The evangelical Christian radio program, “The Way of The Master,” is starting. A montage of fast tempo music and religious sound bytes ends, and the host, Todd Friel, launches into his opening monologue, then welcomes his guest, Marc Perkel. Perkel, it seems, has sparked his interest, because of his Internet-based church, “The Church of Reality.” Determined to confront Perkel’s failure to accept Jesus Christ and God, Friel challenges Marc’s stance on evolution and morality. Finally he asks, “What would it take for you to believe in God?” Perkel replies, “If he were to appear here,” continuing, “I invite God to join this conversation, and if he does, I’m a believer.”

The nature of reality and what is and isn’t real are topics of discussion Perkel is very familiar with. Perkel believes that on the off chance there actually is a God, it is a god that obviously does not want to be known, or wants us to believe he does not exist. Otherwise he would have shown himself, Perkel reasons.

“If God is omniscient, and wants people to believe in him, he can just make it so,” he says. “People believe I’m real, does that make me more powerful than God? If I can do it, why can’t God?”

Throughout the Bay Area, the occasional church bumper sticker can be seen reading “Choose Reality” and “If it’s real, we believe in it!” Perkel hands them out at events he attends.

The Church of Reality or CoR, founded in 1998, is now composed of 500 participating members, 1,000 e-mail subscribers, and a Web site that receives approximately 3,000 hits per day, Perkel says.

Today he’s sitting at the helm of his virtual empire. In the confines of his brightly lit apartment, overlooking San Bruno Mountain, he monitors three computer screens. On the left a never-ending succession of computer code lines move continuously up the screen. This is his custom-designed computer, used for the spam-filtering service he runs professionally. Although it consumes only part of his energies, along with web hosting, it is his bread and butter, allowing him to focus his energies on other callings, encompassed on the two monitors to the right.

Always inspired by controversies of the day’s news, he is sending emails to church subscribers, urging them to phone their congresspersons to voice their outrage at Bush’s definition of torture.

He writes most of the content on the Web site, in addition to introducing topics on the discussion board.

The church, however, is most definitely not about him, something he strongly emphasizes. “There is nothing special about Marc Perkel,” reads the Web site, which discourages the image of him as some type of “reality guru” or spokesperson for reality.

One online discussion forum is the “Reality Development Lab,” where ideas about the church doctrine and philosophy are exchanged. This collaboration is the crux of the church. Perkel modeled the structure of the church after the Linux operating system, which was perfected by many software engineers collaborating remotely from their computers. This meeting of minds, without a physical space to share, is not a detriment to their progress, according to church member Norm Ennis, who lives in east Texas.

“When it’s a congregation in just one little town, you lose the perspective of people elsewhere,” Ennis says. “(On the Internet) the conclusions are much more solid, with varied perspective from sometimes four continents.”

Ennis was drawn to CoR and similar online churches because they appeal to his sense of logic and intellect, and he says are not fanatical or intimidating in the way that big religions are.

“I’m scared of a lot of religions these days,” Ennis says. He goes on, describing the attitude he perceives in most religions. “ ‘We’ve got it, shut up, end of story.’ There are 4,000 religions out there, what are the odds you’ve picked the right one?”

Perkel knows where the San Francisco atheists meet the last Saturday of each month: Schroeder’s Restaurant on Front Street at six o’clock sharp. He’ll be there, armed with stickers and church paraphernalia.

Their subject, he says, is God. “Why devote your life and identity to disproving what you already don’t believe in?! Focus on what you do believe in.”

One by one, he’s made it his mission to convert them to realists instead. A lot of them, he says, are already realists but just don’t know it yet. He says reality has always been there, and always will be. It doesn’t need anyone to believe in it, it exists anyway.

“I didn’t find reality,” he says. “It found me. It invented me.”