The Christian Toastmasters group of Huntington Beach should be in for a more lively debate tonight than the one that broke out after Brother Earl suggested one of 'em was a chick at the Last Supper.
That's because they'll be visited by members of the Orange County atheist/humanist/non-theist group Backyard Skeptics, which is there to bat around the topic “Does Prayer Work?”
]
Fountain Valley's Bruce Gleason, the founder and director of the seven-year-old Backyard Skeptics, expects a verbal rumble seeing as how his group will be squaring off against what he calls “young year creationists” or those who believe the Earth is only 6,000 years old.
Gleason's pitch:
It is important to have a civil discourse on important questions–Do we have a purpose in life? How did I get here (evolution or design)? Is there really an afterlife? This debate series has two groups with diametrically opposing world views. Atheists debating conservative young earth creationists will bring out how these two groups support each others thought and ideas about their own view of reality. There is no other better way to hear such opposing views to decide for oneself which one is more likely to be true.
Backyard Skeptics, which boasts five chapters and more than 1,000 “confident atheist” members, routinely mixes it up with Orange County church folk at events like this. Besides comforting the like-minded, the no-god squad hopes to prove “that atheists are not the baby-eating immoral individuals which some conservative religious groups claim,” according to Gleason.
Tonight's event begins at 6 at Charlie Miller Hall, 13252 Garden Grove Blvd., Garden Grove.
Email: mc****@oc******.com. Twitter: @MatthewTCoker. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.