Friendly Atheist by @hemantmehta » 2006 » June


Obama, Alabama, etc.

Posted in FFRF, General at 10:37 am by Hemant Mehta

Yesterday, my senator Barack Obama made a speech about how Democrats need to embrace faith. The speech is here.

Already, I’ve received a couple emails from Atheist organizations opposing the comments he made. For them, any expression of faith in the public square is anathema to their own agenda.

What did Obama say? Definitely not that we should merge church and state. Instead, he said:
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Pastor Tim’s Response

Posted in General at 11:32 pm by Hemant Mehta

Pastor Tim responded to my post below (Once again showing how great he is with the positive dialogue):
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Creationism for My Child’s Teacher

Posted in General at 6:43 pm by Hemant Mehta

(***Update 7/10/06: The pamphlet mentioned in this post was edited to mention that the National Geographic article does say that there is sufficient evidence for evolution. Soon after that, other points about the inaccuracies of the document were discussed on this website and the pamphlet was taken down from the Parkview site altogether. Thus, the links in this post no longer work.)

As I said last week, Pastor Tim was a great guy to talk to, but I did have a major problem with his stance on Creationism. Tim said he wanted it taught alongside Evolution and wrote a pamphlet on the subject that is offered on the church’s website. However, there are a lot of problems with this pamphlet that I think deserve to be pointed out. Ultimately, I’d like to see my points corrected or the document removed from the site.

This is not me saying why Creationism is general is incorrect (There are much better resources for that than me), but I want to just point out why the document on the church’s website is misguided.

The pamphlet in question is here. It’s called “Creationism for My Child’s Teacher.” I encourage you to read it for yourself before and while you read this post.

My problems with it follow:
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Dialogue at Parkview Christian Church

Posted in GLBT, General at 11:29 pm by Hemant Mehta

I was invited by Pastor Tim Harlow to join him in a discussion at his Parkview Christian Church a little over a month ago. As they were spending some time talking about the Da Vinci Code and the issues raised by the book/movie, it seemed like the topic of “Doubt” was an important one and who better to help talk about doubt than an Atheist?

So, we decided we would have a discussion on stage. Not a debate. Very informal. I’d ask a question, he’d ask one, and we’d go back and forth until time ran out. Parkview is a (rapidly) growing church and it currently holds three services, one Saturday night and two on Sunday. Tim and I wanted to hold different dialogues each time (so it wouldn’t be scripted for any session).

I must admit: it was a bit nervewracking. Not only are thousands of people who disagree with me watching me, but I’m still a rookie at best responding to tough questions. I did what I could and I’m still doing a bit of Monday morning quarterbacking… but the audio can be found below. Judge for yourself:

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Preview

Posted in General at 4:00 pm by Hemant Mehta

The new site is up. But undoubtedly, there are 3289432 bugs. Please let me know if you see any. How, you ask?

By commenting! (At least that function should be working…)

A real update on the weekend will be here sometime tonight.

RSS feeds coming shortly as well.

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