To my amazement, I never received a response. I began to wonder whether these people were real and that this was all a part of an email phishing scam with a long set up. It did not take long for another email to rile me up to pen another letter to this wayward flock of believers. This one came from a speech by Charlie Daniels, “yes of the Charlie Daniels Band” as Ernest put it, on the National Day of Prayer in 2012. I had never really heard of Charlie Daniels, but a thirty second skimming of his Wikipedia page indicates that he is in the Country Music Hall of Fame and even wrote for Elvis.
His speech was reported as follows:
I didn’t come here today to attend a social event or to talk about meaningless things or to make points with the community I love so very much.
I will make no attempt at humor or trivialities; my mission here today is to come together with my brothers and sisters in the body of Jesus Christ to plead with our Creator to give America another chance.
It is not my intention to offend any person or to point an accusing finger at any group or ideology and it is not my aim to judge any man, I have no right to judge, I am a sinner whose only hope is in the boundless mercy of Almighty God and the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ.
In my 75 years on earth America has fallen from a God fearing nation where family and fidelity were honored, to a nation which our own president says is no longer a Christian nation and where promiscuity and adultery are accepted as a given.
We have come from a nation of doers to a nation of takers and a society so permissive wefear to utter a word of criticism, against the vilest of social practices because we’re afraid of seeming out of touch with the times and being shunned as a fuddy duddy who doesn’t understand the new morality. Well there is no new morality, there’s only one morality and it was passed down to mankind by the word of Almighty God, and He changes not.
Our enemy is powerful and has had millenniums of years and thousands of generations to explore the weaknesses of mankind, what temptations are the most appealing, the seduction of wealth and power, sex and drugs. The introduction of cable television has turned the public airwaves into a cesspool of pornography, available to impressionable young children at the touch of a button.
Most music videos have little to do with music any more but flaunt blatant sexuality and anti-social behavior, and even the most vulgar words have become vocabulary and lexicon among our teenagers.
We have become so politically correct that we won’t even stand down those who deny even the existence of the God we serve and fight tooth and nail to have any mention of His name removed from every official document and even from public view.
America folded her hands and let a handful of self-serving politicians pass laws that forbid a child to say a prayer in school.
Well America , the further we drift from God the more lost we become. We have a decision to make. Are we going to continue down this path to certain destruction or are we going to turn back to our only true hope?
If we want to please God we’ve got to make a stand, to go against the tide of popular culture, against public opinion, to bear the white hot lash of criticism and the hurtful sting of ridicule.
Abortion is a foregone conclusion. Man says it’s all right to destroy the unborn; after all they’re just blobs of flesh. But God says He knew us in our mother’s womb and knitted the pieces together and scheduled the days of our lives.
Man says that God should not be part of public life but God says you should love the Lord your God with all your heart and that means acknowledging Him in public as well as private.
Man says there’s nothing wrong with same sex marriage but under the old covenant and the new covenant there is something very wrong with it.
The world claims to find salvation in Humanism, Buddhism, Hinduism and any number of faiths based on man being his own god but there is no salvation for ourselves or our nation in these new age concepts, there is only one place to turn to save America.
The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is not the same as the god of Mohammad, Khomeini and Osama bin Laden.
There is only one God and his name is Jehovah. He is a loving God, but he is a jealous God. He is a God of compassion but he is also a God of wrath. He is a fair God who deals with the nations according to how they have dealt with His Son, His law and His chosen people of Israel .
God told Abraham, he who blesses you I will bless and he who curses you I will curse, and He changes not. Are we listening America ? Do we take it seriously or is God’s word, as some would have you believe, just an old and ancient man made writing that is no longer relevant in our world today?
On this National Day of Prayer the verse from Isaiah will be repeated thousands of times, as it should be. It encompasses the sole purpose for this meeting this morning.
The Bible says, if My people, who are called by My name will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from Heaven and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land. God has blessed America above every other nation on the face of the earth
and we, as a nation, have turned our backs on Him. It’s up to us because, if My people would turn, if My people would repent, if My people will pray.
So today when we pray let’s forget the pressures, the prejudices, the political parties and all the other distractions that exist right outside that door and as the word says, come together as touching and beseech Almighty God for one more chance for America, that for the sake of those who are called by His Name He will send a revival, a reformation to our nation. That He will embolden and strengthen His servants and give us a will and a purpose and the determination to go forth from this place and make a difference, each in their own way.
I would close in paraphrasing a verse of scripture:
What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? What does it profit a nation if it gains the whole world, and loses its own soul? What do you think?
Pray for our troops, and for our county. God Bless America.
Clearly I was left with no other choice but to waste my precious time pointing out to them how incredibly wrong their worldview has become. It was the following long winded and overly researched response that finally got one of them to take issue with being their accidental observer.
Greetings Fellow Americans, (again)
You may or may not not by now but for a few months I have been receiving forwarded emails from, who I assume is your friend, Ernest Bailey, by mistake. I believe they were originally intended for someone named Jim, but lucky me, Jason, I started getting them instead. You might ask why I wouldn’t just alert cuddly, old Ernest to his mistake and make sure I did not receive any more unwanted emails? Well again it was because they were so darn entertaining. (Especially the one from the Confederate Veterans guy, oh and so many others) Besides their pure entertainment value, the material that you and I had been receiving from Ernest deserved a response from someone outside of the intellectual bubble you have created for yourselves.
The material I have received is exemplary of good intentions founded gone awry because of bad logic and misinformation. So over the next few thousand words, come with me on a journey of discovery while I offer up some humble bits of knowledge in response to Mr. Daniels.
Before I begin though, and before you stop reading, let me assure you that I mean no harm, I do not wish to insult your intelligence, and in no way do I think your minds will be changed after reading what I have to say. I just would like to say my peace with straight talk and a little humor. I am going to follow Mr. Daniels point by point from his speech and add context when needed. I may ramble on and on but it is only because there is so many streams of thought it takes to address the amount of bull shit in this speech. So here we go.
Mr. Daniels proclaims that he came to speak at the National Day of Prayer in order to “to plead with our Creator to give America another chance.” Now, my first thought is to point to the fact that the National Day of Prayer was established by President Truman and has existed since 1952. Since its inception, I imagine people of faith have gathered together every year because they care about their country and the people that inhabit it. I would also imagine that prayers for a nation include a desire for God to assist the poor, heal the sick, prevent conflict around the world, or maybe for God to spare us a few natural disasters every once and while. Though let us face it, mostly just prayers to convert more people to your faith. Yet since 1959, although the percent of people in poverty has dropped slightly, there are more total people in poverty than there were shortly after this whole prayer day thing started. Nor has it done anything for the nearly 20,000 children before the age of 5 that die PER DAY from starvation and malnutrition related causes around the world or the 1 in 6 children who go hungry in our nation every day.
Since 1952 the US has been involved in the Cold War, the first and second Indochina War, the Korean War, we invaded the Dominican Republic and Grenada, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, and now the two most expensive wars ever; the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. Since then we have instigated coups and installed autocratic dickheads in South America, Africa, Southeast Asia and throughout the Arab world, started the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, and of course all the hundreds of other secret bull shit that our military intelligence complex is involved in. To be fair though, there haven’t been any World Wars since National Prayer Day started so maybe it is good for something.
This coming together of people of faith to ask God for help has done nothing to stem the tide of hurricanes, earthquakes, and tornadoes. It has done nothing to stop the transmission of disease or decrease rates of cancer. Done nothing to alter the rate of mental handicaps in our newborns or decrease the instances of autism.
Further, this notion that we need another chance is completely ignorant of history. This nation has never had a clean slate. It took a hundred years to abolish slavery, kicking and screaming I might add, and another eighty years to establish laws that would protect the fundamental rights of all citizens. Even after that we have made it our business to drop bombs on an endless stream of new places. Which chance are we on at this point Charlie? You seem to think that even though our nation perpetuated injustice for most of our history, it was ok because white people were less promiscuous and homosexuals didn’t dare be true to themselves.
Now, having participated in the National Day of Prayer myself many a time in my youth, I am also aware that these sanctimonious days are also used to pray for the salvation of our fellow citizens and plead that they too can find Jesus. Any converted follower will then find joy and prosperity for all their days. This is based on the false notion that anyone who does not believe in Jesus is inherently, secretly, maybe even unbeknownst to them deep down in their heart, sad. I was given this distinct impression growing up in the world of fundamentalist Christianity. Living in that world I completely believed it. Maybe because it gave me the sense that I had some special secret that no one else knew. Without this special knowledge they could not experience the joy God had intended for all His creation. Or maybe it was because I was just a teenager when everything in life just seems more dramatic. Having abandoned your way of thinking, I know now that the notion that it takes a relationship with Jesus Christ to get the most out of life is simply preposterous. I would insist even that it is a big impediment to lasting peace. Superseding whether or not it is best practice for a human being or not, it is just simply not the truth. (Maybe something about John 8:32 and the truth will set you free)
“These days are a time to pray that America become more Christian and that we repent from our wicked ways.” Mr. Daniels alludes to this when pining that in his 75 years America has gone from a God-fearing nation to one where “promiscuity and adultery are accepted as a given.” Preceding this, Mr. Daniels, eqipped with a high school education which he completed in 1955, very humbly points out that he himself is a sinner and can not judge… buuuuut then immediately judges by saying that this country is full of pornographers and philanderer’s.
Before I move on I would like to address his proclamation with some context. Brought up in a Christian home and in Christian Schools, I was always put under the impression that back in Mr. Daniels youth, no one had sex before marriage, no one cheated, barely anyone did drugs, and Christian Morality abounded. I am sure this is the impression you might have even if you were raised secular. After investing in my own research, it is quite obvious to me that this narrative was a complete load of bull shit. In fact a very large study proves exactly that.
“The study, which used statistics from the 1982, 1988, 1995 and 2002 National Survey of Family Growth, asked about 40,000 people ages 15-44 about their sexual behavior and traced the trends in premarital sex back to the 1950s. Of those interviewed in 2002, 95% reported they had had premarital sex; 93% said they did so by age 30. Among women born in the 1940s, nearly nine in 10 did. At the same time, people are waiting longer to marry; 2005 data show median age at first marriage is just over 25 for women and 27 for men.”
So again prayer has done nothing and the condemnation by people of faith of perfectly harmless human behavior (which also happens to be none of your damn business) is past its expiration date.
Now to a larger point of context, Mr. Daniels says that he, like everyone is a sinner. It amazes me that full-grown adults accept this arbitrary segregation of what is acceptable human behavior and what is not. By definition sin is a transgression against religious or moral law, but I hope you all can admit that since even Mr. Daniels was born, the definition of sin and the severity of the transgression shifts according to the culture of each generation. Long hair on men and rock and roll used to be the work of Satan and now they are generally considered harmless. You are all familiar with evolving moral standard since you do not stone people for adultery, make a woman drink dirty water to determine if she has been unfaithful, or offer up sacrifices 66 days after the birth of a girl. (Oh and you better not have any yeast or honey on the animal Lev 2:11) These stipulations for existence are preposterous to anyone who wishes to live in modern society.
To Mr. Daniels I proceed. The Puritans that landed on Plymouth Rock were drinking 5.8 gallons of alcohol per year. So it seems that these fetishized followers of Christ wouldn’t be able to hold a day job nowadays. Liquor consumption peaked in 1975 and has declined ever since. Drunk driving fatalities have been more than halved since 1982. Teen pregnancy rates are down by ⅔ since 1960 and continue to fall. And even recently we learned that millennials are having a lot less sex than their parents did at the same age. These are indisputably positive trends for our country. But they also correlate with the same period of time that Mr Daniels insists has resulted in us “becoming lost” and “on a path of certain destruction”. This narrative is tired and completely flies in the face of the facts. The more secular we have become the better things have gotten for all races, genders, and creeds. Yet Mr. Daniels feels it necessary that we all have to believe in Jesus and ignore the great strides we have made.
Mr Daniels thinks that there is no “new morality”. Yet is clear just by the previous examples I gave that what is socially acceptable or moral is fluid, not stagnant. The Christian Bible itself is an example of that. The Old Testament code for behavior gave way to a new understanding of better ways to treat your fellow-man. The New Testament was a “new morality” and some of the codes of conduct detailed by the Apostle Paul are the spark of much debate in modern Evangelical circles. For example, in I Corinthians chapter 14 Paul mentions “ women should keep silent in the churches, for they are not allowed to speak, but should be subordinate even as the law says. If they want to learn anything, they should ask their husbands at home.” In the world we live in, this segregation of intellectual capital between men and women should never be tolerated. There should be no subordination of one sex to the other, unless of course two consenting adults find that really gets their motor running. You get my point by now I am sure.
If you are Ernest, or anything like him, I assume that you agree with Mr. Daniels that “one morality and it was passed down to mankind by the word of Almighty God”. I was presented with this reality in my youth and lived excluded from any information or people who would have contradicted this worldview until I attended public school sophomore year of high school. The world you have created for yourselves only exists in isolation. The principles and “truths” that you hold so dear are not congurent with our humanity;s best understanding of the reality we inhabit. After finishing this sentence, I become aware of the monumental amount of information required to get you to where I am at in understanding the Universe and our place in it. I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Do you want to talk about the reliability of oral histories? Should I run down all the inconsistencies and contradictions in the Word of God? Would you like to hear about how we may very likely live in a deterministic Universe? One where the math of inflation theory may dictate that we live in an infinite multiverse? The historicity of Jesus? The problem of evil? Or maybe how evolution by natural selection, THE mechanism by which all species arose on this planet, and advances in neuroscience may preclude the existence of free will? Complicated subject with free will being a prerequisite for all the Abrahamic faiths. I think that you can see the task you have ahead if you want to be confident in your faith without being ignorant of the facts as the universe has presented them.
Mr. Daniels doesn’t want to be labeled as a “fuddy duddy” but couldn’t be more of the perfect description of such a person. I mean, come on: complaining about sexual imagery in music videos? He might as well be sitting a rocking chair on his porch yelling at kids for skateboarding on the sidewalk. What do you find so detestable about the human body anyways? The sexual revolution happened 50 years ago and as I’ve shown the only revolution was that people were open about it. So sex between a married couple is sacred but any other form should come with a full helping of guilt and shame? Stop being ridiculous and learn a little nuance. Instead of focusing all your efforts on trying to stop teenagers from screwing, hysteria about the “gay agenda”, and insisting that a woman does not have autonomy over her body, the Bride of Christ could have helped solve real problems like how 1 in 6 children go with a meal in America every day, our crumbling infrastructure, our underperforming schools, climate change, or the systemic poverty that persists. Instead you persist with this notion that the devil is out to corrupt humanity and make them do naughty things.
He says that you have stood by and let legislators pass laws that forbid a child from praying in school. First of all that is not true. No laws were passed. We are simply just upholding the Constitution of the United States. Second of all, if you want your particular set of beliefs taught in our public system, then you are going to have to let everyone else espouse theirs to the young, impressionable mind. Including Satanists. People of your ilk always insist that beliefs should be taught in the home but always want yours inserted outside of it. Which in your minds makes sense because you believe this to be the truth. As did I. But when I was a child I spake as a child, but when I became a man I put away childish things.
Mr. Daniels implores America to listen to the signs and take God’s word seriously. But how can any rational adult really take the Bible seriously? Much less, take it as the inherent word of God. For example, the genealogy of Jesus descending from David in the Book of Matthew is different from those in the Book of Luke. There is no archaeological evidence to support the story that the Hebrew people were ever enslaved in Egypt and thus casts a significant doubt on the Exodus story. Which just so happens to be the foundation of all Jewish tradition. The Old Testament insists that Elijah was caught up in a whirlwind into heaven while the New Testament insists that no man has ascended into heaven other than Jesus Himself. The authors of John and Mark disagreed on what time of day Jesus died and the inscription that was posted above the cross. This type of haphazard story telling insists that none of the authors were there for the event. It is well known in academic circles that there are 4 distinct authors to the Pentateuch and that they were written and compiled far after the time they are said to have been written. The books of Kings, Chronicles, and Exodus all disagree about where and when Moses received the Ten Commandments. Which, in my personal opinion, are the dumbest group of do’s and don’ts you could ever tell a young mind. Where is the part about don’t rape anyone or commit violence against your spouse? Because for a decent number of goats you could get away with both of those in the Old Testament. After the death of Jesus in Matthew, who is known to have written the latter of the Gospels, recalls the veil of the temple being torn in two and an earthquake shook the area. But there is no mention of this in the other Gospels. Sounds like someone was building on a previous tale and used some artistic license. I could go on and on. These are just examples off the top of my head. All in all there are over 400 direct contradictions in the “inherent word of God.” Its a wonder how that happened when the New Testament works were selected by a vote almost three hundred years later. So No Mr. Daniels, the word of god is not final and is yes very definitely the work of man and is definitely no longer relevant today. I truly hope you are giving your children all of this information before you try to pass off the Bible a work breathed word for word by the Almighty Creator.
Then for a change of gears Mr. Daniels wants to whine on about us becoming too politically correct that we can’t stand up to those who deny even the existence of God. Well, fellow Americans, I am one of those people. The preponderance of evidence by an extremely, gigantically, enormously wide margin is on my side. I am sure you all, as do I, want nothing but peace and happiness for all American citizens. How dare you insist that your path to that place is only way. Is it really your goal to get everyone in America “saved”? What would that even look like? I could only speculate that America would become the most boring ass fucking place that ever existed. America is the leader of the free world for many reasons (no not because we are a city on the hill predestined by God); resources, an ocean on either side, WWII, among others, but one of our biggest strengths is our diversity. It is the interplay of different cultures and ideas that yield new ones and move us forward on the march of progress. “His” name should be removed from all government involvement because I, as one who denies the very existence of a god, should not have to be entering buildings I help pay for covered in slogans insisting that he or she does. Its preposterous. Check the demographics guys, you have already lost. Most likely your children will grow up and encounter someone like me with all the knowledge of modern science and history to kindly show them a better way.
Mr. Daniels is so fearful of an America that is not predominantly his version of Christianity. The numbers don’t back up his fears. The most secular nations have the lowest crime rates. Atheists and Agnostics in America have lower divorce rates than those who proclaim to be religious. The most secular nations report the highest rates of happiness and give the most money to charity per capita.
You have this ridiculous notion in your mind that punishment in eternal fire is the only thing keeping people from committing heinous crimes. The real reason people stay on the straight and narrow is because we all live in a society. If you constantly abuse the people around you, lie, murder, cheat, and steal, your days as a functioning member of our society are numbered. Sure, you can get away with it for a time, but there are always consequences. Try and spend your day as if their were no God, I am sure you would be just as kind and sweet to your fellow-man as you think you are now. And you could take all the credit for it.
Mr Daniels mentions a phrase from the Book of Jeremiah where God is meant to have known us from before we were in the womb. He says that God has scheduled the days of our lives. There are so many things wrong with this I am almost at my whit’s end but I will soldier on. So he knew that Joe from around the corner would have a low IQ, not do well in school and end up being the clerk at a 7-11 his whole life? That Mary from around the way would have relatives that abused her and late in high school fall into a cycle of addiction to cope with the pain? I hope you can see what a ridiculous notion where are meant to subscribe to.
Now, I doubt that very much that any of my words will have swayed you in the slightest. I would be ecstatic if I was able to spark one moment of doubt in your mind. But if you are still friends with Ernest after his stream of inconsiderate and apparently pseudo white supremacist bull shit then alas you may be too far gone. I am not surprised given how your genes and experience have led you to your deeply held beliefs. The same goes for me. So after this inevitable encounter, I can only hope that for just a brief second you saw how I might be right.
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I can’t say exactly what compels me to invest so much time on words that will likely fall in deaf ears, yet I suppose deep down, I just don’t want to live in this type of world anymore. One so full of false prophets, swindlers, and ignorant masses who follow them will grow tiresome of the coming decades. From these few thousand words it should be apparent how big the task ahead is for the empiricist project. This isn’t to imply that I would rather not be here, I quite enjoy existence (and given the fortunate nature of my circumstances I very well should). My concern is that I intend to be here as long as advancements in human technology will allow. So rather than a hope for future generations, concerns about the future are personal. Even if we rid ourselves of the Jesus freaks, some other false promise of a meaningful life is posed to take its place. I submit that the only way to overcome the pitfalls hanging on to a hope of meaning is to calmly explain that there are no conditions sufficient to give our existence meaning. (more on this soon) Even if it were true that we are all to be judged in an aferlife and exist in glory for all of eternity, that would still leave life completely pointless. And as always this is best situation in which we could find oursevles. Yet, I am prepared to admit that there is a significant proportion of the population tha may not be ready for this new reality. Time will tell.
The Westerlund Project 