The Problem of C.S. Lewis's Trilemma (a blog short)

C.S. Lewis, the famous Christian writer and apologist once posed a trilemma he claimed proved the divinity of Jesus Christ. He postulated that someone making the claims Jesus made (as accounted in the New Testament) was either a lunatic, a liar, or Lord.

Christ either deceived mankind by conscious fraud, or He was Himself deluded and self-deceived, or He was Divine. There is no getting out of this trilemma. It is inexorable.

These three options are clearly plausible options, but where Lewis and I part ways is the last sentence of his quote. Lewis states that these are the only three possible options to someone making the claims Jesus made. But there are so many other options. Jesus could have been evil, he could have been a devil or Satan. Jesus could have had a mental disorder (something that would have gone completely unnoticed in his day, before Western medicine). I suppose that would be covered under self-deceived (maybe with an *). He could be a combination of two of the options presented by Lewis. He could have been a lunatic and a liar. What about a crazy Lord? Is that not possible? What if Jesus was a Lord but unfortunately he is just one of many Lords throughout human history. So does this trilemma apply to the other humans who claimed divinity throughout human history? Jesus could have been an extraterrestrial. What if the Jesus of the Bible wasn't real to begin with. There is evidence that supports this. It's by no means conclusive but it's a plausible option. You see the problem with this. It's narrow-minded to say it must be one of the three options.

Then we can apply this to almost anything. At Barnes & Noble the other day I picked up a copy of the newest non-fiction book on the afterlife called Heaven Is Real, But So Is Hell by Vassula Ryden. The author's credentials are "an author, renowned speaker, and mystic." She asserts that she has experienced the supernatural forces that shapes all of our lives. In one synopsis of the book it says, "The book answers many of the questions that people have been asking for thousands of years and at the same time offers a glimpse into God's love and justice, and of what is soon to come." This book is under the religion/prophecy section at your local bookstore (if you still have one). Ignoring the obvious problem of hallucinations, NDE, or other brain functions, this book is considered by the faithful as an air-tight case for the Christian view of the afterlife.

What is stopping us to applying the Lewis trilemma to this author? The author who wrote this and makes these extraordinary claims (without any extraordinary evidence) of "seeing" hell, demons, and angels, this author who can prophecy the future of all humanity and the intentions of supernatural beings, can be held to the same standard. She is either a lunatic for making these claims. She is either a liar for making these claims. Or she is Lord? Ok that one doesn't work. Jesus was saying that he was lord and this woman is not but she IS saying she is a prophet so we can replace "Lord" with "Prophet". Either Vassula Ryden is a lunatic, a liar, or a prophet. However, as I've pointed out, these are not the only options. The author could have a mental disorder (a claim that can be easily tested with modern medical practices). She could be a devil herself, or even Satan. What if the author was actually Lord. There is that remote possibility. What if she was reincarnated? What about a reptilian alien? As you see, the Lewis trilemma is faulty logic in both cases, when applied to anything and anyone making any claims. It's demonstrably over-simplified.

What Happens When You Love Science Too Much?

The following excerpt is from the book The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates by Frans de Waal (I will comment at the end in italics)

At the end of my weeklong transatlantic excursion, I found time on the plane back to read through the nearly seven hundred responses generated by my blog Morals without God? Most comments were constructive and supportive, expressing belief in shades of gray when it comes to the origins of morality. But atheists couldn't resist the occasion to make more digs at religion, thus bypassing my intentions. For me, understanding the need for religion is a far superior goal to bashing it. The central issue of atheism, which is the (non)existence of God, strikes me as monumentally uninteresting. What do we gain by getting in a tizzy about the existence of something no one can prove or disprove? In 2012, Alain de Botton raised hackles by opening his book Religion for Atheists with the line "The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of any religion is whether or not it is true - in terms of being handed down from heaven to the sound of trumpets." Yet, for some this remains the only issue they can talk about. How did we reach this small-mindedness, as if we've joined a debating club, where all one can do is win or lose?

Science isn't the answer to everything. As a student, I learned about the "naturalistic fallacy" and how it would be the zenith of arrogance for scientists to think that their work could illuminate the distinction between right and wrong. This was not long after World War II, mind you, which had brought us massive evil justified by a scientific theory of self-directed evolution. Scientists had been very much involved in the genocidal machine, conducting unimaginable experiments. Children had been sown together to create conjoined twins, live humans had been operated on without anesthesia, and limbs and eyes had been surgically relocated on people's bodies. I have never forgotten this dark postwar period, during which every scientist who spoke with a German accent was suspect. American and British scientists were not innocent, however, because they were the ones who earlier in the century had brought us eugenics. They advocated racist immigration laws and forced sterilization of the deaf, blind, mentally ill, and physically impaired, as well as criminals and members of minority races. Surgeries to this effect were secretly performed on victims visiting the hospital for other reasons. For those who do not wish to blame this sordid history on science, and prefer to speak of pseudoscience, it will be good to consider that eugenics was a serious academic discipline at many universities. By 1930, institutes devoted to it existed in England, Sweden, Switzerland, Russia, America, Germany, and Norway. Its theories were supported by prominent figures, including American presidents. Its founding father, the British anthropologist and polymath Sir Francis Galton, became a fellow of the Royal Society and was knighted well after having espoused ideas about improving the human race. Notably, Galton felt that the average citizen was "too base for the everyday work of modern civilization."

It took Adolf Hitler and his henchmen to expose the moral bankruptcy of these ideas. The inevitable result was a precipitous drop of faith in science, especially biology. In the 1970s, biologists were still commonly equated with fascists, such as during the heated protest against "sociobiology". As a biologist myself, I am glad those acrimonious days are over, but at the same time I wonder how anyone could forget this past and hail science as our moral savior. How did we move from deep distrust to naive optimism? While I do welcome science of morality - my own work is part of it - I can't fathom calls for science to determine  human values (as per the subtitle of Sam Harris's The Moral Landscape). Is pseudoscience something of the past? Are modern scientists free from moral biases? Think of the Tuskegee syphilis study of just a few decades ago, or the ongoing involvement of medical doctors in prisoner torture at Guantanamo Bay. I am profoundly skeptical of the moral purity of science, and feel that its role should never exceed that of morality's handmaiden.

The confusion seems to stem from the illusion that all we need for a good society is more knowledge. Once we have figured out the central algorithm of morality, so the thinking goes, we can safely hand things over to science. Science will guarantee the best choices. This is a bit like thinking that a celebrated art critic must be a great painter or a food critic a great chef. After all, critics offer profound insights in regard to particular products. They possess the right knowledge, so why not let them handle the job? A critic's specialty, however, is post hoc evaluation, not creation. And creation takes intuition, skill, and vision. Even if science helps us appreciate how morality works, this doesn't mean it can guide it anymore than that someone who knows how eggs should taste can be expected to lay one.

The view of morality as a set of immutable principles, or laws, that are ours to discover ultimately comes from religion. It doesn't really matter whether it is God, human reason, or science that formulates these laws. All of these approaches share a top-down orientation, their chief premise being that humans don't know how to behave and that someone must tell them. But what if morality is created in day-to-day social interaction, not at some abstract mental level? What if it is grounded in the emotions, which most of the time escape the neat categorizations that science is fond of? Since the whole point of my book is to argue a bottom-up approach, I will obviously return to this issue. My views are in line with the way we know the human mind works, with visceral reactions arriving before rationalizations, and also with the way evolution produces behavior. A good place to start is with an acknowledgment of our background as social animals, and how this background predisposes us to treat each other. This approach deserves attention at a time in which even avowed atheists are unable to wean themselves from a semireligious morality, thinking that the world would be a better place if only a white-coated priesthood could take over from the frocked one.

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* I am currently reading this engrossing book and I can't get enough of it. The author offers countless true tales of altruism in all kinds of animals species - providing proof that morality is not strictly a human construct and it is most definitely not top-down but bottom-up through our evolutionary past. However, the passage above smacked me square in the face. I read it over and over again. Stopping to think. Think about myself and what I'm all about. It made me reevaluate my entire perspective on science. I admit that at times I lean towards what is called scientism. It's an overreach that naturally happens, for me, when I stumble across new information. I take it to the extreme. My thirst for more scientific knowledge to help me understand this cosmos is a healthy thing but at times it can be taken too far. In some respects, it may have to do with me not ever reading a book by Daniel Dennett. I have heard him speak multiple times; he is an outspoken atheist, philosopher but is fascinated by religion and wants it studied as a natural phenomenon. This is essentially what it appears Frans de Waal thinks as well. The Hitchens, Harris, and Dawkins style atheism sees no need for religion. Hitchens was devoutly anti-theist, making us laugh with tales of the horrific dictator in the sky. While I agree mostly with the Hitchens crowd (if there was a God - as described in the holy books, how awful that would be!) ... I must say that this part of Waal's book shook me a bit.

Perspective is something that is crucially important when trying to make a model of reality. And historical perspective is key. In a cosmic scale we have 13.8 billion years of perspective, for the Earth we have 4.5 billion years of perspective. So we can brush off claims with no evidence like Young Earth Creationism obviously, but what we also must keep in mind is the history of science as well, which rose from religions. alchemy was an early form of chemistry. Science, just as religion, has had a dark past as the author pointed out and we atheists do ourselves a disservice for not admitting that. I for one have been altered by reading this book (especially the above passage). I hope that the evolution of my thinking is reflected in my upcoming blog posts. In the past I put too much emphasis on science solving ALL of our problems. This is naive optimism (as the author puts it correctly). This is an overreach and something that I must reel in on in my own head. The issue with growing up deeply religious as I did is that I tend to push too hard the other direction once I found countless flaws in the "holy books". I may have reached too far with science. I am changing and correcting myself from now on, just like good science does.

Perspective. Addiction. And the Irony of How I Came to Be.

1. Let Jesus save you.
2. Come out of your blanket, cut your hair, and dress like a white man.
3. Have a Christian family with one wife for life only.
4. Live in a house like your white brother. Work hard and wash often.
5. Learn the value of a hard-earned dollar. Do not waste your money on giveaways. Be punctual.
6. Believe that property and wealth are signs of divine approval.
7. Keep away from salons and strong spirits.
8. Speak the language of your white brother. Send your children to school to do likewise.
9. Go to church often and regularly.
10. Do Not go to Indian dances or to the medicine man.

This list was found by Native American Mary Brave Bird from her grandfather. It was a poster that was given to the Native Americans by the Christian missionaries to be tacked up on their wall. These excerpts are from an essay entitled Civilize Them With a Stick by Mary Brave Bird (Crow Dog) with Richard Erdoes. In this article she describes what it was like growing up in an old Indian boarding school,

It is almost impossible to explain to a sympathetic white person what a typical old Indian boarding school was like; how it affected the Indian child suddenly dumped into it like a small creature from another world, helpless, defenseless, bewildered, trying desperately and instinctively to survive and sometimes not surviving at all. I think such children were like the victims of Nazi concentration camps trying to tell average, middle-class Americans what their experience had been like. 

I was taken to the old-fashioned mission schools at St. Francis, run by the nuns and the Catholic fathers, built sometime around the turn of the century and not improved a bit when I arrived, not improved as far as the buildings, the food, the teachers, or their methods were concerned.

Oddly enough, we owed our unspeakable boarding schools to the do-gooders, the white Indian-lovers. The schools were intended as an alternative to the outright extermination seriously advocated by Generals Sherman and Sheridan, as well as by most settlers and prospectors overrunning our land. "You don't have to kill those poor benighted heathen," the do-gooders said, "in order to solve the Indian Problem. Just give us a chance to turn them into useful farmhands, laborers, and chambermaids who will break their backs for you at low wages." In that way the boarding schools were born. The kids were taken away from their villages and pueblos, in their blankets and moccasins, kept completely isolated from their families - sometimes for as long as ten years - suddenly coming back, their short hair slick with pomade, their necks raw from stiff, high collars, their thick jackets always short in the sleeves and pinching under the arms, their tight patent leather shoes giving them corns, the girls in starched white blouses and clumsy, high-buttoned boots - caricatures of white people. When they found out - and they found out quickly  - that they were neither wanted by whites nor by Indians, they got good and drunk, many of them staying drunk for the rest of their lives. 

Reading this essay makes my own life experience of religious indoctrination seem laughable in comparison. I think of times I didn't want to go to church and was required to, but I was never beat with a whip. I didn't really want to sing in the choir but felt the pressure to as I began middle school. These requirements were natural to me at the time because it was all I knew. The brutality the Native Americans experienced was horrific. Not just the out right genocide of a race of people by white European settlers but the destruction of their entire way of life. Their culture was decimated by the white man and its religion. A few years back I visited the Catholic mission at San Juan Capistrano in California. It's a mission founded in 1776 by Spanish Catholics of the Franciscan Order. While on the tour, I learned all about the clash between the Catholic missionaries and the Native American ways of life. This is what it looks like to conquer a race of people. You move in, kill off the ones that fight back. The ones that don't, you "convert" to your way of life, which is all filtered through the religion. Catholics did this well. So did Protestants. Christianity as a whole took over the New World, by force.

I recall Christopher Hitchens once posing a question to his debating opponent, "Is it not the case that the spread of Christianity, attributing it to the innate truth of the Bible story, was spread by that means, or because emperor Constantine decided to make Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire?" It's a legit question. Christianity spread by force in its early years and then spread by force through the Americas later. Neil deGrasse Tyson recently asked Morgan Freeman on Startalk Radio why he didn't think that aliens would come take over our planet. Morgan Freeman bluntly responded, "why should we assume that aliens behave like white Europeans?"

After I had graduated high school and wasted two years of my life at Bible College, I came home to think things through. I was having a mild crisis of faith. I wasn't seeing eye to eye with anyone except some of my closest friends. The people at my church, my family all seemed so "out of touch" with the real world, even though I actually had no idea what the "real world" really was. I just had a small taste of it after I dropped out of Bible College. I moved in with a few friends that were from a different Bible College (an Assemblies of God one to be specific). These friends were all in a punk band together. Mind you, it was Christian punk music but nonetheless it was more progressive than the ultra-strict Baptist College I had attended. I began to have relationships and friendships with people that were not Christian at all. This was the biggest new experience to me. As I sit here typing this I honestly cannot recall a name of a person I knew growing up that was not a Christian. Our family absolutely surrounded itself in like-minded people in regards to our religion.

Eventually I moved back home and got an apartment with my brother and a life long friend of mine who went to the same Christian grade school - middle school - high school. We formed an alternative rock band and through this we met a lot of non-Christians. This is were my shell really began to crack. I still labeled myself a Christian but didn't think too much about it. Of course during this time, I began distancing myself from my families values. I was still a relatively good person, but I did not like the idea of not watching R-rated movies, or censoring my vocabulary (no cussing allowed); I despised not being able to have sex, drink alcohol, or smoke cigarettes. I began the often-treaded path of being that Christian who smokes cigarettes and drinks beer on occasion. The "back-slidden" Christian. I thought I was so cool. I justified my actions with the Bible (as all Christians do - just find a verse and make it work for you. It's simple. Every Christian does it!). *by the way try this experiment with Harry Potter or 50 Shades of Grey or Life of Pi. Just pick a passage from any book and see how it can relate to your life. It's so simple! Everything is about you!

Fast forward 5-10 years in my life and I have become mild alcoholic. I refused to accept that I drank too much (a common symptom of any addiction). I was smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for about 7-8 years. I partied nearly every night. At this point in my life (less then 2 years ago) I was an agnostic/atheist so religion was gone in my life, but not the addiction to these substances. The thing you tend to do when you are young and dumb is reject EVERYTHING your parents teach you. You lump it all in to one chunk of "parental guidance" that you discard completely. I know this, having completely stopped drinking alcohol for almost 9 months now, and having stopped smoking for at least 3 years. We unite everything our parents taught us in together in our haste and reject it all. To this day I can't express how grateful I am that my parents taught me correctly about substance abuse. They were very anti-drinking and anti-smoking and I should have listened to them from the beginning.

There is a problem that we are all guilty of. We characterize, categorize, then reject or except based on these decisions. Look at the major news media on cable, for example. Fox News demonizes liberals. MSNBC demonizes conservatives. When in reality, most people have different opinions on different issues that make them hard to fit in the binary that is forced upon us for essentially maximizing profits. It's more lucrative for Fox News or MSNBC to hone in on their target markets. Diversity is not good in the corporate business model of cable news. There are multiple examples in race, gender, class, or sexuality of society forcing binary systems on human beings. I was wrong to lump in my hatred of my parents religious culture with their advice regarding the highly addictive, drugs of alcohol and tobacco. *I want to add here that I do not recall my parents warning me about marijuana. I would assume its because of the lack of their understanding of the drug, but marijuana is absolutely harmless compared to the legal drugs of alcohol and tobacco. 

People drink to excess for many different reasons. Just as the Native Americans that were forced to be like white people and become "civilized" only to return to a cold rejection by whites and Native Americans. If any people could have had the right to drown their sorrows the Native Americans do. It's an understatement to say it's sad to see what alcohol did to the Native Americans. My ancestors (the part of me that isn't Cherokee) are responsible for systematically destroying an entire race of people. A beautiful natural race of human beings that valued the earth. A race that predates what we now call conservation, environmentally consciousness, and sustainability. Before Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" was ever written, these ideas weren't something to strive for in the Native American culture. They were their way of life. We almost deify the Native Americans now as we look back, thinking of the Indian with the single tear as trash thrown out of the car window hits his feet. They were wise beyond their years. We are just now catching up, scrambling trying to correct our mistakes that are destroying this planet.

Mary Brave Bird writes,

The mission school at St. Francis was a curse for our family for generations. My grandmother went there, then my mother, then my sisters and I. At one time or other every one of us tried to run away. Grandmother told me once about the bad times she had experienced at St. Francis. In those days ... anybody who disobeyed the nuns was severely punished. The building in which my grandmother stayed had three floors, for girls only. Way up in the attic were little cells, about five by five by ten feet. One time she was in church and instead of praying she was playing jacks. As punishment they took her to one of those little cubicles where she stayed in darkness because the windows had been boarded up. They left her there for a whole week with only bread and water for nourishment. After she came out she promptly ran away, together with three other girls. They were found and brought back. The nuns stripped them naked and whipped them. They used a horse buggy whip on my grandmother. Then she was put back into the attic - for two weeks.

My mother had much the same experiences but never wanted to talk about them, and then there I was, in the same place. The school is now run by the BIA - the Bureau of Indian Affairs - but only since about fifteen years ago. When I was there, during the 1960s, it was still run by the Church. The Jesuit fathers ran the boys' wing and the Sisters of the Sacred Heart ran us - with the help of the strap. Nothing had changed since my grandmother's days. I have been told recently that even in the 70s they were still beating children at that school. All I got out of school was being taught how to pray. I learned quickly that I would be beaten if I failed in my devotions or, God forbid, prayed the the wrong way, especially in Indian to Wakan Tanka, The Indian Creator. 

Barbara (my sister) was still in school when I arrived and during my first year or two she could still protect me a little bit. When Barb was a seventh-grader she ran away together with five other girls, early in the morning before sunrise. They brought them back in the evening. The girls had to wait for two hours in front of the mother superior's office. They were hungry and cold, frozen through. It was wintertime and they had been running the whole day without food, trying to make good their escape. The mother superior asked each girl, "Would you do this again?" She told them that as punishment they would not be allowed to visit home for a month and that she'd keep them busy on work details until the skin on their knees and elbows had worn off. At the end of her speech she told each girl, "Get up from this chair and lean over it." She then lifted the girls' skirts and pulled down their underpants. Not little girls either, but teenagers. She had a leather strap about a foot long and four inches wide fastened to a stick, and beat the girls, one after another, until they cried. Barb did not give her that satisfaction but just clenched her teeth. There was one girl, Barb told me, the nun kept on beating and beating until her arm got tired. 

These disturbing stories of Native American torture at Catholic boarding schools is a common theme among American history. These are the stories you do not read growing up in a Christian home, singing praises to Jesus among the white faces. We dressed up as Pilgrims and Indians on Thanksgiving in school and sat together in harmony not aware of the full truth of what took place in these days of colonization and indoctrination. My relatives brought their diseases over here, my relatives participated in the genocide of the Native Americans and now here I am - a semi-priveleged white American male in the 20th century typing on a laptop (made by Chinese slave labor). This is my heritage. Pillage and plunder. Divide and conquer. Indoctrinate and destroy. We (and my fellow white Americans) are guilty of this past. What are we to do with this information? The twisted reality begins to take shape - I am alive today because my ancestors came to America and conquered it. If it wasn't for my ancestors coming here by force and stealing survival techniques from Native Americans I would not be alive today to be able to type this blog entry.

It's the same mind-fuck as realizing that without the Industrial Revolution and the rise of fossil fuels as a cheap, abundant energy source I would not be alive today to passionately promote ending our collective addiction to fossil fuels. The dirty energy that is warming the planet and causing climate change over the past 100 years is the very thing that has quite literally given me life. It's a complicated life we live in this modern era. We are able to ponder on these strange puzzles of history and circumstance in our minds. We are approaching a point of return. We are catching up to ancient Native American wisdom that tells us how to live sustainably and treat the earth as our mother (which it absolutely is if you know geology and biology - it's our life source) We are catching up to where we (white people) once were - conquering and controlling. We still are. There are some of us white people still left that do not want anything to do with the conquer and conquest of our past/present. I am one. I am repulsed to be associated with the do-gooders or the past Indian-lovers, but I am not so naive to realize out of this came my own existence.

The Spirit Among Us All

You can nearly touch the passion in the air. Everyone is standing, no one is sitting, with arms raised high in the air. The chanting that started as low mumbles has organized itself into a vocal frenzy. The building is full of cheers while people jump up and down. It's raw excitement/anticipation. At the center of all of our attention is a small group of people leading the audience in these songs and chants! Jumping higher and lifting their hands to the sky with joy. There is this symbol of what unites us all front row center at this gathering. The buzz is all around us and I can feel the power of human solidarity, but I have a tinge of guilt in my heart as I don't sing with those around me. I also don't take part in the ceremonial drinking and eating. I seem to be the only one not participating. This makes things a little awkward. I don't get involved in the raising of hands or the chants. People frown on a stickler don't they? Unmistakingly, something seems to be alive, soaring through the air in this building. It's a spirit, I think. Is it the Holy Spirit?

We Got the Holy Spirit! Yes We Do! We Got the Holy Spirit! How about you?

No.

It's Team Spirit. I am at the Thomas and Mack Stadium where UNLV is taking on Fresno State in men's basketball. You may have confused where I was for a minute. What you thought was the praise and worship team leading the congregation in praise and worship was actually cheerleaders. The food and drink isn't communion (wine/grape juice and wafers) but beer and popcorn. The symbol that unites us all isn't a crucifix or cross but a mascot that represents the sports team. The atmosphere of both a sporting event and an Evangelical mega-church revival is very similar. I was just at a heavy metal concert at Planet Hollywood here in Las Vegas. The band was Meshuggah. People in front formed a mosh pit and everyone was at least mildly head-banging to the intense live music that is Meshuggah. The show was really good. It reminded me of going to see TOOL, the Pixies, or Radiohead. It is the sense of unity, the passion in the air that creates "the mood". Human connectivity is a powerful thing. This is what church is. This is what you confuse with the Holy Spirit.

At this game there was a large portion of the fans doing what they call "spirit fingers" as a UNLV player shot free throws. They were "willing" the ball to go in the basket. Of course this superstitious silliness is comical and absurd but it got me thinking- how hilarious it would be if this "willing things" really was true.. but unfortunately it only works at sporting events for free throw shooting. Nothing else. What a cruel cosmic joke, huh? I really find it hilarious to dream that there may be supernatural things but they are so useless that they aren't even worth mentioning. I think it would be hysterical if there was a God. However this "god" was just a bumbling idiot college kid who happened to create our universe in a lab in some other dimension. Like some sort of goof-up accident. I hope that it is true. Can you even imagine how Christianity, Islam, Judaism would react to that?! Oh we were WAAAY off!

Where basketball games and concerts are taken as light-hearted events that mean ultimately nothing in the grand cosmic scheme of things, evangelical revivals and youth church camps are much more intense. I would say mostly and especially the ones geared for younger kids or even teenagers. Adults don't have as much of an excuse to being mind-controlled (though it's sometimes near impossible to break the brainwashing when one's been exposed to it for so long). Growing up in a fundamentalist Christian environment I attended my fair share of revival meetings and hellfire and brimstone church camp services.

There were many reasons I was "saved" or became (as Christians say) "born again" multiple different times. I was originally "saved" at the age of 5. I think. Of course even that memory mostly escapes me at my age now. As an evangelical of the Baptist variety we didn't believe in "losing your salvation" as the Pentecostals did. You know, religious dogma differences. How comical it all seems now. So if I was having doubts then I was taught to accept the "fact" that I wasn't actually "saved" in the first place. There were 3 specific reasons I was "re-born again". I can't recall the ages, but I was consistently getting "saved" up through high school (just for afterlife insurance purposes of course). The 3 specific reasons were as follows:

1. The 70's Biblical apocalyptic film series:

"Thief in the Night", "A Distant Thunder", "Image of the Beast", and "Prodigal Planet". There was a youth ministries group called Awana (stands for Approved Workmen Are Not Ashamed - from 2 Timothy 2:15). Many people growing up in evangelical churches will be familiar with this group. There were pizza parties and YMCA lock-ins. We would memorize verses and recite them back for points and badges sort of like a Christian Boy Scouts. I watched these apocalyptic films in our Awana meetings. I don't know if it was part of the curriculum or whatever, but I guess they just thought some good old fear should help scare these kids straight. Well it worked. I was terrified of devil worshipers, the anti-christ, Unite (the one world government that will arise after the rapture), and of course the rapture itself. My worse fear was coming home to my mom and dad being gone and nothing but their clothes left on the living room floor. So you can imagine how I avoided the laundry room. Thank goodness my parents weren't messy people that left clothes on the ground in their room or I would have been consistently mortified. How hilarious that seems now, but how real the fear was back then. Such needless fear.

*I remember thinking the "clothes dilemma" was such a problem for the whole rapture scenario. On one hand you had a clogged sky/atmosphere/galaxy/universe area with a bunch of naked Christians. On the other hand you had the G rated version of the rapture where everyone was caught up in heaven with Jesus still wearing all their earthly clothes (which of course contradicts that no one will be able to bring their possessions with them to heaven.)

2. The Church Camp Revival Services (specifically the night services).

For a young Evangelical teenager summer church camp was the highlight of your life. This is mostly because of social interactions with other young people from other churches all across the Midwest United States. And the social interactions I'm specifically referring too are meeting girls. This was a powerful time - Puberty. It was an impressionable time for indoctrination and fear mongering. So mix all this natural young curiosity with religious dogma and you get a hot bed of "changing lives".  So these night sermons each night of the week long summer camp were very intense. They were very much scare tactics to get us to "change our lives for Christ." NO ONE wants to burn in hell forever. So again, I was once saved ... again. This was my life equation growing up:

fear + doubt = ask Jesus into your heart again (JUST TO BE SURE!)

3. Local Evangelical Revivals.

We had several different traveling evangelists that specialized in revamping "dead churches". To name a few - Jamey Ragel and Gene Wolfenbarger - to name a few. I remember Jamie Ragel always seemed so strong and powerful. He was also a comedian so that made him more engaging. All of these traveling evangelists were God's experts so they were very intimidating to us kids. They were the professional "men of god". Gene Wolfenbarger stands out the most in my memory. He came to our church when I was in junior high to hold a revival. It was one of those week long events with a service each night. I remember he once threw his shoe down the aisle in the middle of a passionate, old-time religion preach.

... And no, George W. Bush was not in attendance.

During the Gene Wolfenbarger revival week at the church, there was one night set aside specifically for kids. I was so nervous that night. Not because of the scary shoe-throwing evangelist man, but because I had finally gathered enough courage to ask out the girl who lived across the street from my church. Her name was Mandy, and I had the biggest crush on her. So much in fact that I gave her a note asking her if she would go out with me and she said "yes". So my idea for our first date?? - Gene Wolfenbarger revival service in the gym of our church/school! I was a romantic genius. Sad thing is, that's all I knew. Church activities were my only possible options growing up. I remember being so nervous to grab her hand during the ramblings of a madman. Gene kept his shoes on this time, but he made sure to scare the living hell out of all the kids. (I love the professional career choice of scaring children for a living.) I just remember not being effected by it too much this time. It's funny how just being human boy (with blooming attractions to human girls) trumps eternal damnation for your soul.

If you must know, I didn't grab her hand. I chickened out and afterwards kicked myself and felt like a failure. It mattered so much to me. So much in fact that I hadn't noticed what was happening when he finally concluded. During this sermon there were deacons of our church guarding the exit/entrance doors to the gym. Apparently Gene had went a little long on his sermon and it was much later than advertised. Parents weren't allowed in to get their kids. No kidding. In fact there were multiple complaints to the church. And Gene was never invited back again. The local paper wrote an article on it painting our church in a very bad light. They said men were trapping children inside like guard dogs. I scoured the internet trying to locate this article, but to no avail. I really wanted to share it with you in the link section at the bottom of this. Weird how I seemed to miss all of this while it was happening. I guess I was a tad preoccupied. Mandy's dad however was not, and he was pissed off, to say the least. Mandy and I weren't allowed to do anything together outside of their house ever again.

But this story has a happy ending... Even though crazy religious nonsense ruined my relationship with one of my first loves, I bounced back and yes, ladies and gentlemen, I have dated since then. I have also held hands with those girls I've dated. We can move on now...

The power of "spirit", whether it be from a sporting event, a band concert, or a revival service, can be a successful motivator for fear, elation, or unity. The psychology behind a church service is well documented at this point. The fact is our species is very sheep-like. We follow the leader. We are easily manipulated and controlled. This is what kings, popes, and priests have known for centuries. The social group setting that is church is something that is hard to break in people. As I've stated in a previous blog, my father is one that is heavily involved in his church. He attends church every Sunday for adult Sunday school, morning service, choir practice followed by Sunday evening service. He also attends church every Wednesday for Bible study. He never misses a service. Sometimes even if he is physically ill. This devotion, mixed with human connections (his close friends),  collective praising and singing (unity), fearing/loving your imaginary father (Yahweh), and swimming in confirmation bias (The Bible is infallible because the Bible says its infallible) creates a complicated web often too strong to break apart.

Atheism is not a religion, despite what your Christian friends may say. They may follow with something like "Richard Dawkins is just as fundamentalist about atheism as Jerry Falwell is about Christianity." I've had agnostic friends who have said this about me and my "preachy" atheism. The second sentence does not prove the first. Atheism is of course the lack of belief in a God and an outright rejection of all religions. Those who may say this to you don't understand atheism. Richard Dawkins is very much passionate about his non-belief in a god, because he holds the default position. He's passionate about being skeptical. He's passionate about not accepting things on "faith". Atheism is the default position and it is up to the theists to prove to us their extraordinary claim that there is a god. Carl Sagan sums it up: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Period. So you can see how the analogy comparing Richard Dawkins with Jerry Falwell is incorrect. Despite saying all of this, those that are non-believers (some call us the "NONES") may need to rip off this idea of "church" from the believers.

The church of atheism wouldn't worship any deity or sing praises to any divine being, but instead would simply be a community to gather for potlucks (that's right! POTLUCKS, motherfucker!!) and human fellowship. Successful civilizations have learned from past civilizations and stolen from these the best parts of society and culture. Atheists must steal from the religious community and build a few "churches" and maybe then we can get tax breaks too. Want to avoid paying taxes? Start a church. The mission statement to the church of atheism could be "We hate and despise mission statements so this church is whatever you want it to be, ... bitch." We could marry and divorce LGBT people ONLY! Let babies cry as loud as they want during "services"; hell, we could let babies even run the "services". We could hold rock concerts and YMCA lock-ins for our kids. We could take communion (eat some magic mushrooms and drink some wine). An offering could be taken (not for missions/proselytizing, but for actually feeding poor people in the community). We would preach the importance of living locally, while thinking globally (for clean energy and biodiversity). Our sermons would be about the plight of African-Americans, Native Americans, Japanese-Americans, Iranian-Americans, Hispanic-Americans in this country and how they have suffered and been abused by the white patriarchs. (you know, the truth!) Our naturalist-centered message would simply be - let's make this natural world better. Let's help the fight against oppression, racism, bigotry, sexism, superstitious thinking, religious dogma. We embrace knowledge, doubt, freewill (in your face, Sam Harris!), love, peace, acceptance, friendship, and skepticism over all.

These atheist communities exist out in the world. They gather at conferences and retreats more often than they used to, but we need to organize locally. It's important in this day and age to communicate with our neighbors. Religions spend money and time thinking of ways to market to their community. It's our turn to turn the tables and join together in our local communities to spread the good news of "it's OK to be who you are. There is no hell. There is no heaven. There is no perfect instruction book. There is no original sin. There is no God." You can't get past the 2nd chapter of the 1st book of the Bible before you see the glaring difference between theism and atheism. God does not want his creation to eat from the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil". Not the tree of good and evil. It's the "knowledge" of good and evil that's the problem here. Simply put, God does not want his creation to feed it's hunger for knowledge. If you are pro-education or pro-learning you should cringe at this. Religion is for the sheep. It's a vestige of the infancy of our species. It feeds the herd mentality and the ancient superstitious woo-woo deep within our roots. It's those that "just have faith" without evidence. Those that try to pick holes (unsuccessfully by the way) at evolution or a famous atheist's argument but REFUSE to use the same scrutiny/"skepticism" to their own beliefs. It's a deep-seated bias that they either cannot see or refuse to look at. It's a way of getting literally no where on the path of knowledge. Knowledge! There's that evil word again - according to Yahweh.

Whether a sporting event, a religious revival, or a concert, we are a passionate species that thrives off the energy of our peers. It's best to keep this in mind. It's best to recognize our biological characteristics before being swept up in the heat of the moment. Let's be contemplative and wise, let's steal from the best bits of religions and create a better world together.  Here are some links:

The psychology behind mega-church services as a social movement: article from Psychology Today:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/what-is-he-thinking/200904/mega-churches-psychology-and-social-change

Check out Awana:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awana

Meet Gene Wolfenbarger:

http://www.thegatheringfamily.com/im-new/pastor-gene-karen/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UQOyS72igY

Meet Jamey Ragle:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw7rQGiMyPU

Watch "Thief In the Night" (full movie):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYFwpx1K6bs

Watch "A Distant Thunder" (full movie):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8CaAEQGX88

Watch "Image of the Beast" (full movie):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFVcyrNB1YY

Watch the trailer to "Prodigal Planet" (can't find full movie, sorry to leave you all hanging):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJR4uQb39ik

Leaving "Grace City"

*** I will periodically interject in the middle of quoting people in this blog. My interjections will be in parenthesis... ***

If you are a local to Las Vegas you are familiar with the free publication "The Las Vegas Weekly". In the February 21-27 issue pastor Dave Earley is featured on the cover with the headlines, "This Man Wants to Save Las Vegas: For a year, Pastor Dave Earley asked God where to start his church. Now, he's ready to turn Sin City into Grace City." The article was written by journalist, Rick Lax. I have to say I don't know Rick personally, but I'm familiar with who he is. He frequents where I work often to do his writing with his laptop. I have never spoken to him before, but now I will after I realized he was the one who wrote this article. I picked up the copy of this issue at an antique mall - where religious ideas belong. The whole concept is quite dated to say the least, however I decided to read the article and critique it. So here it is:

The article starts,

In 2012, 19 evangelists from Liberty University moved to the Valley to start a church. Now, Grace City is ready to save your soul. The author follows with, Pastor Dave Earley prays the way you and I scroll through Facebook news feeds, the way we watch TV, the way we breathe. All day, nonstop. As someone who no longer has Facebook I guess this doesn't include me. (Don't get me wrong, I am absolutely bragging.) However, I do watch TV and breathe on occasion. The article says that God woke up pastor Earley in the middle of the night by saying "Google Las Vegas". OK. I haven't even reached the end of the first paragraph of this piece and I'm already shaking my head. I just love how the God who is vulnerable to iron chariots (Judges 1:19) or doesn't understand modern medicine (Leviticus 14) is very much familiar with our largest internet search engine, Google. This modern day Christianity if so fucking ridiculous.

Paster Dave obviously then used google to look at Las Vegas (God despises "Bing" and "Yahoo" by the way) he saw a "broken city, a city that needed to be saved." What did pastor Dave do? He decided to donate money to nonprofit organizations like Three Square or Citizens United that help feed the homeless in Las Vegas first then fly out to Vegas to volunteer personally with these organizations. He decided to end hunger in Vegas. Oh, no I'm sorry... He decided to fly out here and proselytize to these poor people instead. Eh, same thing I guess. Nothing satisfies the aching hunger pangs like a good dose of "you are a sinner and you need to accept Christ or else burn in hell forever. But remember God loves you.". Yum!

Pastor Dave Earley used to teach "church planning" at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. Yeah, that's right, that's the Jerry Falwell church. The crazy man who said homosexuals are causing hurricanes or some dumb ass shit. To his credit our journalist, Rick Lax addresses this in the article and asks him bluntly,

Liberty is a big school. We're all trying to follow the Bible the best way we know how, the good pastor says.

I loved the public relations contortion (for Liberty University) he gives to spin his way out of that. Apparently the group prayed for 40 days, seven hours a day for Las Vegas. This group must not have read the multiple scientific studies proving that prayer does not work. They raised financial support so they could pray "full time". I wonder if they took lunch breaks? Do you think they get benefits? Their mission was to pray away the sin in sin city and turn it into "Grace City".

Gag.

Before we go any further, I should be upfront about my impression of the author of this article - the journalist Rick Lax. He could be described as a "pretty boy". He is always looking through the "Dating/Relationships" section at the bookstore I work at. On more than one occasion he has picked up the book The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists by Neil Strauss. The title says it all. To give him the benefit of the doubt he may have been doing research for a new article, but my guess is it was for personal use. He wears those jeans with these ornamental crosses and glittery gold gems all over the pockets. You know the jeans. He wears black v-neck t-shirts. He sits there, cocky with his laptop checking his facebook status constantly. So that's who's writing this. That's whose eyes we're viewing this pastor Dave through.

So ever-so-cool Mr. Lax sets the scene for us next:

We're in front of the UNLV Franklin J. Koch Auditorium. Winter break just ended a few days back and Grace City is trying to recruit new members by handing out fliers in a booth across from Kaplan Test Prep and next to 5-Hour Energy. The Grace City booth has free coffee but as Rick says, "it's hard to compete with free energy." Right, Rick, ... that's right. Our gonzo journalist Rick Lax goes on about a girl in the group saying "I like your shirt" to a passerby. A guy in the group (and I quote) "majestically bows" to other students passing by. This breaks the ice, the guy stops, and the associate pastor Sam Frye talks to this dude,

. . . and this is fucking boring. I'll skip ahead...

Pickup Artist 101: After you move in on a set, your wingman drops by and offers body contact as a social proof. - Rick Lax. Yes this is in the article.

Must everything have to go back to "picking up chicks", Rick?

OK back to the subject matter of the article:

The associate pastor tells his story. He was working on getting his masters degree at Liberty University while working at Olive Garden. I can relate to associate pastor Sam. At around the same age (25) I too was getting a college education to eventually answer God's calling - join the ministry. Sam asked God to show him which city he wanted him to live in to carry out God's ministry by the age of 30. At the age of 29, wouldn't you know it, God pointed him to Pastor Dave and Las Vegas! Just in the nick of time! The lesson I get from this? - God is a procrastinator.

The associate pastor is asked what he saw when he arrived in Las Vegas. 

A lot of sadness. I saw a lot of homeless people - the look on their faces, the emptiness, the drug addictions, the alcohol addictions, the isolation, the loneliness. Vegas is a transient place, so people get stuck in depression, and that leads to the addictions. People need to fill that void.

Lax follows with a cheesy little joke - "I was expecting him to say, 'The Bellagio fountains.'" Really, Rick? Really? I'm just a barely a 1/4th my way through this article and I already like these Bible thumpers more than the person writing this article.

Sam goes on,

We believe that Jesus is the way - the only way. A lot of people think there are other ways to fill the void and other ways to God and other ways to Heaven. We want to let them know that the only true fulfillment is in Christ.

Lax points out that Vegas is primarily anti-Christian, in a way that's what Vegas represents. It is after all "Sin City." True. He sites examples. However, Rick seems to miss the problem with everything the associate pastor just said. First off,  yes there is a lot of drugs and alcohol addicts and a lot of sadness, blah blah, but there is a lot of this in Detroit or Miami too. We could name several cities. What about other countries? I think Sam needs to visit areas in the Middle East, Africa, North Korea. These are real concerns if you are concerned about the quality of life for citizens.

Sam believes that Jesus is the way. This first sentence is enough. That is all he needs to say. It's no longer necessary for follow up sentences after that. It's Sam's belief and that's his opinion. However he goes on saying, Jesus is the ONLY way. Well, not only is Jesus NOT the only way, but we should back up to hammer in the very legit question - "Why is there even 'a way' in the first place?" A way to save ourselves from? .. you lost me at - punishment. You lost me at - Sin. Sam explains that there are people who think there are other ways to "fill this void" (because we all know if you subtract the addiction to alcohol and drugs you must fill it with worship of an ancient Jewish desert god) Other ways to get to heaven? I've said many times the Christian version of heaven sounds like hell to me. As Christopher Hitchens said, it sounds like North Korea. (with all the constant praise and worshiping of the dear leader). We are a nation obsessed with this "going to heaven" thing right now. Just look at the bestselling NON-FICTION (I reiterate - NONFICTION) books now at your local bookstore (if you still have one) and you will see what I mean. Heaven is not real. Sorry. And not to be all progressive Christian Rob Bell on you, but neither is hell either! There isn't a shred of evidence for any of it - even in books written by children or neurosurgeons or pastors. The hypothesis lacks sufficient evidence. The extraordinary claims have not met the need of extraordinary evidence.

The next setting Lax guides us to is a Sunday morning Grace City "church" service at Desert Bloom Park. 150 people are in attendance at this particular service. There's a wide variety of people, ranging from an old man wearing rainbow suspenders and a baby or two. I don't know. According to Rick Lax the sun peers through the cloud at the particular moments when the pastor is hammering home a point. What? Really? I know he was just trying to be cute here but I still cringed when I read that part.

Gag.

Pastor Dave preaches (the parentheses are my mystery science interjections),

Jesus knows what it is to suffer emotional anguish. He knows what pain is all about. He was beaten, whipped - they basically whipped him raw, took the skin off his back, put stakes in his hands and feet. (AND good morning little children, I Hope you like descriptions of graphic torture in the morning.) He suffered. Jesus Christ suffered physically, mentally and emotionally. (Christians really love playing this gore card to pull on the heart strings. It may work if one doesn't use their brain for two seconds. If one doesn't know any history. If one doesn't compare it to much worse suffering. What about the burning of witches in early America or being pulled apart on "the rack" for being a heretic in the Middle Ages? That HAS to hurt worse then being nailed then hung to a cross for a couple of days.) All of your sin and my sin (Sin City tie in!! whoop! whoop!) was dumped on Jesus Christ. (Maybe I wanted to keep my sin, damn it. Did you ever consider that option, Jesus Christ!? I do LIVE here in "Sin City". Now I just feel like a tourist since you forcibly took my sins away, Jesus. Thank you so much.) But God took the worst event in history (really? The worst?? The mass extinctions like "The Great Dying" or K-T boundary extinctions come to mind. Black plague. I could go on.) and he turned it into the best event in human history. (Really, the best?? I would lean towards the discovery of anticeptics. Or how about language? We did escape earth's atmosphere and LAND on the moon in the 60's! Robots we sent that are roaming around Mars just recently discovered that the geology and chemistry of Mars was absolutely compatible for life billions of years ago... Come on, Dave!)

I love this typical diatribe from Christian salesmen: (Now do your best to follow this line of logic!) God set up this one rule God can not break. Except he can but only by sending himself (who is also his own son) to atone for the almost unbreakable rule he set up in the first place. You know, "the way". The ONLY way to save your soul (a fictional mystical essence we all apparently have that has no physical characteristics) come on now! Just think this through for a second, Christian readers. Not one part of this is verified by any amount of sound evidence.

According to "ladies man" Lax, pastor Dave prays, the sun peaks out, and it's time for burgers and hotdogs. He meets Jeremiah, a one-handed guitar player (he should join a band with the drummer from "Def Leopard") and a drug addict that makes as much as $65 an hour as a street performer on the strip. The article says that he had a pot addiction. A pot addiction? is that real? I mean, is that a problem? It's pot, not meth. Maybe this guy needs to just learn how to better manage his street money. There's nothing wrong with smoking some grass if you are wise about how much you spend on it and maybe use it in moderation. It's now legal in a couple states. Jeremiah was dumped by his girlfriend which was proceeded by suicidal thoughts. He didn't go through with these thoughts, but it wasn't like he didn't try. Several times he jumped out into traffic only to have the oncoming vehicles stop before colliding with him.

Jeremiah's car breaks down and he gets a ride from pastor Dave's son, Andrew. During this ride Jeremiah admits to being "addicted to pot" and they go and smash all his bongs (how dramatic! . . . and tragic!) Now Jeremiah has replaced getting high with prayer.

Gag!

(He should try getting high THEN praying.)

Pastor Dave says, 

God uses my son Andrew for people on the edge, people who are gay, addicted, homeless, suffering with mental things - they're drawn to him. Even though he's a pastor's son, he's not like a pastor's son; he has like 30 tattoos. Andrew doesn't try to recruit these people, God brings them to him. They're homeless or they're couch surfers or they're addicted... and now they're free.

Wow. Yeah, there was a lot to break down there but what I noticed most was what Rick correctly picks up on - the gay part. Equating gay with mental illness and other problems. When confronted about the gay part Pastor Dave carefully dances,

I'm just referring to people who have at one time or another been viewed as being on the fringes of mainstream society. In the Bible Belt there are many traditional families with a husband and wife and three kids. Here there are more addicts, more street people and more people with what used to be called alternative lifestyles. Dave goes on to say that there are several people with "alternative lifestyles" that attend Grace City church.

Dave and his son describe themselves as "liberators of lost souls". They describe Las Vegas after being here a short time, People don't come here to go to church; they come here to gamble . It's a sad city. (unless you win a bunch of money, of course) The suicide rate is high (True.) - Three times the national average. The divorce right is high (well duh); and the addiction rate is high (to pot?). People are isolated in this town. A lot don't have families. They're looking for a family. (A family that tells you if you don't follow their line of worship and slave service to their deity he will torture you with fire for all eternity. - you know - a loving family!)

Here's where I REALLY part ways with our cheeky local journalist ...

After the service a woman approaches pastor Dave who has cancer. Pastor Dave and his wife stand on either side of the woman and pray for her cancer to go away. Ricky goes on to talk about if this women approached him he wouldn't even know where to begin. He states its easy to be skeptical about prayer making a difference. He even references the John Templeton Foundation study that found that prayer actually harms those in recovery. Rick Lax says,

Its easy to see that this woman approached Pastor Dave looking for help, and after the prayer, she felt a little bit better. Every parishioner who showed up Sunday morning seemed to.

What?? No Rick. No. You are following for that trap. Just because the placebo effects work doesn't mean it isn't wrong. Wrong is wrong. Period. There is no "Bill O'Reilly Logical Argument" applied here (each person has their own Truth). The evidence in various studies point conclusively that prayer doesn't work. I do give Rick some credit for mentioning the John Templeton Foundation study that found prayer does not work. Another study he could have mentioned is the Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP). This study produced the same results: Prayer doesn't work. It is comical to note that in this study those patients receiving intercessory prayer actually fared worse than those not receiving it. Maybe prayer does work but only in the opposite way we expect it to. I am reminded of Bill Hicks "trickster god" he describes when talking about Creationists saying that God put fossils here to "test our faith". So the lesson here is do not pray for people that are sick unless you want them to get worse.

If you follow the evidence as all reasonable people should you would come to the conclusion that all of this (from the Pastor thinking he is helping by praying to the woman who "feels better now" to our edgy favorite local journalist saying everyone seemed better off) is a giant waste of time. The best I can personally give to prayer as a practice is the meditative benefits of doing it. I even know an atheist that prays (merely using it as a methodology, not talking to any actual deity). I know an atheist friend of mine that meditates too. It's essentially internal focus and "getting it all out" into the open, privately of course. This could be healthy at relieving some stress, but yoga and meditation work much better than prayer in my opinion.

Lax switches the scene ending this article. He takes us to Andrew's (Pastor Dave's son) apartment. As pastor Dave puts it "people on the edge" are all gathered inside. He describes those in attendance of this Bible study. People with just one arm and missing toes. (More band members!) One person who was stabbed in the chest but fully recovered. How? God of course. Atheists prepare the meals for this meeting. Atheists? Rick Lax explains that one atheist, Arturo, has constant pressure from Grace City to convert to Christianity. Arturo says, They know I prefer not to be hassled, so instead they pray for me. (useless and apparently harmful as we've previously pointed out) I just smile and thank them. This atheist doesn't get it. Don't encourage Christians by thanking them for prayer but show them how prayer doesn't work. It's just a fact. Even if there are good intentions behind these prayers, it's a complete waste of time. *See Daniel Dennett talking about Christians who prayed for him when he was recovering in the hospital.

Andrew gathers everyone into a circle in the room and tells each person to pray the "evil spirits" out of the room. He then counts down 1-2-3, then BOOM! ? What? Rick writes, "Then BOOM! Wall of sound." I have no idea what that means. And no explanation, and moving on apparently... The one arm guy is praying angrily. Another is praying like a televangelist. And yet another is laying their hands on another in prayer. After this spectacle, they go around the circle reading Bible verses and explaining what they mean to each of them. (You know - it's all relative and subjective with Bible verses. )
Rick says "it's moving stuff". I sense the sarcasm. Or maybe that's just great writing. "But truth be told I'm getting bored and eyeing the door." Andrew says to our journalist, "Thanks for staying." Rick writes, "It's like he's seen into my soul."

What? Soul? Really, Rick?! That's the way that paragraph ends. No explanation, just yeah it's like he saw into my soul and moving on... Now here we are at the end of the article and this is wear the blood begins to boil. Up until this moment it was just a comical poorly written article about fringe evangelical thinking written by a pathetic, cocky excuse for a journalist, but now it just got real:

The picture at the top of the page shows pastor Dave heading up a presentation at Jack Schofield Middle School. It shows him preaching to children with a slide that reads, "Jesus has done, is doing, and will do many things. 1. In the Past, Jesus Created. As part of the trinity, Jesus created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1, 26-27, John 1:1-3, Col. 1-16, Hebrews 1:2, 7-11)" This is a public school. Yes, a PUBLIC school. This is reprehensible and screams violation between church and state. It's time to make some phone calls regarding this.

The article ends with quoting pastor Dave,

Our next steps, Pastor Dave says, are, one, change the spiritual atmosphere in the city by growing and expanding our house of prayer an, two, train an army of passionate, radical young leaders who want to serve this city with the love of God. And we want to see Sin City transformed into Grace City. We want to see thousands of young people come into the kingdom of God and experience the goodness of personal relationship with Jesus. We want to see people flying into Vegas from all over the world in order to encounter God.

Rick Lax explains that it is highly unlikely Vegas, "Sin City" will turn into "Grace City" any time soon. The "Sin City" brand is much too strong. I would obviously have to agree with him here. He ends the article showing undeserved respect to Grace City,

And he's (Pastor Dave) is right when he says they need help. Whether they need Christ to fill the void or just friendship and support is up for debate (NO RICK! It's NOT up for debate!), but there's no debating that Grace City offers all three.

All three? I counted 2. OK so our young journalist is bad at math too. Or maybe it's 1. filling void. 2. friendship. 3. support. I don't know. Overall I give this article a C-. I guess when I reflect on my grade I realize that it's mostly due to my jealousy of Rick Lax. Not because of his "pickup artist skills" but because he gets to write in a newspaper about this. When I initially picked up this edition of the Las Vegas Weekly I was very excited to do a review on something I know so much about - Evangelical lifestyle. I grew up in this environment. Our family, our friends, our church loved Jerry Falwell and considered him a man of God. My cousin and a few other people I knew attended Liberty University because it was a "good school". I was highly disappointed to say the least when I realized who it was who wrote the article. Rick didn't deserve to touch this subject matter, in my opinion. Reading from the beginning it's all I could think about. How in the world did Rick Lax write this? What an asshole. In all reality I wish it was me writing an article on pastor Dave and "Grace City" for the Las Vegas Weekly.

I've started this blog with intentions to "get out" all I have to say about religion and all it's poisonous dogma. I have aspirations of being a writer of some sort in some respect some day. I suppose my jealousy got the best of me with this article. In all reality Rick Lax is probably a fine enough guy if I were to ever get to know him. After I wrote this I saw Rick lifting weights at the UNLV gym. I wanted to approach him but everyone knows you don't attack someone's writing when they are lifting dumbbells over their head. Fact is, he's writing articles for local newspapers and I'm writing a google blog. Maybe one day somehow he'll come across this blog and kick my ass when he sees me. Or maybe he'll think it's edgy and funny and we'll become best friends (Facebook friends, of course).

I wish pastor Dave and his team a healthy life, but I think they are wasting their lives with this evangelizing the damaged people of Las Vegas. At least google another city. I used to think the same. I wanted to be like Jay Bakker. He was also a tattooed street evangelist, holding sermons in broken down buildings and bars. He was delivering the message of "Christ's love" to the druggies, the prostitutes, the homeless, the rejected citizens of this country. Why can't we just show them human love and leave it at that. What I've come to learn is that it is important to help those in need, but just preaching to them about an ancient Jewish desert god and his son's murder by the Romans is not the way to do it. (even with free coffee involved) These people need help with their addiction, with money, with food. The fact is you don't need Jesus, his father, his ghost, or his book to help people in need. You don't need supernatural nonsense. You just need time and the willingness to do it. Support your local secular charities and get involved. Here's a few links below:

The original Las Vegas Weekly Article:
http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/news/2013/feb/21/liberty-university-evangelists-save-las-vegas/?fb_action_ids=10152583395915611&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation_id=246965925417366

An excellent video on superstition and prayer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWo3kTYb8W0

A great book on Liberty University: 

The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University by Kevin Roose

Get involved and help feed the hungry in Las Vegas:

http://www.threesquare.org/

http://www.meetup.com/actsofkindness/events/11451044/

https://pals.pioneersvolunteer.org/VM/project.aspx?ID=18714

Meet Grace City:

http://gracecityvegas.com/

Meet Rick Lax:

http://lawschoolblogger.com/

http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/staff/rick-lax/