Tennessee Atheists May Be Interested In This… August 6, 2009

Tennessee Atheists May Be Interested In This…

By Guest Contributor
August 6, 2009

To folks near Collierville, Tennessee (close to Memphis), there’s an event going on in your area next week at the Collierville Church of Christ you may want to attend: a “Truth About Human Origins” Seminar with Brad Harrub.

Here’s the schedule:

Friday August 14:
7:00PM: Atheism’s Attack on America

Saturday, August 15:
6:30PM: Is Genesis a Myth
7:30PM: The Dinosaur Dilemma

Sunday, August 16:
9:30AM: Was Darwin Wrong
10:30AM: Medical Examination of the Crucifixion
1:30PM: Scientific Accuracy of the Bible

Ironically, Harrub is co-editor of Think magazine.

Already, members of the Memphis Freethought Alliance and Memphis Atheists are attending. If you’re free and able, think about joining them. Ask some good questions and find out what lies Harrub is spreading. Be polite, of course, but don’t shy away from calling him out on his bullshit.

(Thanks to Chris for the link!)

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  • Ah, that sounds like it would be quite an interesting event to attend. But sadly, I don’t think I can justify a 5 hour drive out there from Knoxville 😛

  • Microbiologychick

    Yeah, I can’t justify the drive from Johnson City, either.

    It’s pretty much a rule that no one in east Tennessee has ever been to Memphis. You can go so many other places in less time.

  • Hazor

    Just as Edward Miller and Microbiologychick, I’m in the other end of the state. Additionally, I have to work on Friday/Saturday. Too bad, it could’ve been interesting.

  • I’d love to go, but I’m too busy leading the Friday night atheist bombing raid on America.

  • I wouldn’t go even if it was local…you never know who is packing heat! People get worked up at these things.

  • http://www.bradharrub.com/Site/Welcome.html

    and: http://www.focuspress.org/files/908/Audio/athiesmsAttack.mp3

    So, if there’s no superior being, there is no meaning to life. Does that mean that their God, not having a being superior to itself, has no meaning to it’s existence?

    Usual right-wing bigotry. Quite sad really.

  • Dr. Harrub was in St. Louis awhile ago and I attended his seminars and took like 31 pages of notes, which I then analyzed in about 30 different blog posts. You can find my analysis here. This might be helpful as you’ll know exactly what Harrub is presenting – I have also seen several of his presentations online and his material does not seem to change much.

  • CatBallou

    I won’t be there (I live in Seattle), but I’d really like to hear about the scientific accuracy of the Bible! I think that’s biting off a bit too much, even for fundamentalists.

  • nani

    so an interesting coincidence just occurred that i feel like relating. sorry if it isn’t nearly as interesting reading it as it is to me in my head.

    a couple minutes ago, i wrote something with a dry erase marker, and the smell of it gave me a wave of nostalgia for when i used to live in memphis. some friends of the family would hold bible studies at their house in collierville, and i used to draw on their whiteboard a lot. these were people that, as a kid, i used to look up to and think were very intelligent. he’s since passed away, but i’ve wondered recently if i would really judge him as intelligent according to my current standards. then i go to this site, and the first post i see involves this :p if i still lived in memphis, maybe i would’ve been attending this, and maybe still as a believing christian. if he was still alive, i could easily see him being involved in this. crazy.

  • Neon Genesis

    Is the same Church Of Christ sect that doesn’t believe in worshiping God with musical instruments? If it is, I used to be a member of that sect before I deconverted to atheism and I live in Tennessee, but unfortunately I also live on the other side of the state and I haven’t come out of the atheist closet yet to everyone in my family, so I can’t attend it.

  • BathTub

    Hah I came here to recommend Ziztur’s report, but she beat me to it!

  • «bønez_brigade»

    You East Tennesseans (R.E.T.?) need to just carpool on over. Nonbelievers are in short supply here in West TN. If I weren’t leaving for school that weekend, I’d attend. “The Dinosaur Dilemma” sounds entertaining.

    BTW, this Harrub guy’s material looks quite similar to that of Inmate #135733 (aka Dr. Dino).

  • katie

    I don’t know how in the hell you’re going to find many atheists in that part of the world. I grew up there — VERY baptist. I wish luck to anyone who can attend. Wish I was closer.

  • Curt

    I heard this guy a couple years ago before I was fully deconverted. There was zero challenge from the audience – just soft-ball questions and nodding agreement. It would have been nice to have had a few tough questions thrown at him to expose the errors.
    Looking back, I find his “evidence” to be quite silly and desperate. Things like how the bible predicts details of modern science, dino pictographs in Native American cultures, dino sculptures from S. America, the decaying magnetic field proving a young earth, dragon traditions being ancient stories about dinos, etc…

  • Alas, I’ll be at work all three days. *snaps finger*

  • Matt D

    For anybody who has the time (it will take a while to read) follow Ziztur’s link. It’s a fantastic read.

  • It also is in blog format so the last post is first and the first post is last, so you might want to scroll to the bottom to find the first post. One of these days I am going to have to organize it into an easier format.

    Thanks Matt D!

  • «bønez_brigade»

    Well, I decided to attend Harrub’s “Atheism’s Attack on America” lecture.

    The verdict: Aaaaaaah, the stupid!!

    Harrub spewed forth in the manner of Gish (Harrub Hurtle?) with loads of half-completed stories of Christianity being put down, held back, forcibly removed or “persecuted” in America — due to, you guessed it, the advancement of secularism and humanist principles. One of our group members was familiar with a couple of Harrub’s Fox”news”esque, too-good-to-be-true blurbs and gave the complete versions during Q&A. If Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort had heard even one of Harrub’s half-truths, they would’ve been well justified in calling him a liar.

    He also threw out the teaser for his upcoming evolution vs. creationism talk; it was the tired old evidence-for-evolution = Piltdown/Nebraska/etc. Before ridiculing the Lucy fossil, he represented Neanderthal as a one-off mistake/(hoax?) made by science, based on one fossil he thinks was probably a mutated/diseased ape. Apparently he didn’t get the memo that hundreds of Neanderthal skeletons have been discovered. Disturbingly, he holds a Ph.D. in anatomy & neurobiology, yet he mocked the fact that conclusions can be made about the stature or mobility of an extinct critter from incomplete skeletal structures (e.g., joint, leg or foot bones).

    Surprisingly, many non-theists were in attendance. We took charge during the (sometimes quite-heated) Q&A section, extending that part to nearly 2 hours.

    I’m almost glad I won’t be able to see his straw man attack (/lies) on evolution in tomorrow’s (/today’s) talk. Some of the other local heathens are planning to endure them, though.

  • «bønez_brigade»

    BTW, as much stupid as there was coming from Harrub’s cakehole, to his own credit he did discredit the two myths about Darwin rejecting religion and his deathbed recanting. Strange (but welcome) words coming from an otherwise typical YEC bot.

    And I think he only said “Nazi” and “Hitler” once per word.

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