atheist blog
Today on Facebook my friend asked her atheist friends to give her some thoughts on Mike McHargue, this guy who is claiming to be an atheist-now-believer-in-Jesus based on a moment on the beach with an indescribable light, a moment that he considers mystical, a connection with god.
Here's the video my friend posted.
I'd never heard of the guy, but I had some time so I watched a couple of interviews with him and some of his brief media videos. He seems to have a nice little wave of notoriety going on. Seems he has been podcasting for some time on a show called Ask Science Mike. On iTunes I see over 80 podcasts.
I don't know how Mike claims to be an atheist when he's clearly been podcasting as a Christian for over a year... But I admit that I don't know the guy. Maybe he's just building up his audience in anticipation of release of his book Finding God in the Waves: How I Lost My Faith and Found It Again Through Science. Wouldn't it be great if that sold millions?
Call me a skeptic (OK, you're a skeptic) but this whole thing sounds like a giant set up, a performance designed to capture a very specific audience. Mike McHargue clearly states in a second clip on his youtube channel that he has written this book for people who are in that gray area, in that area where science and social media has begun to get to you, to make sense, to inspire doubt. This book was written for those people who are beginning to see the light...this book is for you. So he says.
This entire campaign seems to me like a carefully orchestrated piece of propaganda designed to snare those people who are struggling with belief. It is a campaign designed to use the word science to comfort those who can no longer ignore science's validity. And I find that loathsome, disgusting, and incredibly manipulative.
Here's the video my friend posted.
I'd never heard of the guy, but I had some time so I watched a couple of interviews with him and some of his brief media videos. He seems to have a nice little wave of notoriety going on. Seems he has been podcasting for some time on a show called Ask Science Mike. On iTunes I see over 80 podcasts.
I don't know how Mike claims to be an atheist when he's clearly been podcasting as a Christian for over a year... But I admit that I don't know the guy. Maybe he's just building up his audience in anticipation of release of his book Finding God in the Waves: How I Lost My Faith and Found It Again Through Science. Wouldn't it be great if that sold millions?
Call me a skeptic (OK, you're a skeptic) but this whole thing sounds like a giant set up, a performance designed to capture a very specific audience. Mike McHargue clearly states in a second clip on his youtube channel that he has written this book for people who are in that gray area, in that area where science and social media has begun to get to you, to make sense, to inspire doubt. This book was written for those people who are beginning to see the light...this book is for you. So he says.
This entire campaign seems to me like a carefully orchestrated piece of propaganda designed to snare those people who are struggling with belief. It is a campaign designed to use the word science to comfort those who can no longer ignore science's validity. And I find that loathsome, disgusting, and incredibly manipulative.
Feeling a sense of the sublime, on the beach and whatever his vague claims are, are human feelings. I feel the sublime in many places. Those places, in no way, are a god to me. Pure nature is breathtakingly huge and beautiful and terrible and beyond our current comprehension. STILL, not a god. I promise you, a moment of awe would never make an atheist suddenly become a believer in any supernatural story and no freethinker would ever go back to the bonds of mythology that ensnare religious minds. I despise it when believers claim to be atheists in order to prove that atheism can be overcome by faith.
I do doubt Mike McHargue. I think that he is marketing to a huge group of people today: the people who are watching religious claims receding in the light of knowledge and the people who are openly or secretly doubting what they have been taught to believe...
Just a few cents in a few moments of thought.
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