Well, lookee here … an announcement in the local Morris paper.
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 7
TOM DEROSA will be at Morris Evangelical Free Church at 6:30 p.m., to present a creationist’s perspective about evolution. DeRosa’s presentation is free and open to the public.
I don’t think I have any plans for Sunday night. Wouldn’t an evening with an old pal of D. James Kennedy and the founder of the Creation Studies Institute be buckets of fun?
You should listen to his testimonial. He claims to be an atheist who was teaching evolution in the public schools (he was teaching physics and chemistry, though — what was he doing teaching biology?), and got upset because they cut back the science curriculum from a year to half a year. So he’s talking to someone at D. James Kennedy’s private Christian school (why?), and offers to apply for a position opening up there (what?), and his wife organizes a prayer chain so that the interview will go well (what? what?), and at the interview he learns that salvation is not a consequence of works as he previously thought (what? what? what?) but faith, and takes the job and becomes a Christian. Why, He sounds just like a real atheist.
Oh, and they have a “museum”, too.
If you’d rather not come out to Morris, DeRosa is going to be scuttling about this part of the state for a whole week, so you might find him closer to home, poisoning your community’s children’s minds. Of course, the Morris event will have the advantage of a more interesting audience. Heh.
Wait, salvation is by faith and not works?!? Gosh darn it all, now I’m going to have to go become a Christian too!
Oh wait, I forgot. Faith is a load of bull. Nevermind.
That nice Mr Heddle will probably put us all straight on this one. He’ll point out that salvation as a consequence of works is a heresy that most American Christians subscribe to. I’m sure he will put me right if I have misunderstood his beliefs.
From Wikipedia:
Now although I find all this sort of stuff strangely interesting, it strikes me very much as similar to a heated debate about the ‘rules’ of Dungeons and Dragons or arguments about scripts in Star Trek. However I do object to being accused of Original Sin (originally ancestral sin in the Bible) and refuse to cower in abasement at the foot of the Throne… YMMV
Works schmorks. Just sell out, man!
or
Works? But I want my self-righteous feeling NOW!
Is it possbile this can be recorded?…I’d love to see you go “Mano y Mano” with someone from Morons Inc.
From what I remember of Heddle, salvation can only come from having God’s Holy Anvil* dropped on your head. Then you will be “refenestrated”. Or something.
* 5 million points for anyone who gets this reference
Sock it to ’em, PZ! (I’m assuming that you are going to attend.)
Heh, I (and a few other locals here in KS) went head to head a few times with a Chistian Origins Research R(?) group, but eventually, they gave up because 1) the audience of skeptics grew larger every meeting, and 2) the audience of believers dwindled every meeting.
Eventually they moved their meetings from the WSU campus to one of the local churches, and stopped advertising it around teh campus. =)
“refenestrated” is the term for going back to MS Windows.
And stop talking about me as if I’m not even lurking. Calvinists have feelings too, you know.
What? You mean I din’t have to do anything to be a Christian? I don’t have to be humble, or give to charity, or give up earthly pleasures, or be my brother’s keeper? I just need to have faith and I go to heaven?
No thanks. Any atheist worth their salt would see through such transparent, self-serving bull scat.
HOLY CRAP (Pun intended).
I am a PR Flack…please let me interpret the below claims from his bio.
“he has studied the area of Creation thoroughly at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church” – Wait a sec…he studied creationism at a church? I thought creationism was a science, or a religious claim?
“he is presently an adjunct instructor in Chemistry at Broward Community College.” – ‘nough said….Community College (and adjunct at that).
“Tom has been recognized by the Sun-Sentinel as receiving the High School Science Teacher award.” – That doesn’t actually mean he won the award, it means that someone SAID he won the award. BTW, “High School Science Teacher Award” sounds phony with no adjectives. No “Best” or “Outstanding” to qualify this “award”.
“He has contributed to several published science-teaching manuals” – Any accepted by peer-review and public schools? Doubtful.
Morris has 13 churches for 5200 people. I can’t tell whether that is a lot or little for 5200 people especially when 2K are students. Quite a few of them have Evangelical in their name, a bad sign.
Looks like PZ has his work cut out for him in Morris, MN.
i guess you havn’t read sam harris’s new essay
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/sam_harris/2007/10/the_problem_with_atheism.html
and at the interview he learns that salvation is not a consequence of works as he previously thought (what? what? what?)
You see, in the evangelical neo-dogma, everyone (including us atheists) really really want to become a Christians, but we KNOW we all carry so big darn load of SIN from killing all those people, that we don’t think we could be saved.
Christianity, it’s not just for good people anymore.
I’ve read Harris’s essay. I bet Matt Nisbet likes it.
*looks at post title*
*looks at date*
April Fool’s Day is in April, PZ.
“Wait, salvation is by faith and not works?!?”
Well, yeah, they had to come up with something to dissuade people from feeding, providing health care to, and otherwise accepting as human the wrong people.
You make this sound like so much fun. Don’t make me buy a plane ticket!
PZ, are you going to be commenting on the Harris article? I’d like to know what you think about it.
How many points does Heddle get for his sense of humour?
Take video. Please.
And no, I wouldn’t want to go to church with you. I could be seriously injured when you burst into flames. :)
I don’t think this is accurate. Most Americans are Protestant in one form or another and think faith alone is sufficient.
Heddle is confused but he’s not a bad fellow.
If you go, I’d really push him on the claim that he was an atheist, and try to get him to explain why an atheist is worried about how to attain salvation?
What was this salvation that he expected to get by acts alone?
Isn’t lying considered a sin?
Rey Fox : “From what I remember of Heddle, salvation can only come from having God’s Holy Anvil* dropped on your head. Then you will be ‘refenestrated’. Or something.
* 5 million points for anyone who gets this reference”
IIRC, God’s Holy Anvil is an advantage from the game “Macho Women With Guns”.
Yeah! Tear Sam a new one, PZ!
– Rieux, designated Pharyngula blood-demander
I wonder what Tom Derosa’s and D. James Kennedy’s thoughts are on the “theory” of gravity? Maybe fs we force them to walk through the Darwin exhibit and the Evolving Planet exhibit at the Field Museum in Chicago, they’ll get a better idea of the word.
Then they’ll also have to look at the one thing every religionist hates: evidence.
Kennedy died recently. I suggest you write your request to, D. James Kennedy, General Delivery, Hell. He is sure to get it.
Hey PZ! Gonna be in Moorhead Thursday?
Oxford scholar:Allan Chapman, a professor at Wadham College, Oxford, England, will speak on “Does Science Challenge Religion?” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday in the lecture room in the science lab building at Minnesota State University-Moorhead.
Chapman, a social historian, author and member of the Royal Astronomical Society Club, often appears on British TV. An expert in the history of modern medicine, he’s been the Hastings Memorial Lecturer at the University of Minnesota.
For more information, call (218) 477-4389.
There were things to like in Harris’s little spiel, but it left me unmoved, both emotionally and intellectually. Kudos to the guy for trying to shake things up, but he just didn’t persuade.
Anybody who has witnessed Terrorism become the new Communism (to wax a little snowclonish) will recognize that new words can be given the emotional baggage of the old ones. Merely changing your label won’t win the rhetorical battle. . . and if you don’t give yourself a label, a person with less patience and tolerance for subtlety will stick one upon you. Consider that inane coinage of Wired, the appellation “New Atheist” itself. Do all the authors whose books are shelved together as “The New Atheism” agree with one another? No. Do the people who read those books follow their authors in all intellectual decisions of consequence? Nope. If I wrote a book, we’d have a “New Atheist” author who disagreed with Hitchens about the Iraq war, Dawkins about group selection, and Harris about “spirituality”. Better call me a “New Atheist” of the Sokal-Blackford-Avalos-Nanda-Myers Reformation!
Yet, to the self-appointed professional pundit class, “New Atheists” we are, and “New Atheists” we shall always be — one equal temper of subversive heart. If you get any attention at all, that’s the treatment you will receive, whether you call yourself a Bright or a Skeptic or a Secular Humanist. And if you choose the hermetic path, if you forsake the limelight and walk the Earth (you know, like Kane in Kung Fu) to provoke the faculties of critical thought one mind at a time — well, we’ve tried that, and look where it got us.
Harris’s defense of the whole “spirituality” thing also lacked punch. Not only did it seem like a distraction from the tactical and strategic case he was trying to make, but also it missed the point of the complaints directed at him. I won’t claim familiarity with the whole Satanic Talmud of commentary which has grown up around the Uppity Atheist Bookshelf, but I think it’s fair to say that people like Meera Nanda are concerned with the way Harris imputes empirical truth value to the claims of the mystics.
prof weird: Possibly, but that wasn’t what I was thinking of. Never heard of it myself.
I’d say that “I bet Matt Nisbet likes it” is a review. ;-)
He claims to be an atheist who was teaching evolution in the public schools (he was teaching physics and chemistry, though — what was he doing teaching biology?)
One never knows what fundamentalists mean when they say evolution. He might be talking about the big bang or something. Maybe the periodic table is the work of the devil. Who frakkin knows. :-)
Gosh, Sam Harris manages to write something I agree with…until about halfway through, when he goes off on his mysticism hobby horse.
Why, He sounds just like a real atheist.
Yeah right. Sounds to me like he’s completely freakin whacko.
That nice Mr Heddle will probably put us all straight on this one.
No he won’t because only a few chosen people like Mr. Heddle are blessed with the knoeledge of the real truth. Heck he isn’t even supposed to try and convince the heathens.
Please oh please record it…at least on audio. You can probably have Skepticality or the NES host it!
When I was little, I’d go with my family every Sunday after church to the Tom Derosa Steakhouse. Their burgers were rectangular.
Please oh please record it…at least on audio. You can probably have Skepticality or the NES host it!
Yeah really. (There’s always youtube.)
Blake Stacey:
Hear, hear.
I recognize that Harris wanted to shake things up a little, but that speech was heavily weird–especially given that Harris has talked about himself as an “atheist” in plenty of instances (such as his beliefnet shredding of Andrew Sullivan). Does Harris think that guerilla bands of rationalists, avoiding all overt identification with one another, will actually be able to accomplish anything?
Maybe if someone took the time to explain to him that ‘lazy prick’ is not a synonym for ‘athiest’. Or am I missing something from this whole ‘conversion story’ bit?
Coincidentally, I caught a church add on TV the other day asking people to come see some speaker with a similar I-was-an-athiest-but-now-I-found-jay-zuz story. Don’t remember which church, but it was likely one of the megachurches that are so popular in this area (Houston, TX).
Blake: “Merely changing your label won’t win the rhetorical battle. . . and if you don’t give yourself a label, a person with less patience and tolerance for subtlety will stick one upon you.”
Damn right. When I was a fundie, I listened to umpteen sermons labeling self-identified Christians as atheists. “Practical atheists” was the term used, but atheist nonetheless. All it took was that they broke some of the rules of our little sub-culture; maybe they went to the bar on Saturday night, or played poker. Or even just slept in Sunday mornings.
Isn’t a creationist’s perspective on evolution kind of like a white supremacist’s perspective on apartheid? I don’t mean to conflate the two groups, except that they both believe silly things for very poor reasons but with the utmost certainty and gravity. It’s a forgone conclusion what they think about their respective topics, and there’s nary a chance anything short of brain damage or a gradual spiral of disillusionment will change their mind.
Don’t knock Pelagius, a nice guy by the standards of theologians circa AD 400. He argued that we are born, not horribly tainted by “original sin” but as moral blank slates, and have the capacity to choose to act well or badly. This put him in conflict with Augustine (Boo! Hiss!). There’s a very telling set of beliefs which Augustine put up at the Council of Carthage, beliefs of the Church which Pelagius denied:
1. Death came from sin, not man’s physical nature.
2. Infants must be baptized to be cleansed from original sin.
3. Justifying grace covers past sins and helps avoid future sins.
4. The grace of Christ imparts strength and will to act out God’s commandments.
5. No good works can come without God’s grace.
6. We confess we are sinners because it is true, not from humility.
7. The saints ask for forgiveness for their own sins.
8. The saints also confess to be sinners because they are.
9. Children dying without baptism are excluded from both the Kingdom of heaven and eternal life.
Now, we do have to be careful in interpreting a person’s work through the comments of their opponents; but from this list it seems that Pelagianism included beliefs such as:
Death came from man’s physical nature, not sin.
Infants don’t have to be baptized to be cleansed from original sin.
Good works can come without God’s grace.
Clearly he had to be suppressed, otherwise people would have been going around being good without reference to God, and you can’t run a proper theocracy that way!
I was raised Anglican, and I recall one time after church (someone had been fulminating about Pelagianism, though why I don’t recall) we looked him up in the Encyclopaedia Britannica and thought, yes, that all sounds perfectly reasonable, what’s the beef? Among other things I’m really impressed that he had it clear that we die because of our physical nature- as all animals do- and not because we’re being punished for some kind of prehistoric fruit-related incident.
He was British, too, which means I imagine him as one of the guys from Life of Brian- probably the one who’s left saying “What? Stop…” while the ravening mob charges off. Hang on, that was Spike Milligan. OK, Pelagius is Spike Milligan.
What about Calvin & Hobbesists? Can we insult them?
They’ll take it out on us in the next round of Calvinball.
If you want to study up on your hymns, this page has lyrics to the tune of “That Old Time Religion,” including several for atheists:
http://www.whitetreeaz.com/vintage/realotr.htm
although my favourite is still about Aprhodite and her see-through nightie.
If you want to study up on your hymns, this page has lyrics to the tune of “That Old Time Religion,” including several for atheists:
http://www.whitetreeaz.com/vintage/realotr.htm
although my favourite is still about Aprhodite and her see-through nightie.
If you want to study up on your hymns, this page has lyrics to the tune of “That Old Time Religion,” including several for atheists:
http://www.whitetreeaz.com/vintage/realotr.htm
although my favourite is still about Aprhodite and her see-through nightie.
If you want to study up on your hymns, this page has lyrics to the tune of “That Old Time Religion,” including several for atheists:
http://www.whitetreeaz.com/vintage/realotr.htm
although my favourite is still about Aprhodite and her see-through nightie.