everyone cloing their eyes and relaxing, while a leader said things like, "the eagle flies overhead................. it's wings lifting it higher........................ you feel the world soaring under you...........like a moving river..........."

During the meditation, Flimsy and I wrote sentances to each other by tracing letters into each other's palms, or simply looked at each other - which was perfectly quiet until he made a face, which made me let out a stifled laugh that thankfully sounded like a sneeze. We've got a way of communicating to each other without words - if we think something is funny but can't laugh, we will often grab a leg or arm (of the other person) and squeeze.

I find that spiritualists are, in general, an open-minded and tolerant bunch. They tend to see themselves as freethinkers and they are - I think that sometimes they are just a little too credulous. You know that saying, "Don't have such an open mind that your brains fall out"? I think that can be applied here - especially in the case of easily testable phenomenon like the ability of certain crystals to cure diseases and so forth. I think the mysticism of spirituality really draws people into spirituality - the same way tarot cards and Ouija boards were intriguing in high school. It's a way of being religious while shirking mainstream religion.

*Flimsyman*

My spirit message was about me, standing in a field, . . .  Dressed like a cowboy.  Ten-gallon hat, six-shooters, the whole nine yards.  A horse trots up behind me - a pure white horse.  The horse knows that it's mine, and the horse loves me.

Um, yeah.  First off, fuck that.  I'm not a cowboy, I'm a goddamn ninja.  Even in that setting, I'm still not a cowboy; I'm a native quietly weeping as ignorant fucks destroy the things I care about, right before taking a tomahawk to some crackers' faces.  Beyond that, Ziztur and I exchanged some humorous (i.e. not serious) speculation that she's the white horse, that she is good and pure (wtf), and that she knows that she's mine.  Of course, this is a ridiculous (and more than a little sexist) interpretation, but what's the alternative?  That the 'vision' actually means nothing at all?  Um, wait.  Yeah, that's pretty much the case.

*Sigh*  I always hate to make fun of the 'spiritualist' folks.  Is it completely irrational to believe in "spirit guides"?  Definitely.  Do they typically infringe on the rights of others?  No, they are usually pretty ethical people.  Do their beliefs deserve a modicum of automatic, intrinsic respect?  No, absolutely not.  At the end of the day, though, do I really have a problem with them?  No, not really.  So they believe some silly things.  I probably believe some silly things myself.  I try not to, but how can I be sure?  The true test, then, of whether I have a legitimate, justifiable problem with somebody is their ethics, not their beliefs.  For all that it's a classic skeptic/freethinker/atheist line, it is not always true that "Those who believe absurdities will commit atrocities."  Sometimes people can live in perfect good will with society, and with myself and those I care about, while believing things that are almost certainly insane.  And you know what?  That's their right.

Faith Infiltration: First Unitarian Church

Every Sunday, Flimsy and I attend church. Sometimes, we're just trying to see if we'll erupt in flames once we enter the sanctuary. Most of the time, we're there to see what other people believe, to see what draws them to church, and to hear what pastors have to say to their congregations.
This is our 18th church. That's right, we've actually been going to church for over four months. We don't have a specific goal in mind for how many we'd like to visit - we'd figure we would do it until we lost interest.

This week we attended the First Unitarian Church of St. Louis. This place looks like a church. It is a early 1900's church with a light stone face, a sanctuary with modest pews, and all the trappings of a typical Christian church, minus the Christianity.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Unitarianism, let me just tell you that this is one of the churches where we weren't afraid to tell the pastor we were atheists. Unitarians are not united by their dogma or docrine or specific beliefs - rather they encourage people to follow their own spiritual path.  Here, the pastor mentioned "non-theists" in a positive way - this is the first time we've heard something like this during a sermon.

The opening reading was not from a Bible or holy text, but from a by Chet Raymo's book:  Natural Prayers and was good enough that I feel it warrants repetition, in part, here:

The earliest prayer I can remember is "Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep". Head on pillow, tiny palms pressed together, parent sitting close at hand, I sleepily mumbled the words. "If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." The prayer was formulaic. It might as well have been a nursery rhyme or a string of made-up words like "abracadabra." It was in fact an incantation, a magical plea to the powers of the universe to guide me through the little sleep of night into the light of another day.

I was raised in a culture of petition, from an early age inculcated with a repertoire of formulaic prayers addressed to God, his angels, or his saints. All the prayers assumed a response: Here I am, Lord, deserving of your attention, favor, healing, forgiveness. Never did it pass my mind that my prayers were not heard. My education was hemmed about with a huge body of stories affirming God's intervention in human affairs. The evidence of efficacy was overwhelming. Or rather, the evidence for the efficacy of prayer appeared overwhelming to a mind predisposed to belief. Later, I trained as a scientist and also studied the history and philosophy of science. I learned something about controlled experiments, the statistical analysis of data, and the appropriate exercise of educated skepticism. Most importantly, I learned how belief can influence judgment even the judgment of scientists - and how scientists seek to minimize the role of belief in the evaluation of evidence.

In the light of my new scientific skepticism, the evidence for the successes of petitionary prayer became a thing of smoke and mirrors, a compilation of mere anecdote.

For many of us, the hole in our lives has been filled by a new story of the creation that does not require a God who interferes in the day-to-day unfolding of events: an evolutionary story that reaches inward to the ceaseless dance of the DNA and outward to the spiraling galaxies. It is a scientific story that places human life and consciousness squarely in a cosmic flow of complexifying energy. This new story is solidly grounded in the empirical method, but open to revision as we learn more.

So far, the majority of religious people have recoiled from the new scientific creation story, instead seeking security and comfort in Scriptures and traditions that derive from an older, more human-centered cosmology. In the older cosmology, an Olympian God mostly listens and responds individually to our prayers. In the new cosmology, God reveals himself in and through his creation, as law and chaos, light and darkness, creator and destroyer. He is, in the words of the Jesuit theologian David Toolan, "the Unnamable One/Ancient of Days of the mystics, of whom we can only speak negatively (not this, not that), a 'wholly other' hidden God of Glory." Or again, in the words of the Greek novelist Nikos Kazantzakis: "We might have given it any other name we wished: Abyss, Mystery, Absolute Darkness, Absolute Light, Matter, Spirit, Ultimate Hope, Ultimate Despair, Silence. But we have named it God because only this name, for primordial reasons, can stir our hearts profoundly. And this deeply felt emotion is indispensable if we are to touch, body with body, the dread essence beyond logic." The God of the new story does not take note of our childish cry: Here I am, Lord, deserving of your attention, favor, healing, forgiveness. Rather, he sweeps us along on the grand wings of his abiding plan and presence.

How are we to pray in such a universe, to such a God? Thomas Merton says, "The option of absolute despair is turned into perfect hope by the pure and humble supplication of monastic prayer." He defines monastic prayer as "a prayer of silence, simplicity, contemplative and meditative unity, a deep personal integration in an attentive, watchful listening of 'the heart.'" Learning to pray, then, as I understand it, is learning to listen with the mind and heart - making oneself attentive to what the poet Mary Oliver calls "the light at the center of every cell." It is a fearsome task, best suited to solitude and silence. Our prayers are not answered with miraculous gifts, tagged with our names or those of loved ones, but with beauty and terror. For the prayerful listener, the world becomes the sublime scripture, full of stories of structure and chaos, law and chance, complexification and decay, including the individual stories of the human persons in whom the universe becomes conscious of itself.

David Toolan writes: "We are here to make sacraments of nature - signs that give grace, life, hope - whether in raising a family, educating children, running a corporation, governing a city, searching for a synthesis of all physics, collecting garbage. All such activity takes nature's energy and transforms it, tries to pour soul into it, makes poetry of it, a thing of beauty. Liturgy is the big clue: here we regularly take fossil fuels, stone, metals, silicon, water, fire, grain, grape, animal stuffs, air waves, and sound - indeed, as much of space-time as we can sensuously lay our hands on - convert it into a gathering of voices, a ceremony of praise and thanksgiving."

Praise and thanksgiving: these are enduring motives for prayer. All of my life has been a re-learning to pray - a letting go of incantational magic, petition, and the vain repetition "me, Lord, me": instead watching attentively for "the light at the center of every cell," listening for the "dread essence beyond logic." It is a watching and a listening that is informed by science, because reliable knowledge is a prerequisite for love. "Less and less do I see any difference between research and adoration," wrote the great Jesuit scientist and theologian Teilhard de Chardin Teil·hard de Char·din   , Pierre 1881-1955.

French priest, paleontologist, and philosopher who maintained that the universe and humankind are evolving toward a perfect state.  near the end of his life. A scientific experiment that rebuts the effectiveness of intercessory prayer could itself be a revelation of God's modus operandi in the world. Let me watch and pray, then, in utter silence, or aloud in a gathering of like-minded souls, raising our voices in praise and thanksgiving. Prayer is for me now being mindful of a story - the story of the unfolding of life and consciousness in a universe of godly dimension - an activity summed up in Saint Augustine's words Noverim te, noverim me, "May I know you, may I know myself."

During the sermon, the pastor told his congregation that he knows God means different things to different people. To him, "God" is poetry or a metaphor - an abstraction that is within each of us but beyond all of us. This is a church that wholly accepts non-theists and atheists, people of whichever gender, and whose ultimnate goal seems to be communion of all people with all beliefs. Yes, we're adding this one to our reccomended list.

*Flimsyman:

It's not hard to see why we like this particular church.  How to describe the deliberate atmosphere in a simple way . . . it is very literally as if no one at this church would ever be derogatory or condesending to someone simply because they disagree with you on a theological issue.

It seems that the Pastor is homosexual, and the church and it's members are quite proud of how inclusive they are to those often excluded from so many other church families.

And that is exactly why The First Unitarian Church makes Ziztur and I, on the whole, proud of the human species.  Even the theistic portions of it.

Faith Infiltration: Holy Cross Deaf Lutheran Church

For those of you just joining us, nearly every week, Flimsy and I go to a church. We've been to about 17 churches so far, and have blogged about each one of them. We usually blog about our general opinions of the church structure and members and have something to say about the sermon. This week, our friend The Alien joined us. She blogged about her experience at the church too, so go check it out if you get time.

We went to Holy Cross Deaf Lutheran Church. This church, as you might guess, is for people who are Deaf. I feel like I need to point out that Deaf culture is alive and vibrant, and does not automatically include people who are deaf or exclude people who are hearing. It is an individual's sense of belonging to the Deaf community that makes them part of it, hearing or not. I know very little ASL, and the Alien knows more, but since I am an occupational therapy student and work in a lab located within an independent living center, I am around people who are Deaf fairly often.

At this church, the pastor is hearing and speaks English, while translating his words into American Sign Language (ASL), or having someone else translate into ASL. When members of the congregation spoke or signed, it was re-signed or translated. Some people introduced themselves by signing to us, and we were able to communicate with each other fairly well.

Since sound is not a particu