Creationist Politicans

This is a copy of a letter I sent to several Republican TN State Representatives regarding HB 368--an anti-evolution bill. After the letter, see the response I received from one of the Reps.

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Dear Distinguished Representatives:

I appreciate the work you’re doing to lower taxes and keep the federal government at bay. I’m proud to have Republicans in control, but as I expressed this morning, the Republican take-over has become bittersweet. I wanted to take this opportunity to share my objections to HB 368.

The issue of evolution is something in which I have had profound interest in recent years. I was raised a Southern Baptist and was devout. I’m a licensed minister, worked as a youth minister, and even worked for the Tennessee Baptist Convention in Brentwood and the Southern Baptist Executive Committee in Nashville. So, there’s no doubt what I was RAISED to BELIEVE. However, I have researched this topic extensively and know it quite well.

Let’s not mince words. This bill seeks to bring creationism into the classroom. Unfortunately, neither creationism nor Intelligent Design has met the rigorous standards set forth in science. There are absolutely NO peer-review articles on the topic that have met the muster to be included in scientific journals. I’m familiar with all the creationist writers, have read their books, and understand their arguments completely. They’re just not up to par. Evolution on the other hand has over 150 years of rigorous testing and evidence to support it as fact. In fact, evangelical Christian Dr. Francis Collins, who was partially responsible for mapping the human genome, was critical in showing me the fact of evolution. To deny DNA shows the relatedness of all living creatures, one would have to deny DNA shows I am related to my father. It’s the same science. There is a mountain of evidence I could show you, but I won’t bother doing it here. If you have interest, I’d be more than happy to show you the work that has been done.

This bill is bad law, because a PA court ruled in Kitzmiller v. Dover trial in 2005 and the Bush-appointed judge whole-heartedly agreed that Intelligent Design is creationism in disguise. If we allow teachers to teach this unsubstantiated pseudo-science, ANY teacher of ANY religious affiliation can teach his/her view of creation. Creationism is just as unsubstantiated as some Eastern religion that says the universe was birthed by a pink cow in space. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to ridicule Christianity, but I am saying that it is clearly not science and has no place in the classroom--something ALL Republicans should agree with.

To create an atmosphere where teachers are encouraged to teach pseudo-science will dumb-down our students and will be a grave mistake for the future of Tennessee. I beg you to oppose this bill and keep non-science out of the classroom.

Sincerely and respectfully,

Daniel A. Brown

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Response from Rep. Richard Floyd. All punctuation is as he sent it:

Dear Mr. Brown,

May I suggest that you might want to go back and read the book of Genesis one more .Thank our awesome God and His wonderful Son ,Jesus, that I was able to miss your professors.

Because He Lives !!!

Rep. Richard Floyd"

A Letter to Pastor Livengood

I recently attend FBC Columbia, TN and you'll see my entry about the experience here. I wrote the pastor pointing out flaws in his church and sermon and have received no response. So I figured I'd make the letter public since I've received no response in 16 days. Enjoy.

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Dr. Livengood,

My name is Daniel Brown and I am a former member of First Family, a former employee of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee, and a former Christian. I graduated from Belmont, after transferring from Union as a religion major. I worked as a youth minister for four years and preached occasionally while in college. Ultimately, I changed my major to design communication and used my degree to work for the Tennessee Baptist Convention and for the now-defunct Cooperative Program Development Division of the SBC.

Around 2003, I decided to become self-employed and use my free-time to research my faith deeper—delving into the origin of Scriptures in particular. I resurfaced with a rational approach to religion and decided the Scriptures couldn’t be authenticated and the miracles couldn’t be remotely validated. Thus, I denounced the church, Christianity, and Christ and now claim to be a rational, free-thinking, truth-seeking individual. Solid, irrefutable evidence is king. If a philosophical statement cannot be demonstrated as true or false, I suspend judgment. Therefore, the “God exists” claim is meaningless to me. However, I must say I thoroughly enjoy discussing religion with educated Christians.

I decided last week to begin visiting churches again on a regular basis to see if anything has changed in the way the Gospel is presented. Yours was the first church I’ve visited in over seven years.

There were several items that disturbed me about your sermon. First of all, you began with a direct assault on science, philosophy, and education in general. You praised the foolishness of the message of Christ, but did nothing to add a sense of validity to it. I hoped for some sort of paradoxical truth that would tie up the loose end, but nothing was offered. Repeating the mantra that “the message of the Cross is foolish” doesn’t make it a good position. It only reinforces the non-thinking required to be a Christian.

You invited the college-age students to seek you out for advice on how to process new information they receive in school. You made the typical, unlettered, 1970s Christian claim that “they (whoever THEY is) dated this-or-that to be several million years old when it’s only 30 years old” or something along those lines. You cited no source and made a wild, deceptive claim thinking no one would call you out on it. This is disheartening considering your level of education. Scientists use a variety of dating methods to verify each date claim made—Uranium-lead dating, Rubidium-strontium dating, Samrarium-neodymium dating, potassium-argon, argon-argon, fission track, optical, luminescence, thermoluminescence, and many more. A quick Google search would provide you with this info. I am appalled by your complete negligence with this statement.

The church service did nothing to change my perspective on the church and was everything I expected. By the way, only one person spoke to me the entire time and he specifically said he didn’t know if I was a member or a visitor. You might want to work with your people on that.

I apologize if I’m coming off as irritated, but I am growing weary of Christians spreading false information. I expected to hear things I disagreed with, but not outright attacks on critical thinking, science, and rational thought.

I hope you aren’t too put off by my email and I’d love to engage you in further discussion.

Sincerely,

Daniel A. Brown

PO Box 1331

Columbia, TN 38402

der_hammerman@yahoo.com

Typical

The (Ir)Relevant Church

Another week, another church. This week I visited Hope Presbyterian Church, a mega-church located in the suburbs of Memphis, TN, with an average weekly attendance of 7,500. As expected, it is full of wealthy, white families with a few black folks scattered here-and-there for good measure. After navigating the expanse of minivans and SUVs and dodging families with the standard 2.5 children, I made it into the front door. Once inside, I ran the gauntlet along the corridor where parishioners were dashing between vending machines and coffee kiosks to stock up before the big show.

Inside the sanctuary, I made my way to the 7th row for the best view. The show started promptly at 11:15am. The music was a good mix of contemporary and traditional songs, but was essentially a 30-minute concert starring the zombie-like choir and various musicians—from guitarist to drummer to saxophonist. When the music team finished, there was a customary offering and the pastor, Dr. Craig Strickland delivered his sermon. His homily was the third part of a seven-part series titled, “Seven Words from the Cross”. In the series, Dr. Strickland is lecturing on the seven comments Jesus made while hanging from the cross. By the way, these comments by Jesus are not consistent across the four gospels, but that is neither here nor there. Last Sunday, he discussed “love” citing John 19:25-27, where Jesus says to his Mother, “Woman, here is your son (John the disciple),” and, “Behold your mother,” speaking to John of Mary. He goes on to explain that loving your family and treating fellow believers as family is a good thing. The entire sermon was pleasant and non-judgmental. Because of its lack of substance, I won’t bother with further analysis.

This entire experience is a shining example of why Christianity is wrong and evil. Contemporary Christianity is deceptive. Believers focus on sweet and loving passages by Jesus and Paul, while ignoring the genocide and rape sanctioned by their god in the Old Testament. They emphasize Jesus as a loving, humble servant who only wants to save you from his vengeful father who seeks to cast you into eternal torment. The moderate, touchy-feely version of this religion legitimizes all the fringe denominations, which lie to children as a means of propagandizing them and psychologically and emotionally abuse them.

The truth is Christianity is VERY judgmental and preaches the wicked message of an afterlife of eternal torture to the gullible masses. This experience did nothing but expose the shallowness of contemporary Christianity. Christianity is an evil enterprise that seeks to perpetuate and “make relevant” a dim-witted proposition for financial gain and power.

Church website: www.hopepres.com

What's your favorite argument for the existence of God?

I've seen plenty of arguments and none are strong. This is a list I found and LOVE it. It's hilarious. Which is your favorite? Check it out:

http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/GodProof.htm

Jesus thinks Rape is A-OK

Deuteronomy 20:10-14

John 10:30-33

A Visit to the Asylum

Until this past Sunday, I had not sat through a church worship service in over seven years. After considering a number of churches for this adventure, I decided to attend First Family in Columbia, TN. About twelve or so years ago, this particular church—otherwise known as First Baptist Church—decided to build a large complex on Pulaski Highway south of town. After nearly sixty years on the corner of High St. and West 8th St downtown, the church left an enormous empty facility and a large parking lot where several historic homes once stood. This action demonstrated their arrogance and disregard for the neighborhood and lack of financial and environmental stewardship, but I digress.

The experience at First Family was as one would expect—mind-numbing, overly-repetitive praise music and a sermon full of the standard rhetoric with a spattering of conceited applause and AMENs. The pastor made the usual religious pleas and wisecracks to elicit an emotional response from the crowd. I was left wondering what had happened and how could I regain the hour I lost.

Before the service began, one person who happened to be sitting directly in front me spoke and shook my hand saying, "I don't know if you're a member or not, but hello." No one spoke to me for the remainder of the service—including during the time when everyone is encouraged to speak to their “neighbor”. I suppose I didn’t appear neighborly enough despite being dressed for the occasion with a sports coat and a genuine smile.

The first thirty minutes was a prolonged performance by a female who I would assume is the music minister. I don’t know her name, because it appears in neither the bulletin nor on the web site. There were the standard sing-alongs, but no one in the crowd seemed to be familiar enough with them to heartedly participate. The lyrics were convoluted and ludicrous. One of the seemingly never-ending praise songs had the chorus “There is a fountain who is a King.” What the hell? Having grown up in church, I unfortunately know what this means, but to an average person off the street, it would seem utterly ridiculous.

After a parade of various ministers speaking about goings-on in the church, on-stage walks Dr. Steve Livengood, the senior pastor. His sermon “Perfect Nonsense” was mindless drivel. I sat through the entire sermon asking myself if this preacher is seminary-educated. Turns out he has a doctorate—from where I don’t know. I would assume from one of six, fine Southern Baptist seminaries. Despite the “Dr” in front of his name, Pastor Steve offered a homily that lacked substance and bordered on rambling.

From the title, you may have the gist of its content. As you would expect from an evangelical, Pastor Steve criticized secular education, science, and abortion. Citing I Corinthians 1:18-25, he praises the absurdity of the message of Christ. Verses 22-23 say “Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” There is nothing profound or meaningful in this verse. It’s merely stating the obvious. The pastor reiterated this concept of foolishness many times as if that somehow adds truth and meaning to the message of Christ. I waited with baited breath for some profound argument with a twist of paradoxical truth only to be left wanting. Somehow in the twisted world of Christianity, foolishness and absurdity trumps intellect and rational thought.

In my opinion, the church has simply created a problem of sin and disobedience to their god, assembled what they consider to be a solution, and is now trying to reconcile all of this with more mumbo-jumbo. Pastor Steve says that those seeking an answer simply don’t understand the remedy god has put forth. In other words, the foolish ones are not those accepting the absurd message of Christ’s redemption, but those seeking truth and knowledge.

He goes on to attack philosophy and science. In a portion of the sermon directed at college students (of which I’m sure there aren’t many in this particular church), he tells them that if they are taught something in college and it doesn’t coincide with Scripture to reject it. He goes as far as to say that they may contact him via email or phone if they are confused. No doubt he will set them straight as to what to believe and how to filter contemporary scientific facts through the lens of an ancient, unauthenticated book of myths. This is the epitome of indoctrination, propaganda, and deceit. Not only has this church ruined the minds of children, they continue spreading ignorance and misinformation when the children are young adults.

In keeping with the standard evangelical Christian message, Pastor Steve reiterates the claim that humans are born corrupt and in need of salvation. The performance ends with the usual Christian mantra, “How do I know all of this? The Bible tells me so.”

This experience was beyond disappointing. The musical performance was mediocre, the sermon was elementary and lacking any true substance and the people were less than inviting. I give the full experience a D-.

The church's website is www.thefirstfamily.org.