Jerry DeWitt is a former Pentecostal minister turned heathen, a graduate of Dennett and LaScola’s “Clergy Project,” and now director of the organization “Recovering From Religion“. You may remember the moving profile of him in the New York Times Magazine last August: “From Bible-belt pastor to atheist leader.” (Read it if you haven’t.)
This rousing two-minute atheist “sermon,” delivered at Reason at the Rock (the annual meeting of the Arkansas Society of Freethinkers), shows that DeWitt retains his preaching skills, and, despite his tribulations, has a great sense of humor.
h/t: Gregory
Darwin!
b&
True.
With enough Hitchens, you can’t avoid Darwin.
Delicious!
I haven’t been to church in 50 years but this rings true.
That is how the sermons went.
Is his a mistake? Only 2 min? Agin Religion?
How can that be?
You can find more Jerry DeWitt on YouTube. I do love me some Jerry DeWitt!
Awesomely correct and entertaining!
Fantastic.
Maybe he should try getting into the standup comedy circuit.
Here is a photo of Jerry DeWitt in Austin, Texas, with a couple of his godless heathen friends, taken in front of a painting of the devil in-carne asada.
Darwin!
Darwin? Sounds like an in joke. Explanation, please.
It is a joke, it’s a satirical attempt at what an evangelical atheist sermon might sound like, provided people could stop laughing long enough, of course. 🙂
“Can I get an ‘Amen'” is a standard line in a certain tradition of fundie preaching.
Clearly I have been deprived in the diversity of my religious experience.
It didn’t make sense that he would ask if he could get a Darwin Award.
Everything before that was so funny, my eyes were leaking.
Substitute “Amen!” for “Darwin!” and the truth will set you free.
Whoa American sermons are awesome, it’s like he’s singing. Our priests are rather boring, they just mumble and mutter, and thank monkey they don’t just recite the mass in Latin anymore.
As you might expect, there’s a huge variety.
That sing-song style is poplar with certain types of fundamentalists. If I’m not mistraken, it first gained popularity with the tent revival movement. Many Black Baptist preachers also have a similar style; it should come as no surprise that Dr. King delivered his speeches in the same style as Rev. King preached his sermons.
But we also have our boring droners, too. Lots of ’em. It’s rare for me to do a gig at a church and not have to struggle to stay awake for the sermon. Most of the ones where I succeed, it’s because the preacher is seriously talking about some particularly insane bit of the Bible as if it actually happened, and I’m amazed at the spectacle.
b&
i>”Most of the ones where I succeed, it’s because the preacher is seriously talking about some particularly insane bit of the Bible as if it actually happened, and I’m amazed at the spectacle.”
😀
Now there’s a confused fellow.
It has never been documented that prescriptive information could be derived from physics and chemistry but he has come to believe that it was.
On the other hand the only source of prescriptive information we have ever experienced is from an intelligence (a mind)
and he has stopped believing this.
Alas, It takes all kinds…….
Not confused at all. I gather from your comment that you think god lends us moral guidance. But in fact there are examples of “prescriptive information” (by which I assume you mean “moral rules”) found among all kinds of social animals on this little rock of a planet. They wouldn’t be social animals without rules of how to behave in the presence of other critters like them.
Your assertion is simply false. And I’d request that you provide evidence that there is a god up there (which you term “a mind”) at all. In the absence of such evidence the case is clear. You don’t need such an entity to find “prescriptive information”. We humans create it perfectly well on our own.
I think phosphoros99 is referring to David Abel’s creationist ID notion of Prescriptive Information:
PZ Myers had some fun with that twaddle here:- More bad science in the literature
“On the other hand the only source of prescriptive information we have ever experienced is from an intelligence…”
I agree. Bob Dylan was the shit!
😉
Jerry, I’ll give you two Darwins.
DARWIN! DARWIN!
I had the pleasure of hearing DeWitt give a fantastic talk here at LSU last year. Great guy.
In Louisiana – sorry, sometimes I’m too USA-focused for this website’s vast readership…
We’ve had several superb speakers give talks at the student atheist/agnostic/freethinkers group at Louisiana State Univ, including DeWitt. Large turnouts, too. Gives me a little (LITTLE) hope for this lost state.
‘Can I get a Darwin!’ Oh, that did make me chuckle. 🙂
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