Chick-Fil-A and Moral Responsibility

The Controversy and Why It Matters

Unless you've been living at the bottom of the ocean for the last several weeks you're no doubt familiar with the national controversy centered around the south's very own Christian chicken joint, Chick-Fil-A. It has come to light that between 2003 - 2010 Chick-Fil-A donated $5 million to anti-gay causes. For a comprehensive breakdown of the money given to these organizations and how they campaign to legislate homosexual discrimination please visit EqualityMatters.

Two of the organizations financially supported by Chick-Fil-A are worthy of note:

1. Exodus International is a promoter of "ex-gay therapy," which states that a person's homosexuality is an illness to be cured. This company refers to being LGBT as "perverse" and a form of "sexual brokenness." I have friends who have been subjected to this and it is horrific.

2. Family Research Council is literally designated as a hate-group by the SPLC for attempting to draw definitive correlations between homosexuals and child molestation/pedophilia.

Some folks have falsely suggested that Chick-Fil-A's donations have nothing to do with their patronage. However, a percentage of proceeds from every single sale at every single Chick-Fil-A goes to The Winshape Foundation (CFA's charitable arm) which then funnels portions of that money to the above anti-gay organizations. As it turns out, your patronage DOES affect the gay community.

To add fuel to the fire, CFA President Dan Cathy made some rather telling remarks in the press about his personal views on gay marriage. He says:

"We are very much supportive of the family -- the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that...we know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles."

Cathy went on to say:

"I think we are inviting God's judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say, 'We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage,' and I pray God's mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to try to redefine what marriage is about."

I find it interesting that Cathy is appealing to the "biblical definition of the family unit." The fact is that there is no biblical consensus on what constitutes a family unit. Consider the incoherence. One book proclaims the marriage of foreigners blasphemous while another book considers it a blessing. One book says not to fornicate while another makes a virtue of offering your daughters to be raped. How many of the heroes of the bible had multiple wives and concubines? The Apostle Paul even encourages folks to avoid marriage all together. The point is that Cathy's appeals to the "biblical family unit" ring hollow to anyone who has ever seriously studied the Bible.

He then takes a shot at divorce which I found interesting. Surely he knows that many heterosexual and even church-going Christians have experienced divorce. His most audacious remarks suggest that we are inviting some unknown punishment from God for seeking to "redefine" marriage. Perhaps we should have avoided redefining slavery as well? How about women's right to vote? Redefinition is the hallmark of human progress and, quite poignantly, not our holy books.

The most clever thing Cathy did in these statements was to make an appeal to freedom of speech by alluding to the freedom our country permits him to "share his values."

This Is Not A Free Speech Issue

Contrary to what opponents of equal rights would have you believe, this is emphatically NOT an issue of free speech. Dan Cathy is perfectly within his first amendment rights to express his anti-gay opinions. What he said was ignorant and atrocious but I will fight for his right to say it. The same goes for the Westboro Baptist Church, people who believe they are Elvis and any other lunatic out there. No one is arguing that Dan Cathy had no right to the expression of his opinions. No one.

The reason people are upset is because Chick-Fil-A donates millions of dollars of it's consumers' money to organizations that actively seek to harm our gay friends, families and neighbors. It is precisely OUR right to the freedom of speech being utilized when we boycott, protest and criticize Chick-Fil-A for it's bigoted spending. The irony is palpable.

Chick-Fil-A has made a sucker out of anyone who has bought into the idea that participating in "Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day" means supporting the freedom of speech. That is an intentionally dubious conflation of the real issue which, lest we forget, is how your money is being spent on the fight against civil rights.

Criticism, Intolerance, and Hatred

This week I have been accused several times of being intolerant and hateful as well as participating in a "corporate witch hunt." There is an important difference between criticism and intolerance. I'm not calling for Dan Cathy to be jailed for expressing opinions I disagree with. I'm not calling for the government to shut down every Chick-Fil-A for giving millions of dollars to hate groups. I'm simply criticizing them for it.

Want another dose of irony? Contrary to my stance of tolerant, peaceful criticism it is folks like Dan Cathy who proudly tout their intolerant beliefs. I don't want Cathy legally penalized for his lifestyle but he is the one who wants your gay friends, family members and neighbors legally prohibited from marriage! Discriminating against an individual or group based on their sexual orientation is actively participating in hatred and intolerance. To the contrary, I criticize based on people's thoughts and actions, without discrimination.

Boycotting and Moral Responsibility

So, what is our moral responsibility in this situation? Is boycotting an effective way to fight the battle for gay rights? Does eating a chicken sandwich matter? Is it plausible to boycott every organization that spends money in ways you disagree with?

These are all great questions. I'm still mapping my way through them but for now my answers look like this:

1. Our first moral responsibility in this and any situation is to take it seriously. You need to know that this is an issue of your money being spent to hurt innocent people and not a politicized shit-slinging contest over free speech. I'm personally choosing to distance myself from Chick-Fil-A in order to keep my money from hurting my gay friends, however small the amount may be. I don't consider myself a moral hero for doing this nor do I consider you or anyone else a homophobic bigot for choosing to continue eating there. Let me be absolutely clear here that my thoughts are descriptive, not prescriptive.

Rosa Parks being arrested in Montgomery, AL 1955.

2. Boycotting is absolutely proven effective. Here's a list of successful consumer boycotts that occurred in the last decade and we should shudder to forget The Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 which was a seminal event in the Civil Rights movement.

3. Maybe eating a chicken sandwich matters, and maybe it doesn't. Several people have noted that thanks to Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day, Cathy has likely had one of the most financially successful days in his business' history, suggesting that his decision was a good one. I disagree. Perhaps CFA had a good day. Perhaps they'll have a good year or maybe even a good decade. But there will come a day when they will either amend their anti-gay views or die.

The south will remain conservative for some time yet. But we will eventually catch up to our coastal brothers and sisters on the moral issues of our day just as we begrudgingly did with black civil rights and interracial marriage. It's our unfortunate calling card to be late to the moral progress party. As we've seen in cities like Boston, Chicago, New York City and San Francisco, the folks there are not interested in tacitly funding homosexual discrimination. Eating chicken sandwiches matters a hell of a lot...but more to the future of Chick-fil-A than the gay community.

4. Is it plausible to boycott every company who spends money in ways you disagree with? Probably not. Is it possible to even know how all the companies you patronize spend their money? Absolutely not. Contrary to accusations this week, I am not endorsing a "corporate witch hunt." I'm making the best moral decision I can with the information I have. Morality is complicated and nuanced, not black and white the way our mythologies and politicians lead us to believe. In the case of Chick-Fil-A I am simply constrained to distance myself.  Apathy and cynicism are not the answer. I apply social pressure wherever I am reasonably able to do so.

I leave you folks with this question that has, so far, gone unanswered.

Would you give your money to Chick-Fil-A if they donated millions of dollars to organizations that actively fought against equal marriage for black people? Consider Cathy's remarks about how allowing gays to marry actually warrants the wrath of the God of the Universe. Replace gay with black.

Would you support that organization? What's the difference?

In Reason,

Clint Wells


Homosexuality, Equality and Human Secularism
Homosexuality, Bigotry and False Victimization

What's the Point?: Thoughts on Easter and Religious Criticism

This morning I woke up with my fiance as she was preparing to go to work around eight o'clock. I sent my younger brother a birthday text message and idly pondered the coincidence of his birthday shared not only with the death of Kurt Cobain, but also, at least this year, the commemorative resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I made some coffee and came into my office to do some writing. Immediately (and unsurprisingly) I noticed the many religious accolades of my believing friends via social media. I lightheartedly made a few comments of my own ("He is risen!" I said to myself in the mirror) and took note of the "heathen" atheists walking their dogs and exercising outside my office window on this glorious Easter morning. For reasons unknown to me I put on Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska and was struck by the poignancy of this line from "Atlantic City:"

"Everything dies, baby, that's a fact

But maybe everything that dies someday comes back."

Despite my enduring dissent from religion in general and Christianity in particular, I still find the idea of redemption compelling and beautiful. Hardly the explicit domain of Christianity, this idea has likely always been present in us. Most experts agree that religion first evolved as a response to the quickening of our mortality. Our first pre-religious rituals involve the burial of the dead and the rituals, themselves, generally centered around the idea of surviving death. This is indisputably a hallmark of the world's modern religions as well.

However, there is a secular language we have adopted since the advent of modern science that I find just as beautiful, if not more so. We've learned in the last several hundred years that the makeup of all matter is virtually the same. On a small level we have learned that we, as human beings, share DNA not only with our closest relatives like chimps and bonobos but also with distant cousins like whales and birds and even plants and trees. On a larger level we have learned that all organic matter containing carbon was produced in stars. As the late Carl Sagan famously quipped:

"We are a way for the universe to know itself. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We're made of star stuff."

We are programmed to live and yet everything dies. This is a sobering realization for all of us, no matter where we fall on the spectrum of belief. The story of Christ, and particularly, the story of Christ's resurrection, is a pivotal balm when contemplating the sad state of dying things for the Christian. For within the resurrection of Christ my believing friends see also the promise of their own resurrections and the resurrections of those dear to them. The atheist has no such comfort and, in regards to the specific matter of coping with death, I am sympathetic to the beliefs of my peers although I cannot, myself, assent to them.

Well, that's all good and well isn't it? So, the question is often asked of me, why do I constantly make a hobby of criticizing religion? If I am sympathetic to it's most dearly held predication (the fear of death) and I am able to regard it reasonably if not respectfully then why not leave well enough alone?

This question is only a good one superficially. Let me explain to you why.

Christianity is fundamentally an evangelical religion with explicit admonitions to proselytize the world. The Great Commission recorded in the final verses of Matthew have Jesus saying,

"Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you."

First of all, I am quite happy that modern Christians largely consider the Old Testament to be not only irrelevant but often times diametrically opposed to their more tolerant, love everyone version of Christianity. Back in the days of Moses dissent from the God of the Jews was dealt with swiftly by stoning the guilty parties to death. To the chagrin of my believing friends, one does not have to step far back to wade in the blood of those who dissented only several hundred years ago and were burned as heretics or dipped in oil as witches or beheaded as atheists. I'm fond of acknowledging the Catholic church's 350 year late apology to Galileo after threatening him with death for stating the now undisputed fact of a heliocentric universe.

I digress.

Though I am not in any immediate danger of being murdered for disagreeing with my Christian comrades, I am, unfortunately, a victim of their constant proselytizing. Christians, in my experience, aren't content to hold their beliefs privately. They must judge the world. Just the other day a thoughtful believing friend of mine quoted a dense theologian he no doubt respected who, having the courage (read:audacity) of judgment I simply do not possess, deemed all non-believers to be "headed towards the void" and "alienated from themselves." My response to the theologian?

You don't even know me, motherfucker. And even that is much more time by way of response this cretin deserves.

Being told by strangers that I am unhappy and incomplete is but a mild irritation compared to the truly incredible indictment that I am going to suffer in hell for all eternity. That's right. I am going to suffer in hell for ALL OF ETERNITY because I believe in different things about the world than you do. This is made more startling when considering how many versions of Christianity exist in the world (Protestantism boasts 33,000 denominations). Which one buys you a ticket to heaven? One of them? Some of them? None of them?

Sadly, no one is an authority on this question. Myself included.

The difference is, while I criticize the more evil aspects that come with religion (and many of my thoughtful religious friends agree with these criticisms), I don't proselytize and I certainly do not threaten dissenters with eternal suffering.

Until the religious thinkers of the world treat me with the same respect I am bound to chip away at their crass dogmas. Remember, everyone has the right to believe in whatever they want to. But what they do not have is the right to not be criticized or offended. That goes for you and for me, dear reader. Only, I'm much less likely to knock on your door.

In Reason.

Clint Wells

Rick Perry and the Power of the Internet in the Marketplace of Ideas

Rick Perry's latest campaign video has gone viral. Over the last week or so it has generated an astonishing six million views. However, I'm not so sure his marketing team anticipated the negative exposure it would generate for their campaign. The video currently has 654,114 dislikes versus 20, 549 likes. If you're at all familiar with YouTube then you already know that the like/dislike ratio is a fairly telling barometer for how that video is being received by the public. First I want to talk about the video and then I want to talk for a bit about the power of the internet in the marketplace of ideas. Here is the video if you haven't seen it. I want to briefly address his main points.

1. "I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a Christian."

First of all, admitting that you are a Christian puts you in company with every president in American history including Barack Obama. In fact, it's pretty well established that in a country with an evangelical majority you must at least superficially subscribe to Christianity to become the president. There is no shame in this. To the contrary, a presidential hopeful would incur the shame of the pubic for stating the exact opposite. In other words, Perry's opening line is self-refuting nonsense.

2. "You don't need to be in the pew every Sunday to know that there's something wrong in the country when gays can serve openly in the military..."

It really doesn't take a genius of moral philosophy to see that serving in the military should have nothing to do with sexual orientation. I've discussed the civil rights of homosexuals elsewhere but for now it should suffice to say that anyone who wants to risk his or her life defending the country they love should have equal opportunity to do so. Believing that homosexuality is evil does not make you a bigot. In my opinion this just makes you pathetically ignorant. However when you seek to strip away basic civil rights because of those beliefs, that's when you become a bigot. The fact is that homosexual bigotry has simply lost in the marketplace of ideas. It is currently being relegated into the heap of human failure alongside slavery and the subjugation of women. Rick Perry not only shows the world that he is an inhumane and evil bigot, but also that he considers this to be a pillar of his dearly held Christian beliefs. I hope my Christian friends are appalled and embarrassed by this.

3. "...or our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school."

This is a direct lie. There is no law stating that kids cannot celebrate Christmas or pray in school. When I was in high-school there were several Christian organizations that met on campus. One met every morning before class at the school flag and offered coffee and donuts to students in addition to tracts, prayer and sermons. In the lobby of my high-school Gideons passed out copies of the New Testament. During lunch a college student representing Campus Crusade had free reign over the lunch room praying with students and inviting them to weekly bible studies. It was considered an honor to be a part of the FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes). I also clearly remember a group of students wanting to start a group for atheism and being prohibited by the staff. These are my personal experiences and they are not very different than many in my generation across the country.

Here is the deal. The United States is a pluralistic country. This means that we recognize all

religions equally and that we do not endorse one as a national sectarian religion. That means that schools (government funded institutions) are not allowed to show favoritism to a certain religion. Students may pray in school, in fact we were always encouraged to do so. However, the teachers were never to mandate or lead their own prayers. The reasoning is self-evident.

The truth about most evangelicals is that they do not want religious freedom. They want Christian freedom. Many evangelical parents would be horrified if school sanctioned adults were handing out copies of the Koran to students before school. Many parents would scream their throats raw if their precious Christian children were being forced to pray to Allah or Odin or Ishtar. Rick Perry's message is intentionally dishonest and meant to emotionally stir what he obviously considers to be an impressionable and gullible public. Thankfully, we are proving him wrong.

4. "As president, I will end Obama's war on religion..."

I found this one most interesting. First of all Obama has repeatedly and explicitly stated that he is an evangelical Christian. You can read some of his statements where he talks about coming to Christian faith by choice later in life because he understood that Jesus died for his sins. Praying every day, he says that public service is just one of the ways he can express his Christian faith. Rick Warren, one of America's most prominent evangelicals, was the "spiritual leader" chosen by Obama to launch his inauguration with an invocational prayer. Secondly, haven't a lot of conservative pundits (34% roughly 1/3 according to a 2010 pew poll) spent countless hours and wasted energy attempting to perpetuate the rumor that Obama is a Muslim? How can he be a Muslim and be waging a war on religion? Idiots.

5. "...and I will fight against liberal attacks on our religious heritage."

The founding fathers and the documents that make up the bedrock of American policy are intentionally and explicitly secular. Sure some of the founding fathers were religious (mostly Deists) but they recognized that the only way to truly be free from the religious oppression they were running from was to keep church and state separated. The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment specifically prohibits the establishment of a national religion and the favor of one religion over another by the government. This is quite obviously NOT what Rick Perry wants. Rick Perry seems to think that our "religious heritage" is a specifically Christian heritage. This is clearly not true if any of you have ever truly investigated the making of America.

6. "Faith made America strong and it can make her strong again."

Okay, this is obviously pandering nonsense but he can have that. Yeah, Rick. "Faith" made America strong and "faith" can make her strong again. I'm happy to receive a lesson on faith from bloated millionaires who can't even remember their own policies for presidential debates and who preach intolerant, homophobic bigotry. Classic.

The Power of the Internet in the Marketplace of Ideas

I'm so thankful for the Enlightenment and the exponential technological boom we have been experiencing ever since. From the printing press to antibiotics to clean water systems to doubling life expectancy to central heating and air to cures for disease to space travel to velcro to birth control to iPods to bifocals to particle colliders we are currently experiencing the most exciting time to be a human being.

I'm particularly thankful today for the internet. Science works

because it must survive it's own rigid self-correcting process of peer review. Scientists don't just win Nobel Prizes for coming up with ideas. These ideas must WORK and we find out if they do or do not work because these ideas get independently tested and verified over and over before they are accepted. Science works. Maybe there is a god and maybe that god is Rick Perry's god (uh oh) and maybe that god works miracles in the natural world. MAYBE. In the meantime, science WORKS. Think about that as you're reading this blog post in a well lit, well conditioned room. Think of the thousands of songs on your iPod or those nice running shoes you just wore to the gym. Think about the glass of clean water you are drinking and the 911 speed dial on your phone in case your spouse has another epileptic seizure. Science. It works.

Now, the marketplace of ideas is not very different. However, for centuries, the marketplace has been controlled by bureaucrats who have sought to stifle the free thought of the masses. Why? Because they're evil fucks who want to control everything, that's why. These are the people who wish to control information to keep you and I towing their line. These are the people who put Galileo on trial for suggesting the now commonly accepted idea of heliocentrism. These are the people who imprisoned Socrates and fed him hemlock for asking questions. These are the people who burned atheists and "heretics" at the stake. For far too long these people controlled the marketplace of ideas to the detriment and retardation of human progress.

Not any more, folks. When someone like Rick Perry claims that children can't pray in schools or that Obama isn't a Christian or that America was founded on Christian principles we can all very easily and quickly google those claims and find them erroneous. We are no longer an easily disregarded minority in our small towns. We are a voice that must be heard. We are now unified the world over and can now strongly hold to account those who used their power to subdue us with bad and non-information.

The intellectual war is over because it just got a lot harder to be full of shit. Rick Perry's laughable campaign is over and the YouTube response to his latest video is proof. Goodbye Rick Perry. I will miss enjoying every bit of your public stupidity. And for whoever is next, we'll be waiting and hoping you aren't as evil and pathetic because if you are, you will not survive in the (finally) free marketplace of ideas. Thanks to the internet. Thanks to science. Thanks to the courage of everyone like me. And like you.

In reason,

Clint Wells

The Oddness of Belief and Ritual - Sunday

I was just lying here, reading Bukoswki as my two pugs snored beside me, thinking about the Sabbath Day. I skimmed through the television early this morning and spent some time listening to all of the TV preachers. All in all there were six of them (bear in mind I only have 10 channels) and they were all grinding that same axe. Working that same machine. Telling that same lie. Capitalizing on that same fear.

One of them was talking about misery and struggle (as they all do). He was comparing misery and struggle to being lost in a desert (as they all do). He was telling his listeners to take heart when their struggles and miseries seemed too big to handle. Why? Because the bigger the desert the bigger the blessing. The bigger the hopelessness and misery the bigger the lesson God has for you when/if He chooses to be your deliverer.

The pastor, of course, shouted all of this and when he got to the end the organist, of course, played with passion and the congregation, of course, shouted, laughed and many were even sitting with tears running down their tired faces.

It's all terribly boring, isn't it. It's all terribly pitiable, isn't it?

What are the greatest fears of mankind?

1. We don't know how we got here.

2. We don't know where we are going.

3. We are going to die.

4. There may be no meaning to our suffering.

I certainly don't have any satisfying answers to the above questions and fears. Evolutionary biology has solved the answer of how human beings got here as a species and how life has evolved into the diversity we see around us but the big question of "where it all came from" remains a mystery. As far as where we are going it seems, by all reasonable accounts, that once you reach brain-death you go nowhere and simply cease to exist. Death is something no man can escape, despite our most dearly held mythologies. And other than the small meaning we define for ourselves, there seems to be no cosmic reason for any of our sufferings.

These are my default positions on life's greatest mysteries. I don't find them particularly consoling but it does give me a certain amount of satisfaction to adopt a skeptical posture because it is clearly the most intellectually honest one. Whether you are a Christian, Muslim, Mormon, Buddhist or an atheist, we all share the same fate and the same fears. This I know.

But the Christian has a firm answer to these fears. I heard it clearly on the television today. I heard it clearly in my decade of evangelical christianity. I read it clearly in the teachings of the Bible. It's quite simple and not unlike thousands of other myths across the world. Unsurprisingly there is a thread throughout each answer to our greatest fears.

1. God made you intentionally by his own will and special creation. Though you may not understand it, you were put here for a reason.

As far as marketing an idea goes this is a perfect answer because it appeals to both successful and unsuccessful people. If life is going well for you then you are able to see it as a confirmation that, of course, God is looking out for you. If you suffer in untold miseries (as most of the world does) then you are able to take comfort in the fact that, though you don't understand your present struggle, you were made with a purpose. In this sense Christianity has made a virtue out of suffering. The preacher today was emphasizing this by drawing a correlation between the size of your blessing and the size of your struggle.

2. When you die you will live with God in perfect unity and bliss as you were meant to for all of eternity.

You will finally be freed of struggle. Free of pain and misery. Free of bounced checks and unpaid bills and mundane jobs and tyrannical bosses and abusive fathers and collect callers and dismal parents and no friends and impotency and disease and fatigue and garbage and lost love and disappointment and being picked last and tears and drudgery and slavery and obesity and acne and emasculation and so on and so forth.

3. You were not meant to die.

Death is unnatural. You were made to live in perfect unity with God for all of eternity but that all changed when Eve ate the apple in the Garden of Eden therefore plunging perfect humanity into a condition of total depravity. Luckily, God sent Himself to die for that depravity so that we could all be restored into our original state which was, of course, a state that was never meant to experience or taste death. Life is temporary. It will soon be over and you will be in Paradise forever with no pain.

4. Your suffering has meaning.

When life beats you down mercilessly you can be assured that the God who created everything is intimately involved in your suffering. After all, when he took on humanity and the sins of the world he was able to taste what you taste and may therefore empathize with you wholly. In this way any and all suffering may be neatly filed under "God moves in mysterious ways." Consider Elisabeth Fritzl. At age 11 Elisabeth began suffering abuse at the hands of her father. When she was 18, Elisabeth's father lured her into his basement, drugged her and locked her in. For the next 24 years he visited her three days a week to bring her food and often raped her. Elisabeth gave birth to seven children in her captivity. One child died a few days after birth while three of the children were taken up to live seemingly normal lives while their mother remained imprisoned, tortured and raped below them. Imagine what prayers and petitions ran from this poor girl's heart. For over two decades suffering the most unfathomable misery. God certainly does move in mysterious ways. His ways are so mysterious, it seems, that it is as if he does not move at all. This is one story of countless millions easily forgotten under the auspice of the cosmic meaning of suffering. It is a particularly evil teaching.

Consider these answers, folks. Does it give you any pause that they are so wonderfully tailed to calm your greatest fears? Do these answers strike you at all as pandering to your deepest unsurities?

I do not know many things. I really don't. I do not know if there is a god or not and I certainly don't know if that god is or is not Jesus Christ. I just don't know. Here are a few things I do know, however. I know the following to be ABSOLUTE FACTS. Please consider them seriously.

1. No one knows how we got here.

2. No one knows where we are going.

3. No one escapes death.

4. No one knows if suffering has cosmic meaning.

Think for yourselves. Question authority. Be skeptical about what you've been told your whole life. It was probably untrue and based on fear.

In reason,

Clint Wells

Homosexuality, Equality and Secular Humanism

This weekend New York passed the Marriage Equality Act which allows gender neutral marriages for same sex/opposite sex couples as well as protects religious organizations from penalty for refusing to sanctify or recognize a marriage that contradicts their religious beliefs.

This is yet another landmark in the ongoing homosexual civil rights issue. The New York Times published several touching stories about middle aged, life long partners finally being able to have their relationship validated by the state. For the first time hundreds of American families in New York are being treated equally.

Well, not completely equally.

Because of the Defense of Marriage Act, same-sex marriages are not recognized by the federal government. What does this mean? This means that gay and lesbian spouses are being explicitly denied the roughly 1,049 federal protection laws that all heterosexual spouses enjoy. In addition DOMA says that no state is obligated to recognize a same-sex marriage. This means that whatever state rights exist to protect a same-sex marriage (this varies by state) become completely obsolete as soon as you leave the state.

1. Federal Rights.

Of the 1,049 federal laws that homosexuals are being denied the highest of these are in the categories of Federal Civilian and Military Service Benefits (275), Taxation (179), Social Security (82) and Employment Benefits (67).

There are all kinds of horrific stories that bear out the consequences of being denied these rights. Imagine that your lover of 30 years is hit by a car on a late night stroll. Without marital status you may be legally prohibited from riding in the ambulance, visiting in the hospital, making decisions for your partner's medical treatment, and even honoring their funeral wishes. Why? Because you are technically a legal stranger.

You are not entitled to exemption on Inheritance or Death taxes. You are not entitled to employee benefits such as medical leave to care for a spouse or bereavement. You are not given a break on property tax in the event of your partner's death which, in most cases, means that you lose your home because you can no longer afford it.

You are not entitled to social security or VA pensions should your partner die. These are rights that even divorced heterosexual couples have, folks.

If you are the non-biological parent of a same-sex partnership and your partner dies you have no federal rights that validate or protect your relationship with your child.

Until very recently if you were a homosexual serving in the military you couldn't even list your partner as an emergency contact for fear of being discharged, let alone the VA benefits offered to every other heterosexual couple. One tragic story involves a lesbian Air Force Captain. A few weeks before deployment her partner of 14 years was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. When she told her superiors why she could not be deployed she was immediately discharged. Even when her partner died and she brought a death certificate to the appeals for her unfair discharge she was still accused of using the event to get out of her military obligations.

Every right I have listed (maybe 15 out of the 1,049) are unequivocally given to heterosexual marriages. This is clearly not equality.

2. State Rights.

There are about 300 state rights that come with marriage. Even the most progressive states like California and New York do not offer these rights fully to civil unions. For an example of how important this is consider that if you study the California Code with regard to marriage, you'll get 4,000 hits where spousal status makes a difference.

The important thing to know about State rights is that, because of DOMA, state rights do not apply when you leave the state. This means that the couples who married this weekend in NYC are not necessarily protected by the laws of marriage in ANY OTHER STATE.

Bill and Brad have been together for 24 years. They finally got married this weekend in New York City and are taking a cross country road trip for their honeymoon. In Utah they are hit by a drunk driver and Bill is taken to the hospital in a devastating coma. Brad, 

who has no federal or state rights in Utah as a legal spouse, is treated as a legal stranger and has no authority to decide on Bill's medical treatment. And so on, and so forth.

Folks, this is not equality. This isn't even CLOSE to equality. This is not an appeal for the homosexual community to have "special rights." It is an appeal for "equal rights."

Secular Humanism and the Fight for Equality

It is a fact that the loudest resistance to homosexual equality is the religious right. They continue to use the same dishonest tactics by drawing debunked correlations between the homosexual community and the degeneration of the family. In my essay on Homosexuality and False Victimization I said this:

"Although the American Psychological Association makes it clear that the longstanding consensus of the behavioral and social sciences and the health and mental professions is that homosexuality is a normal and positive variation of human sexual orientation, some people still seem to think that it is a mental disorder. Although homosexuality can be observed in nature (lions, pigeons, giraffes, bison, elephants, gulls, bonobos, dragonflies, sheep, dolphin, just to name a few) some people still consider it a dysfunctional CHOICE. Although study after study continues to show that there is an equal level of commitment and relationship satisfaction amongst both gay and straight couples, some people still think that homosexuals are incapable of having healthy and lasting relationships. Although studies show that children raised by same-sex couples are just as mentally healthy as other children, some people still think that homosexuals are not fit parents. Although studies show no correlation between homosexuality and child molestation, some people still consider homosexuals a threat and a danger to children."

I'm not ignoring the many religious folks who are open and accepting of gay rights and marriage equality. There are many fine religious folks out there who I stand arm in arm with on this issue. However, the advancement of the LGBT movement is largely due to increasing secular values.

I recently read an article about Willow Creek Community Church, a huge, trend-setting congregation in Chicago, cutting ties with anti-gay ministries. Churches and mainstream evangelicals are beginning to disassociate with the anti-gay bigotry of Christianity's (not so distant) past.

Why are they doing this? Well, it certainly isn't because they think any differently about homosexuals. Church officials at Willow Creek described the move as a shift in approach rather than a change in belief.

So, they still consider the homosexuals a project. A target with which to inculcate their straightness. The truth is that they want to be culturally relevant. Cultural relevance, these days, is dictated by secular humanism. This is the same thing that happened during the abolition of slavery and the advent of inter-racial marriage. Just like the religious fundamentalists today, the religious right back then believed that God was on their side. A Virginia judge had this to say during the interracial marriage breakthroughs:

"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."

Are we seeing a pattern of religious based bigotry here folks? Who are the secular humanists fighting against same-sex marriage? They do not exist.

The war is over. For every enemy of gay rights there will be someone like me ready to fight them with logic, reason, science, rational thought and human compassion. We are growing and we will dismantle their hatred with our wit, our evidence, our free commitment to the values and dignity of human life. We have no rule book. We have our consciences. We have no gods or cosmic authorities telling us who, what, and how to love. We have our hearts and the pervasive drive to fight the suffering of the world.

Which side will you stand on? Will you be apologizing to the world like those who defended slavery and made interracial marriage illegal? Or will you stand with those of us who fight for the inherent dignity of all human beings? 

It's pretty simple. Get on the right side of history.

In Reason,

Clint Wells

Morality Part One: The Burden of Proof

Does morality come from gods? Of course it doesn't. Have you read the holy books recently? Aside from being utterly repugnant and morally retarded, they're actually quite hilarious. For the sake of my largely Christian readers I'll explore the moral philosophy of the Bible and argue for why it is not a source for morality in any reasonable sense. But first, I want to spend some time talking again about the burden of proof and honest discourse.

For centuries one of the pillars of Christian apologetics has been the assertion that without Christianity there would be no source for morality. In other words, we're all brutes who need a cosmic authority to say "Thou shall not murder" in order to know that wanton murder is detrimental to society. More sophisticated theologians will talk about how non-believers are capable of morality, but unable to rationally justify morality with a natural explanation.

Here's the deal. The inability of a non-believer to justify morality doesn't even make the Christian explanation more plausible, let alone true. To claim absolute morality (which the orthodox Christian does) the burden of proof is on the Christian to substantiate their claims. In my many formal and informal debates with Christians there always comes a point when they look at me and ask me to explain morality. When I point out that it is not necessary they believe they have won some sort of philosophical victory.

Well, I happily call bullshit.

It just so happens that I have a naturalistic explanation for morality. I subscribe to an objective (note: not absolute) provisional morality. It's objective because it belongs to the species, not the individual, and it's provisional because morality evolves with our understanding of pain and well being.

This is the first (and briefest) of a three part series on morality. Next I will discuss the moral philosophy of the Bible and argue that it cannot be any viable source for morality. Lastly I will outline a reasonable, naturalistic account of human morality.

For now I hope you will thoughtfully consider the burden of proof.

In reason,

Clint Wells

Christians Say Interesting Things Part Two: "Pray For Me"

I've been thinking about this prayer thing for years now. I've even written two essays (linked below) using reason and logic to explore the irrationality and ineffectiveness of prayer.

Over the last few months as natural disasters have ripped through the south and the midwest and as I have personally dealt with the death of one of my best friends, I've seen, more than ever it seems, appeals for people to pray for them. During a calamity all of my social networking sites are clogged with people petitioning for prayer.

I simply don't understand it. Even when I was an evangelical Christian devoted to the teaching of the Bible I found it ineffective and slightly embarrassing to ask people to pray for me. As a progressive believer (meaning a believer more or less in touch with observable reality) I had relegated prayer to some abstract form of faith exercising. In my dialogues on the below essay's I've even heard some of you say this very thing. You pray because it changes you in an abstract sense, not because it actually changes reality.

And that brings us to my point. Here are some logical questions I have in response to people using social media to ask for prayers in the wake of an approaching thunder storm:

1. Is your god capricious enough to reserve help simply because not enough people prayed for it?

2. Don't you believe that god is in control of everything? Doesn't this include the very storm on it's way to potentially destroy your life? What is the goal of prayer here? To honor your god's will or to thwart it?

3. How do you explain the fact that there are people in this world who probably pray harder and better than you and who are still susceptible to the same natural disasters as yourself?

One Christian, who is fairly well known as a musician in a successful Christian band, had this to say in response to making it through a storm that others were destroyed by:

"We were *blessed* this line arrived after sunset. Avoided a tornadic outbreak. Feels good to get a reminder of Who is in charge."

I pointed out that this was incredibly offensive to those who were devastated by the storms and, according to this logic, "unblessed" by the Big Man in charge. He responded by saying he didn't consider it offensive to be thankful not to get hit by a tornado.

Do you see the cognitive dualism here, folks? It's like missing a flight that ends up crashing and thanking god for his goodness and his blessings while hundreds of lives were lost and thousands destroyed.

This is nonsense. If you want to pray to gods or to Elvis or to your dead loved ones then by all means, I want you to have the freedom to do that. But when you start publicly petitioning for prayer and thanking your god for sparing you while thousands of others are picking up the pieces then you deserve some social criticism.

Prayer quite obviously is a complete denial of reality. It is the ostrich burying it's head in the sand. It is childish and it is time to grow up, folks. What we need in a time of crisis is human solidarity and tangible resources. We don't need to waste our time praying to an invisible being who, whether that being exists or not, isn't going to do a damn thing for us. We don't need to proliferate wish thinking as a viable method of coping with tragedy.

We must use the tools of reality to face reality. Together.

In reason,

Clint Wells

Praying for Oil to Touchdown Jesus: Counting the Hits and Ignoring the Misses

Prayer, Science and Haiti

Christians Say Interesting Things Part One: Epistemology and Reality

Christians Say Interesting Things Part One: Epistemology and Reality

I was recently followed on twitter by a preacher who runs a twenty-something ministry I won't name here. His website/blog advertises itself as "intellectual/spiritual wanderings from a reform(ing)ed, emerging, gen-X-er..."

That's all fine and good, but what I found particularly interesting was his short twitter bio which simply says:

"I preach the gospel out of an unshakable need for it to be true."

For reasons you may well imagine, this bothers me a great deal. No belief should be held to, espoused, or preached for such a meritless reason as the need you have for it to be true. Reality must be pursued beyond our petty biases and needs.

As an atheist I am often accused of turning away from god because I want to live a particular life of sin, debauchery and hedonism. The idea here is that I may know or suspect that God exists, but it wouldn't flatter my wants and needs and therefore I reject it. Atheism is what I want and therefore it is true to me.

Well, this is partially true and partially false. It's true because, as far as I've read, the god of historical Christianity is a capricious megalomaniac and it would likely be man's worst nightmare if such a god existed. While I am open to any verifiable evidence of the existence of such a god, I am happy that none yet exists. It's false because swallowing the mortality of myself and the ones I love and cherish is a bitter pill indeed. I'd like to believe that somehow I and the ones I love might survive death and that we may live together in communion for a long, long time. I'd like to believe that my body won't decay or that my prostate won't become swollen or that my mind won't weaken. I'd like to believe that the sun will not explode in five billion years destroying Earth and and every living thing on it.

In some dark moments I may even feel the need for these things to be true.

However, this changes nothing about observable reality. Simply needing something to be true does not make it so. Nor does finding current evidence unpalatable make a claim untrue.

I've heard people say, "Well, I simply cannot imagine not existing."

Really? It's actually not that hard. To people in Paris right now, you don't exist. You didn't exist for 14 billion years before you were born. There are a million thought experiments you can do to prove this point.

If you believe in Jesus or Zeus or L. Ron Hubbard or Santa Claus....I honestly don't care. But when you proselytize on the basis that you NEED it to be true...well that's when I get fired up enough to spend ten minutes writing a blog that no one reads.

Booya.

In Reason,

Clint Wells

Religious Logic and Child Sacrifice

This week a woman in Illinois was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison for stabbing her six year old daughter to death. When the authorities showed up they found the body in a room with a butcher knife and a picture of Mary, Joseph and Jesus. The little girl had been stabbed eleven times in the neck and chest.

Eleven times.

After the mother did this she attempted suicide by slitting her wrists but a neighbor called the cops before she could bleed out. At first her story was that she murdered her daughter in self-defense. However, she later admitted that the real reason was because she feared the little girl was possessed by demons. Allegedly the only evidence for this was a case of sleep walking, an entirely common phenomenon especially in children.

I've written about this elsewhere in an essay called "Religion and Mental Illness" but I feel compelled to reiterate this point because, unfortunately, crazy people are still killing their children because of unfounded beliefs in demons, possession, spirits and gods.

What I simply do not understand is why religious people can call the story of Abraham and Issac a tale of heroic faith and yet share my disgust when a woman stabs her poor child to death. How can these people claim to get their absolute morality from a book containing a story of premeditated child sacrifice and then have any logical coherence when condemning this sort of thing in the modern world.

We both likely agree that this woman is, at best, mentally ill and unfit for society. My question to the Christian is: why do you believe this?

Common Misconceptions Part Six: Science Is Biased Against Supernaturalism

In my experience theists usually begin a debate by appealing to standards of evidence we all find colloquially useful in everyday life. They will talk about the reliability of the Bible as a divine historical document, fulfilled prophecy, answered prayers, observed miracles and other claims that can actually be tested by experimental and historical sciences. However once you show them that:

a. the Bible has failed all the tests of a reliable historical document.
b. the Bible only makes self-fulfilled prophesies (i.e. "this took place to fulfill what was prophesied Matthew 21:4-5) or prophecies that correspond with normal probability laws (i.e. Jerusalem will be sacked; there will be wars, etc.).
c. several independent studies of intercessory prayer have proved prayer to be futile (see the STEP Prayer Project).
d. no miracle has been directly observed and verified by others without a natural explanation (i.e. a severed limb supernaturally regenerates).

…they then revert to pseudo-scientific arguments from incredulity. In other words, once they see that real science is no friend to their claims they begin using a bastardized version of science. They make the Cosmological Argument and they invoke the anthropic principle. Using legitimate scientific data they form unwarranted and illegitimate conclusions that life MUST have been implemented by their own god. They believe that pointing out weaknesses in evolutionary theory (something that scientists have been doing themselves for over 150 years) somehow lends more credibility to their god hypothesis. They draw unsubstantiated correlations between the theory of evolution and social darwinism (which, by the way, even if such a correlation was founded on evidence wouldn’t make it untrue). And so on, etc.

Once you show them that these arguments hold no water they revert back to what they should have started with in the first place: faith. This is usually combined with attempts to criticize atheism. This cycle happens almost every time I debate a theist. Science -> Psuedo-science -> Faith -> Denigrating atheism and “scientism.”

When science turns from amity to enmity for the theist things really start getting interesting. One of the things I hear a lot at this point is the paranoid assertion that scientists and/or science itself are biased against the supernatural.

This is wrong for two reasons. First, science itself is completely neutral on this issue. The fact is that supernatural claims lie beyond the purview of the scientific enterprise. The underlying principle of science is methodological naturalism which states that natural phenomenon can only be observed and explained by natural models. This is why science will never prove or disprove all possible gods. Science speaks to improbability, not impossibility. With a theistic god like Yahweh, Allah or Jesus all science can do is evaluate particular claims that occur in the natural world. This would include miracle claims, the effects of intercessory prayer, the historical merit of the Bible, the manifestation of a spiritual being, and so forth. While science cannot say whether or not all possible gods do or do not exist, it can say that the things one would expect to see if particular gods DID exist are simply not observed.

Secondly, if scientists have all conspired together on this anti-supernaturalism bias then why are roughly half of scientists religious? These scientists obviously believe in the realm of the supernatural but rightly understand that they must separate the supernatural, by necessity, from the scientific process because, by definition, it is a process that only works in the natural world.

Some people (I am not one of them) subscribe to philosophical naturalism which states that only the natural world exists in the universe. I am sympathetic to this philosophy. However, because I simply have no way of knowing this, I reserve judgment. In other words, I have no bias against the existence of the supernatural. Methodological naturalism is distinct from philosophical naturalism because it is simply an epistemological way of acquiring information, not a worldview pronouncement.

Common Misconceptions Part Five: The Burden of Proof and the Presumption of Atheism

I often wrestle with the idea of debate. My general position is that debating someone privately tends to have little or no value. Most people approach an issue with such intense bias that the likelihood of convincing or persuading them out of their default position is not worth the time or energy spent making good arguments. However, having a debate on a public platform, formal or informal, really can have an intellectual impact on those who are watching while sitting on the fence. When it comes to big issues such as evolution, abortion, religion, or racism I have personally been affected by many avenues of dialogue. Self education, individual debates, public debates, religious literature, critical literature, scientific/philosophical literature, YouTube videos, scientific studies and experience (amongst others) have all helped shape my current worldview.

In my experience, debating theists/creationists is often futile because they simply cannot make their arguments without shadowboxing, willfully or ignorantly confusing claims and terminology, invoking emotionalism, misunderstanding basic science and philosophy, ignoring criticism, drawing unfounded correlations, name calling, unabashed arrogance, false humility, and other disingenuous tactics of argumentation.

For example, let’s consider the burden of proof and the presumption of atheism. The theistic position makes a positive claim (i.e. There IS A god). Atheism is not a positive claim (i.e. There IS NO god) but rather, a rejection of a claim (i.e. I see no good evidence to believe there is a god). Please take note that this is not a semantics issue. No serious atheist claims to KNOW that there is no god. No one is ever called upon to prove a negative. Therefore it is a non sequitur for a theist to ask an atheist to prove their rejection of a claim. The burden of proof rests on the one making a positive claim.

As a thought experiment, try disproving this positive claim: There is an invisible, anthropomorphic guitar that lives in my closet. Only I can hear him and he tells me the future but I am not allowed to disclose the information he gives me. If you don’t believe in him on faith then you will burn in hell for all of eternity. Try disproving that. It should become clear to you in a matter of seconds that not only is it impossible to disprove this, but you are under no philosophical burden TO disprove it. And so it is with any positive supernatural claim, including theism.

Consider the theory of evolution. I believe that evolutionary theory is the best explanation for the diversity of life we see around us. You may rightly ask me to prove this positive claim. If you did, I would point to things like DNA, genetics, the fossil strata, observations of evolution through sexual and environmental selection, fruit fly experiments, transitional fossils, artificial selection, etc. If you proved all of this wrong (congrats you just won a Nobel Prize) then you would STILL have to prove your alternative positive claim. If you believe that evolution is wrong because your version of God made the Universe, then disproving evolution is only half of your burden.

If we should rest under the presumption of theism then which god should we believe in? Zeus, Thor, Jesus, Allah, Poseidon, Ares, or any of the other thousands of god on offer? At some point (Immediately, in my opinion) the presumption of theism crumbles. This is because theism is a positive claim requiring proof and atheism is the default position until compelling evidence is provided.

Common Misconceptions Part One: There Are No Contradictions in the Bible
Common Misconceptions Part Two: Atheists Are Arrogant
Common Misconceptions Part Three: Atheism Is a Religion
Common Misconceptions Part Four: Evolution Caused the Holocaust

Evolution Misconceptions Part One: Evolution Is Just a Theory
Evolution Misconceptions Part Two: Evolution and the Origins of Life

Thoughts About Atheism and Religious Knowledge

Perhaps you've seen all the headlines today describing a Pew Forum which shows that atheists and agnostics know more about religion than believers. The religious community seems to be puzzled by this revelation. As the non-believing community continues to hold the title of largest American minority and as it seems this trend is in no danger of slowing, I think it's crucial to understand the reasons for this new information.

Although it's true that all human beings are born atheists (without gods) it is an unfortunate reality that by the age of five, the most fundamental years of psychological development, most Americans are either indirectly exposed to or directly indoctrinated with religion. Most religions target children for this very reason, at the age when appeals to authority are absolutely imperative for survival. But just like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, there comes a time in a person's life when they must, for themselves, weigh the evidence of certain claims.

The adult atheist in America has a lot to lose by rejecting religious claims. Family ostracism, professional discrimination, the narrowing of social community, etc. Atheists are commonly likened to dogmatic mass murderers like Hitler and Stalin as well as being accused of all base immorality. George Bush Sr. even pronounced the unbelieving community as unpatriotic sub-citizens.

While considering these remarkable sacrifices the atheist must make sure that her decision to reject religious claims is built upon the firm ground of reason. This naturally involves a studious education of the holy books as well as a sober view of how the teachings of these holy books play out in the world around us. For many these observations are so unlikely and scientifically unverifiable that the most reasonable response to the claims of religion is agnosticism. We just don't know. For others of us the claims of religion are so devastatingly irreconcilable that we simply must reject the claims out of conscience.

The Catholic church in the pre-Reformation/pre-printing press era built their empire on the ignorance of the masses. Why was this? I submit it was because they knew that, left to think for themselves, the masses would see enough of these holy books to warrant a safe amount of skepticism about their claims.

A philosopher once said that the only book you need to suggest for someone to convince them that Christianity is not true is the Bible. This is my story and the story of many of my beautiful, unbelieving friends. It doesn't mean that there are not intelligent Christians or that there aren't dumb atheists. It just means that most atheists have weighed the evidence. We know our holy books. We've sat in the pews and read the theology books and paid the tuition fees for seminary.

And as much as it may rub the religious, the evidence indicates that we've taken it a lot more seriously than the believers. That should be a sobering thought. Lots of love and kind thoughts to you all as you continue to investigate the truth in this strange, beautiful world. Wherever you fall on the spectrum of belief, we're in this thing together. I hope this finds you well.

In reason,

Clint Wells

An Open Letter to Red Mountain Church

Dear Red Mountain Church,

I first attended Red Mountain Church in January of 2002 when I was nineteen years old. I had converted to Christianity two years earlier and found myself, simply out of social coincidence, attending a rather large, rich Southern Baptist church in Pelham, Alabama. For two years that was my spiritual home and community. It was the beginning of my Christian education and my only tangible source for learning how to apply what I believed about the world to my young and wonderfully complicated life. Like any stage of infancy, I was dependent on the wisdom and goodness of the caretakers around me. I’ve always had a skeptic’s heart but never dreamed of needing its benefits in my Christian experience and in that believing community in particular. Such was my seventeen year old naiveté! A few years into my journey, and through pure self-education, I stumbled upon the tenets of Reformed Theology. I didn’t know what reformed theology was or even who John Calvin was for that matter. To me a tulip was simply one of a million unidentifiable flowers and held absolutely no doctrinal meaning. But as I continued reading, it became clear to me at the time that if Christianity was true then there was a crucial emphasis on God’s sovereignty and the bigness of his grace. To my great surprise (again with the naiveté), these new ideas put me at odds with my Southern Baptist church leadership. At that point, because I played music, I was heavily involved with this church. I was playing in praise bands, leading worship, leading Bible studies, helping organize mission trips, etc. I was a fairly typical, young Christian poster boy. As the leadership became more afraid of the ideas my friends and I were exploring they began to strip us of any leadership or influential roles. Ultimately we were asked to leave the church altogether.

I feel a lot and so this was devastating. I didn’t have much hope of finding another place to grow and learn or a body of people to enter into a dialogue with. My great friend, Brad Willis (an old friend of Red Mountain and, ironically, the former youth pastor at the aforementioned Baptist church), told me about Red Mountain. He said it was this humble place that met downtown in a hotel conference room. He talked about how there was so much space to sit and be quiet and how the pastor preached in his normal speaking voice and how the musicians played songs from hundreds of years ago that he’d never heard before. But he also said it was a place that was not afraid of ideas and a safe haven to rest and to process. To my great fortune I decided to go. Before long I had met Brian T. Murphy and began playing on Sundays. I had met and connected with Steve. I had joined my first of five community groups and had met so many people that I still have meaningful relationships with today. In many ways Red Mountain not only spoke to my previous disillusionment, but also undid for my heart what I thought had been bound. This is something that I continue to hold dear and think fondly of. Red Mountain has been the cultivated ground for the most important and special friendships I will likely ever have. People who have carried me in times of darkness and who have been kind enough to allow me to return the favor, however insufficiently. A lot of my core ideas about community, waiting, long-suffering with people, process and beauty I have learned while sifting through life at this church.

A few years ago I began to question the validity of Christianity. To be honest I’ve never been very good at believing things without evidence, but there seemed (and seems) to be a lot of space carved out for that sort of struggle in the teachings of Jesus. As I’ve come to more fully understand the Universe we inhabit and as I’ve learned more about human evolution and the historical progress of religion, I no longer personally find it reasonable to continue believing in Christianity, or any religion for that matter. While I don’t feel any anger or hatred for the belief systems themselves, I am still searching for a way to constructively criticize what I believe to be harmful elements of the faith. Most of my dear friends hold to some variation of Christianity and so I maintain sensitivity to that process to the best of my ability.

I have been beyond fortunate to participate in the music and know the musicians at Red Mountain. I realize the incompatibility between my current worldview and the body of work I have created at the church. I believe that the contradictions are surmountable and that with a united belief that the work has its own voice and a determination to make a way where there seems to be none, we can move forward together as I continue to make music within communities close to the people of Red Mountain.

I say all of this because I want you to see that my story is, well, a story. With arcs and with conflict. With toil and with joy. The story of Red Mountain has always been its people and I am thankful to have been wrapped up in the folding and unfolding of such a beautiful place. In light of these things and out of my respect for and admiration of this institution I have officially revoked my membership. I have revisited the five vows I took when I became a member and can conclusively say that I no longer believe in them as I once sincerely did. Red Mountain has changed a lot. In some ways it has become unrecognizable to me. In others I can see that it has evolved naturally and that perhaps some of what it has given up has made a way for it to gain other beautiful things. I take heart that my value at Red Mountain is to be counted amongst the people that I love and are loved by and not solely by my lack of doctrinal subscription or the petty babble of cowards.

Perhaps my story with you, anonymous reader, has ended. I’ve had enough bittersweet goodbyes this past year to last a lifetime. If you are still with me, I am thankful for your kindness and for your care. I hope this finds you all well.

In reason and the continuing spirit of détente,

Clint Wells