CNN’s Belief Blog has the story of Ryan Bell, a pastor who decided to try being an atheist for a year. (This started back in January, but I just learned about it.) He lost his job at a church, and decided that the time was right for a “neat little intellectual experiment”:

“It’s like when you go to a movie and you suspend disbelief for three hours to get inside the story,” Bell said. “I’m suspending my belief in God to see what atheism is all about.”

It is commonplace for theists to make statements about atheists that suggest that they have either never spoken to an actual atheist, or weren’t really listening when they did. This guy seems to be reaching out, though, as the story continues:

He would interview atheists, attend gatherings of nonbelievers and read through the canon of skeptics: Friedrich Nietzsche, Baruch Spinoza, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, among others.

He has even started a blog called Year Without God. There was one piece from CNN’s post that caught my attention in particular, though regarding how he would live differently:

When friends got sick, instead of praying, as was once his immediate response, Bell said, he would “do something tangible and practical and supportive for them.”

Um, good?

Something about this sentence really rubbed me the wrong way. Look, I realize that religion is complex and multifaceted, and that no one individual is representative of a larger group. I also realize that many, many religious people do all sorts of outreach. All of that said, it has long bothered me how some people^* consider prayer to be the functional equivalent of tangible/practical support in most or all circumstances. It’s one thing if you really can’t offer any tangible assistance. If you could offer tangible assistance, and choose not to for whatever reason, that’s often a fair and reasonable choice, too. It’s when you could offer assistance, choose not to, and then tell the person that you are praying for them that things get ethically dicey to my mind.

But that’s just one Episcopalian-turned-atheist’s take on it.

Oh, also? Hemant Mehta of Friendly Atheist started a fundraiser to hep Bell out, and raised $19,000 for him in one day. When he closed the fundraiser, it had reached $27,304.

Photo credit: johnabruce@gmail.com [Public domain, CC0 1.0], via Openclipart.

* I said “some people.” If this doesn’t describe you, then it’s not about you. Get it?