As some of you might remember from a post I made a week ago, Dr. “Chaps” Gordon Klingenschmitt recently said atheists should be exorcised so they’ll feel “free to enjoy the worship of Jesus Christ.” I retorted back with my post, saying, essentially, “Prove it. Exorcise me and see how I feel about Christianity afterwards.” After I made the post, I sent Dr. Chaps an email, basically saying the same thing. He replied that he’d take me up on my offer and exorcise me if I watched all 17 training videos he’s made on how to be a good Christian. I accepted his counter offer. Here’s the initial email I sent and his response:

Of course, I’m aware that Dr. Chaps might be pulling my leg. Maybe he’s making me jump through all of these hoops because he doesn’t think I’ll actually do it.

Well, today I started doing it, beginning my journey towards exorcism. Even if he doesn’t live up to his end of the bargain, I’m sure I can find someone to exorcise me. Today I watched the first half-hour segment of his training series, taking notes and filming my reactions to his sermon. I don’t recommend watching it unless you’re really interested in what he has to say, but here is the video link.

In the video he teaches how to “discern spirits,” both good spirits (the Holy Spirit and angels) and bad spirits (demons), as well as the human spirit. He says something that made me chuckle about how to tell the difference between good and bad spirits: What are the voices inside your head telling you to do?

In other words, give into whatever mental illness you have and try to make rational choices regarding morality. I should also add that I thought religious people believed morality was biblically objective, but that’s neither here nor there.

Anyway, I’m not going to dwell on his sermon. I’ll critique the entire thing when I’ve seen all 17 episodes (quite possibly in a Youtube video).

I’ve shared this idea with a lot of people, and there seems to be some kind of ball rolling. Several people want to help me make a documentary of my journey to exorcism, the exorcism itself, and my response to the exorcism. Therefore, this post reflects my first step in this project. I’m not sure how many parts this blog series will have, but it should be rather lengthy. I’ll end each one by using Richard Dawkins’ theism/atheism scale and position myself somewhere on it.

Before watching Klingenschmitt’s video I was somewhere between a 6 and a 6.5. My position has not changed, even after watching his video. And I don’t expect it to.