The crueler part of me wants to make a joke and be done with this, but I think that there is an important message to get out in the wake of Mack Wolford’s death by snake bite.

Mack Wolford, like his father who also died from a venomous snake bite, was a Pentecostal Pastor who handled snakes to show is faith. He had been bitten before, trusted in God and prayer and had come through. This time however, the Yellow Timber Rattlesnake injected more venom than his body could handle, and after 10 and 1/2 hours of agony, he died a needless death, one day after his 44th birthday. He made it 5 years longer than his father, who he saw die the same way.

It is always somewhat inspiring to see someone carry their beliefs through to the bitter end, but he was not dying by the oppressive hand of a government that he sought to overthrow. He was not even a religious martyr in any real sense. He simply let himself die for misplaced faith; just like members of Heaven’s Gate, or the followers of Jim Jones, who had the ultimate faith in false beliefs.

If you’re reading this then you probably already know my views on faith in general, but that is not what this is about. This man, and perhaps even his father, should be alive today. With timely medical care, they probably would have survived their envenomations.

No matter what you think of prayer, the evidence is clear; in most (and I believe all) cases, medical professionals will do more than God to intervene and help a person who is sick or injured. If seeking medical help shows a lack of faith, then it is a lack of faith that is well warranted, but I believe that it shows only a concern for a person’s wellbeing and has no bearing on faith.

The most important thing to let Pentecostals know about though is the fact that Mark 16:9–20, the verses that the peculiarities of their religion hinge upon, are almost certainly not original to that book. Not one of the oldest manuscripts in existence contains these verses, and there are multiple different endings that were added on later, including the one that we see in modern English copies.

As Wolford’s mother said in the With Signs Following documentary trailer above, "the word is still the word"; except when it’s not.

If these verses are later additions, which seems almost certain to be the case, then it leaves even faithful Christians with no reason to believe that handling venomous snakes or drinking poison is a good idea. So please, don’t do it, and if you are envenomated, seek medical attention at least as quickly and fervently as prayers.

A couple of our members followed traveling university preacher Brother Jed down to the University of Arizona yesterday, and they passed out some of our tracts while they were there. If you got one and you’ve made your way here, feel free to post comments, join the forum, or just read through the archives to get an idea of what we’re trying to do here.

There is a particularly busy thread of comments on our post refuting silly Creationist theories about the Recession of the Moon, and if you post a question in the forum then we’ll make sure to give you some answers.

This has been an odd week, and we haven’t kept up our post-a-day pace we’ve had since the beginning of the year, but we should be getting back on track and putting up some good new stuff next week, so please come back and check it out, and participate if you’ve got anything to say.

It’s been a pretty fun week so far with Normal Bob Smith, Brother Jed and a few of the crazy local preachers thrown in for added ridiculousness, but sadly Normal Bob has to go back to New York this weekend and he won’t be here for the last day of Jed’s stay.

One of the most amusing events of the whole week happened today, and may continue tomorrow. One of Brother Jed’s own converts (who seems to have surpassed Jed in his study of the Bible) got into multiple animated close-up shouting matches with him, to the great amusement of the masses. We’ll try to get some video of the events posted soon for those of you who missed it, but you may still have a chance to see Jed get the smack-down for his “porno preaching” from Monty if you come out tomorrow.

I just watched a segment of Lou Dobbs Tonight talking about the decline in religious belief over the past decade or more, and I am very annoyed with the guests who were chosen and what they said.

Neither of them was anywhere close to speaking for the 15% of people who explicitly stated in the American Religious Identification Survey that they were not Christians and not religious. Apparently 15% isn’t enough to get a voice on television. There are enough of us to get religious people on to talk about us and dismiss us, but I guess it’s too much to ask to have someone who even remotely represents our views there to defend us.

Essentially both of the guests tried to downplay the loss of faith, attempting to claim the large number of non-religious people who aren’t ready yet to say that there is no “higher power” as their own, and claiming that due to the bad economy, terrorism and other problems, people are going to come crawling back to them.

It’s sad that that point is somewhat true, but the fact that they not only admit that this kind of suffering and hopelessness is what brings people to their business but seem to be proud and smug about it is disgusting. It’s like an undertaker rubbing his hands with glee as he hears about a horrible disaster because it will bring him business.

Most personally annoying to me was the fact that they basically dismissed atheists and even agnostics as inconsequential, and they could do it because none of us were there to defend ourselves.

They may not admit it, but they must know that the people who have fallen away from religion may very well end up as atheists or permanent agnostics, especially if we are brave and open enough to present our side, and they should know that there are many of us out there.

If you are an atheist or agnostic, or if you have any other minority view on gods and the supernatural, please don’t keep it to yourself. The majority needs to be challenged, and the people who are on the fence need to be informed about the serious debate on these subjects, not just indoctrinated by a new church without ever knowing another way is out there.

Let’s show people like Bill Donahue and Tony Perkins that we actually are out here, and that we will not be ignored and stepped on by them and their ultra-conservative religious agendas anymore.

This has been a long weekend, and I’m a bit worn out, but I think it was worth doing. Now that I’ve attended the Local to Global Teach-in and I know what to expect, I think we can do more with our table next year, and we can run one or more workshops too, so expect to see us out there in greater numbers and with greater purpose next time.

You can find a lot of great information at backbonecampaign.org, and you can find Ezra’s books at newbookforanewworld.org. There were a lot of other workshops that looked interesting too, but sadly when you’re a participant and not just an attendee you have to balance your time between the two roles.

So if you missed this one, I hope you’ll come out next time, and we’ll keep our eyes open for other similar events to point you to in the mean time. If you already know of some, please share the information!

This morning Brother Jed was supposed to be at ASU, according to his own schedule, but the schedule was changed today. Now it says that he will be here on Friday, but not today or Thursday, so if you were going to come check him out you should wait until Friday.

Sorry, but Jed moves in mysterious ways.

For those of you who are still on the fence about coming to see Jed this week, here’s a video of one of his songs and a bit of extension cord sex demonstration. How can you pass up such great comedy? It’s like a caricature of Fundamentalist Christianity, but he’s serious!

Jed’s Gay Song

It’s not okay to be gay
It’s not okay to be a homo
You weren’t designed to be that way
God says that it’s a big no-no

It’s not okay to be gay
It’s not okay to be a pervert
It’s not in your DNA
What you need is to be converted

It’s not okay to be gay
It’s not okay to be a lesbo
You weren’t designed to be that way
God says that it’s a big no-no

Well Darwin, this year it’s been 150 years since your book On the Origin of Species was published, and we’ve come a long way. Scientists have a much deeper understanding of the relationships between all known life on Earth, and your ideas have even helped guide us to a world without smallpox and polio, a world where influenza can be prevented, a world where we can understand what we are and why we are this way.

Do they reject your theory based on a mountain of evidence piled up against it? Do they reject it based on even one piece of solid evidence against it? No. Most of them reject it based purely on their religious beliefs.

Sure there is “Creation Science”, also called the “science” of Intelligent Design, but this is science in the same way that claiming birds are carried through the sky by a divine hand is science. As much as they want to pretend it’s science, it’s simply not.

I’m sure you would recognize the problems we’re having though, you had to deal with the same kinds of people 150 years ago. If only today’s creationists would look at how their predecessors have fared, every one of them trying to disprove evolution and not a single one coming close, the debate might finally be over.

For the book’s 200th anniversary, I hope I have some better news for you. With any luck, medical science will enable me to live at least that long, in part thanks to you.