Tag Archives: Street Preachers

Call for Contributions

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I am putting together a collection tentatively entitled Street Preachers: An Exercise in Critical Thinking. It’s going to be a collection of short stories of encounters with street preachers and other conversion efforts, with perhaps a few short dissertations on the topic.

If you can write a compelling contribution, I’ll include it in the book. I’ll split the royalties 50-50 between myself and all the contributors.

If anyone interesting in contributing could get in touch with my by November 15th, 2010, that would be best.

Thanks, and please consider letting others know about this opportunity!

A Run-In with a Street Preacher

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I ran into a street preacher, whom we’ll call Fred, a week ago. He dropped some pretty crazy gems that I just had to share. (Note I’ve tagged this entry with “Responses,” indicating it contains answers to common conversion efforts.)

Starting Off with Atheists in Foxholes

Fred begins by saying something generic and attempting to hand me a flyer for his church. “I’m an atheist,” I say, taking care not to begin with “Sorry” — I’m not going to apologize for my rationality!

“Oh, we’re all atheists!” Fred exclaims, then leans forward: “But if you jump out of a plane, who do you think you’ll be praying to?”

Never mind I’ve been skydiving, no gods involved. I play along. “Perhaps, but it wouldn’t necessarily be your god I was playing to.”

Fred maintains his conspiratorial stance and shares his Secret with me: “Well, there’s only one God, you know!”

“But there’s no proof,” I say.

“Exactly,” Fred says in an attempt at argumentative Aikido. “That’s why it’s all about faith!”

Being a guy who attempts to have rational beliefs this doesn’t sit well with me. But at least this guy knows, in theory, that faith a the lack of evidence… or does he:

“But if you look at all the prophecies…”

Not a Real Christian

One of my absolute favorite things to hear Christians say is “Oh, they aren’t real Christians.” (That’s the No True Scotsman fallacy, and for whatever reason, Christians, especially evangelists, love it.)

Our friend Fred doesn’t let me down.

After Fred encourages me to just take the flyer and consider converting, I mention that I was raised Christian, I know the stories, and I’m never converting, and he becomes a bit excited. “What were you raised as?” he asks. “Because I thought I was raised Christian too, but I wasn’t!”

“Catholic.”

“Me too!” Fred shares. “Well that’s something we have in common!”

“If Catholics aren’t true Christians,” I ask, “Tell me, what religion would you have been in, say, 1,000 A.D.?”

Fred didn’t have an answer, but religious fragmentation and the chronologically & geographically determined nature of faith are things I’ve thought about before.

The Loving God’s Hellfire

We discussed theodicy in an amusing way.

“If God loves me, as you say,” I asked Fred, “Why would he make me, knowing I, as a rational thinker, would have to reject Him, causing my damnation? Why would he make so very many people who would just go to hell? Heck, how could Native Americans go to heaven before Europeans came over?” I asked rhetorically.

“Well we have to choose. Do you want us all to be boring automatons?” Fred started. I could see where this was going already. The spectre of “free will” is always used as a counter to the problem of evil.

“Here’s the thing,” I say. “You clearly believe that for us to have free will, we have to be able to hurt each other.”

“Yes.”

“Why is that necessarily true? Wouldn’t a perfect God be able to create a world with free will, without letting us hurt each other?”

Fred isn’t convinced — that isn’t, of course, how our world works, but if you’re an omnipotent, loving creator… “I don’t think so,” Fred says.

“But isn’t that what Heaven is?”

“No, everyone is Heaven is sinless.”

“Tell me, Fred. Are you going to heaven?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever hurt anyone?”

“Well, I’m sure we’ve all said some things —”

“So are you just going to be an automaton in Heaven, then? Or can you hurt people in Heaven? See how I just made you argue against yourself? It just doesn’t make any sense,” I say, referring to Christianity.

I consider this a slam-dunk argument against typical Christianity, proving my point about theodicy and free will and how a loving, all-knowing, all-powerful god can’t exist in this world. Yet our preacher friend is wholly unfazed, resolute in his mission to convince others that something he knows is unprovable is not only the Truth but also the Only Way.

“The Holocaust was God’s Plan”

“You know why the Holocaust happened? Because the Jews – well, most of ’em – refused to recognize their own Messiah, their own savior,” Fred shared.

I was so shocked by this claim of Fred’s that I have a hard time remembering what prompted it. Perhaps it stemmed from our discussion of why there is evil in the world.

“You know what I think? I think the Holocaust happened because this guy Hitler used the Jews as a political tool,” I counter. Never mind the role the Catholic Church played in this atrocity for now. Never mind that Hitler was a Christian.

“You’re thinking little picture, I’m thinking ‘big picture,’” Fred says.

“Oh, so what then, God leaned down — ” I cup my hands to my mouth and bend forward — “and whispered, ‘Hey, Hitler! Have you heard about these Jews? They’re really pissing me off!”

“Well, no, I don’t believe God talked to Hitler.” Of course not. Hitler couldn’t possibly be a true Christian, could he? It’s cognitive dissonance in action: Fred likes God and Christianity; he hates Hitler, thus he can’t imagine Hitler being Christian or supported by God, even when it logically follows from what he’s just said.

By now I’ve had enough of this offensively uncritical guy. “So God just caused the Holocaust indirectly, with magic? I don’t believe in magic. Have a nice night,” I say, walking off.

“Answers to the 4 Big Questions” — A Light Critique

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I recently got into a discussion with a few street preachers.

The conversation was somewhat interesting — not interesting meaning “stimulating,” of course, but interesting meaning “amazing what some people believe.” For example, they told me that Catholics aren’t real Christians. While for some definitions of “real Christians,” they may have a point — the Pope is as different from Christ as humanly possible — absolutely all Catholics consider themselves true Christians.

Anyway, the youngest of the group is, if nothing, a good arguer and convinced me that I could not write off the book he was handing me, Answers to the 4 BIG Questions, simply because Ken Ham was a co-author. (“Ken Ham!?” I exclaimed, thinking of his laughable position on evolution. “That guy is a joke!” Our street-preaching friend noted correctly that my perceptions of Ham did not necessarily merit outright rejection of the book. But it turns out, my hunch was quite correct.)

This book goes off the tracks at step one: Picking four big questions. Without even going into the answers, here are my critiques of the questions themselves:

Question 1. “But doesn’t evolution explain our existence?”

No. No, it doesn’t, and no scientist would say that evolution by itself “explains our existence.” As Carl Sagan famously noted, if one really wanted to make an apple pie from scratch, one would first have to create a universe, fill it with atoms, etc., etc. Evolution is part of “how we got here” but does not and could not explain the whole universe. (Any believers reading should take note that most atheists are — at least intellectually! — fine knowing that science has not explained why the universe exists at all. We don’t feel the need to pretend to know that a mythical being created it.)

Bad question.

Question 2. “How did different ‘races’ arise?”

If that is one of the four biggest questions on your mind, I can only assume you are racist. But Biblical literalists always surprise me, and apparently if God created exactly two people — Adam and Eve — then we should not expect to see so many races, especially without evolution, making Africans, Asians, Native Americans, Europeans and the like a direct challenge to your notion of God.

I remember seeing a question regarding skin color in a science museum as a child. I understand that melanin causes skin pigmentation and is important in resisting sun damage, so with a rudimentary understanding of evolution we might expect populations living in areas with a lot of sun — e.g. Africa, not so much England — to have darker skin.

Not a very perplexing question.

Question 3. “Cain’s wife–who could she have been?”

This is the part where I start laughing. If one takes Genesis as a parable or myth, it’s a pointless question.

But to Biblical literalists, it’s significant. This book actually states that one of Adam and Eve’s other children became Cain’s wife. Of course, this leaves the assumption that one of the first, few humans on the face of the earth decided to run away with the murderer of her own brother to start a thriving family. Then again, the Old Testament is almost always that messed up.

Question 4. Does God exist?

Probably the only question in the book that is legitimately one of the big ones.

Of course, my answer to this question is “depends on how you define God.” The Christian God is a contradiction in terms and probably cannot exists. Some god could possibly exist, but I have not seen proof of this and remain unconvinced. Fair enough, right?

In general — terrible book, terrible questions, and as always, atrocious pseudo-science from the Answers in Genesis people.