I don't think I've ever mentioned The Clergy Project here before, but I've known about it for a while. Didn't Dennent start it. Anyhoo...It is a cool online place where clergy can go to transition from Team believer to the Mighty (and I believe correct) Team Atheist. Recall your own personal story and that eureka moment when you admitted or acknowledged that...the probability that there is an all knowing and all powerful and all loving God (that is diest-y and doesn't interfere with human affairs, much less a specific and particular God that can be boxed into a name like Lutheran, evangelical, Protestant, born again, whatevah) is veeeeerrrrryyyyyyyyy small (and yet, fer all we know, there is). Now imagine how shocking it would be for a clergy peep, with a congregation and all. Yea, that's a lot.
This one particular guy is made of cool and I think that it shows a step by step, or how incremental, the process is.
"Jerry Dewitt went from respected pastor with a vibrant congregation to an atheist without a job (Thanks RNS)."
Yea, that's God's love. Me personally I don't give a shit if my family knows that I'm an atheist (I only talk to my brother and sister), but I know that it means a lot to so many wanting to come out (don't forget the Out Campaign either). So for the normal peep it teh tuffs and for the clergy peep it everything.
Think about it: it is your job, your livelihood, your community, your passion, even your downtime. It is your freekin' everything. That is one of the reasons why The Clergy Project is so important. It is one opportunity, one avenue, that these people can turn to and explore in a time when they need help. That is awesome, I say.
OK, back to Jerry. First he thought about hell and the stuff like if a person is good, but doesn't subscribe to my particular splinter cell of the Jesus Cult, then why doesn't that person go to heaven (I dunno if he was influenced by that Rob Bell book that came out a while ago, but it sounds like it). So at one time he went the "there is no hell rout." After that the house of cards will fall.
If there is no hell, then there is no heaven. If they lied to me about this, what else did they lie about (the day Jesus was born, who wrote the gospels, are Adam and Eve and Noah historical, did humans and dinosaurs walk the erffs at the same time....).
I end with this show stopper, super epic quote. Jer' was asked to pray for a sick friend, but dude knew by this time (25 years in the making) that...
“I could not do it,” he said, as the hall grew quiet. “At that moment my conscience outweighed everything else in my life. ... No matter how much I loved her, I knew the best hope for her situation was a good medical staff and I wasn’t going to pretend there was anything better for her than science and reason (RNS)."
"Nuff said."
* Billiards master, John over at his site, I dunno if you guys evah heard of it so just check it out, has an article today from someone else from The Clergy Project. It's good, no...great stuffs, yo.
* There are many ways to debunk religion, any of them. There is philosophy, any one of the sciences and there is fighting fire with fire. I like the approach of debunking Christianity with Christianity. And who know better than clergy how to do that.
